Nokia owns European smartphone market These numbers look awesome, and should probably continue to grow thanks to the 6630.  ¶ 11:38 AM 1 comments

  Live pics of the 3230 c/o Virgile, posting on the French site Planete Nokia.  ¶ 6:38 PM 0 comments

  3230 the first week in Feb.? The Expansys.com website forum for the 3230 has a couple of people claiming o2 in the UK is going to have the phone the first week in February.   ¶ 3:19 PM 0 comments

  Positive review of Nokia 6670 by CNET Asia Nothing terribly new or interesting here (what you'd expect from a rehash of the 7610, anyway), but a positive review.  ¶ 7:12 AM 0 comments

  Meet "Lasco" Symbian's latest virus puts the OS in the spotlight in today's New York Times: "In the 2004 quarter, Symbian-based devices grew to half of all new shipments. And on Wednesday, Symbian announced its entry, along with PalmSource, into the Open Mobile Terminal Platform group, an organization of mobile phone operators that seeks to bring more interoperability and consistency to the forest of mobile devices on the market."
  ¶ 3:38 AM 0 comments

  Update your damn website. They have a real hands off attitude... ahem, Ms. Webmaster, the 6630 and 6260 are out.
  ¶ 5:33 PM 0 comments

  Enjoy longer battery life on a 6600/6620 It seems the n-gage battery, which has a bigger capacity, can be modded to fit into the 6600/6620. Explained here on Hofo.
  ¶ 2:17 PM 0 comments

  3230 sightings in India Like with UFOs, you have to take claims of new hardware sightings with a grain of salt. But this post on Mobile Forum is the first I've seen with people saying its in the retail channel.
  ¶ 11:20 AM 0 comments

  FM? Steely Dan is hipper. And I say that with all respect to Steely Dan. So why is Nokia focusing on FM virtual radio technology (the Beeb has a piece on it today with pictures and mention of the upcoming 3230)?

Satellite is definitely the future; some might say its even the present. In Washington D.C., long-time prog rock station WHFS has sold to a Spanish-language outlet. Howard and Bob have taken up with the satellite broadcasters. Focusing on a dying technology is a sign that Nokia is more than a half-step behind when it comes to being cutting edge, and sends a signal to the early adopter set that Nokia's best day's are behind it.
  ¶ 11:08 AM 0 comments

  DIY firmware upgrading on the horizon? Fiero from Sweden suggests on Mobile Review forums that Nokia is moving to flashing firmware via the data cable that comes with the 6630. Imagine all the calls to customer service that could be avoided by having customers able to upgrade firmware? This is something I used to do all the time with Palm devices; it's amazing that firmware upgrades in 2005 require going to or sending the device to a customer service center. For every user who botches the process and requires assistance, there will be ten who won't have to send their phone to Florida or ring call centers to complain about the WSOD.*

*white screen of death
  ¶ 9:02 AM 0 comments

  N-Gage RIP? From Joystiq via Engadget.

It's hard to imagine that it was only 3 months ago when it was re-released. Time flies when you're selling none.

UPDATE: A contrary view about the supposed demise of the N-Gage at SymbianOne.
  ¶ 7:33 AM 0 comments

  Even the Mullahs like Symbian.




From today's New York Times - "An Iranian Critic Turns Blogger for Reform."

(reg. reqd.; photo by Newsha Tavakolian/Polaris, for The New York Times. "Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former Iranian vice president who quit in frustration with Parliament, shares cellphone pictures on his blog."  ¶ 7:04 AM 0 comments

  Avant NO. I read this review on PC World.com which got me a little worked up about the newest version of Avantgo, which I really used to love back in the old days of my PalmPilot. I had used the Symbian 60 version a year or so ago, and wasn't wild about the rendering of the pages, but I thought I'd give it another try, despite the fact that Doris Browser and Reqwireless WebViewer allow me to view all the content I want.

Once I downloaded it on my Nokia 6600 and tried to access my Avantgo channels, I immediately started getting error messages galore. Of course, when I went to the "manager" program to uninstall, it wouldn't allow me to do so.

It's one of my biggest pet peeves about certain S60 software -- certain programs are "uninstallable" via manager. The only way to successfully uninstall is to try and reinstall the program with the original .sis file; when you get to the second or third step in the process when it asks you if you want to uninstall the previous version, you click "ok" and after uninstall, you cancel the process.

Are the people who write the programs which are uninstallable through manager, such as the programmers at Avantgo, just inconsiderate or completely stupid?
  ¶ 6:49 PM 0 comments

  Reading Outlook on Series 60. Data Viz has just come out with software called Road Sync viewer that allows you to read, not write, your Outlook email on your Series 60 phone. Sounds interesting, and I'd like to try it. But the registration process requires you to give your mobile number, your work's domain as well as your password. This isn't the kind of info I'd ever give out, nor should you.

Their privacy policy is ok (no sharing with third parties; however, they can sell the company to anyone they choose and your info goes with it, and they don't pledge not to spam your mobile phone number). But do you really want someone to have access to your work email password as well as potentially receive mobile commercial spam? I don't, and as a result, won't try this software.
  ¶ 1:46 PM 0 comments

  I love freeware. One of my favorite things about Series 60 is the innovative freeware utilities that get written for the platform. Admittedly, it would have been better for Symbian to have included these functions in the first place. I suspect they don't include them in order to stimulate third-party program-writing and create a broad market in Series 60 software, helping attract people these phones over other full-featured phones not running an OS (as with Sony Ericsson's UI on the S700).

Igor has just released alarm manager, a program that allows eight recurring alarms to be set. No huge deal, but it rectifies the omission in the Series 60 "clock" program which doesn't allow you to set multiple alarms, or have them recur. Igor has created a nice program with a very simple interface that works well. (You still need to use the built in clock program to change your alarm tone, though).

I also like Mobipaq's stopwatch utility and Cell Track as well, both which add very valuable functions absent in the Series 60 interface. What can be better than something that is free and works?
  ¶ 1:23 PM 0 comments

  Panasonic X700 review on GSMarena.com. It sounds like a nice piece of Series 60 hardware, but I don't know if I could deal with a smaller screen, and certainly the camera is very unacceptable according to the review, which you can find it here.

It's too bad Panasonic didn't knock out a home run, because the minute one non-Nokia manufacturer gets a Series 60 winner, it will both put pressure on Nokia for better innovation and may shake Samsung's devices loose from the mothership.
  ¶ 1:10 PM 0 comments

  Series 60 and Good Technology. I love my Nokia 6600. And I love my RIM device running the Good server software. So I was extremely excited to read that Nokia and Good had linked up.

My question is: why the hell Nokia is moving so damn slow? Nokia has the lead in the phone market, but PalmOne owns the North American smartphone market. The Treo 650 is about to get released; the 600 has already gobbled up a big chunk of consumer loyalty. Good is far superior to the Blackberry Enterprise Server; Nokia will get left in the dust if don't they move quickly and release a Series 60 mail client that can work with Good. How hard can this be?

Update: After a conversation with someone in sales at Good, its pretty clear that they are not moving any product to market before mid-year. It sounds like it will be in conjunction with some kind of converged device, possibly with a qwerty keypad, and unfortunately it is unlikely there will be any kind of symbian 60 software download to enable existing phones.
  ¶ 1:02 PM 0 comments

  Nokia 3230 in February! Finally, some sign of exactly when in Q1 the 3230 will be released. There's a new promo page with a bunch of marketing flash on the phone at Nokia.com.
  ¶ 1:08 PM 0 comments

  Unnatural recording. This new recording software strikes me as sort of creepy and potentially illegal. In many states, it is illegal to record conversations without informing the other party.

UPDATE: CallRecorder seems to take this issue seriously, beeping at a certain interval to alert callers they are being recorded.
  ¶ 7:17 AM 0 comments

  Microsoft rag loves Symbian. This is an older article, but it really shows why I love the 6600 so much, and why I am hesitant to be upgrading to another phone. I mean, if it works well, why fix it? If Nokia kept the 6600 and just added a 1.3 mp camera, it would be a tremendously good seller, I'm sure.
  ¶ 11:37 AM 0 comments

  Perfect market? Not. I never cease to be amazed at the wild divergence in pricing for unlocked GSM phones. Check out the difference in the pricing between Expansys and Myworldphones.com for the Nokia 6630.
  ¶ 11:18 AM 0 comments

  All you need to know about the 6630. A fairly comprehensive link post on the 6630 c/o Russell Beattie.
  ¶ 11:10 AM 0 comments