With a 4-inch display, and a body to match plus a sensor that puts the rest of the mobile world in a tizzy, this device could very well be aiming to take the part of the market looking to stick with the odd man out, Symbian, whilst still having the benefits of the iPhone 4S in shape and photo power. There’s no denying that the iPhone 4S still has the photo finesse when it comes to working with millions across the globe, even if comparable devices might contend, but Nokia bringing some fire to the camera department here is good news for everybody. If a dying operating system can work with the world’s best camera, so should everyone else!

This device, the Nokia 803, currently has a time frame of release set for somewhere around May of this year. If this device does pop up with Symbian and the world’s largest camera sensor in a mobile device, you can bet this publisher will be grappling for it. Nothing like a strange operating system to get your juices flowing and your camera finger snapping!

[via BGR]

First Impressions

This phone is what I at first felt was a blast from the past. It seemed almost ancient to be to be holding a phone without a basically square casing and screen smaller than four inches. Then I remembered that I’d just been handling the LG Optimus V, an Android phone that had essentially the SAME sized screen, only fatter and shorter. Then it came to me – that big long button in the center on the bottom! It was a presence I’ve not felt since I was a young Jedi back before the days of Android, Windows Phone 7, and iOS. Truly I was in the presence of something taken from a far-off time. Right? I mean, wasn’t this an old phone?

As I held and handled the phone for minutes and then hours, I came to realize that this was not only a phone sporting the newest version of Nokia’s Symbian OS, this was a phone with advanced specs as well! What a surprise it was to handle a phone that wasn’t inside one of the bigger mobile OS families but had a power inside it worthy of contention!

Of course I’m not ignorant to the fact that Symbian is an elder sportsman when it comes to being a “smartphone,” indeed forging the way for these other amateurs in many ways. As I explored the system, I looked and I used, I found that this was a phone that I’d even consider using, even whilst considering the plethora of options from other mobile OS creators and manufacturers of devices.

A Tough Little Cookie

There’s no way getting around the fact that this phone is small, and there’s no way getting around the fact that this phone is carrying an OS that appears to more than likely be heading the way of the wooly mammoth – but like the wooly mammoth, there’s always a way to resurrect. Will our angry gods of mobile OS judgement intervene?

Or will T-Mobile’s Nokia C7 Astound keep Symbian alive long enough to necessitate her back into the spotlight?

And what about it’s NFC capabilities? Would a manufacturer really take the time to add such a futuristic functionality into a phone that was destined to die only a year after it’s released? We’ll give this phone the full rundown and see what we can see – soon!

The move is effective immediately, according to the Symbian PR that was released. According to the Symbian Foundation’s HR Director, Steve Warner, it looks like Williams has decided to step down from his post as Executive Director due to personal reasons. The letter from Warner, which you can read below, doesn’t go into any great detail as to why this is happening, but considering its “personal reasons,” we didn’t expect any details. But, the Foundation isn’t without a CEO, as they have appointed Tim Holbrow, the Symbian Foundation’s former CFO, as Executive Director with immediate effect. Check out the letter below. Interesting times for Symbian, that’s for sure.

[via Mobile Industry Review]

Williams says that the OS is only waiting on final checks before it’s ready to ship.  ”There is a small share of code which is pending checking by its contributors” he explained to Reuters.  However, future versions – including Symbian^4, which is tipped to bring with it more significant UI and other changes – are still very much dependent on Nokia’s timescales.  Still, Williams expects “a very mature Symbian^4″ by Q1 2011.

As for what has seen Symbian market share decline in the face of rival platforms, Williams in part blames the long approvals process for developers to get their apps onto users’ handsets.  That can take six months, he suggests, versus weeks or less on Apple’s also-stringent iPhone OS.

Video demos after the cut

As we saw before, there are three homescreen panes with some new transition animations and more user-control over how the panels are laid out.  There’s little to distinguish it from the iPhone or other touch-controled handsets on the market today, though; after Symbian directly reference their rivals in their technical documentation, we thought they’d make more of an effort to differentiate the UI.

To be fair, it’s only early 2010 and Symbian^4 isn’t expected to debut on devices for another twelve months or so.  In the meantime Symbian^3 should arrive in Q3 2010 this year.

[via Unwired View]

The latest version of Symbian packs in some nice new features that will make it much more popular in the mobile phone arena. Symbian says S^3 will be feature complete by the end of Q1 2010 and offers lots of significant improvements over the previous OS version. Among the new features is support for HDMI out.

The OS also has music store integration in the radio with a buy it now button for easy purchases. Memory management in the new OS is improved with Writable Data Paging and the OS has a new 2D and 3D graphics architecture supporting OpenGL ES. Other features include 4G network support, one-click WLAN connectivity, various usability enhancements, and a new home screen with support for gestures and multiple pages of widgets.

Video demos after the cut

Auto-following – Buzz takes advantage of Gmail’s record of frequent contacts, automatically setting up contacts based on who you email with regularly.

Rich, fast sharing experience – Google Buzz pulls in information from your contacts’ Google Reader, Facebook, Twitter, Picasa, YouTube and other services, even if you yourself don’t have an account with that service. Videos and photo thumbnails are shown in-line, but there’s also a custom photo viewer that pulls up a full-browser slideshow. Links, meanwhile, when pasted into Buzz automatically pull out photos from the source URL, and you can click to add them to your stream. Meanwhile there are the regular Gmail keyboard shortcuts for speedy navigation.

Public and private sharing – When you post something – either an update or a comment – you can select between public or private comments. Anything public goes to the user’s Google profile and is search-indexed, but anything private can be added to custom groups of people – friends, family, colleagues, etc – and be limited to those contacts.

Inbox Integration – Google have looked at mproved methods to integrate social updates with your inbox; rather than send simple emails, messages are flagged up with a Buzz logo, and those messages are dynamically updated with new comments. All the usual Buzz features – including the full-browser slideshow – are functional. Also integrated are @-replies, and typing that into the comment box automatically pulls up an auto-complete of your contacts. Sending an @-reply directs that comment to the other user’s inbox.

Just the good stuff – Buzz is designed with sharing and recommending in mind. If several of a user’s contacts comment on another item, from a user you’re not following, that’s automatically flagged up on your own Buzz stream. You can then click on the Recommend button to see who prompted it to be added to your Buzz stream, and then give feedback on how appropriate it was which educates the recommendation engine.

There’s also a mobile aspect to Google Buzz; Google have launched three new mobile products to take Buzz away from the desktop. First up, when you visit Google.com on an iPhone or Android device and tap the Buzz icon, the phone will automatically use GPS coordinates and attempt to fathom out where you are and what business you’re nearby. The system uses time of day and other details to offer up a list of possibilities; you’re then able to add a new Buzz post, either as text or – on an Android device – by speech recognition.

In the Google Buzz app, the full event stream is pulled onto the mobile device. Tapping on a place in a map brings up Buzz information – such as friends’ reviews – whereas a new Nearby feature can pull in comments from those people physically nearby. Finally, there’s a new version of Google Maps with Buzz integrated, instantly pulling in your location (and offering businesses) from which you can add an update to your stream. Meanwhile, on the map itself various speech bubbles indicate geo-tagged Buzz comments which you can review while on the move.

While Google Buzz will initially launch as a consumer product, Google also intend to launch it at a later date as an enterprise tool. The company have not given any idea of a specific launch date for the enterprise functionality, but regular Gmail users will see Buzz added to their accounts over the next few days. Meanwhile, there are hints of future integration with Google Voice – potentially transcribing conversations, or being able to phone in a Buzz update – and Google are promising developing integration with other social networking platforms such as Facebook Connect.

Google Buzz:

Google Buzz for Mobile:

“A lot of companies are experimenting with PDA-tablet-style form factors, also for stereo systems, and internet-connected devices running low power on primarily ARM architecture — we do get occasional interest for a few of those” Lee Williams, CEO, Symbian Foundation

Nokia themselves showed off one such concept device late last year, as part of their “Vision of 2015″ video which you can see below.  Williams reckons we will likely see Symbian tablets in the next 1-2 years, and the thought of a Tegra 2 or OMAP4 based device does have us salivating.

However, ARM architecture isn’t the only place Symbian is likely to make an appearance; as part of the Foundations “Wild Duck” side-project, the OS has already been ported to Intel’s Atom processor, which means netbooks could be in line.  Wild Duck is basically a database of off-the-shelf hardware with which manufacturers could easily put together a working Symbian device.

Nokia Vision of 2015 video:

“The dominant operating system provider out there is Symbian,” says Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, “and now we are offering developers the ability to do so much more.”

Symbian software is used on over 330 million phones around the world, as stated by the Symbian Foundation.  It’s facing increasingly dynamic competition in the smart phone arena from Apple’s iPhone OS platform as well as Google’s Android OS, the two front-runners at the moment.  However, Symbian phones have never topped sales charts in the US – will that start to change soon?

The graphic – which compares OS market share for Nokia’s devices in 2009 and then 2011 – suggests that rather than ousting S60, Maemo will instead squeeze in at the expense of S40, the entry-level OS on Nokia’s budget and mid-range devices.  The indication seems to be that S60′s reach – with a new UI, Nokia promise – will be extended down the line-up to contend with users expecting more from their handsets, while Maemo slots in at the flagship end of the spectrum.  Indeed S60 device share actually increases from 2009 levels, rather than decreasing.

Of course, there are no actual figures so it’s hard to tell exactly what Nokia expect to happen.  The company has promised two “major device milestones” in 2010, but earlier rumors suggested that only one new Maemo device was planned for next year.  If that’s the case, 2011 will need to have quite a few more Maemo smartphones on offer if it’s to grab its chunk of pie.

[via Twitter]

They also want to increase the number of touch and/or QWERTY blessed devices, as well as “deliver our first Maemo 6-powered mobile computer, with an iconic user experience, in the second half of 2010″.  It sounds like Nokia’s intent to push S60 down the range into cheaper devices will also come to fruition in 2010, with the company looking to make smartphones more accessible.

Nokia’s UI work has been a common theme among smartphone discussion, with S60′s somewhat tired interface (masking what’s still a very capable OS) often leaving reviewer opinion lagging behind when compared to more visually-rich rival platforms.  Their software teams have not been shy in putting together tempting concept videos, proposals for next-gen UIs and new collaborative functionality, but so far there’s been no timescale for when any of that might transfer over to a shipping handset.

Nexus is a runtime that sits on top of the underlying OS, and while it’s not made explicitly clear in the press release, it sounds as though Sony Ericsson are offering WebSDK as a generic, cross-platform development environment.  The company’s own Timescape and Mediascape apps, as loaded onto the X10, are said to be platform agnostic and as such would run on Android or Symbian Foundation devices.  We’re checking with SE to find out if this is indeed the case.

General registration is free, and garners you access to the forums, white-papers and developer tools.  However if Sony Ericsson like the cut of your jib then they might invite you to be a “premier partner”, the perks of which include access to early hardware, loaner devices, dedicated tech support and software flash equipment.

Press Release:

Sony Ericsson launches a Web SDK and widens mobile market access for web developers

Sony Ericsson showcases the beta version of WebSDK at the annual Web 2.0 conference in New York.

New York – November 18 2009 – The Sony Ericsson WebSDK is a suite of mobile development tools that allows both web and mobile developers to create applications for Sony Ericsson’s Google Android™ OS and Symbian Foundation phones.

Created in collaboration with the PhoneGap open source community, the launch of the Sony Ericsson WebSDK from makes it possible to design applications for Sony Ericsson’s Google Android™ OS and Symbian Foundation devices starting with the newly announced XPERIA™ X10 and the recently launched Satio™.

“With the Sony Ericsson WebSDK our focus is on bringing all the capabilities of web technologies to mobile applications and giving web developers wide access to easy-to-use tools and mobile phone platforms.” says Christopher David, Head of Developer and Partner Engagement at Sony Ericsson. “We are driving this initiative together with the PhoneGap open source community and invite developers to join us as we offer advanced mobile devices and a clear monetization path.”

Nitobi’s CEO, Andre Charland added: “Sony Ericsson’s collaboration with the PhoneGap community is a huge win for mobile users, developers and the future of the open web on mobile devices. Having already adopted and benefited from open platforms like Google Android™ OS and Symbian, Sony Ericsson is now completing the puzzle for developers of cross-platform mobile applications.”

For more information on the new Sony Ericsson WebSDK please visit booth 917 at the Web 2.0 Conference in New York or visit http://developer.sonyericsson.com

While there are currently 16 different packages of the current Symbian release available, together with an EPL release of the microkernel that, Puckrin expects, will see semiconductor firms proliferate low-cost chipsets for the platform, Symbian^3 is on course for completion in Q1 2010; handsets are expected to reach the market in the second half of next year.  Meanwhile the Symbian^4 kits will begin to become available in Q1 2010, with the OS scheduled for completion in Q4 2010 and commercial availability of handsets in the first half of 2011.

Symbian^3 and ^4 will bring with them at least 466 new features from the Foundation team themselves; Puckrin also expects many more additions from the developer community itself.  The Foundation expects to differentiate its offering from Google’s Android by virtue of broader access to core aspects of the OS, together with a different open-source license which will require those modifying and tweaking the Symbian code to resubmit their changes and adaptations, a move Puckrin believes will prevent fragmentation.

Among the native functionality baked into Symbian^3 will be near-field communications, which will allow mobile devices to communicate wirelessly with in-car electronics, media systems and other handsets, together with a new social web API.  Similar to Android 2.0′s API “hooks”, this will allow social networks such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to connect to core applications such as contacts and messaging, for aggregation of content and sharing profile photos and other information.  The upcoming OS will also feature hardware graphics acceleration, potentially boosting video playback performance to hitherto unseen levels on mobile devices.

Rather than leave finding applications to chance – or to the occasionally clunky Ovi store, Symbian Foundation have developed Horizon, a combination application publishing system – which will push new code into the Ovi store for download – as well as act as a “yellow pages” for apps.  Rather than replicate the Ovi functionality, Horizon will offer a full database of software from both large and small developers, as well as multiple links to the various places it’s possible to download those apps from.  There’s also a suggestion site, ideas.symbian.org, where smartphone enthusiasts can suggest new features, vote for other suggestions, and the Foundation will attempt to connect developers and popular ideas for later inclusion in the core OS.

While we’re inherently cautious about any platform purporting to be “The Future of Mobile”, some of Symbian Foundation’s approaches certainly seem to make more sense than rival OSes and the relatively tight grip they’re held in by the manufacturers.  More details on the Symbian port for BeagleBoard here; the device itself is available here.

Video demo after the cut

In the demo, there’s a combined “event” stream from Facebook accessed from the homescreen, controlled by gestures; an invitation links into messaging, with Exchange-style meeting responses, and is automatically added to the device’s calendar.  While on the move, meanwhile, an augmented-reality view of the street is overlaid with specific directions to the event complete with messages from other users (“the back gate is open”).

Unfortunately, like discovering after a make-up date that your ex is still wedded to their old, destructive ways, Symbian Foundation aren’t doing the sensible thing and leaping on this new idea.  Instead, they say, “this concept is not part of the Symbian UI Roadmap, but we hope some of the cool features and effects will make it into our reference UI and/or delivered handsets.”  Disappointing, and for a platform that’s rapidly being overlooked in favor of Android and webOS, potentially very short-sighted.

[via Gear Diary]

In fact, according to that spokesperson, there is “absolutely no truth … whatsoever” to the Guardian piece.  The company failed to respond to the paper’s suggestions that industry interest in Symbian – which was made free after Nokia bought out its software partners and assumed full control of the platform – has proved low in comparison to Android take-up.

Nokia devices have previously been coaxed into running Android, but so far the company has made no official move to adopt the platform.  The firm is conspicuous by its absence among the members of Google’s Open Handset Alliance.

According to the rep, Sony Ericsson are aiming for October with November considered the “fall-back date” should plans go awry.  Sony Ericsson Sweden would only reiterate that the company plans to ship the Idou “sometime in the second half of the year”.

Previewed at Mobile World Congress in February, the Sony Ericsson Idou is a full-touchscreen smartphone running Symbian Foundation, with GPS, a 3.5-inch display and massive 12-megapixel camera.  More details – plus live photos and video – can be found here.

[via Boy Genius Report]