Category: Nokia Products

Nokia is fascinating the audience in such a way that I thought to create a category for the same in my blog like I created one for Google

Layman’s take – Symbian PR3.0 teaser-the radical changes?

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Note: Wait! wait! Wait! if you are reading it for some exclusive things that you have not seen on web yet, then please stop here as its the same stuff that has been posted by MyNokiaBlog etc. Here I am just going to discuss some of the finer details on it.

So, after the note of caution, let me start with some old speculations around the next gen Symbian updates that were being called as Symbian^4 earlier but with the arrival of Stephen Elop, a lot of things got changed internally and the decision of dropping the name Symbian^4 was one of them. All the scheduled changes were going to be part of existing Symbian^3 itself in iterations and that’s how PR3.0 became something very radical than anything before.

symbian-renewal

Recently we seen some previews of PR3.0 a.k.a. radical changes in slide from Nokia itself and the teaser itself given a lot of hints about the coming UI, which made me to post a few comments about them.

Android/ iOS like sleek top UI:

Menu

This was one of the complaints that many like Symbian-Guru made that the top bar in Symbian UI was taking almost double of precious screen space than its competitors. Symbian was using bigger top bar to use them as interfaces to go into connection settings, calendar, profiles etc, but other platforms proven that the big bar wasn’t needed. But the same time, another frustration of users came out with Menu-under-menu system, when it was more text centric than being visual like other platforms.

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Nokia N8 received SW Update love again – Quick Search Update

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While I was looking at comments like Symbian is dead etc and was getting bored that there is nothing to talk about Symbian as of now, then a very prompt buddy of mine @Hardiklive tipped me that there is something new inside SW update of N8.

These updates are available for all Symbian^3 devices like C7, C6-01, E7 and … (I wont write the name 😉 )

xm8q35 2qwpmog

Trust me, whatever the update might be, we always feel excited if something new arrives for our Nokia N8. As of now, I am not only able to find the details as shown in screenshot and something more ….

There are four new app additions in Application manager as given below

  1. Messaging 1.58
  2. Conversation server 1.57
  3. Conversation Appl 1.57
  4. Video player 9.22 (53)

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Gravity build 6698 pushes the bars again with Push Notifications this time

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Sometimes it really looks like more than Nokia itself, its @janole, who always come forward to hold users with Symbian and this time, he couldn’t have used a better timing for me, when I with many of my friends was feeling down by the news of delayed PR 2.0. Yes! our most favorite Symbian Twitter client is updated again to build 6698 to add one of the most awaited feature Push Notifications.

Other than the minor updates in between, the big update was Gravity 1.50 build 6685 (I covered in details on December 19, 2010) and after around one month at January 26, 2011, the second major release was Gravity 1.50 build 6693, which I couldn’t cover as my marriage was on the same day and now today, February 18, 2011, not even one month completed and we see the big update Gravity 1.50 build 6698 that changes the way, you knew tweeting on symbian.

Scr000029 

Sometime back Nokia also did announced their push solutions and related APIs, but on developer level those push features been available for Qt applications only and being a Symbian C++ application, it wasn’t an easy task for @janole to implement such a feature here, specially, when he was to go on his own. But when absence of split portrait qwerty input or a poor browser performance on symbian^3 wasn’t able to temper Gravity experience, how could have this mattered this time?

What are Push Notification and how they change the experience?

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Do not wait, No Symbian^3 PR2.0 in 2011 Q1

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Update 2: Thanks to our beloved @phonedaz (Damian Dining, the man behind awesome N8 camera), we have got some more updates on PR2.0 and this time it doesn’t look that bad, as I wrote in first go.PhoneDaz2

Phone

Though still no dates apart from the usual “early”, but we can believe on words of him for sure.

Phonedaz3

He also didn’t went for holding his opinions on Split Qwerty and Browser that seems more necessary for Symbian users than any kind of “radical UI changes” as of now. He confirmed that both of those most wanted features are a must part of next coming update that is coming before May/ June.

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More software update love for Nokia N8-MobilBox Pro and DAB Radio

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Yes! I am not talking about PR1.1, its something new that appeared on my Nokia N8 by today only.

swupdate n8

We know a little about DAB update as it first appeared with video subtitle support update back in Janaury 2011, but that time it was not available for Indian Nokia N8 units like mine. But this time looks like it got released worldwide finally.

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Laymans take-Trying to look at Nokia and Microsoft move

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February 11, 2011 will be marked as one of the most remarkable day in history as finally against prediction of we all Nokia fans, bloggers and developers, Nokia actually announced a partnership with Microsoft.

Did it

This was being speculated since the day, ex-Microsoft Elop joined Nokia as CEO, but not many of us believed it considering the fact that Nokia just been in a partnership with Intel to develop MeeGo and was going big guns (at least in words) around Qt.

I was much tied up with my own arrangements and office works after a real long holiday just spent but there were still some readers, who wished to read my views on the whole scenario now, so I was push myself for “summarizing” that what’s Layman’s take on Nokia + Microsoft?

  1. Shocked community and outburst of emotions on “End” of Symbian journey
  2. What Nokia and Microsoft said officially on it?
  3. Should consumers bother if Symbian is no more a priority for Nokia now?
  4. What is this “War of Ecosystems” and why there were not much choices?
  5. What still seems to be risky for Nokia? What could go really wrong from here?
  6. Is this the end of Symbian era ?
  7. What about the promises made by Nokia to deliver the updates on symbian 3 platform?
  8. What about the much awaited symbian 3 overhaul?

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PR2.0 teaser-Browser, Split Portrait QWERTY-Challenges

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While I always try to hold myself from echoing some news, this time it was hard enough for me to hold myself for not posting the recently leaked screenshots about upcoming PR2.0 browser and portrait split qwerty. Though we have already seen some leaks via Alex08 on MNB but screenshots always more precise than videos.

Some thoughts on new browser in PR2.0

pr_20_browser_1

What we see here in browser screenshot is a simple interface rather than going through a rather different approach than Desktop ones, who always had an address bar on top, while Nokia decided to go on own by keeping the same at below. Didn’t work well.

But just a top address bar is not all here. This is supposed to be a Omnibar combining search and address bar at one place like Chrome/ Opera/ Firefox doing on Desktop. Rather than a design shift, it was a necessary move with split QWERTY that will take the lower part of the screen.

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