Mobile phone leader Nokia will unveil their first touch screen phone next Thursday. Whatever they call it Tube, 5800, N97 or something else, the most important thing in my opinion is the Operating System with its application base. For new Nokia phone it will be S60 Symbian! I hope that Wavelog will work on it. Can’t imagine mobile blogging with something else…
Nokia released two new NSeries phones, N85 and N79. N85 looks like a younger sibling of N95 although equipped with an excellent organic LED (OLED) display. It is also rich with features like navigation and 5Mpixel camera (N79 as well). Both phones are powered with Symbian S60 3rd edition with feature pack 2 (Symbian OS 9.3).
Nokia’s investment in Symbian establishes a solid foundation in development community for all their new phone models. It is expected that once released Nokia “Tube” (Nokia’s first touchscreen phone) will have much more solid application portfolio, platform robustness and stability than the rival iPhone from Apple.
A new page in the mobile world is turning as the leading operating system Symbian will become an Open Source platform. That will be an invaluable push for device manufacturers, software developers, service and content providers to double their efforts in focusing on Symbian platform devices. Unlike the personal computer world, in the mobile world it is the most popular OS that becomes an Open Source. Of course thanks to backing by key stakeholders, notably Nokia who decided to buy the most stakes in Symbian and then turn it Open Source. Bravo!
Without much surprise, Steve Jobs announced global launch of the 3G iPhone as of the 11th of July. Technical novelty (only for iPhone version 1 users, Nokia users already have that) is a GPS support. There are no much other news. Disappointingly the camera remains only 2 megapixel. It is also not confirmed that the phone will support video calling. The color is black or white, like iBooks. Perhaps we can expect iPhonePro soon in silver?
As anticipated with SDK beta, 3G iPhone is powered with software version 2. Disappointing news for developers is that Apple follows Symbian practice in locking software by certification requirement. Developing even free applications for iPhone requires participating in “standard program” which costs 99US$ (”enterprise program” sosts 299US$). It is not currently known how long would it take to test an application and get it certified, but the advantage is that the application would be distributed through the Apple store.
Clearly new iPhone targets enterprise users with the synchronization support for MS Exchange (too bad for Notes and GroupWise users) . There is a potential for dethroning BlackBerry in that market. However, I am not convinced that iPhone’s 10 million units sold in 2008 objective will seriously damage Symbian’s hundreds of millions units sold figures.
Certainly I will keep my Nokia N95 for a while (at least until the expiration of my 2 years contract with the mobile operator) And I will continue using it to access mobile Internet, together with geotagging, 5 megapixel camera and full 3G speed (with video calling). Moreover, I will blog even more with my N95 thanks to Wavelog version 2 (still in beta though).