Filed under: Symbian

Fans of free and open source software, I hope you have a change of pants handy, because this is some big news. Symbian, a platform that has been proprietary and closed-source for a decade, just opened up its code and turned free. It's been close to two years since Nokia first announced plans to open the source code for the OS.

The Symbian Foundation is boasting that this is the biggest switch from closed to open in the history of software. With their software powering 330 million Nokia devices, that sounds like a reasonable claim.

It's no secret that Android played a big role in this move. The competition from Google's hot new mobile OS (that's been marketed as an open alternative) meant that Symbian had to make a change. Now all of Symbian's code is open, and they can take shots at Android for its partially-closed code. Symbian's roadmap of planned features through 2011 will soon be published for anyone to comment on and contribute to. Hopefully, this move will keep the aging OS around past that point.

[via Wired]

While the iPhone and Android OS are known for their gorgeous UI candy, Nokia's Symbian OS isn't going to win any beauty contests. Nokia is hard at work on something much, much more attractive for Symbian^4. The mobile company has released its UI concept proposal documents, including some sexy screenshots of the new Orbit and Direct UI landing pages.

The screenshots are the main event, but there's some juicy stuff buried in the design document as well. Most exciting? Symbian^4's application chrome will support transparency, which could lead to some nice-looking effects. As far as usability, Symbian has taken a look at what other mobile OSs are doing, and taken its own path instead:

"iPhone has a flattened application library; however, it is displayed to the user exclusively as a manually organized grid, whereas the Symbian Foundation application library is an alpha-ordered list with multiple filtered views."

Unfortunately, this is only a version 0.1 design document, so Symbian users aren't likely to have the new OS in their hands until 2011. On the other hand, it'll surely undergo plenty of improvements before that time.

[via Engadget]

Oh my... not content with finally being at the stage where they're ready to release a working version of their 'Fennec' mobile web browser (albeit only for the Maemo based Nokia N900 initially), Mozilla seem to be on something of a mad world-domination-power-trip at the same time.

Why? Well, Mozilla have declared that Firefox Mobile will render all existing device application stores redundant as developers shift to developing applications which simply run in your mobile web browser.

Although this is probably the millionth time I've read that web applications will make client applications completely redundant, I'll explore their asseration for the benefit of you, dear DLS reader.

Vice President of Mobile at Mozilla, Jay Sullivan, spoke to PC Pro about application development and raised some valid points. He talked about the relative simplicity of developing in JavaScript and HTML and the benefits of not having to learn the development platform required for a specific mobile or desktop OS. It is valid to say that, featuring the fastest Javascript engine of any mobile browser, some great experiences will be possible with Firefox Mobile.

But I see a problem -- two, in fact.

Skype has released a new beta version of its internet communication client. Skype 4.2 beta for Windows includes a number of minor improvements and a couple of major new features including the ability to transfer calls.

You can transfer calls to any of your Skype contacts for free. You'll have to pay SkypeOut rates if you transfer a call to a mobile phone or landline.

There's also a call quality indicator, improved functionality with the Winodws 7 taskbar and system tray, and improvements to the contact importing utility. Now that the Google Chrome web browser supports plugins, Skype has also added a Chrome plugin to its list of browser tools. Firefox and Internet Explorer plugins were already available.

In other news, Skype also introduced a beta version of its chat and VoIP client for Symbian smartphones today. The software supports a number of Nokia phones running Symbian Series 60 software. You'll need 6MB of free space on your phone to install Skype for Symbian.

The Symbian client supports Skype to Skype calling, receiving calls at your Skype number, making SkypeOut calls, instant messaging, and sending and receiving data. Skype for Symbian works over WiFi or 3G data connections, but it'll eat up a fair bit of bandwidth so it might be cheaper just to make old fashioned phone calls on your mobile plan unless you have an unlimited bandwidth plan.

The SEVEN Beta setup is an interesting one.

As a company, Seven (enough capitalising already!) sell their excellent push e-mail products only via mobile operator channels, however their Beta program is an excellent way for users on unsupported carriers (that's likely you and I) to enjoy their software.

Available in a variety of editions on a variety of platforms, Seven's software allows you to receive push mail on your device from a variety of services - Exchange, Yahoo, GMail, AOL Mail, HoTMaiL and standard POP and IMAP services are all supported. A Beta release it might be (with the usual associated disclaimers), but the application is a supremely useful piece of software that i've been using for many years to push synchronise GMail with my Windows Mobile devices.

I happened to visit the Seven Beta site earlier today to download the latest Windows Mobile client and I was intrigued to notice that an Android download option had appeared. Obviously I had to download the application and take a look!

As expected, it's a Seven client for the Android OS that includes all of the goodness that i'm used to - push mail across a host of platforms, 'quiet times' when push can be automatically disabled, multiple accounts, server contact search, customisable notifications and more! Although the currently version of the software is missing a few features i'd like to see (primarily HTML mail), for Android users it can often be a trying task getting mail set up and working as desired if you are using something other than GMail, and Seven is making that story easier. I've been pushing an additional e-mail account and a HoTMaiL account all day without any issues!

If you'd like to try out Seven on Android (or indeed any of their other support platforms, which include WinMo Standard / Professional, Symbian S60, Palm OS and even J2ME!) then head on over to the Seven Community Forum to sign up for an account.

I admit it, European Download Squad readers: I'm jealous of you. My friends in London and Paris are swapping Spotify playlists like crazy, and we Americans and our brothers to the north still don't have access to this awesome music service. Heck, it doesn't even take a fancy phone to use Spotify in Europe anymore: it's just arrived on Nokia's Symbian phones.

This is a huge move for Spotify, which already has iPhone and Android apps. Nokia phones are extremely popular in the lucky parts of the world where Spotify is available, and supporting such a wide range of devices allows Spotify to look down its nose at passé walled gardens like iTunes. When Spotify comes to North America - sometime next year, but not soon enough! - it'll face competition on the iPhone, but I don't see a clear rival on Android or Symbian devices.

Do you? What will be your mobile music app of choice for 2010?

Palringo, the multi platform rich messaging client for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux (via WINE), Windows Mobile, Android, iPhone, Symbian, Blackberry and Java (phew!), that we first covered back in 2007, has just received an update to it's Windows and Windows Mobile iterations.

Palringo is an IM client with a twist - as well as supporting a multitude of instant messaging services (Windows Live, AIM, Yahoo IM, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, iChat / MobileMe, QQ, Gadu-Gadu and Facebook chat), Palringo provides some features not seen in competing products such as chat groups, location sharing, picture sharing and push-to-talk speech.

Changes in the new release include support for contact avatars (although these can be disabled if required), flick / kinetic scrolling, the ability to toggle the status bar (useful for devices with small screens!), variable font size, the ability to set online-status for all services at once, an improved installation process and many other improvements and fixes.

The Symbian client was also updated last week, adding a host of new languages, reduced data usage which also results in a speed increase and a number of bug fixes including improved compatibility with the Samsung i8910.

Palringo is free to download (a premium version is available on iPhone) from the Palringo website or from your mobile device's application store.

Hot on the heels of the release of their Android and iPhone clients, online music streaming service Spotify have posted a preview video of their forthcoming S60 client on their blog.

Aimed at Premium subscribers in the handful of European countries that Spotify currently supports, the application appears to support all of the features available in the existing mobile offerings and is a nod to Spotify's mission to support the largest possible mobile userbase - we'd like to see a Windows Mobile client next please!

Spotify is yet to make clear it's intentions with regards to launching in the US, however such a move seems highly likely provided the appropriate deal can be cut with the labels.

Many of us change our phones regularly.

The phone world moves on quickly and with carrier subsidies, upgrading to a new device is often cheap or even free, particularly in Europe. While physically transferring your phone number to the new device is usually as simple as swapping in a new SIM card or getting the device activated by the carrier, migrating data can sometimes be a real chore - particularly if you're switching to a different type of phone.

With the arrival of Android in the Smartphone space and it's continuing growth, this is a pain point that is being felt by many users who are switching to Google's new baby from other Operating Systems such as Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Nokia's Symbian OS or RIM's Blackberry OS. Thankfully, there is a solution if you are in one of these camps!

Sprite Software, makers of 'Sprite Backup' have just released a Beta version of their 'Sprite Migrate' tool into the Android Market as a free download. Sprite have a very good reputation in the mobile space, and rightly so. Their products are relied on by millions of users worldwide, shipped by carriers on a number of devices and Sprite certainly have a glowing pedigree!

Sprite Software was founded in 2001 by two former employees of Binary Research, developers of the well known Ghost software that was sold to Symantec in 1998. Any computer technician that has been in the business a few years will tell you how vital Ghost was to their toolkit, and how infallible it was!

How well does it work? For me and my test device, it did exactly what it said it would... everything made it across intact!

ESET is one of the most respected antivirus providers around, and they're not new to the mobile world. They've been selling a WinMo product for some time.

Now, they're making a push for another segment of the smartphone ecosystem -- those running Symbian OS.

The new product will not only provide protection against malicious software targetting Symbian phones, but ESET also plans to include a remote wipe feature. For the $24.95 annual price tag it's likely to carry (or just north of $37 for two years), that's not a bad deal at all.

There will also be a built-in firewall for added protection. The SMS spam filter which ships with the Windows Mobile version will not, however, be included.

[via ComputerActive]

Microsoft has been making a mobile version of Office for years. But it's only been available on devices running mobile versions of Windows (what we now call Windows Mobile or Windows Phone, and what was once called PocketPC). Today, Microsoft and Nokia announced a deal that will bring Office Mobile to Nokia smartphones.

This is the first time Office Mobile will be available on handsets that don't run Windows Mobile. The two companies have announced plans to work together on a range of mobile solutions. One of the key points is that is that Nokia's Symbian powered smartphones will be able to run mobile versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote. Users will be able to "view, edit, create, and share" Office documents from their mobile phones.

Nokia is also working on improved Exchange ActiveSync support, and expects to roll out support for other features including mobile access to intranet portals build on Microsoft SharePoint Server.

The Symbian Foundation is looking ahead toward the next few generations of the mobile operating system. And according to the Foundation's David Wood, the group plans to replace the S60's Avkon API with Qt when Symbian^4 is released in late 2010. In other words, applications that are designed to run on today's S60 devices probably won't run on future Symbian phones.

Of course, Palm also broke backward compatibility when the company launched the new WebOS featured on the Palm Pre. But the company decided to partner with a third party to build an emulator that would allow WebOS users to run older Palm apps. Perhaps we'll see an S60 emulator for Symbian^4 one day?

[via Engadget Mobile]

Symbian is the latest company to announce plans to launch a mobile app store... sort of. What Symbian is actually expected to announced today is more of an App Store platform that will allow developers to market and sell their applications through a variety of stores including Nokia's recently launched Ovi store.

Nearly half of the world's smartphones run the Symbian operating system, but a relatively small portion of US customers have Symbian-based phones. And while there are app stores for BlackBerry, iPhone, Google Android, and Windows Mobile phones, which make it easy for users to download and install applications directly on their devices, Symbian users (with the exception of Nokia owners) have been left out in the cold.

Symbian isn't looking to profit directly from its app store platform. It won't be taking a cut of profits from developers. Rather, the idea is to encourage developers to write programs for the platform to help keep Symbian competitive, although with Symbian's global smartphone marketshare hovering around 49 percent, this sounds like more of a long term goal than a short term one.

Skyfire is a web browser for Windows Mobile and Symbian S60 series phones that puts Microsoft's mobile version of Internet Explorer to shame. And I'm not talking about the kind of shame where you're a bit embarrassed to tell your friends about it. I mean the kind of shame that makes you move to a remote island and avoid human contact for the rest of your natural life.

The browser has been in beta for about a year and a half, but today the Skyfire team released Skyfire 1.0 to the public.

While the mobile browser that ships with most Windows Mobile phones can handle basic web pages, Skyfire can handle pages with rich media content including Flash 10, Quicktime, Silverlight, and Realplayer audio and video files. In other words, this is the first mobile browser that you can point at a web page like YouTube, Hulu or ESPN and simply watch web videos on the site. There's no need for a separate application just to play videos from those sites.

The browser also features the zoomable interface we've come to expect from modern web browsers. You can either view a whole web site as it would appear on a desktop browser (albeit, with tiny, unreadable text), or zoom in on the area you want to view.

Skyfire includes tools for keeping up with your friends on social networks including Facebook and Twitter. There's also an option to share any web page with your friends either via SMS or by posting a link to sites like Facebook.

Nokia opened the doors to its Ovi Store today. The Ovi Store is Nokia's answer to the iPhone App Store, and it provides access to 20,000 programs that you can download and install on a number of Nokia phones running the latest Symbian operating system. Or at least it's supposed to. Because for much of the morning, the Ovi Store has been unreachable.

Here's how it's supposed to work. Users with more than 50 different Nokia devices should be able to download an Ovi Store app onto their phones and use it to browse, download, and purchase software. You should also be able to visit the Ovi Store with a web browser at store.ovi.com.

But TechCrunch reports that the web site has been going offline intermittently for hours, and some applications that were available earlier this morning are no longer available now. A number of Engadget readers have left comments saying they can't even download the Ovi Store application anymore. And even if you do manage to get the store installed on your phone, All About Symbian reports that the experience leaves a lot to be desired, thanks to confusing navigation and slow page load times.