mobile reviews

It seems it’s time for another round to discuss about whether Nokia will abandon Symbian OS in favour of (mobile) Linux. All About Symbian has reported that “Nokia’s Chief Financial Officer said Nokia is considering manufacturing Linux-based mobile phones”. This information is confirmed by Unwired View as well, although in a slightly different tone: they say “Nokia sees increasing role of Linux in handsets”. Finally, El Reg is saying that “Nokia says no plan to switch phones to Linux”.

Who to believe? Having read the comments carefully, people seems to have the following opinions/see the following options:

• The biggest haters of Symbian say that it’s natural that Linux will take over and this is exactly what they’ve always claimed.
• According to a bit more careful opinion, these two mobile operating systems will co-exist. There are couple of arguments for this scenario:
• Symbian/S60 is undoubtedly the leader in smartphone market
• There’s room for both OSes: Symbian excels in high-performance mobile phones, whereas Linux could be successful in mid-range feature phones.
• Nokia has already heavily invested in the development of a mobile OS and is a nearly 50% shareholder of Symbian these days - why would they ruin all this?
• The development of a smartphone running on Linux still takes a LOT of time.
• Some more paranoid commenters say that “Linux is not really a threat for Symbian, but rather a motivation” to work & perform even better in today’s extremely competing environment (i.e. mobile OSes and smartphone market). They believe that Nokia wants to make pressure on Symbian by announcing new Linux-powered devices from time to time.
• Finally, there are those who don’t give a sh.t to what OS is running on a phone, they “just” want their Flash/Python/Java/etc. applications (whether they wrote them or not) to run smoothly in the future, too. Some of these people also mention that it’s the same if the OS gets replaced, the UI (i.e. S60) is what’s important - and if it remains, nothing will change actually.

Personally, I think that Nokia is still making experiments with Linux. Don’t forget that they already have mobile Linux devices (Internet tablets running on Maemo platform), though, those are not mobile phones, just sort of PDAs. In today’s fragmented mobile Linux market, no one mobile manufacturers dare to commit themselves to take Linux as the leading operating system for their products - it would simply be way too risky. It’s been also said numerous times that there are lots of factors that manufacturers must consider when selecting a mobile OS and Linux is definitely NOT the ultimate solution today. Nokia might abandon Symbian in the future, however, it’s not time for that. Yet.

Any thoughts?

Tote

It seems it’s time for another round to discuss about whether Nokia will abandon Symbian OS in favour of (mobile) Linux. All About Symbian has reported that “Nokia’s Chief Financial Officer said Nokia is considering manufacturing Linux-based mobile phones”. This information is confirmed by Unwired View as well, although in a slightly different tone: they say “Nokia sees increasing role of Linux in handsets”. Finally, El Reg is saying that “Nokia says no plan to switch phones to Linux”.

Who to believe? Having read the comments carefully, people seems to have the following opinions/see the following options:

• The biggest haters of Symbian say that it’s natural that Linux will take over and this is exactly what they’ve always claimed.
• According to a bit more careful opinion, these two mobile operating systems will co-exist. There are couple of arguments for this scenario:
• Symbian/S60 is undoubtedly the leader in smartphone market
• There’s room for both OSes: Symbian excels in high-performance mobile phones, whereas Linux could be successful in mid-range feature phones.
• Nokia has already heavily invested in the development of a mobile OS and is a nearly 50% shareholder of Symbian these days - why would they ruin all this?
• The development of a smartphone running on Linux still takes a LOT of time.
• Some more paranoid commenters say that “Linux is not really a threat for Symbian, but rather a motivation” to work & perform even better in today’s extremely competing environment (i.e. mobile OSes and smartphone market). They believe that Nokia wants to make pressure on Symbian by announcing new Linux-powered devices from time to time.
• Finally, there are those who don’t give a sh.t to what OS is running on a phone, they “just” want their Flash/Python/Java/etc. applications (whether they wrote them or not) to run smoothly in the future, too. Some of these people also mention that it’s the same if the OS gets replaced, the UI (i.e. S60) is what’s important - and if it remains, nothing will change actually.

Personally, I think that Nokia is still making experiments with Linux. Don’t forget that they already have mobile Linux devices (Internet tablets running on Maemo platform), though, those are not mobile phones, just sort of PDAs. In today’s fragmented mobile Linux market, no one mobile manufacturers dare to commit themselves to take Linux as the leading operating system for their products - it would simply be way too risky. It’s been also said numerous times that there are lots of factors that manufacturers must consider when selecting a mobile OS and Linux is definitely NOT the ultimate solution today. Nokia might abandon Symbian in the future, however, it’s not time for that. Yet.

Any thoughts?

Tote

Simon Judge’s blog made me think, again. He wrote about Mob4Hire, a company offering people for mobile application testing. Testers get paid via PayPal after bidding on projects (i.e. mobile applications/solutions) and developers get testers at a (hopefully) reasonable price. Finding testers might be especially useful if your geographic area is not the one you’d like your software to be tested in.

You know, lots of developers (dare to say: most?) do not recognize the importance of testing. This is the least pleasant part of development, I must admit, yet one of the most important. There are various kinds of testing including (but not limited to) unit-, regression, load, “smoke”, etc. testing. The one, Mob4Hire provides solution to is called functional testing, where one can test the whole solution end-to-end. You know, mobile handsets are very-very fragmented in terms of platforms: applications can be developed in many programming languages like Java, Symbian C++, Windows Mobile Win32/C#, iPhone Obj-C, Linux C/C++, etc. And even when sticking to the same platform and programming environment, JME for example, the supported features vary very much from device to device. This, along with the complexity of what operators allow 3rd-party programs to do, makes it very difficult for a new application to be thoroughly tested.

Nokia already provides a free service for developers wishing to test their mobile applications written for Nokia S60 platform: it’s called Nokia RDA (short for Remote Device Access). It is an Internet-based solution, where you can remote control a real mobile phone. You can request, for example, that SIM- and/or memory card be inserted in the test device as well as more than one phone be reserved for your test session to test peer-to-peer communications.

DeviceAnywhere provides a similar solution to Nokia RDA, however, it’s not limited to a particular platform, nor to only 1-2 network operators. According to their web site, their service is “a revolutionary online service that provides access to hundreds of real handsets, on live worldwide networks, remotely over the Internet”. Unfortunately, it is not free of charge.

Note that you cannot test everything with these solutions. For example, applications that use camera, GPS, accelerometer are basically out of question as well as ones using external accessories.

Another option for functional testing is making use of the services of Test Houses. Professional testers verify the quality of your software (compared to Mob4Hire, for example, see Simon’s opinion) so that you can be sure you get the most what you paid for. Sometimes it’s even required for your application to pass certain tests in order to get certified by some authorities. However, you may need to pay a lot for this service, see the list & pricing of Test Houses that Symbian Signed accepts, for example.

Finally, let’s talk about community-driven testing. Once your application is in such a shape that it is ready for external people to play with it, you can ask them to go and use it extensively. You can offer free copies of the software to them, for example, or they may do it just for their own gratification - it’s the same. This way of testing works extremely well in solutions based on client-server architecture with a mobile front-end and a server back-end. It’s quite common in these scenarios that the mobile-end is just a light-weight client software that can be freely distributed, thus it doesn’t cause any inconvenience if software distrubition is not strictly controlled. The point is that you may get lots of people playing with your software, because it’s their passion. And passion drives people to do their job well, simply because they enjoy it, they love your program and they’d like it to be even better. I’m really a great supporter of this kind of testing.
Can you recommend any other way for performing functional mobile software testing? Please let me (us) know!

Tote

Simon Judge’s blog made me think, again. He wrote about Mob4Hire, a company offering people for mobile application testing. Testers get paid via PayPal after bidding on projects (i.e. mobile applications/solutions) and developers get testers at a (hopefully) reasonable price. Finding testers might be especially useful if your geographic area is not the one you’d like your software to be tested in.

You know, lots of developers (dare to say: most?) do not recognize the importance of testing. This is the least pleasant part of development, I must admit, yet one of the most important. There are various kinds of testing including (but not limited to) unit-, regression, load, “smoke”, etc. testing. The one, Mob4Hire provides solution to is called functional testing, where one can test the whole solution end-to-end. You know, mobile handsets are very-very fragmented in terms of platforms: applications can be developed in many programming languages like Java, Symbian C++, Windows Mobile Win32/C#, iPhone Obj-C, Linux C/C++, etc. And even when sticking to the same platform and programming environment, JME for example, the supported features vary very much from device to device. This, along with the complexity of what operators allow 3rd-party programs to do, makes it very difficult for a new application to be thoroughly tested.

Nokia already provides a free service for developers wishing to test their mobile applications written for Nokia S60 platform: it’s called Nokia RDA (short for Remote Device Access). It is an Internet-based solution, where you can remote control a real mobile phone. You can request, for example, that SIM- and/or memory card be inserted in the test device as well as more than one phone be reserved for your test session to test peer-to-peer communications.

DeviceAnywhere provides a similar solution to Nokia RDA, however, it’s not limited to a particular platform, nor to only 1-2 network operators. According to their web site, their service is “a revolutionary online service that provides access to hundreds of real handsets, on live worldwide networks, remotely over the Internet”. Unfortunately, it is not free of charge.

Note that you cannot test everything with these solutions. For example, applications that use camera, GPS, accelerometer are basically out of question as well as ones using external accessories.

Another option for functional testing is making use of the services of Test Houses. Professional testers verify the quality of your software (compared to Mob4Hire, for example, see Simon’s opinion) so that you can be sure you get the most what you paid for. Sometimes it’s even required for your application to pass certain tests in order to get certified by some authorities. However, you may need to pay a lot for this service, see the list & pricing of Test Houses that Symbian Signed accepts, for example.

Finally, let’s talk about community-driven testing. Once your application is in such a shape that it is ready for external people to play with it, you can ask them to go and use it extensively. You can offer free copies of the software to them, for example, or they may do it just for their own gratification - it’s the same. This way of testing works extremely well in solutions based on client-server architecture with a mobile front-end and a server back-end. It’s quite common in these scenarios that the mobile-end is just a light-weight client software that can be freely distributed, thus it doesn’t cause any inconvenience if software distrubition is not strictly controlled. The point is that you may get lots of people playing with your software, because it’s their passion. And passion drives people to do their job well, simply because they enjoy it, they love your program and they’d like it to be even better. I’m really a great supporter of this kind of testing.
Can you recommend any other way for performing functional mobile software testing? Please let me (us) know!

Tote

If you owned a Nokia N78 now and then please don’t be jealous if your friend from Spain own a white Nokia N78, this new version from Nokia N78 only available in Spain. So it will not available at other country ! This Nokia N78 comes with a 3.2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, 3.5mm headphone jack and runs on the S60 mobile OS which similar on its older brother, the black one. What make this phone different with Other N series that it GPS-enable phone.

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Our upcoming article will be entirely devoted to Nokia 5610 XpressMusic, summing facts up that one is very close to 6500 classic, while Nokia 5610 XpressMusic is designed after Noki 6500 slide. Such an expansion of the company’s portfolio is extremely profitable, the developers only need to introduce a few changes to an existing concept proven by time, which means much lower development costs. This both reduces the resulting market price of such models and approximates the release dates.

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Need a stylish cellphone and also powerful cellphone from nokia ? you can choose Nokia N95 multimedia phone. This Nokia N95 8GB comes with .8-inch QVGA display and 2-way slide keyboard, you also can find 5M camera with Carl Zeiss optics at this smartphone. The good news is this phone offers GPS features, other features such as WiFi, Bluetooth, video calling, Microsoft Document support, visual radio, TV out and XHTML web browser. With 8GB of internal memory there is plenty of storage for all your high resolution pictures, videos and music.

If you love to surfing internet with your mobile phones , you can choose Nokia N95 . It support HSDPA, so you will enjoy high speed internet access which is ten times faster that standard 3G.

Nokia N95 is a complete multimedia cellphone, you can use Bluetooth is also great for transfer of files and music to or from your the phone, and also ou can play MP3 music and also watch your favorite video clips.

If you looking for standard cellphone from nokia you can choose Nokia 6131, this phone offers a 1.3 megapixel camera and a high-quality display and a built-in digital music player and FM stereo radio. For connectivity this cellphone features Bluetooth wireless technology and push to talk connectivity and Nokia Xpress audio messaging.

phone dimensions are 92mm x 48mm x 20mm

see video below

If you waited so long for Nokia 6212 classic that featuring Near-Field Communication (NFC) and this is good news for you because this phone finally announced, This phone is support 3G and the most interesting features is you can use the phone as your wallet - conduct payments and ticketing right from the device.

With this phone also you can share photos and videos by tapping an NFC-capable phone and pairing with a Bluetooth NFC-enabled device. This phone offers a 2-inch display, a 2 megapixel camera and stereo FM radio, it supports microSD memory cards for added memory.

Will hit stores in Europe and Asia by Q3 of ‘08 and price around €200

Nokia released new cellphone called Nokia 6300i , You must be guess tha this phone is the new version from Nokia 6300 cellphone. According to company this new Nokia 6300i come with same specs with 6300 but at new version you can find WiFi features and also the most interesting VOIP feautures.

With Wifi you can connect this cellphone to internet at any hotspot area near you and you can use it to call your friend using free Voip like skype, so this would be very interesting if Release I will buy it and try the wifi and also Voip features.

Other features such as 240 x 320 pixel display and 2-megapixel camera , Fm Radio, 512MB storages , also it offers stereo headphones wired as standard and the microSD slot in the 6300i supports memory cards up to 4 GB . If you interested Nokia 6300i will be available in Q2 2008 to almost € 175 or £ 125 before taxes and subsidies.

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