The Nokia Microsoft partnership is paying off , first it was launching of Microsoft Communicator on Nokia’s Symbian ^3 devices followed by Nokia’s adoption of WP7 for their newest smartphones and now for the Symbian crowd there is a reason to rejoice, in Fourth quarter 2011 i.e.within the next three months we can expect the following Microsoft Productivity Apps available FREE OF COST to us through Software Updater or OVI Store.

• Microsoft® Lync™ 2010 Mobile – for cost efficient IM, presence, audio and web meetings on-the-go.
• Microsoft® PowerPoint® Broadcast – quick broadcast of presentations directly from PC to mobile.
• Microsoft® OneNote™ – rich note taking with images. Syncs with Microsoft® SkyDrive®.
• Microsoft® Document Connection – single view to documents stored on mobile, including email attachments as well as documents on Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 sites.

If that’s not enough by 2012 , we’ll also get

• Microsoft OneNote sync with SharePoint

and Nokia will also be adding Microsoft Word , Excel and Powerpoint as native apps to Symbian Belle.  Although Symbian could be disconitnued after 2016 , still we have hope for the platform for another four years .

What do you think does it again make you like Symbian ? Symbian Belle does it for us

This Time It’s Personal is the tag line of Nokia’s Hong Kong Symbian event.  Nothing is known till yet what Nokia will bring out , some say it’s already leaked #Belle and likes of Eldar says it’s going to be new devices and on the countdown it says Something new on Symbian.

What could be new , some hints which are being dropped by Nokia is use of 3D images, is Nokia bringing out a 3D phone , a 3D screen .  Our Speculations are rampant and expectations are high let’s see what Nokia unveils in the next few hours,  we are crossing our fingers for a 3D Camera phone with Carl Zeiss lenses  and keeping our eyes glued to the event page

UPDATE: Nokia launched three new phones , the 600 , 700 and 701 , no 3D goodness

Have you played Need for Speed series , how about Asphalt 6 d you feel the adrenalin rush when paying these high speed games. I’m also a fan of these high speed intense games but sometimes I miss the simple car racing games like Lotus Racing (circa 1992) where all you do is change lanes and drive, no strategies like knockdowns or drifting .

Highway Racer developed by Orison Technologies  brings back that feel good nostalgic feeling to racing games . All you do is start the game and drive . The only controls within the game are right and left turn which the playeer use to avooid their red color yellow striped car from hitting other cars.

I prefer playing this Highway Racer  after a long day at work when i just want simple gameplay to relax , my only complain is the soundtrack , it seems midi based and is quiet annoying so mostly i play with it turned off .

I definitely recommend Highway Racer to old techies like me who remember the good old stress free arcade gaming and want that nostalgic feeling back.

Highway Racer is available for free from OVI Store and can be downloaded from here.

Opera today released version 11 of Opera Mobile and Version 6 of their popular Opera Mini for Symbian ,  Android and Blackberry devices .

To download just point your mobile browser to m.opera.com and you will be shown versions as per your phone .

While Opera Mini 6 is just under 1Mb , Opera Mobile 11 is a bit above 7MB so prefer an unlimited Data Plan or WiFi connection.

What’s new with Opera Mobile 11 ? 

Beside a new UI and faster frame rates when zooming without distorting the text  , it supports both Flash and HTML 5 Video  beside much more technical jargon.

We have downloaded both the versions and will soon post our thoughts on them

When Nokia announced their transition to Microsoft’s WP7 many thought that from now Symbian is dead and Nokia will leap from ‘burning’ Symbian platform to be a Microsoft OEM manufacturer with hundreds of million invested in Symbian by Nokia and millions of hours of work done by developers to make the 30,000 plus apps available on OVI Store will be gone to waste .

Yes Symbian is on fire but do  Nokia really would like Symbian to vanish in the abyss ? We don’t think so .

Symbian was and still the world’s largest mobile OS with 37.6 % market share in 2010 ( source Gartner Research ) although it had been loosing it’s share drastically to other mobile OS ( Symbian had 47.6 % share in 2009) but there is none like Symbian which is serves both extremes of the mobile phones from down the line to top of the line phones.   . WP7 , iOS and Android are all serving the mid to high end of the market it’s only Symbian which rules the bottom end of the market making Nokia synonymous with mobile phone in many places.

If we look at Nokia from developing and under developed country prospective , a cell phone costing 40 Euros could be a major investment for many and these people are looking for ease of use , familiarity and stability and features which Nokia and Symbian provides . Some may say Shenzhen eco system’s Chinese phones meet their requirement with much more bells and whistles than a typical Nokia C series phone however Chinese phones still are not trusted due to their low durability and are considerably difficult to operate . Remember it’s the Nokia 1100 which although was a Euro 20 phone ( at previous exchange rate in Pakistan )  it sold more than 250 million units , making it the highest selling mobile phone in history , it didn’t had smartphone features but it did had durability and people’s trust over Nokia.

Beside bringing familiarity , Symbian , a mature OS is also highly adaptive to the market with support for more than 100 languages , be it Urdu , Farsi , Hindi , Punjabi or Bangla , any European language or even Swahili  dialect , Nokia has made efforts so that Symbian powered phones ‘speak’ the users language , now a person does not have to be able to read English , his phone can show the whole menu set in his native language and he can write and display messages in the same language  and with local developers already engaged in making locally relevant applications their experience on the phone is further enhanced.

On touch screen phones Symbian has also shown their edge over competitors in developing markets. Once I have praised Nokia for using resistive screens on their 5800 phones, the reason the phone can support handwriting input in English and even in Urdu making it much easier for many to send SMS in the most natural way , by writing . Nokia 5230 , the little watered down version of 5800 is also proving to be a success in the market where practicality takes precedence over fancy apps .

Nokia is not abandoning Symbian , on the lower end at S40 side , Nokia is adding newer capabilities with QWERTY and Touch and Type input choices  , addition of GPS and email systems , support for Dual SIMs working simultaneously , Nokia is using S40 to it’s full advantage to make durable , user friendly feature laden phones for the masses . These are the phones which make Nokia a household name in developing countries , making it the most trust brands in high growth economies like India

Now it does not mean that Nokia will only focus Symbian feature phones in the low end of the market only , the mid tier market is also in focus , the place where feature phones with smart phone characteristics are paramount.  Jo Harlow , SVP Marketing -  Mobile Phones , when addressing media on 13th Feb Keynote has committed that Symbian is coming on newly revamped devices to offer better experiences enhancing  Navigation , Imaging and Social Media aspects , she also added that finally Nokia is entering the Giga Hertz race with better graphic handling capabilities and finally the User Interface which has been outdated by many years and was supposed to be revamped in Symbian^4 is going to be be renewed using Symbian^3 as it’s building base .

Nokia is also putting QT to it’s advantage , already proven to work with less programming requirements , QT over Symbian will prove to be a great asset for Nokia and if they somehow manage to work QT overlay for Windows Phone 7  , applications developed for either platform will work on both.

So maybe Symbian Platform is burning but the platform is still afloat and Nokia is putting behind all the efforts to keep it afloat , cause a Nokia Symbian feature phone user today could translate into Nokia Windows Phone 7  user for tomorrow and that’s one of the reason Nokia has invested so heavily in the developing and under developed markets , enhancing people’s life style and giving them tools to increase their income through Life Tools and ease of usage through Nokia Money cause as they go up the economic chain , Nokia is banking upon that Nokia will remain their choice . 

We are optimistic about future of Symbian , it may not stay afloat forever but for the coming years it’s still afloat. 

It’s been a week we had been using HTC HD7 , a Windows Mobile 7  phone along with our Nokia N8 to see where they both have advantages over each other  and which features Nokia and Microsoft should amalgamate to make the Nokia Wp7 phone a success.

Hardware:

On the hardware front , Nokia has to make major changes  from their existing portfolio

• Screen :  4 inch AMOLED -  Nokia has just launched their largest screen on E7 and we believe the trend will continue , we would love to have the 4.3 inch as in HD7 but at times it feels too big .
• Processor :  at least 1GHZ -  Nokia as till now is using ‘outdated’ processors running around 600 MHZ , now people want their phone to be snappier then ever and at least a 1GHZ processor can do the job.
• Memory :  1GB of  base (( ROM and RAM ) and 32 GB of flash with support for 64GB SD Cards -  for now many WP7 phones in the market have 512MB ROM and 576MB RAM  and up 16GB Internal storage and as far as I know none have SD Card Support.
• Camera :  Nokia does not have to make any changes here from 8MP Carl Zeiss to 12 MP Carl Zeiss with Xenon flash anything will do .
• Ports -  HDMI Out , USB On the GO , Nokia has done them before with N8 and can do again with their WP7 phone
• Keyboard – Here Nokia can be optional , I’m more for hardware slide out Keyboard but if staying with touch screen only , supply a Capacitive Stylus and support for SWYPE.

Software 

Here an amalgamation of both WP7 and Symbian is required while WP7 playing the major role .

• UI : Tiles on WP7 beats Nokia’s traditional multi layer app selection approach .
• Navigation :  Nokia has said that OVI Maps will be part of WP7 , that will be great , Bing Maps are totally useless.
• Browser :  Nokia should ditch their own browser and adopt IE present on WP7
• Office Compatibility : Microsoft made MS Office , let them keep this functionality
• Games :  although I’m not much into them but let X-Box handle this part
• Market Place / Store :  I like the Microsoft Marketplace as it let’s me purchase apps right on my PC
• Social Integration :  Much better interface on Microsoft so let it be , do not mess it with Nokia Social
• Pc Sync Software :  OVI Suite beats Zune in Pc Sync , right now WP7 phones can’t even sync with MS Outlook 2010 and my Nokia N8 can
• Cloud Services :  Leave it with Microsoft and their 5- 25GB SkyDrive , Nokia forayed into it once and got burnet with OVI Files.
• Email : Again I’ll prefer Microsoft’s approach , the email looks much cleaner on WP7 than on N8.
• Music :  Zune Music will do , Nokia can ditch their comes with Music and Music Store.
• PC Connectivity -  Nokia takes precedence over here with their phones able to tether without much effort and being able to be used as flash drives without hacking the phone
• Beta Labs :  Nokia Beta Labs has added much value to Nokia phones and we’d prefer their continued contribution .  Beta Labs should shift  sports tracker , wellness diary , bubbles and Big Screen to run on WP7 phones.

These are just a few thoughts and suggestion we have for Nokia and Microsoft to implement and bring the best of both together .  Some may say that if Microsoft makes the changes in software as mentioned above , every other WP7 manufacturer from HTC to Samsung will get access to it , true but for some features , Microsoft can limit them to Nokia only such as a separate market place for Nokia .  Nokia can distinguish themselves from rest of the pack through their hardware superiority , where others are still making plastic phones , Nokia can come up with N8isq Anodized Aluminum body with high res cameras etc.

For once it’s not Eldar but the folks at Negri Electronics  who are showing off their acquisition of probably Nokia N9 ( as they call it )

Looking at the front , the phone is running Symbian with usual S60v5 Widgets , now if the phone had been running Symbian 3 than the screen could have been different .  Now Nokia has officially announced that N8 is the last Symbian device all other N’s will be running MeeGo ( in my opinion it’s to irritate Eldar as he has predicted that there will be 3 –4 more N series running Symbian before total shift to MeeGo)  so in SenseApplied opinion , this phone may not be the next N but will be rebranded as someother number ( hopefully not an E as it’s one ugly phone )  . 

Design wise , we are not impressed ,  the ‘TRAY’  Keyboard concept kills it (  The looks reminds us of 6760 Surge )  ,  the front cam is very awkwardly placed near the Nokia logo .

The Negri Electronic people did a god job in showing the device software which has a version date of 22nd April 2010 , almost the same time when Eldar crashed and burned N8 so the authenticity of this phone is in question with us , will Nokia will not ever launch this phone or take it down to lower level category.

At the back the phone has it’s highlight , the 8 MP Dual LED flash camera and the body same as of N8 .

We are not very optimistic about this phone , no way it’s going to be the N9 may be it will replace some lower category phone but nothing in the top series .

What do you think about it do inform us in comments

Finally the wait is over , Nokia C3 , the mid tier QWERTY Series 40 phone from Nokia is launched in Indonesia and UK

Available in a variety of colors , looks and QWERTY is not it’s only strong points , it’s other features include

• 13.6 mm thin body weighing 114g
• 2.4 inch , 262 K  screen screen
• 2G ( no 3G)  , Bluetooth and WLAN
• 2 MP Camera
• 55 MB internal memory and support for 8GB external memory card.
• FM Radio
• BL-5J 1320 mAh Li-Ion battery  8hrs talk time
• Customizable Home Screen with Widgets , themes and shortcuts ,
• equipped with Nokia / OVI Chat with live Facebook and Twitter feeds on the home screen
• Nokia Messaging compatible
• Support for Chat on Windows Messenger™, Yahoo!® Messenger, Google Talk™ and Ovi Chat.

Coming to the fast growth emerging markets like Pakistan this phone is ideal for Generation Text ( Students )and Businessmen alike for whom staying in touch via emails or social networks is important .

Comparing it to the Blackberry crowd , the phone will also have appeal for them too (especially the one using mid tier 8230 Curve available for around 225 Euros)  , with Nokia Messaging push email service which instantly pushes the emails as quick as on Blackberry and with inbuilt support for HTML email which can even play YouTube videos within the emails . Also with access to OVI Store in all territories compared to limited availability of Blackberry App Store , Nokia if position them selves right can snatch the Blackberry market . Beside accessing unlimited data in Pakistan is much cheaper ( Rs 500 + tax ) on a Nokia or anyother phone as compared to Blackberry BIS services ( Rs 1000 + tax )

Not everything is great with Nokia C3 , with S40 multitasking is non existent but our strong assumption is that  live widgets and Nokia Messaging will work in the background .

There is no GPS on C3 but the market which Nokia is targeting does not require GPS for their daily use and can easily use Google Maps with cell tower triangulation for directions and location services .

Available at an estimated price of only Euro 90 ( Pakistani Rupee 10,000approx  )  I sure am looking forward for the launch of this phone .

What do you think will you buy this phone or looking forward to try one do inform us in comments

Augmented Reality is the new IN thing for mobiles , be it Google using it to find places in Nexus One /  Android or Nokia using it with Point and Find to find product details .   However till now the technology was limited to a few phones but with Wikitude 4.0 from Mobilizy -  based in Salzburg Austria for the first time , non touch symbian phones got access to this technology - 

for now the software is available through OVI Store for free on

• Nokia E72
• Nokia N86 8MP
• Nokia 6788
• Nokia E52
• Nokia 5730 XpressMusic
• Nokia 6710 Navigator
• Nokia E55
• Nokia 6720 classic
• Nokia 6210 Navigator
• Samsung I8910 HD (will be supported by mid April)

What Wikitude does is that it creates different ‘Worlds’ for the users to access Augmented Reality Data from , these data points /  World sources include

• Flickr
• Youtube
• Panoramio
• Google Local
• Yahoo UpComing!
• Wikipedia
• Wikitude.me
• WindFinder
• Wildlife Parks in Asia
• Qype
• World Heritage List

When the application starts , by default , Flickr , Panoramio , Youtube and Google Local are already selected and works well for initial usage . 

The drawback of adding more sites is that with the default selection , Wikitude only shows available information within a Kilometer ( I use Metric Settings ) , the more sources I added , the larger area it covered ( for me it was 800 plus Kms ) and given out all the redundant information .

Once the sources are selected for your world , and Cam View is on the software will ask you to move the phone around for the built-in Digital Compass in phone to be calibrated .  It takes about 30 sec for the compass to calibrate and than the fun part begins ,  Start moving the phone around and it will show the places and marked data from that direction . 

Like I started it in my car ( please don’t use it and drive as it’s very very distracting )  while it was on the move , my son can see what’s around our location , after about a km of movement , it asks to update data to reload your world . The data you get depends on you location determined through GPS and Cell Tower Location and Digital Compass determined the direction and POI and snaps taken in that direction which even when pointed to sky.

If you don’t want to use the CamView , a list can show all the nearby places and the list of places /  pictures can be limited to 30  ,  40 or 50 places

Overall we loved the software providing us local information even in Karachi  -  Pakistan , however the information is limited to the sources and data available with them .  If Wikitude can offer an upload service or addition of new POI’s  on their own servers that will be a welcome feature . 

One problem which we faced during our usage is awkward placement of Exit button .  The Right Softkey is used for exiting the software in all the options and screens , as a user of S60v3 , usually the same softkey is associated with back key so our advice to Mobilizy is to use the middle key as exit and use the right key as back.

Mobilizy , the innovator in Augmented Reality is now bringing their Wikitude World Browser to the Symbian S60 v3 phones , currently available for Android , iPhone and Nokia S60 5th Edition , Wikitude offers a point and get information interface .

Wikitude gets their information from geocoded , 200 various sources including Flickr , Qype , Wikipedia and Youtube and the users can configure which sources to use and create their own sources without any need for programming .

As Martin Lechner , CTO Mobilizy says “Until today Augmented Reality was only available for users with touchscreen capable smartphones. This is about to change with our Wikitude 4.0 version for Symbian phones“, The challenge was to keep the navigation simple and self-declaring even without the availability of a touchscreen. That’s what we’ve accomplished.“

Wikitude 4.0 will be available in the next few days on  OVI Store and will support the following S60V3 devices

• Nokia E72
• Nokia N86 8MP
• Nokia 6788
• Nokia E52
• Nokia 5730 XpressMusic
• Nokia 6710 Navigator
• Nokia E55
• Nokia 6720 classic
• Nokia 6210 Navigator
• Samsung I8910 HD (will be supported by mid April)

No information is available on price so we’ll have to wait and see what it costs