Gadzooki

We can expect to see Symbian ^3 soon

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Nokia seems to be pushing ahead with Symbian even though rumors abound of Nokia’s move to switch the entire N-Series from Symbian to Maemo. Right now, there’s new of Nokia skipping development of Symbian ^2 so that they can go ahead and proceed with Symbian ^3. And the good news is that we might be able to see Symbian ^3 this year, as Nokia is aiming to release v3 by the third quarter of 2010!

According to Digitimes:

The Symbian version 4 is believed to be based on the Qt cross-platform application development framework developed by Trolltech, which Nokia acquired in June 2008, said industry sources. The Qt will allow software developers to develop application software supporting Symbian and Maemo platforms simultaneously, added the sources.

For terminal end products, Nokia will continue to offer Maemo-based mobile computing devices, Symbian S60-based smartphones as well as Symbian S40-based feature phones, with the prices for Symbian S60-based models likely to be more competitive in 2010, Hsu said.

By 2011, smartphones based on the Symbian S60-platform will account for 55% of Nokia’s total handset shipments, followed by Symbian S40 feature phones at 35% and Maemo-based devices at 10%, according to sources who are familiar with Nokia’s product roadmap.

I can see Nokia using Symbian on its low-end consumer phones, but if they want to have an edge over the up-and-coming Google Android phones – just about every other phone manufacturer is making one – they really have to step up and make more Maemo-based phones, soon. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested to see what they’re planning for Symbian ^3, though.

[via]

Nokia N-Series Phones Will Probably Switch From Symbian to Maemo

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I have a love-hate relationship with the Symbian OS. On one hand, it’s a mature mobile operating system with a huge selection of applications. On the other hand, it’s been pretty restrictive, especially now that you have to sign your applications before you can even install them. Also, it’s pretty old, the UI is horrible, and application programmers everywhere are complaining about how hard it is to make apps for Symbian.

Which is why we’re all keeping an eye on the N900. The N900, if you haven’t heard, is the first phone running Nokia’s Linux-based Maemo. Nokia already released a few internet tablets running Maemo before, but this is the first time we’ve seen Maemo being set up to do mobile phone functions. Also, Maemo has that sexy UI that Nokia’s other OS is sorely missing.

Nokia has held “meetups” throughout the world to celebrate the launch of its new N900, and during one such meetup in London, Nokia dropped a bomb: Nokia’s marketing team has unofficially revealed that they are planning to drop Symbian from N-Series phones by 2012!

This makes sense, really. Have you guys seen how Maemo is able to handle multimedia? The reason I’ve stayed away from the N-Series is the amazingly bad sluggishness these phones acquire after a few weeks of usage. I haven’t used (much less seen) an N900 yet so I can pass judgment on Maemo, but I’m pretty sure it’ll perform way better than Symbian on the multimedia front. It was mad for that purpose, anyway.

If you really, really, really like Symbian and really don’t want to let it go, worry not. Lower-tier phones will still retain Symbian. I don’t see Symbian going away completely in the near future.

Now what do you think of this? Is this a knee-jerk reaction to Google Android or is it something Nokia has been planning for a long time already? Tell me all about it!

[via]

S60 gapless playback for your music files with FolderPlay

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I’ve made the move of dumping my iPod (at least temporarily until the iPod touch gets a 100+ gig iteration) and put my music on my Nokia E63. It’s got a decent playlist maker, a great equalizer (better than the iPod’s I must say), it even supports audioscrobbling (with Mobbler), and carrying around one device instead of two saves me a bit of space.

One disadvantage to using the built-in S60 player is that it doesn’t support gapless playback. This usually isn’t a problem, but when I’m playing an album such as Brian Wilson’s SMiLE, it can get pretty annoying. Thank goodness there’s FolderPlay for the S60.

folderplay_001

FolderPlay is an audio application for Symbian OS, that gaplessly plays back a subset of the directory structure with orientation on lossless formats and supports the following audio file types: WAV, LPCM, FLAC, APE/MAC, AC3, MP3, OGG, AAC (ADTS).

FolderPlay works beautifully with the Beatles’ LOVE. However, it has a pretty ugly UI (it’s just practically a file manager) and it doesn’t have an equalizer or audioscrobbler yet.

Download FolderPlay here.