Hasta La Gadget!

So long, Symbian. Nestled away in the company’s financial announcement this morning, Nokia confirmed that its pixel-punching 808 PureView phone will be the last release powered by the increasingly creaky Symbian OS. In no uncertain terms:

“The Nokia 808 PureView, a device which showcases our imaging capabilities and which came to market in mid-2012, was the last Symbian device from Nokia.”

The company still managed to sell a total of 2.2 million Symbian devices during the last quarter, half the number of Windows Phone 8 devices shifted in the same period — presumably thanks, in some way, to that as-yet unparalleled PureView camera sensor. We’ll be pouring one out (and capturing it in 38 megapixels) if you need us.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: Nokia (PDF)

Skype has been available through official channels for Belle-based Symbian devices for awhile, but not for those running FP1 or FP2. If you’d wanted to use the world’s largest VoIP service from a more recent (or recently updated) Symbian phone like the 808 PureView, you were stuck. A low-key update has thankfully flicked the support switch for those who upgraded to the newer OS before their internet calling could follow suit. From early appearances, though, compatibility is the primary upgrade; My Nokia Blog doesn’t see a functional difference from earlier releases. The Skype refresh is still a welcome tweak for those who’d like to hold on to Nokia’s original smartphone platform for just a little longer.

Filed under: Cellphones, Internet, Mobile

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Via: My Nokia Blog

Source: Nokia Store

There’s no arguing that the mobile market is here for the duration and that it’s Android and Apple’s iOS that are dominating the field – this three-month-average comScore report shows that much clearly. What’s not quite as clear is how two major manufacturers – Apple and Samsung – are swallowing up the market while LG, Motorola, and HTC (the other top three manufacturers in the market today) are dropping down. Oddly enough, it’s not more than a point difference between months that’ve changed this month other than Apple – they being the only manufacturer to gain more than a single point of the % of mobile subscribers.

The charts this month show Samsung up top with an absolutely dominating 26.3% of the OEM market share, that being part of this study that’s a 3 month average ending in October 2012. The chart you’re seeing compares to a 3-month average ending in July of 2012, the point changes being compared therein. Also of note is the fact that this study is done on US Mobile Subscribers working not just with smartphones, but feature phones as well, and all of them 13 years of age or older. Not that there’s a gigantic amount of 8 year old smartphone users out there, but still – keep that in mind.

The Samsung share here went up between periods just under 1 percentage point at 0.7 while Apple went up 1.5 points. Apple’s share here sits at 17.8% and it’s quite likely that their percentage went up largely because of the launch of the iPhone 5, but it’s not entirely clear if those questioned were asked if they’d actually had their iPhone in-hand when asked – that could have a small but significant effect on the outcome of this test because of the amount of people that ordered the iPhone 5 at launch and had a brief waiting period in the three months this study takes place in (if they didn’t have an iPhone before now, that is).

Meanwhile the LG, Motorola, and HTC shares have been going down, with LG in the lead for loss as well as market share at 17.6% after a loss of -0.8 points. Motorola’s share this period sits at11% and HTC exists at the end of the list with 6%. Not included due to what we must assume is extremely low numbers is Nokia and RIM with BlackBerry.

Interestingly it does seem that RIM does exist in a low bot not nearly so insignificant place in the Top Smartphone Platforms list with 9.5% of the market to their name. Apple and Google (with Android) sit up top with a total 87.9% of the market to themselves, with 53.6% of the market belonging to Google and 34.3% of the market belonging to Apple. Meanwhile Microsoft is in 4th place with a tiny 3.2% of the market and Symbian (believe it or not) still exists on the list with a fabulous 0.6% of the market.

In the Smartphone Platform Market Share list it’s also Apple and Google that are devouring the market bit by bit with Google going up by 1.4 points and Apple heading upward by 0.9 points. Meanwhile RIM took the biggest dive with a loss of 1.7 points and Microsoft and Symbian slipped by 0.4 points and 0.2 points respectively.

[via ComScore]

comScore: Samsung and Apple syphon mobile market is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Nokia still has a ways to go before directions in Nokia Transit (also known as Nokia Transport) are on par with Google’s, but the Finnish crew is clearly on the right track with a fresh update to its Windows Phone and Symbian apps. Travelers now see segmented route maps that provide a closer look at key points in the trip as well as more focused directions at those crucial moments. The app is that much more savvy about travel times, as well — the forward-thinking can at last plan trips days in advance, and there’s new options for relative arrival times as well as a simplified destination history. Symbian even gets its own specific update with long-overdue support for route updates in-app, rather than through upgrading the app itself. Lumia owners on Windows Phone 8 devices can get the spruced-up version of Transit or Transport today as a regular update; Symbian and Windows Phone 7 users willing to live on the edge can get roughly equivalent betas at the same time.

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Mobile, Nokia

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Source: Conversations by Nokia, Nokia Beta Labs (1), (2)

I know that the Symbian operating system can be said to be in the same boat as RIM – they are both a dying breed. The thing is, there are still a fair number of people in developing countries that do not yet own a smartphone, although you can be quite sure that with each new phone purchase they make down the road, the chances of them picking up a smartphone would increase. Having said that, if you have updated your device with the Symbian Belle FP2 update, how has your alphanumeric keyboard’s performance been? There has been at least one complaint online, citing that upon installation of the Belle FP2 update, the new T9/Alphanumeric keyboard ended up in a far worse state than before, being cited as “pretty terrible and a big
step back in usability.”

It seems that this particular complaint did not come from just one person, as there are also others who agreed with the poster. Bear in mind that the performance issues seem to be limited only to the T9/Alphanumeric keyboard, and has nothing to do with the portrait or landscape QWERTY which is said to have improved by a fair margin.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Nokia Belle update could start rolling out 8th February, Nokia Belle update happening in February,