2. At that time, information about it is not available that much. We can only guess and shoot in the dark. But I managed to scourge some very interesting specifications of the E7-00 such as the 1024MB ROM, Microsoft Communicator built-in, 256MB RAM, and so on.

3. Today, the good folks at Negri Electronics posted 3 new photos of a real E7-00 but they believed it’s an Nseries.

4. Whether it’s an Nseries or Eseries, we wouldnt know until it’s announced. I will leave that open to debate. But for your information, Nokia N8-00 is the last Symbian powered Nseries. All future Nseries will use MeeGo OS.

5. I dont want to comment much on the photos. Suffice to say it does resemble what shown to me in early 2010. The QWERTY is N97 Mini-like and it’s definitely powered by Symbian^3.

6. Lets get the facts straight, again. It’s not Nseries. It’s Eseries. And will be announced as E7-00.

7. To recap, here is what I posted as the specifications of E7-00 :

- hybrid design (touchscreen and QWERTY)
- 4 rows QWERTY keyboard
- 4 inch AMOLED capacitive tilting touchscreen supporting multitouch and gestures
- (maybe) using snapdragon processor
- 256 MB of RAM
- 1024 MB of ROM
- 16 GB of internal storage
- microSD slot
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- 8 megapixel camera with LED flash (no Xenon, no Carl Zeiss optic)
- HD video recording
- No HDMI output
- Microsoft Office Communicator Suite included
- Symbian^3 goodness
- availability in August or September
- super thin at only around 13.8mm
- anodised aluminium body
- 1200 mAH unremovable built-in battery
- same design philosophy as the N-800

8. I say, bring it on!!!

Source : Negri Electronics

1. Before the N8 was even announced, the people are talking about it. Good publicity, bad publicity, you name it. It was everywhere. People were talking about what Nokia will do with Symbian^3. And people are watching carefully to see whether Nokia will compete in the high-end smartphone battle or not.

2. When N8 was announced on April 27th 2010, many felt it was not enough. It’s missing this, it’s missing that… All sorts of complaints like “Why the battery is only 1200 mAH?” or “Why the battery is unremoveable?” or even “Why the UI still looks like N97? Aint Symbian^3 suppose to bring new and fresh UI?” Which, in one way or another, showed us the real attitude of these people – Ignorant.

3. The question all of us should think, right now, is : WHY THE FUSS? N8 IS NOT EVEN SOLD ON THE MARKET YET. Not many people outside the closed circle of Nokia engineers have the opportunity to test N8 at the moment. Cant we all wait patiently until it’s available in the market and after that, do all the condemns and bashing that you want. All these negative reactions are immature opinions and views that are not based on “actual” experience with the device.

4. On paper, what we see about N8 are incredibly delicious. I think this is the most impressive Nokia Symbian smartphone to date. To share my enthusiasm, here’s 10 things why I think Nokia will sell the N8 in truckloads :

10 Supercool Things About Nokia N8

1. The name. N8. This is the first Nseries with a single digit in it’s name. And it’s not ANY number. It’s number “8″. It’s a big and bold statement. In Asian culture, number 8 is associated with “GOOD LUCK” and “PROSPERITY”. All the big online media coverage before and after it’s official announcement shows a signal that Nokia is still in the game and will charge at all cost to defend it’s throne.

2. It’s colours. It’s available in a family of colours. You dont like Black? Choose the Blue one or if you are not into Orange, you can pick the Green one. To my eyes, all the colours looks gorgeous. Together with the anodised aluminium body, N8 looks like a piece of an alien spacecraft! Shiny.. and metal… and looks exclusive… and unique!

3. Strong Multimedia support. In my opinion, Symbian has always been underestimated by all manufacturers especially Nokia. In recent memory, only Samsung i8910 OmniaHD and Sony Ericsson Satio can be considered as having some of the best Multimedia hardware amongst Symbian smartphones. With N8, finally Nokia give Symbian justice by putting superb hardware :
- Capacitive OLED screen, check
- 12 Megapixel camera powered by Carl Zeiss optics and Xenon flash, check
- High definition video recording with stereo sound, check
- HDMI support, check
- Dolby Digital sound, check
- 16 GB internal storage, check
- FM Transmitter, check

As an independent writer and blogger, as well as producer of audio and video contents, I need a powerful device that is able to grab important moments without fuss. For example, I can attend any launch events and record high quality videos and snap photos to be published on i-Symbian.Com for all of you to see

4. I haven never seen any other smartphones support USBToGo. For Symbian, it is actually a standard which was included in Symbian OS v9.5 specification which was announced somewhere in 2007. With USBToGo, transferring huge files (such as videos taken using N8′s 12 mp camera, obviously) to USB thumb-drive or USB hard-drive is easy. N8 sales package will include a cable that will act as the connector to the external USB device. This is supercool!

5. Powerful processors. A 680 MHz main procecessor which powers the overall operations of the N8 and another processor dedicated to the graphical needs. This opens many possibilities. One of them, hopefully, is more compelling and efficient user experience. Application developers will be able to create richer eye-candies for their applications. In short, Symbian applications will look better.

6. 256 MB RAM with Writable Demand Paging. This will make N8 fast and stable to cope with many applications running in the background. As one of the enhancements in Symbian^3 combined with visual task switcher to ease jumping from one application to another, multitasking experience on Symbian will be pushed to the next level.

7. Built in Ovi and Nokia applications and services. One of Nokia’s strengths (or weaknesses, depends on how you look at), is services and applications developed around Ovi ecosystem. N8 comes with Ovi Store, Ovi Maps and Ovi Contacts integrated as well as Nokia Messaging Email, Nokia Messaging Chat and Nokia Messaging Social Networks. All these will make a more complete user experience. For me, Ovi Maps, Ovi Store and Nokia Messaging Emails are the must haves.

8. Symbian^3. As the world’s first Nokia smartphone powered by the new Symbian^3 operating system, N8 itself is a history in the making. Many people asspciated it with Symbian^1 aka S60 5th Edition but they never consider all improvements under the hood that make Symbian^3 a force to reckon with. It’s not the make-up in the interface department only that makes Symbian^3 different from Symbian^1 but the Operating System has been carefully open sourced and enhanced. Look at the single-click direct interaction, easy internet connection and supports for a wide variety of processor related stuff. To those who are short-sighted and made early negative judgement before even testing Symbian^3, please do more research and do some reading. Dont simply write-off Symbian^3 without real hard facts and hands on experience. One important feature of Symbian^3 is it’s backward compatibility with older Symbian versions because it’s still supporting AVKON apps and also future compatibility with Qt runtime. This is only one of many more enhancements and improvements in Symbian^3 that should be considered.

9. It’s a Nokia. Do not underestimate what this Finnish behemoth can do. Whatever bad reputations they made in the past years especially in the case of N97 Classic, they have shown that they are willing to offer free firmware improvements. The fact that Nokia is the major contributor to the success of Symbian in the smartphone market is also a proof that Nokia is doing more than other Symbian manufacturers. We’ve seen Nokia releasing enhancements after enhancements unlike Samsung and Sony Ericsson who seems are not bothered to support those who bought their Symbian products. N8, in this regards, will hopefully not be abandoned by Nokia and will be improved further. Who knows if Nokia decided to backport some Symbian^4 features to N8 in the near future?

10. The price! EUR370 is more or less RM1565.00. It can be considered as very affordable. Not that far from the introduction price of Nokia 5800 Xpress Music 2 years ago. Normally, for a flagship, Nokia’s price is more than EUR500. This is really unbelievable!

Well. That’s my excitement and hope for Nokia N8. It’s been a while since I was this excited about a Symbian product and to be honest, I cant wait! BRING IT ON Nokia N8 FTW!!!

1. Sorry to my readers for the long hiatus. Been really busy

2. This is a short post. Just want to ask contribution and donation to help me repair my laptop’s screen. The cost is going to be around USD200. As you can see, only 60% of the screen is usable at the moment.

3. If you are willing to help this poor fella, please email me or DM me @asrialbaker over at Twitter.

Cheers!

2. Out of the box, Symbian supports multitasking since the glorious days of Psion.

3. The built in method in S60 to see the running applications in the background is to press and hold the Menu key aka the Applications key which will list opened applications.

4. If you want to close an application, press the delete or the cancel key while highighting an application in the built-in taskmanager.

5. There’s also some 3rd party applications for those who want more power in managing multitasking. Applications like Handy Taskman, Best Taskman and JBak Taskman are the most commonly known.

6. I prefer to use Best Taskman. Which, in my opinion, has better features for my needs.

7. Compared to Handy Taskman which looks more polished and better designed, Best Taskman doesnt score in the design department.

8. However, Best Taskman wins with regards to ease of use and quick access to most commonly used functions such as the task-switcher whic is unique. With a click of a button, Best Taskman displays a task-switcher which pops-up in the centre of the screen and allows user to toggle between opened applications quickly. It looks and functions just like the Alt-Tab shortcut on Windows PC.

9. Other than that, Best Taskman also offers quick-access shortcuts to applications. This can be configured in the setting.

10. Another important Best Taskman function for me is the ability to show hidden processes and if you want, you can kill any rogue process. It is one feature that is not available in Handy Taskman.

11. A quick way to close all running applications is also available from the menu. Very useful to quickly release RAM.

12. Best Taskman is also useful to view available RAM, internal storage as well as memory card space.

13. And if you fancy looking into applicaton details such as app uid and keep track of how many applications are installed, it’s just a few clicks away.

14. All in all, I’m comfortable using Best Taskman on my E90 because although it looks kinda ugly compared to Handy Taskman, it has unique features that are not available on other applications.

15. So, what’s your preferred multitasking tool? Care to share with us?

16. Get Best Taskman from Smartphoneware’s official website for only $7.95. A 15 days fully functioning demo is available for you to test to help you decide your purchase.

1. If there’s a Symbian application that I can talk about for hours, it must be Gravity.

2. It made my friends who use iPhones, Androids and other smartphone platforms jealous and wanting to use E71 just for Gravity.

3. What made Gravity so special? To me, it’s about the unique user experience and the amount of effort by Jan Ole, (the developer) put in to enhance Gravity.

4. I use Gravity mainly for 2 things. Twitter and Google Reader.

5. With usability in mind, Gravity pushed Symbian applications further by giving an intuitive user interface unlike anything else in we’ve seen.

6. Gravity is not a software that sits idle and do nothing. It’s (for lack of better word) ALIVE!

7. Those who have used Gravity would know that it’s not Twitter nor Facebook nor Foursquare nor Google Reader that make Gravity part of their life. It’s the lifestyle.

8. Bringing all these services into Gravity was fun. Using them in Gravity is a luxury.

9. What’s next? I’d say please bring Bloglines support and port it to other devices as well. Android, iPhone, Symbian^3 and beyond and to desktops as well.

10. Happy first anniversary Gravity!

1. Aint rumours the best thing since sliced bread? No?

2. Apparently, the above photo has been circulating on the internet for quite some time now.

3. It looks like a mix of N97 Mini and 5230. But instead of a tilting screen, it slides-up to reveal the full QWERTY and D-Pad.

4. I noticed the keyboard is also aligned to the screen’s edges. Maybe for ease-of-typing and also ergonometry.

5. There are not much information about this rumour except it’s C6 designation and the photo above.

6. If this is true, then it means that the new Cseries will also has a range of devices from normal phone without touchscreen to the more modern and powerful smartphones with touch interface.

7. Regarding the system, I bet it’s going to be Symbian^1 aka S60 5th Edition because the Homescreen doesnt look like to have the trademark of Symbian^3 like the small dots at the bottom of the screen (to indicate multiple homescreens) and there are 3 hardware buttons whereas for Symbian^3, I’m told that one hardware button is going to be the standard.

8. Suddenly, this year 2010 looks like to be a very interesting year for Symbian

1. Scott Weiss, User Interface Manager of Symbian Foundation has posted an update of the progress for Symbian^4 UI development.

2. From the blog, there’s nothing much to report actually. If you are expecting new screenshots or video of the upcoming Symbian^4 UI cncept, you’ll be disappointed.

3. However, Scott did summarize briefly of the contributions and ideas that have been generated as well as the sheer amount of interest from the community who want to see a better Symbian in the future.

4. It has to be noted that Symbian^4 is still under heavy development and it will be a good year or more from now before we can see the actual product on real hardware.

5. There’s also 2 videos showcasing the same Symbian^4 UI concept that have been circulating on the interwebs for some time. They showed the photo gallery and the homescreen.

6. What do you think?

1. Frankly, I’m excited to see news regarding Symbian^4 development and although it is still months away from release, the Foundation worked very hard to deliver it.

2. Designing UI is not easy. There are many considerations to be made. Furthermore, the trend nowadays is towards flashy, swooshy and elegant interfaces.

Video 1 – Homescreen Concept

Video 2 – Photo Gallery Concept

3. These are concepts. Symbian^4 is months away and changes will be implemented.

4. Lets just take them with a pinch of salt and dont be carried away ok

Cheers!

1. Symbian^4 is not yet ready and they are working hard to bring it feature complete towards the end of this year.

2. Symbian^4 will bring a new DirectUI user interface. A whole new experience of smart mobile operating system.

3. The new UI will stand head to head with other modern smartphone operating system (iPhone, webOS, Android, Maemo).

4. Among Symbian^4 UI featuers are :
- multiple home screens with different wallpapers (also available in Symbian^3)
- context sensitive toolbar
- easy multitasking with task-switcher icon
- more to come!

5. Symbian Foundation will release more information in due course. Meanwhile, you can take a look at The Symbian UI Brainstorm blog for some really cool ideas regarding Symbian UI.

Source : http://twitpic.com/photos/OlyG

2. Ewan mentioned about an application called Gig Finder which is using a different UI from the standard Symbian^1 (S60 5th Edition) UI.

3. For the sake of excitment and testing something new, I installed Gig Finder to take a peek into the so called new Symbian UI elements.

4. Although the application is packaged in SIS, I believe it is a Widget, not a native application.

On the left is Gig Finder, and on the right is the proposed Homescreen UI for Symbian^4

5. Hell yeah! It is indeed different from the stock Symbian^1 user interface which I hate to love it!

6. The UI is modern and has elements of other modern UI in the market. For example, there are 3 icons at the bottom of the screen which is called Toolbar, it is used to access the most accessed (logically) functions.

7. There’s also other elements that will pop out for users to confirm actions. And the pop-up is hanging, i.e. not locked to the bottom of the screen like the existing Symbian^1 UI.

8. For the Options and other menus like Setting of the app, and those that is not accessed frequently, including the Information about the App, the menu is accessible by pressing an icon at the top left corner of the screen.

9. The UI looks good on landscape mode too!

10. The new Symbian^4 UI is not finalised yet. And Symbian just annonounced Symbian^3 as a full open source system. It will be interesting to see what the community will bring to the plate.

11. Bring it on Symbian^4!!!

- Asri al-Baker