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. I own and maintain 3 self-hosted WordPress blogs. This blog, SymbianKu.Com and MeeGoKu.Com. I choose WordPress for it’s simplicity, elegant and flexibility.

2. On my MacBook, I use an offline blogging client called Ecto. A superb and easy to use software that fulfills my blogging needs.

3. For Symbian S60 3rd Edition, there are some solutions available namely Telewaving’s Wavelog (not free), WordMobi (free, based on Python) and the official WordPress for Nokia client (free, based on Qt).

4. I’ve talked about how WordMobi helps me blogging on the move (HERE and HERE) and personally, it’s the most useful and feature complete WordPress client for S60 3rd Edition at the moment.

5. WordMobi is very stable, doesnt eat RAM like crazy and works brilliant. And I prefer using it for blogging anytime.

6. Another solution for WordPress blogging on Symbian is using an official application developed by the WordPress team. It’s using Qt technology and currently being developed heavily for Nokia Symbian smartphones and Maemo.

7. In order to use it on Symbian smartphones, you have to install Qt runtime or it will not work. You can get the necessary files from :

Qt runtime : Version 4.6.2
WP Client : Version 0.54a Self-signed

8. Although it is designed for touch-screen smartphones, it works on E90 but there’s some usability and stability issues. It crashes randomly, and sometimes it doesnt respond to keypresses. It also freezes when it cant cope with user’s action and to run it smoothly, you need to have plenty of RAM.

9. The design looks familiar. Any WordPress user will feel at home because it looks like the WordPress Admin Panel.

10. You can view and edit posts, comments and pages. But I think, it’s not ready yet to be used to write long and complete posts. It’s useful if you want to view and manage comments or write a short and simple posts.

11. On Nokia E90 Communicator, it works on both screen. But on the external screen, navigation is slower compared to the internal screen.

12. Other than the slowness and non touchsreen related issues, in my opinion, it also needs an offline mode.

13. Everytime I launch it, it will ask me to select Access Point to connect to the internet and I have to reject it by pressing cancel 15 times before can use it offline!

14. An offline function without the annoying prompts will enhance it’s usability even more. There should be an option for users to choose to connect to server for fetching and updating contents or stay offline.

15. The connectivity issue also happens when I toggle from one blog view to another. It will try to establish a connection.

16. Like I said, there are many user scenario where it fits perfectly okay for offline usage. One of them is to write short post or to draft an idea in an area without WiFi or internet coverage.

17. I believe the development team is working very hard to make sure this WordPress for Nokia application easy to use, stable, relevant and functional. And they are almost there.

18. Until it becomes really useful on E90, and optimised for non-touch operations, I am sticking to WordMobi at the moment.

19. But for you who own one of Nokia’s Symbian^1 touchscreen smartphones or N900 (Maemo 5), this is the most elegant solution for your WordPress blogging needs.

20. Visit http://dev.nokia.wordpress.org to follow it’s development. It’s a free open source project and you can also contribute to it’s progress.

- Asri al-Baker

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. LonelyCatGames is one of the most prolific Symbian developers who have some powerful applications in their catalogue such as Slick, SmartMovie, X-Plore and ProfiMail.

2. One of their strength and uniqueness is they developed their own interface on top of the standard Symbian UI. This is their trademark which has been practised over the years.

3. Recently, they launched a new application called PhotoBook which is basically a photo viewer application. As with other applications produced by LonelyCatGames, it also uses LCG’s own UI.

4. PhotoBook is an alternative to the built-in image viewer on Symbian and IMHO, it gives Resco PhotoViewer a challenge.

5. It has it’s own file browser which is neatly designed and you can view photos from your device’s folders with ease.

6. It also supports zooming and slideshow. Pretty standard stuff.

7. At the current version 1.00, PhotoBook does what it says. Nothing more, nothing less.

8. Hopefully they can integrate more advanced photo related functions in the future such as photo editing.

More information about PhotoBook at LCG

1. One of the oldest Symbian applications which has survived till this day since the old EPOC days. Opera internet browser.

2. For modern Symbian smartphones, users have the opition to install the native version of this excellent internet browser, also known as Opera Mobile. Or install the J2ME version called Opera Mini.

3. Opera Mobile 10 and Opera Mini 5 have been developed for months. Users are invited to experience the beta since late 2009 and last week, Opera Software announced the availability of both applications it their final versions.

4. The final version of Opera Mobile 10 comes with the following features (among others) :-
- Visual speed-dial
- Multiple tabs with number indicator
- Opera Turbo
- Opera Link
- Presto rendering engine
- Download manager
- Cool user interface for easy navigation to contents
- Kinetic scrolling

5. The final version is also more capable and stable than previous Beta test version.

6. I noticed faster loading of pages and faster kinetic scrolling, as well as supporting full Opera Link which makes it in a class of it’s own.

7. As a fan of Opera products (Opera Desktop, Opera Mobile, Opera Mini, Opera Link & Opera Turbo), I am satisfied with what Opera Mobile is capable of.

8. For some people, they will compare Opera Mobile with the built-in S60 Web browser which comes by default in all current Symbian smartphones.

9. And one of the most requested feature in Opera Mobile is the Flash support. For me, Flash sucks! And Opera Mobile is miles ahead of S60 Web.

10. Get the latest version of Opera Mobile and Opera Mini for FREE from the official website :

http://www.opera.com/mobile

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

Where?

Kelantan Delights
1-5, Level 1, Sooka Sentral
Jalan Stesen Sentral
50470 Kuala Lumpur

When?

February 10th 2010 (Wednesday
5.00 to 7.00 PM

Who should come?
- Symbian users
- Symbian and other developers
- Symbian Enthusiasts
- If you are in KL or near KL
- Just for fun

What is the Agenda?
- Talk
- Eat
- Have fun!

Why I should come?
- Meet cool people
- Talk about Symbian and it’s ecosystem
- Discussing ideas to improve Symbian
- Have fun!

There will be some official SYMBIAN goodies up for grab for early birds. Come!!! Places are limited.

“I think the Kuala Lumpur Stammtisch is a great idea!” – Sebastian Brannstrom, Symbian Foundation.

More information about Symbian Stammtisch at : http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Symbian_Stammtisch

You can also follow the event’s progress on Facebook : First KLSS

If you are on Twitter (who doesnt?), watch out for the hashtag #klss

Note
===

1. KLSS – Kuala Lumpur Symbian Stammtisch is a community effort towards a more vibrant and active Symbian community in Malaysia in conjunction with Symbian Foundation’s continuous effort in getting more feedback from Symbian community all over the world.

2. We hope this first KLSS will be a landmark and history in promoting and bringing more awareness regarding Symbian’s open nature. Whether you are an individual or a company, you are welcomed to contribute and together building a global brand name with Symbian Foundation.

3. Thanks to Symbian Foundation, which fully supports this initiative. Lee Williams, Haydn Shaughnessy, Sebastian Brannstrom, Susana Posada, Lauren Sarno, Ashlee Godwin, Annabelle Cooke in which, this event wont be possible.

4. Should there be anyone who are willing to contribute to this event, please email me asri at i-symbian dot com.

1. If you are in KL you will be in KL in the very near future, something is cooking.

2. After reading a post by Sebastian Brannstrom at the official Symbian Foundation Blog, I thought, why not!!!

3. In the past few months, Symbian Stammtisch was held in London and I feel it would be interesting to answer to Sebastian’s call and I decided to organise one in KL.

4. I am currently getting some stuff together to organise the first KLSS (Kuala Lumpur Symbian Stammtisch), hopefully somewhere in early February.

5. I will post more details soon when things are shaping.

6. More information about Symbian Stammtisch can be found at :

http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Delivery_Team_Stammtisch

http://developer.symbian.org/wiki/index.php/Stammtisch_Ideas

WATCH THIS SPACE!!!