We have all cribbed that Nokia’s Symbian devices are underpowered, that they need faster processors, that there is just not enough juice in them. That is about to change, Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs in an interview to the Helsingin Sanomat has said that we will see a Nokia Symbian device running on the Snapdragon processor by the end of this year. Awesome.

In case you are wondering what all the fuss about Snapdragon is, have a look at the following quote from the Wikipedia:
The Snapdragon platform is designed for real time …

Nokia Conversations has just published a video showing off how Symbian ^3 will look on upcoming Nokia devices. At first glance there seems to be a hint of familiarity with the UI that you may have seen on Nokia’s current touch devices like the N97, but that quickly goes away when you look at the sheer number of optimizations and enhancements that have been done to the UI.
There is multitouch (pinch and zoom), multiple homescreens, support for hardware accelerated graphics, single tap across the entire UI, complete kinetic scrolling, a …

You remember the countdown we told you about? The reason for it is now out – As of today the Symbian OS is free and a 100% open source. This means that manufacturers will no longer have to pay for using the OS on their devices and because of its open source nature, the doors to speedy innovation have now been truly opened.

As a consumer this will have little impact on you in the short term, but come 2011 and you will start seeing the awesome fruits of this labour. …

A little over two hours ago, there was a tweet from the official Symbian account that simply said – #symbiancountdown 108. 108 what? Hours, Days? My first thought was hours, but its been two hours since that tweet and the countdown.symbian.org still says 108, which makes me wonder what does 108 actually stand for?

For a hint I looked up the Page Source code and actually found one! It didn’t really help, all I got was …

Nokia has just released Qt 4.6, the first release of Qt to natively support both Symbian and Maemo. Why Qt is important is because it enables the creation of applications which can run on both platforms yet be born from a single code base. In other words, the developer can make an application once and then supply it both for Symbian and Maemo devices.
This is the tool Nokia is looking at to harmonise software development across its different platforms. Qt also supports Windows 7, Apple Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leopard) …

Fujitsu has created a Symbian smartphone (Fujitsu F-04B) that has a detachable QWERTY keyboard, touchscreen, a 12Mp camera and an optional camera module that can be snapped on if required. For days when you would like a slim device, you can use the phone independent of the keyboard navigating with the touch interface.

NTT DOCOMO, the leading mobile operator in Japan, recently announced its line up of 19 new handsets, and the F-04B is one of the 9 based on Symbian. The device will be available in March-April next year, but …

Periodically upgrading the firmware is the best care you can provide to your device, it not only helps improve performance, at times it adds functionality that previously did not exist. I am certain most of our readers are power users like myself, who probably upgrade device to the latest version within days if not hours of its coming out. But what about the not so savvy users? Do they ever upgrade? Chances are pretty bleak. So what can be done?

But before we get to that I was looking for a …

The Symbian UI is generally criticised for not having enough eye candy and even if you turn on the theme effects on the N97, it doesn’t do much. However, for those of you who are fans of slick transitions, I have some good news.

You can now add super cool theme effects onto your N97 easily and in under 5 minutes (that’s how long it took me) by following the simple tutorial below and without a computer. But first have a look at this YouTube video I’ve put together demonstrating some of these transition effects.

Following on from the previous tutorial which showed you how to get a developer certificate (to sign unsigned applications) quickly, is this guide which shows you how to sign it on the phone itself without the need of a computer.
This should especially be useful for people like me who own a Mac, for which there is no signing application, or for those who appreciate the convenience. I will be using a N97 to demonstrate the application, but the process remains exactly the same for any other 3rd Edition or 5th …

There are a lot of ‘unsigned’ applications floating around the web, partly because part time developers either do not have the time or money to get their applications signed via the Symbian Signed program. While quite a bit of such applications can be signed via the Open Signed website, some cannot be and quite frankly there are times when we are simply lazy.
For all such reasons it is best to have a developer certificate with which you can sign the files on the phone itself and install without having to …