Mobile Phone News

Filed under: Software, Nokia, Symbian

Hey, S60 owners, have you had this nagging sense over the past year or two that you’re somehow getting slighted by Nokia, but you haven’t been able to put your finger on why? No worries, we’ve figured it out: it’s the calculator. Nokia’s mainstream dumbphone platform has featured a far better and more capable built-in calculator app than S60 for a while at this time, which really doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense; granted, you can get better ones from third-party developers, but the point is you shouldn’t have to. Thankfully, Nokia agrees, and they’ve started to toy around with the idea of replacing the S60 calc with its little brother’s — a relatively easy process, since the latter is written in Java. On one hand, it’d be a shame to see a core S60 app move from native code to Java, but on the other hand, if it’s a better app and the JVM is transparent, who really cares? Anyway, the ported app is chilling in Nokia’s Beta Labs as we speak, just waiting for customer feedback before the higher-ups make a judgment call on whether to integrate it into future S60 releases. The power’s in your hands, people, so you may as well take advantage.

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Tags: Beta, Calc, Calculator, Customer Feedback, Heck, Hey, Java, Judgment Call, Jvm, Little Brother, Mainstream, Nbsp, No Worries, Nokia, Nokia Symbian, Party Developers, Shame, Software Nokia, Third Party, Ups

Filed under: Software, Nokia, Symbian

Hey, S60 owners, have you had this nagging sense over the past year or two that you’re somehow getting slighted by Nokia, but you haven’t been able to put your finger on why? No worries, we’ve figured it out: it’s the calculator. Nokia’s mainstream dumbphone platform has featured a far better and more capable built-in calculator app than S60 for a while at this time, which really doesn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense; granted, you can get better ones from third-party developers, but the point is you shouldn’t have to. Thankfully, Nokia agrees, and they’ve started to toy around with the idea of replacing the S60 calc with its little brother’s — a relatively easy process, since the latter is written in Java. On one hand, it’d be a shame to see a core S60 app move from native code to Java, but on the other hand, if it’s a better app and the JVM is transparent, who really cares? Anyway, the ported app is chilling in Nokia’s Beta Labs as we speak, just waiting for customer feedback before the higher-ups make a judgment call on whether to integrate it into future S60 releases. The power’s in your hands, people, so you may as well take advantage.

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Tags: Beta, Calc, Calculator, Customer Feedback, Heck, Hey, Java, Judgment Call, Jvm, Little Brother, Mainstream, Nbsp, No Worries, Nokia, Nokia Symbian, Party Developers, Shame, Software Nokia, Third Party, Ups

Filed under: Apple, OS X

All sorts of little gems are turning up in the iPhone firmware 2.0 code; first we had scraps of GPS support being tracked down, and at this time we have another pair of goodies that are sure to turn at least a few heads. First up, sister site TUAW is reporting that the latest release makes reference to some sort of remote control for iTunes installations that Apple appears to be billing as “iControl,” allowing iPhone users to browse and play iTunes libraries from afar — presumably over WiFi.

TUAW’s also got the lowdown on code suggesting support for XMPP, the protocol that underpins Jabber, and most famously, Google Talk. It seems that access to the XMPP framework is being kept solidly out of third-party developers’ hands, though, meaning that Apple — and Apple alone — will be using it to support on-device iPhone chat. At this point, Bot. of these features need to be quarantined in the “rumor” category, because even if the code does exist as TUAW’s tipsters are claiming, there’s certainly no guarantee it’ll make the cut for firmware 2.0, iPhone 2, iPhone 3, or iPhone 10. Looks promising, though!

Read - iControl
Read - Jabber support

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Tags: All Sorts, Apple Os X, Control, Firmware, Gems, Goodies, Google, iphone, Itunes Libraries, Jabber, Nbsp, Os X, Party Developers, Protocol, Remote Control, Rumor Control, Scraps, Third Party, Tipsters, Tuaw