In it the author talks about his experience with mobile devices over the years, and his perceptions and generalizations on Mobile Web.

It is a short and interesting read; though the author tends to concentrate on “what was” and “what might be”, rather than “what is”.

Read it here.

Looks like they have a new device out, called the iRiver P.ple P10! View their Promo Video.

It appears to be a tablet based media player with a lot multimedia capabilities and hardware design we’ve come to appreciate on their devices, including most notably great video and music/audio capabilities (say on the iRiver Clix).

This new device kind of reminds me of the Nokia N810 (in some of its profile respects … however, they are totally different in terms of market spaces they address).

Also, from the promo video online, it appears it based on touch and tablet (via stylus), and the screen looks to be 800×480 leaving quite a bit of screen real estate for your media viewing pleasure. It also features a 33 GB drive for all your favorite media!

Anyways, if all this has got you interested, you can get a comprehensive list of capabilities at their features, or specifications page (unfortunately, much of which is in Korean).

Looks like it also supports Microsoft Office, and even PDF viewing … so perhaps this is the first merger between their pocket dictionary line and media players? (incidentally, every time I go to San Francisco I see young savvy Koreans with iRiver Pocket translators!)

Also, looks like this device has a Flash Lite 2.1 user interface running under Windows CE 5. My initial suspicion is that standalone Flash content is not supported (since “Flash Games” are not part of the features section, nor is SWF listed as a supported format under specs).

Anyways, take a look at the gallery and you can appreciate a Korean take on user interface design using Flash.

All in all, looks to be a pretty sweet device … downside is that I doubt we’ll see this “bad boy” outside of Korea anytime soon (but I may be wrong).

I picked up a Nokia E90 recently which I have just begun using as one my primary mobile business communication devices.

In terms of Nokia devices, it compliments my N810 tablet and N95 (my primary personal phone & development device).

So far, I love the device .. even given it’s larger profile compared to the N95.

It does, however have a gorgeous screen (240×320 pixels, 16M colors & 800×352 pixels, 16M colors), and lovely tactile keyboard.

It also has a 2 cameras (3.2 Meg), built in GPS, supports: GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, HSDPA, Wi-Fi. What’s more, it’s an S60 device, and has Flash Lite 2.0 pre-installed, among many other features.

Overall, I think this will be a nice device that fits in between the N95 and N810 for my business use cases (email, web browsing, etc).

In you’re interested in a short break down, features include:

• Full-fledged keyboard
• Big and high-resolution display
• Integrated GPS
• Built-in maps and basic navigation without charge
• 128 MB memory
• 512 MB microSD in the standard package
• Integrated WLAN, HSDPA
• Quality e-mail client
• Office applications, document creation and editing enabled
• Seamless synchronization with computer (PC Suite)
• Mini USB universal connector (Mass storage enabled)
• Built-in camera with autofocus
• Stereo FM radio and A2DP-enabled Bluetooth for wireless stereo headphones
• Quality loudspeakers
• VoIP support
• Elegant and presentable appearance
• Quality construction
• UI compatible with other Nokia phones
• System speed

For more detailed specs on the device, check out Nokia’s page on the E90, or this video for starters.

March 04, 2008

Extends choice for developers on the world’s leading mobile platforms

Espoo, Finland – Nokia today announced plans to make Microsoft Silverlight available for S60 on Symbian OS, the world’s leading smartphone software(1), as well as for Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets. Adding support for Silverlight will extend opportunities for developers to create rich, interactive applications that run on multiple platforms in a consistent and reliable way.

“Today’s consumers are very clear in what they want: easy access to tightly integrated services and data on any device,” said Lee Williams, Senior Vice President in Nokia’s Devices software organization. “Nokia’s software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments, enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range. Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich internet application environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole.”

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications. Silverlight is already powering thousands of applications around the world and organizations including Entertainment Tonight, the NBA and NBC Universal to deliver superior Web-based experiences to their customers. The arrangement with Nokia will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices, including S60 on Symbian smartphones from a range of manufacturers, as well as Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.

“This is an important relationship on so many levels. Working with Nokia means we are easily able to reach a huge number of mobile users, including customers of all S60 licensees. This is a significant step in gaining broad acceptance for Silverlight and ensuring it is platform agnostic. This is critical since we want to make sure developers and designers don’t have to constantly recreate the wheel and build different versions of applications and services for multiple operating systems, browsers and platforms,” said S. Somasegar, Senior Vice President of Microsoft’s Developer Division.

“There is clear market demand for rich, Web-based services across a variety of device types, but developing these can often be commercially difficult. For Microsoft this extends Silverlight to a broader range of vendors, platforms and devices. For Nokia it expands the web runtime options on its devices, enabling a wider community of developers and more applications. This should help the uptake of higher speed mobile services and advance a new era of anytime, anywhere device-based computing”, said Bola Rotibi , Principal Analyst at Ovum.

Microsoft will demonstrate Silverlight on S60 during the opening keyote at Microsoft’s MIX08 conference on March 5 in Las Vegas. Silverlight is intended to be available to S60 developers later this year with initial service delivery anticipated shortly thereafter for all S60 licensees. This will allow S60 application developers to use an even wider range of development environments for S60 on Symbian OS than today. Today S60 developers can use: C++ (using native Symbian OS APIs and Open C providing subset of standard POSIX libraries), S60 Web Run-time (supporting standards-based web technologies such as Ajax, JavaScript, CSS and HTML), the Java(TM) language, Flash Lite from Adobe, and Python.

Microsoft Silverlight availability for Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets will be confirmed later.

(1) S60 has already shipped on more smartphones than any other platform, enabling users to access and enjoy the Internet and Internet services. S60 covers the broadest product portfolio, with devices for a variety of segments and needs from different audiences. S60 is the clear leader in converged device software with over 53% market share globally in Q4 2007 according to the latest Canalys report (January 2008).