Gabor Torok's Forum Nokia Blog

Forum Nokia Champion Day in Singapore

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:27:02 +0200

Hmm, I've already wanted to write a blog about this event, but it seems Naresh was faster. :) Anyway, I can add my thoughts, too.

So, one of the great benefits of being a Forum Nokia Champion (or FNC) is that we can attend the FNC Day held twice a year at various locations. The first was in San Francisco, which I unfortunately couldn't attend. The second was held in London just one day before Smartphone Show, 2006. That was great! First, I always like kind of networking with other people who are interested in the same area (i.e. mobility). Second, Nokia is a gallant company meaning that we couldn't have any complaints as to how we were treated during these events.

For example, let's take this event that took place in Singapore. Not only did Nokia pay for the accommodation in a 4-star hotel, but - for some of us - they also paid the airfare. Okay, we've got it as a reward for contributing to the successful launch of Forum Nokia Wiki, but still: let's say it was a fair deal. :)

By the way, I thought in the beginning that Singapore was not the best selection for the FNC Day. Not as if it wasn't a nice location, but it's too far away from most of us. But still, about 20 of us could make it and were there and it was fun to be there. I liked all the Indian guys (they were the nicest, the funniest:) and it was a pleasure for me to meet "TCB" Paul (I could never imagine that a 3rd-party software could get TCB capability), "FlashLite Master" Alessandro, "Medical Man" Arto, "Y-Browser" Jukka, Paul "My students can do everything" Coulton and "I evangelize Python for S60" Jurgen. It's by far not an exhaustive list of people who were there and I enjoyed staying with - I've just picked up some from my memories.

So, I'm pretty much satisfied and happy that I could be there, now I just need a few days (weeks?:) to relax and recover from the long flight. :) Thanks Anina, Hung and the whole FN Champion team to make it happen! I'm wondering, however, where the next event will be held. London, New York, Brazil? Why not?

Cheers,

Tote

Sony Ericsson to acquire UIQ Technology

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 11:07:21 +0100

Interestingly enough, this post is neither about Nokia nor any of their products as you would expect from a Forum Nokia blog post. It's about Sony Ericsson and their press release regarding acquiring UIQ Technology. Many popular mobile blogs (e.g. here, here and here) have already drawn our attention to this piece of great news, but it seems they have all missed to point out a very important consequence of this step.

Or it might be only me who's a little bit worried about Symbian's future? Not that much, but still. You know, I have read couple of articles about the future of mobile operating systems and was a bit worried about that lots of them predict the fall of Symbian in contrast with the rise of Linux. For example, the last report I've read on this topic was made by ARCchart and can be freely downloaded from here: http://www.arcchart.com/reports/mos.asp. They say that one of Symbian's biggest disadvantage is that Nokia owns too much shares in it, which might scare off other manufacturers, mobile companies from licensing it. In contrast with Linux (as they say), which is not suffering from a similar effect, thus might look more desirable for mobile companies. Oddly enough, even Nokia is making experiments in the area of producing mobile devices (Nokia 770, Nokia 330 - not confirmed that latter runs on Linux) with Linux operating system, which might be a base for rumours, too.

So the point in my opinion is that Sony Ericsson's commitment to UIQ might significantly strengthen the position of Symbian OS in the market of mobile operating systems. Not as if Symbian wasn't already in a strong position for the moment, but hopefully it will have positive effects in mid- and long-term plans, too.

Finally note that as I've already written I was in London on the Smartphone Show, where I picked up a booklet from Symbian's booth. The title of the booklet is "The Insight Series with David Wood" (check it out at http://www.symbian.com/symbianos/insight/index.html) and it's about the thoughts of Symbian's EVP for research about basically anything that has something to do with mobility and of course concerns Symbian. What has really captured my attention is a chapter about The hidden value of the mobile operating system. In this chapter, David Wood explains why he thinks that even though Linux is a real alternative on the market of mobile OSs, Symbian doesn't (yet) have to worry about it.

Comments are warmly welcome!

Cheers,

Tote

Random thoughts on web browsing in S60

Fri, 20 Oct 2006 14:36:06 +0200

As I was involved in the development of S60 browser for years, I think I have a good overview on how a mobile browser works. Therefore I'm particularly interested in the "mobile browser war" taking place in S60. First of all, I'm surprised that there's a _war_ at all.

Of course, I'm talking about Opera and the new S60 (or OSS) Browser. You know, I'm a big fan of the latter (for reasons, see above) and I think it's a fantastic piece of software. I see that there are lots of other people around the world who share my opinion. Nevertheless, I still don't decline using other similar software, like Opera, just because it's not my favourite. Even more, I don't understand why supporters of either browser hate the other software and argue endlessly protecting their favourite. Hey, it's a free world, anybody can like anything and no need/place for hate.

It's just because both browsers are good. Extremely good in a not-so-easy environment! Whilst OSS Browser (any official name of this software?) is strong in showing web pages in their original layout, it's often found as a weakness, too, when the user has to scroll sometimes a lot in order to navigate to the relevant part she's interested in. Opera solves this problem by rendering the web page smartly (I mean, knowing that it's going to be displayed on a smartphone) so that it always fits on to the screen horizontally and even if the user has to scroll she has to do it only vertically. However, small screen rendering ™ has a drawback: the layout of the web page is changed and it's sometimes not what the author of the page wants and/or the users like. I think this is the main difference between these two fantastic browsers and it's really up to the users which one they prefer knowing the pros and cons. I personally bow to scrolling a bit more, but expect to see the page in its original layout, thus vote for the OSS browser.

But as to Opera Mini, Opera Software's free browser: I bow before them! To those who still don't know, Opera Software has written two different browsers for mobile phones: Opera and Opera Mini. So far I've been talking about the first, but I must tell some words about the latter, too. You know, I have visited Opera's boot on Smartphone Show and had a short chat with one the guys there. Besides that they share my opinion on the opposition of these two browsers, I heard some technical details about Opera Mini from them. First, it's not written in Symbian C++, but Java programming language. I was surprised to hear that as browsing requires as much resources (memory, CPU, I/O, network) as possible and the Java run-time environment is not famous of providing this as it would be desirable. But to my biggest surprise, it turned out that Opera Mini turns to an Opera server first asking it for downloading and rendering the web page in question on behalf of the mobile phone. I guess, the second step for Opera Mini is to download and show the "pre-digested" page information (not confirmed, though). That's fantastic! I mean, I'm amazed of how they could come out with such a brilliant idea. They can even apply compression techniques on the pre-digested data so that they reduce the amount of data to be transmitted to the minimum. Very cool! It's unnecessary to tell you that I've already downloaded and taken Opera Mini into use on my Nokia 6630. To my biggest pleasure - also unnecessary to say. What? - I hear. Yes, I'm using Opera Mini on my Nokia phone as the built-in browser is not good enough to my needs (OSS Browser has not been backported to older S60 versions).

Finally, as I've already written, I have attended Google's Q&A session on Tuesday. I was not surprised when they applied the common formula and said that "we're going to port/write as much software for Symbian in as short period as possible". I mean that's natural, it's certainly in their interest, too. Nevertheless, I started to think whether it's really worth for them to write software for S60 at all. Provided that the built-in browser is already close to perfection (just close, though), users of advanced S60 phones can enjoy almost(*) desktop browsing experience. Thus, no need to write anything for this platform! However, in the (*) section I wrote "almost" and I did it on purpose. You know, a mobile phone with such a small screen, never-enough memory, slow(er) CPU will never be able to beat desktop browsers, in my opinion.
Side-note: interestingly enough, I was not there when Nokia had announced their vision on the Smartphone Show that new mobile phones would slowly replace even desktop computers in the not-too-far future. Having mobile phones used for almost a decade, I would never have predicted it to happen. Tell me, when will you want to stare at a small display 1/20 (or less) in size of a desktop display? Or type in long documents with an ITU-T keypad?
So, it's Google's interest to make their services available on Symbian, too. Fortunately (and due to the fact that they're smart enough), their APIs enable anybody, not only them, to make this happen in a relativel short period. I can hardly wait until they announce their LBS-supported Froogle! :)

Any comments?

Tote

Update: I was wrong when I wrote that it had been Nokia announcing mobile phones replacing PC in the near future. Mentioned in Michael Mace's great article, it turns out that it was Symbian. And don't forget to read the comments, too: I also share Steve Litchfield's opinion that we don't have to over-react this announcement. :)

Smartphone Show, London, 2006

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:04:19 +0200

The Smartphone Show in London. I have already heard lots of things about it, but never been there thus far, so I was glad to have the chance to visit it. I've decided to be there for both days (Tuesday and Wednesday) so that I would have enough time to talk to everybody, try out/listen to everything. I mean, everybody and everything I'm interested in.

My feelings? Mixed. The good thing is that everybody was there who really counts in the Symbian world. Okay, I mean those that I'm aware of. :) Symbian, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, SysOpen Digia, ARM, Wiley (Symbian Press), BlackBerry, etc. Hey first: sorry for not mentioning everybody, but it's most probably thanks to my limited memory. Second: I have not mentioned Google on purpose. They have not yet contributed to Symbian so significantly that I should mention them, imho. Nevertheless, their cookies (I mean, the real ones, not the digital) were good. :)

Why are my feelings mixed then? Well, even though I'm from Hungary, a small country, I've already seen a few big shows, let them be trade or technical ones. This one was not one of them, at least not in my opinion. To my disappointment, I could wander through the area of the show in the first half an hour and pick up those boots that I decided to pay my attention to. Then I spent the first day with visiting those boots, talking to people, listening to others talking, etc. I've even attended a few seminars on Tuesday. Briefly: it was smaller than I had originally expected.

Okay then, what made me stay there for Wednesday? Well, besides the fact that I could have cancelled my hotel reservation and changed my flight schedule only for a horribly high amount of money, it was definetely the party that followed the first "working day". I mean, that was GREAT! Very good music (does anyone know the name of the band?), drink, food. The place had been a secret until we got transported there: it was called "The Container City", not too far away from ExCel London, where the show took place. At the end of the party, we got even taken near to the city center so that didn't have to think too much of how to go and where.

To my biggest surprise, there were even more people visiting the show on Wednesday. At least it seemed to me so. As I had already seen what I wanted to by that time, I decided to listen to keynote presentations in the morning and attend some technical seminars in the early afternoon (my plane left in the evening, so I had to leave early). It turned out to be a good plan and I could do what I had originally scheduled. For example, I was wondering what the heck BlackBerry could be looking for on the show, but after listening to their keynote speech (the lady was _very_ convincing) I could hardly stand to go to their boot and ask for a quote for my company. I was also interested in David Wood's speech, his vision of the next few years in mobile space was very impressive.

All in all, I'm so glad that I have visited the Smartphone Show. I've enjoyed it very much and I think I've gained much experience of it, too. Nevertheless, I might opt for a one-day trip in the future - that will be enough. Including the party, of course. :)

Tote

Forum Nokia Champion Day, London, 2006

Thu, 19 Oct 2006 14:32:56 +0200

As a Forum Nokia Champion, I was invited to attend the aforementioned event on 16 October in London. In addition, Symbian arranged their annual Smartphone Show so that it took place on the upcoming days, Tuesday and Wednesday so that I could stay in London for a few more days. This posting is about the first day, Monday, but I'm going to write another one with my remarks about the show.

Here you are. I'm so grateful that I could attend this event and meet other fellow champions. We were accomodated in Hotel Le Meridien (wow!) for two nights, Sunday and Monday. After having an excellent breakfast, we walked across Regent Street to Cafe Royal, a venue perfectly fitted to host meetings and events - like ours. First, we all had a brief introduction of ourselves and I can tell you that it was very nice to meet all of you and associate the faces, voices with most of the names I've already read here and there. There came some technical seminars, where we were presented some insights about the new Carbide.C++ Dev & Pro versions, Python for S60, got some hints on documentation and S60 3rd Edition update, etc. By the way, we had a traditional English pub lunch at noon - it was excellent not only because the food was good, but we could get to know each other, have a chat with anybody.

After the seminars, we were invited to build the team (i.e. teambuilding :). It turned out that we were spies (I knew that Tom Cruise was kicked out from Mission Impossible, but was surprised to see that we're gonna replace him:) and we had to accomplish a spy mission. We were split into 5 teams, each had to do the same tasks: explore places nearby, answer tricky questions, scavenge items from various places in a fixed amount of time. Khhm, we were so much filled with empathy that we thought it would be nice to be the fifth among the five teams and let others feel a little bit better. None seemed to be effusive in their gratitude. :) By the way, the winner team got Nokia 9500 Communicators, one per each member.

Finally, the last event on Monday was a coctail party held in Albannach, UK's second biggest whisky bar (as I learned). It was not only us, FN Champions, who were invited, but PRO members were also there. It was good to see so many people filled with enthusiasm about mobility - unfortunately, the place was so small that it was basically overcrowded. Nevertheless, the food was excellent as well as the drinks so we (at least I) enjoyed the whole party.

In fact, the whole day! So I'd like to thank Sanna, Elina and the rest of the team who arranged the whole thing so that I was (and still am) both proud and grateful that I'm a champ. Besides that I'd like to encourage other fellows, you, mobile geeks, do your best in the mobile community and become a FN Champion. It's worth, believe me!

Tote

Ps.: one of my colleagues has also flew to London to attend the Smartphone Show. As he is not a champion, he couldn't attend those events that I could, but what he could do, however, was that he went to the pub event arranged by Symbian on Monday evening. There was a draw during the event and he won an N93. Simply just because he was there. I'm so jealous. Everyone could win a mobile phone, except me? :)