Symbian Foundation at MWC 2009

Mobile World Congress 2009 is almost upon us. The Symbian Foundation will have a stand with some fun demos (and free coffee!) so please pop by and say hello! They have also set up a Symbian Foundation Blog where they will be posting news and coverage from the show.

Please go visit it, bookmark it, subscribe to it and share it with the world!

FreeWay demo

One of the other demos at our stand this year was showing off FreeWay, the new communications architecture. Specifically it was showing the throughput of data through the comms stack:

Pretty impressive I’m sure you’ll agree! Mmmmhhh… 100+Mbps on my phone! *drool*

Yesterday’s news

Sorry for not posting anything yesterday. The app I was going to use on my phone had trouble connecting and the WiFi connection in my hotel room wasn’t working either. *grumble*

Yesterday was a blast! I spent most of the day on the Symbian stand showing off one of our two ScreenPlay demos (I’ll cover it in more detail in a later post). Lots of people came by and seemed to be interested (though I suspect some were just after the coffee!). There were a few bloggers stopping by too – one was from the Mobile Game Developer Magazine which looks like an interesting site for… well… mobile game developers. We also had Norman from Symbian World stop by – another interesting blog worth checking out! I wonder if the AAS boys or some of the blogs.S60.com folk will stop by too – come on guys, you know you want to!

In the evening there was the Symbian party which was excellent. There was plenty of food and drink and music by the Pinker Tones. I would say it was kind of funky electro music, but I’m not too good with the old music genres, so why not judge for yourself? In any case it was a lot of fun and we were dancing away (especially William ) into the wee hours of the morning.

Right, best be off to the show now.

Getting ready for tomorrow…

The Symbian stand is up. The cube is lit and rotating. The jelly bean dispenser has been filled…

…The coffee machine is present. The lip balm is ready…

I think we’re ready to go!

If you’re attending the Mobile World Congress, please come by and say hi! We’re in Hall 8, stand 8A77 (Check the MWC’s floorplans for directions if you get lost). You can see our latest tech demos, find out about Symbian OS’s cool features and of course grab a free coffee and have a chat with us. We look forward to seeing you all!

Stand and deliver

A sunny barcelona greets us as we hit the stand to see how construction is proceeding. The fira is seething with activity and mega structures are flying up in record time. 48 hours until the doors open. The clock is ticking.

Travelling light

Dotsisx’s did an interesting article titled “Math à la N95 8GB” a while ago which illustrated all the things her Nokia N95 8GB could replace.

I was reminded of this while packing my things for the trip to Barcelona. My current phone, a Sony Ericsson W960, replaces a whole bunch of things I would have taken with me on a trip abroad just a few years ago. I therefore decided to dig out the devices I typically would have had with me back in 2001 and compare them with what I take now. Here are the results…

2001

Phone, MiniDisc Walkman with a few discs (each one was only 74 minutes, remember!), GameBoy Advance with games and batteries, Analogue camera and chargers for the phone and Walkman. Altogether these items weighed about 1.5kg.

2008

Smartphone (using Symbian OS, naturally), stereo Bluetooth headset and charger. (The headset is also Sony Ericsson in this case so I can use the same charger). As you can see, far less bulky and weighing in at a mere 250 grams. That is one sixth of what the 2001 gear weighed or, to put it another way, the same as my 2001 phone charger weighed!

That’s not all though – my 2008 kit does everything the 2001 collection did and more! I can now play videos, browse the Web and film videos, none of which I could do before. Less items also means less cables to get tangled up in my rucksack (I swear cables come alive and get into knots when nobody’s looking!!) and less things to forget to pack or, even worse, forget in the hotel at the other end.

Good ol’ convergence!

I wonder what I’ll be taking with me 7 years from now. Hopefully the MWC next week will offer a glimpse of what is to come…

Demo teaser

Pssst! Over here…

My name’s James and I’ve snuck into this blog past William and Freddie to bring you an exclusive spy shot from deep within Symbian…

It’s a demo we’re cooking up to show at the Mobile World Congress, but I didn’t tell you that! Can you guess what it is? Add some comments below with your ideas!

By the way, I’m going to try to sneak my way into the show at Barcelona and infiltrate this blog occasionally to bring you more geeky news!

Right, I’m outta here before someone spots me!