Symbian

Hello and thank you to all the kind users who gave our Symbian Beta a try and then shared their experiences with us. We used as much of the feedback as we could in the upcoming commercial version and we haven't forgotten the rest. The Symbian Beta phase is now over, making way for the commercial release of our Symbian version next week. Thanks again to all of those who tested our Symbian Beta version, we really appreciate your efforts.

I am also pleased to announce that Darla Mack won the EQO iPod Shuffle for filling out the Symbian Beta Survey. Congratulations Darla, I hope you enjoy your iPod!

The Symbian Beta will still be available for download at the Symbian Beta page and we will still gladly accept all feedback coming our way, but the beta period is officially over. I hope you'll all try our next Symbian version! Please stay tuned.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

We have released version 1.2.1 of the EQO Symbian Beta for Nokia Series 60 3rd edition phones. This version alleviates many of the "Memory Full" errors that our testers were getting. This problem may not be solved for people with over a thousand contacts, but the general population should be much less afflicted. Problems with the symbol table for text entry persist on some phones. Affected users will surely realize right away. We have addressed this bug, but the fix didn't make it into this release. Version 1.2.1 also contains many other minor bug fixes that make this release faster and more stable.

When upgrading to the latest version of the Symbian Beta it is a good idea to remove the old client first before upgrading to version 1.2.1. There are some issues with upgrading over the old version, be warned. Get the latest version from our Symbian Beta page or by visiting get.eqo.com/symbian on your mobile browser.

Thanks again to all of our testers and please keep the great feedback coming in our Symbian Beta Forum. After this next Beta period, we'll be announcing the winner of the EQO iPod Shuffle!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

The eagerly awaited second version of our EQO Symbian beta has arrived.  The first beta yielded much excellent feedback and we thank our kind testers for all their hard work.  We've tried to incorporate as much of what we heard as possible into this next version, although 1.2 is still a beta with issues of its own.  That being said version 1.2 is greatly improved and offers:

• Enhanced stability and performance.
• Predictive text and text input status notification.
• IM stability and bug fixes.
• Contact search filter.
• Other good stuff I can't think of.

When upgrading to the latest version of the Symbian Beta please make sure to remove the old client first before upgrading to version 1.2.  There are some issues with upgrading over the old version, be warned.  Get the latest version from our Symbian Beta page or by visiting get.eqo.com/symbian on your mobile browser.

Also, there is a major bug in version 1.2 that we are aware of and are already fixing for the next release.  On some phones, opening the Symbol table for special character input causes the app to crash.  I imagine you'll find out rather quickly if you are affected or not.

Thanks again to all of our testers and please keep the great feedback coming in our Symbian Beta Forum.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

The EQO Symbian Beta is here! This version differs from our J2ME version in that it is built natively for Symbian Series 60 3rd edition phones. The Symbian version offers many improvements over the J2ME version, but is also still a little rough around the edges being a beta and all. Since you are all my great friends, feel free to use my promo code "chrisr" for some extra sign up credit.

Get started on our Symbian Beta page and learn all about it. If you do decide to give the Symbian Beta a try, check out our Symbian Beta Forum for the latest news and bug reports. Users that fill in our Symbian Beta Survey will have a chance to win an EQO iPod Shuffle!

Supported Models:
3250, 5500, 5700, 6110 Navigator, 6120, 6121 classic, 6290, E50, E51, E60, E61, E61i, E62, E65, E70, E90, N71, N73, N75, N76, N77, N80, N81, N82, N91, N92, N93, N93i, N95

Cheers and thanks for testing!

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

A few weeks ago, at the Symbian Smartphone Show in London, our CEO, Bill Tam, spoke with bnet.TV about the upcoming Symbian version of EQO. Check out Bill's interview with Nicole Scott here.

Peter
EQO Customer Support

I once read that a true sign of greatness is facing the cold hard facts of life and admitting a mistake when one has been made.  I truly hope this bit of speculation, that Sony Ericsson may be adopting Windows Mobile as a replacement for their Symbian UIQ, is more than just speculation.  I am not a fan of Symbian UIQ having made use of both the Sony Ericsson M600i and P900i.  I hear that the new Sony Ericsson P1 is pretty good, but I image that I'd still prefer a smartphone of any other major type.  I literally get my hands on everything and I dare say I prefer the iPhone, Nokia S60 3rd Edition, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Motorola Linux smartphone platforms (in that order) to Sony Ericsson's Symbian UIQ.  I've found UIQ slow, cumbersome, and not widely supported.  Good call Sony Ericsson, ditch UIQ, give Windows Mobile a try, and keep on making the feature phones you produce so well.

Chris
EQO Customer Evangelist

Three years ago, peer-to-peer technology was all the rage made popular by Skype and file sharing applications such as KaZaA, Shareaza, and BitTorrent. I too caught the P2P bug and together with two other co-founders developed a P2P-based distributed telephone switch. Coming from a telecom background in mobile network equipment and Internet Multi-media Subsystem (IMS), we thought the use of P2P for node addressing and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for call signaling would make for a powerful and low cost disaggregated telephone soft-switch. We experimented with several P2P protocols including Sun's JXTA, Gnutella2 and FastTrack but eventually ended up with a beta product based on the more structured Pastry P2P design. The rationale was that to have a P2P network that can match the performance of traditional telephone switches, we needed a P2P protocol that is more real-time deterministic and one that can be made practical on limited resource end-user device such as mass market mobile phones.

I have been using the Nokia 5500 Sport for about 2 months now. I have to admit, this phone looks rather dull and ordinary but it is a pretty cool mobile device. The Nokia 5500 is a Series 60 Third Edition Symbian phone (check out the phone specs here).

During 2006, we at EQO created a great deal of technology that extends and bridges online and circuit-switched communications services to mass market mobile phones. Much of this work were extensions to patent-pending server-based distributed call management and service bridging technology that has been under development since 2003. Through out the year, we gained much valuable feedback and product input from our now quite significant user base. One of the key learnings is simplicity. This is particularly important when it comes to applications that runs on limited screen size, limited keypad, limited memory, limited computing, limited battery, and limited bandwidth devices such as mass market mobile phones.

As you folks likely read in the media, we had a very successful trip to San Jose Last week.

But one thing in particular was palpable at last week's VON conference. As Stuart Henshall pointed out (and Jeff responded), there was no Skype presence at Spring VON in San Jose, which is by far the pre-eminent conference in the arena.

VON would have been a great place for Skype to convene with developers like us: They were all there, from Skype Phone handset manufacturers and hardware vendors to software / network players like us. I ran into James Bilefield, Skype VP Business Development, but Skype were notably absent from the Speakers' List.

There are really a couple of fundamental issues here (that I know about):

1) Much has been made of Niklas Zennstrom's pending (ahem) legal issues with the RIAA vis-a-vis his Kazaa experience. The rumour is that the RIAA have convinced the US Government to issue an arrest warrant against Friis and Zennstrom, which of course would have detrimental effects upon his entry to the USA. Note that I am conveying this rumour though I can find no such documentation as to its veracity.