Time passes very quickly here at the Mobile World Congress and it’s already morning of day 2. Here are some thoughts I scribbled into my notebook yesterday which you might find interesting, too.
Apart from the N97, I’ve also taken a look at a couple of other things while at the Nokia booth. The beta version of Nokia Maps has been out for a while and after looking at it at the booth, I think it is time to upgrade on my N95 and wait for the half a gigabyte of map data to reload in the process. New features that have persuaded me are speed warnings, radar warnings, finally a navigation route overview option and, most importantly, integration of maps with Ovi on the PC, so I can plan routes and favorites on the PC and synch them with the mobile. A very nice feature.
Sportstracker has been upgraded as well and now supports Polar heartbeat monitors. Currently only available as a bundle with a new phone but with some luck at some point also available separately. I noticed that the heart rate of the presenter was higher than mine 🙂
Next on my list of things to do was to pick up the tickets for the Symbian Foundation evening event at their stand and to chat with some of the employees of where things are going. It seems things are still very much in flux and the next year will be an exciting one for those involved with the foundation.
I also went to see my book publisher Wiley in hall 2 (2A130) to prepare for my book presentation session on Wednesday afternoon from 2-4. The book is already selling well and I had the chance to talk with someone just picking up a copy while I was there. It’s always good to talk with people to see why they are picking up a copy. If you are around on Wednesday, please come around and say hello!
As I said, time flies and once that was done I was already on my way to the MobileMonday Global Peer Awards. As the event is quite big it was outside the Fira as every year, this time in the beautiful Palau de la Musica. The venue was not quite perfect for the event as the conference room was underground and there was absolutely no public network coverage. Some people, including me, were quite nervous not being reachable. It must be the times… Rudy de Waele was nice enough to give me instructions how to log on to the installed Wi-Fi network so I could at least send out e-mails that I am not reachable. Lots of people were at the event and I think the format to give each startup three minutes to present themselves was a good thing. Great event, Rudy, I guess you have done magic again for networking and getting the talk flowing. One thing I particularly noticed compared to previous years was that for startup companies the iPhone seems to have overtaken S60 as THE platform to develop for. Not sure an application store and an N97 will be enough for Nokia to reverse this trend. But they are certainly not sitting still so we’ll see what happens.
And finally in the evening we chilled out at the Symbian Foundation Party. As always lots of interesting people there to talk with, mobile and otherwise. A great first day and not much energy left afterwards.
Day 2 has just started now, let’s see what it brings.