Aaargh, Nokia’s iPhone-killer is going to be running S60?

Bummer. I had high hopes for a cool device to work on.

Software could trip up Nokia’s iPhone rival

First Nokia touchscreen phone could be a disappointment, analysts warn

When Nokia’s first touch-screen phone eventually comes out, looks will be important, but software is what could make the difference between success and failure.

Richard Windsor, of Nomura International, said that when he tested the latest version of the S60 operating system, understood to be the software the Nokia touch phone will run on, he was “deeply unimpressed.”

He warned that unless there is a “meaningful improvement” to the user experience before the phone is launched, it could fail to catch on and become profitable.

“While the device looks great, we think that the software that runs it could easily end up being a massive disappointment,” he said.

link

I often run into difficulty explaining the concept of Metosphere since I don’t always have my laptop with Android emulator at hand. So I whipped up an iPhone webapp that has similar functionality to the Android version.

I decided to focus on an iPhone webapp for now, since most people I know have unJailbroken iPhones. Thankfully, FireEagle handles the location info nicely. The backend is the same, so any geospatial information created in either the iPhone or Android version shows up in the same, um, metosphere.

Features:
- Create geotagged objects at your location (messages, alerts, events, reviews, etc.)
- View geotagged objects created by others in your proximity (list or map)
- List nearby events from Upcoming and Eventful
- List nearby geotagged Wikipedia pages
- I left out the GeoBlog functionality for now since that’s still in flux while I’m finalizing the forthcoming Android release.
- I used the CiUI iPhone UI instead of IUI because it seems faster.

Click here for Metosphere for iPhone

Some Screenshots:

D’oh! I kept trying to talk myself out of going to Google I/O, but I didn’t realize there was a Mobile Track until today.

The Android sessions look great:
* Android 101: Building an Application
* Anatomy & Physiology of an Android
* Dalvik Internals
* Inside the Android Application Framework
* Building Great UIs with Android
* Internationalizing Android Applications
* Location, Location, Location
* Mobile Mashups

More details here.

Wow, May is going to be busy with Where 2.0, WhereCamp, and now Google I/O.