The first day of the Smartphone show was the first opportunity many had to see new CEO, Nigel Clifford, in action. It was clear that Nigel will be a great asset to the company. His telecoms background is certainly a strong point and he clearly does not see the Symbian world through rose colored glasses. He described the current status as "the end of the beginning" and recognized that there is still much work to do to truly cement Symbian at the heart of the wireless industry.

Symbian has been moving towards the mid-range for some time, at least in announced OS capabilities. Nigel described this long term goal as removing the "smart" from "smartphone", or more specifically make the smartphone "the" phone. This will take advanced features to a wider audience, rather than dumbing down Symbian OS.

From a developer perspective there was a lot of news. The announcement of Nokia's Carbide C++ tools particularly the free Express version seemed to take many by surprise. The significant price reductions, accompanied by a growth in features, for the charged tools also had the same effect. Carbide.c++ will retain all the features of the CodeWarrior tools, which streamlines the development of Symbian OS applications. The free version is understandably "no frills" while the professional version adds visual application design. The Beta versions of the visual designer were very impressive as they were more than simply component drag and drop. They include screen templates, for both Series 60 and UIQ, which follow each platforms UI style (rather than simply starting with a blank canvas). Components can then only be dragged and dropped into appropriate places on the screen. In doing so one goal, according to Markus Ahonen, was to both provide guidance to new developers (with tool tips explaining why components can not be added to certain areas of a screen) without getting in the way of more experienced developers.

Part of the reason the announcement surprised many is that Nokia run its tools business on a commercial basis. As such a free entry level product would seem to run against commercial goals. D'Arcy Salzman pointed out the long term expectation is that the free tools will help expand the base of developers and over time these developers will migrate to the paid for tools. Another, equally important goal, is to help show that Symbian OS development is not hard, just different, and access to tools is perceived as one of the things which has added to this "hard" perception.

SymSource, in conjunction with Majinate, launched an online Symbian Developer Accreditation exams to support the scheme announced at the show. One of the key issues facing the Symbian ecosystem is the availability of skilled Symbian developers. Tim Ocock hopes that the online examinations will help streamline the recruitment process by ensuring that employers have a qualified baseline against which to test a developers knowledge. So the test has been devised to use real life scenarios which developers are only likely to have solved during practical development experience, not simply from training or reading documentation. SymSource and EMCC are also supporting the accreditation program by linking the exams to training to address areas of weakness highlighted by the result.

The Sony Ericsson P990 is certainly the device of the show, and more on it tomorrow, but interestingly it was not the only working example of UIQ 3.0. No less than three different development boards were at the show running UIQ 3.0, including the new Intel reference boards. Interestingly the port to the Intel X-Scale chipset took only a few days (although the radio had not been implemented) which belies suggestions that Symbian OS device creation is overly complex.

There were several other developer announcements of importance. The introduction of free developer certificates and a freeware free signing program. The big issue these programs create is for low volume semi-commercial developers. Domain experts or developers with innovative ideas often look to the small revenue from application sales to support their endeavors. In many cases the cost of signing an application could easily account for a significant part of sales revenue, exacerbated by the fact that these developers do not often have the resources for thorough testing and therefore issue regular bug fixes. While many hobby developers do not progress beyond that, a small number create innovative application which have long term commercial potential and benefit for the ecosystem. This is a singular challenge for Symbian and its licensees that has been partially addressed by the introduction of a free Symbian Signed testing tool. This will allow developers to ensure their application will pass the signing tests before they deliver them to their chosen test house.

The range of applications on display clearly shows that innovation is part of the Symbian ecosystem culture. One fascinating example was from US developer Red Hen Systems. Its Research and Development Director, Ken Burgess, had a curious arrangement of two Series 60 phones mounted on a cradle. Ken is using these to create stereographic images. Software on the phones synchronized the images captured using Bluetooth. Ken characterized his interest in Symbian OS as the fact Symbian devices provides a programmable camera platform. While the stereo photograph is something of a hobby for Ken, Red Hen is using Symbian OS based camera phones for disaster recovery work. Its application allows an area to be surveyed, images captured and tagged with their location before being uploaded to a command centre, allowing recovery crew requirements to be accurately assessed.

X Media Solutions were also showing a interesting blend of the old and new. Its technology allows handwritten forms to be captured via a digital pen and uploaded through a Symbian OS phone to a server. The paper forms are then converted into a digital format. In addition Vision Objects are also creating an application which performs the handwriting recognition on the phone, specifically as a mechanism to create an easier way to reply to email while mobile.

Day two of the show promised to be equally interesting. A "customer announcement" is due, which we are expecting to be device related (given that previously similar announcements have been for devices). There is also a good portion of the show floor yet to be explored. Stay tunes, more tomorrow.

Don't forget to check out our photo blog from the show floor on flickr.