It was that time of the year again. When I got ready to head out into the wilds. Armed with nothing more than my trusty smartphone (in years past, a Nokia 9500, an E61i and an E90, this year it was the E75's turn), the aim was to keep in touch with the world even when camped miles from anywhere with my family. But what about power? How did I keep my smartphone supplied with juice? Not mention the barrage of 'Daddy, my xxxx's battery is flat' complaints, all of which needed to be handled quickly if a peaceful atmosphere was to be maintained!
Over on All About Symbian's sister-site Ovi Gaming we've been reviewing some big-name titles recently, and also added our usual gameplay videos and screenshots alongside the reviews. See below for the complete list of links...
Nokia's sent us one of their Cityman 450 anti-theft units designed for the Nokia N97, and we have to say it's quite impressive. Absolutely no one will want to steal your phone once you've put this little beauty into action. Find out more below...
The Ovi Macintosh Files Connector, writes Tam Huynh on the Ovi Blog today, is now available. It will allow OS X 10.5 users to remotely access files on their Mac from a Nokia handset, or the Ovi Files web interface , send the files directly to friends and colleagues and build up a mirror of your useful files on the Anytime Files archive that comes attached to your Ovi account. And don't forget that Ovi Files recent dropped the subscription charge and is now available as a free web service.
Nokia are looking to find out what you think about the Share on Ovi service, and are offering five people who take their survey a share of 1000 euros (that's 200 Euros each). You can take the survey here. It should take around ten minutes. And even if you don't win, you will have helped the service.
Digia have released a beta version of their @Web browser for S60 5th Edition devices (Nokia 5800 and N97, Samsung i8910 HD). Digia @Web is a 'fully finger controllable, web browser for mobile'. Features include direct page control with finger, multi-window support, URL auto-completion and automatic full screen browsing. Read on for more details and screenshots.
The Symbian Foundation have asked for input from Developers and interested parties on the newly drafted Test Criteria for Symbian Signed. The new criteria, v4.0.8, are still in draft (and developers should continue to follow the existing v3.0.3 criteria until told otherwise), but the Foundation "...believe that it's important to get as many eyes on this as possible as soon as we can."
Chris Messina has posted an interesting argument that the rise of popularity in applications on mobile phones has stunted the growth of the true 'next big thing', the web based applet that runs in the browser. It's worth a read over a cup of coffee, including his (perhaps not quite) tongue in cheek thinking that Steve Jobs is deliberately crippling the app store. Of course in all this heat, I'm sure many US commentators will forget about one of the leading on device web app platforms... Nokia's Web Runtime.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've just done mini-reviews, screenshots and gameplay videos of six lower-price games (in descending order of quality): excellent accelerometer-based tilting maze game Labyrinth Touch, noughts and crosses on a larger grid with Tic Tac Toe Touch, chess-inspired puzzle game Knight's Puzzle, Mr Pringle avoiding a soaking in Log Jam, testing whether you've got dementia with Viitrio Memory Match, and a rather more boring noughts and crosses with Viitrio Tic Tac Toe.
Offscreen Technology have just released a touch enabled version of Elements, their periodic table application (it's available in the Ovi Store). Making best use of the letterbox screen size of the 5800, the app presents the always useful periodic table of elements, nicely colour coded to keep elemental groupings together, as well as allowing you to tap through on each element to gain additional information.
Quickoffice today announced the official release of latest version of its Microsoft Ofiice compatible document viewing and editing software. With the release comes the news that all existing S60 on Symbian Nokia devices will receive a free upgrade to the latest version, Quickoffice 6. Users will receive an upgrade in line with the version that shipped with their device. This means that Eseries devices will receive an upgrade to the viewing and editing version, while other S60 Nokia devices will receive an upgrade to the viewing only version. Read on for more information.
The head to head that all Nokia camera phone fans wanted to see - Damian Dinning, the guy behind both the N82 and N86 8MP, has been doing controlled tests at Nokia's Southwood test centre, and the results are his presentation, embedded below. See also the original Nokia Conversations accompanying article, helping explain what you're seeing. Make sure you click to go full-screen, by the way, if you want to see everything!
DataViz today announced the release of an updated version of RoadSync that improves the product's support for S60 5th Edition devices such as the Nokia N97 and 5800, and Samsung i8910. Version 4.004 of the Microsoft Exchange Client features a new 'touch toolbar' when viewing messages, allowing for easier email management. The release also improves the set up procedure with support for auto-discovery (Exchange 2007 only) of account details.
Quickoffice has now soft-launched Quickoffice v6.2 Premier (i.e. the editing version) for the Nokia S60 5th Edition phones. The company say "This is an interim release for touch devices only due to significant demand and requests from our end users for editing support ASAP. Watch this space for full v6.2 feature details and developments/launches for other phones happening soon". Soon, from the little birdie that twittered in my ear, might be very soon, in fact. In the meantime, N97 and 5800 owners should find that v6.2 Premier is now available as a paid upgrade on their device in Quickoffice's 'Updates & upgrades' (Quickmanager) section. See below for screenshots and brief comments.
In All About Symbian Insight 81 (AAS Podcast 143), we share the news that Ovi Files is now free to use and talk about its potential uses. We follow up with discussion of the latest Google software updates, the most notable being the addition of Layers to Google Maps. There's comment on Apple's recent result, Accenture acquisition of Nokia's Symbain Professional Service unit and answers to some listener questions. You can listen to AAS Insight 81 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
