Just in case you've missed it, Ovi Gaming is now also available as a mobile website at ovigaming.mobi. It contains the same content as ovigaming.com but in a reformatted style which should work on the majority of mobile web browsers and screen resolutions. It should also load a lot more quickly and use much less data, which may be useful for those on a slow connection or with expensive data charges. Have a look and let us know what you think...
Over on Ovi Gaming we've reviewed five games which all retail on Ovi Store for €3 each: excellent surreal racing game Sheep Mania Barnyard Dash, relationship simulator Date Or Ditch, online Scrabble clone Lexulous (formerly known as Scrabulous), Lancashire's finest in Wallace & Gromit Adventures, and the return of the blue hedgehog in Sonic Unleashed. As usual we've included gameplay videos and screenshots along with brief remarks on all aspects of the games.
After months of delay, the 'Ambassador' programme for the Samsung i8910 HD (used to be called the Omnia HD) has kicked off, with the production devices now delivered to contacts across the world. This means that SIM-free, unlocked phones are now in mainstream English reviewer hands for the first time. See below for some first impressions and, most importantly, sample HD video footage from the i8910 HD's camera. [Updated with new video sample, new compatibility notes]
Nokia have updated the Nokia Music PC app to version 1.3, adding in software to ease connection difficulties between the S60 handsets and the music client. The app will now offer to switch the connection modes of a connected device to ease transfer of music, and the caching of the contents of a smartphone has now been tweaked, allowing faster connections to be made.
Another year, another design iteration of Proporta's bestselling mobile charger range. This is 2009 and we now have the USB TurboCharger 1200 and the USB TurboCharger 3400, with the numbers helpfully telling us how many mAh of charge are stored within. I've been reviewing the (physically and electrically) smaller version - is it worth sacrificing charge for size?
This afternoon, Google has quietly released an updated version of the S60 version of its Google Maps for Mobile application. The new version, 3.2.0, adds a 'Layers' feature which helps organise the information displayed on top of the map (including the existing Latitude, Driving Directions and Traffic functionality). However, Layers also gives access to some entirely new information including Transit Lines (e.g. London Underground), Wikipedia and My Maps (user generated content) overlays. Read on for more details and screenshots.
Google has officially declared its S60 YouTube client compatible with the Nokia 5800, with the release of v2.2.9 (it was 2.2.6) on m.youtube.com (i.e. you no longer have to intercept the one offered to S60 3rd Edition phones and transfer manually - you can just go to Google's mobile site in Web on your 5800). There's also a new 'Flag' (as inappropriate) menu function, but still MIA are login/favourites/commenting - surely a version 3.x version will be needed for these? Curiously, there's no 'official' compatibility yet with the N97. Watch this space.
In All About Symbian Insight 80 (AAS Podcast 142), we discuss Nokia's Q2 results and the announcement of the Nokia Surge. We follow up with news of Symbian's Horizon program, before talking about the latest set of software updates for the N97. Finally we answer some questions from our listeners. You can listen to AAS Insight 80 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
What comes after Sudoku? How about KenKen, asks Ewan, as he looks at another Japanese number grid-based puzzle game. Adding elements of real mathematics into the puzzle makes it quite a bit more challenging to the ol' grey matter.
Ho yes. Every news network worth its salt has to have its share of iPhone and S60 widgets. ITN is the latest to join the throng, with its News widget now in the Ovi Store for all S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition phones. It's free, of course, and has sections for 'Headlines', 'Sport', 'Business' and 'Fun'. Many of the stories have attached ITN videos, which pop up in fairly low res (176 by 144 pixels) 3GP format in RealPlayer. Some screenshots below.
Nokia today announced the Nokia 6760, it is an unbranded, enhanced version of the Nokia Surge that was announced in conjunction with AT&T last week. It is a horizontal slider with QWERTY keyboard and is a mid-tier, consumer-focussed, messaging device. The Nokia 6760 will be available from Q3 2009, at a cost of €200, before taxes and subsidies. Along with the Nokia 5530, it is one of the cheapest S60/Symbian phones released to date.
Last Friday, Nokia and Accenture announced that they had entered in to an agreement for Accenture to acquire Nokia's Symbian Professional Services unit, which is 'responsible for Symbian OS customer engineering and customer support'. Effectively, the unit provides technical expertise, in the form of a service consultancy, to companies from across the ecosystem: mobile operators, silicon vendors and device manufacturers. Read on for more.
I've mentioned the direct lineage between N95 and N86 8MP before here on All About Symbian, so let's break this down - how far HAS Nokia come in the last two years? And how much of this distance is covered by software updates that can also be applied to the N95? In another of my device head-to-heads, I compare the N95 'classic', as it was at launch in early 2007, with the N86 8MP of mid 2009...
The UK's biggest network operator, Vodafone, has announced that it's abolishing the 15MB data limit, set only a few months ago, in favour of a system by which customers can "browse the mobile internet as much as they like" for 50p a day on an ad-hoc basis. It's a system that works well, and one which I use often with a whole brace of PAYG SIM cards. Digging deeper reveals that the new limit is 25MB, not a massive increase, but this is now a 'fair use' figure rather than a hard-coded limit and (thankfully) you won't be charged extra without contact first from Vodafone to warn you about excessive data use (e.g. if you tether to a laptop or similar).
In this major feature, Rafe Blandford compares the relative performance of web browsers on various mobile devices, including the Nokia N95 8GB, Nokia E71, Nokia E75, Nokia N86 8MP, Nokia N97, Nokia 5800, T-Mobile G1, and Apple iPhone 3G. Which mobile device has the fastest browser? The results may surprise you - they did me.
