Kudos to AAS friend Matthew Miller for putting together a gloriously techy article on how to rid your S60 3rd Edition FP2-toting (ho yes) AT&T-branded Nokia E71x of all of its Java trialware and bloatware. Bottom line: an hour of effort and you've got yourself a lean and fit smartphone that's more advanced in many ways than the E71 the rest of the world is enjoying.
Over on sister site All About NGage OviGaming, Ewan's been putting a new implementation of the card game classic Uno through its paces. And, barring a token multiplayer mode and all-or-nothing sound, the developers seem to have knocked this one out of the park. And done it in Java, no less. Now all you've got to do is master the rules...
At an event tonight in London, Sony Ericsson has formally launched the 'Idou' concept as the 'Satio', to be available Q4 this year. Rafe's on the spot and will report here shortly in much more detail. See, for example, the AAS Twitter feed. Two other non-smartphones were launched, with equally 'modern' names, it's a new chapter for Sony Ericsson, it seems. The Satio will have its media player integrated with YouTube and Picassa, plus there's full Play Now Arena support. Plus the already-known specs, including the 12 megapixel stills camera and Xenon flash. More below. Don't go away....
There's a fascinating (and welcome) post by Phil Northam over on the Symbian Foundation site talking about the new i8910HD. Particularly interesting is the quote "the i8910HD is packed with a host of powerful options: Qt, Python, Ruby... All these run out-of-the box without change on the i8910HD". Good news all round, I say, though I suspect there's a degree of firmware-updating, downloadable addons and poetic license still involved. Anyone able to shed more light on this? See also Samsung's accelerating Mobile Innovator programme.
Possibly as part of the whole Ovi server shake-up, possibly as part of the new Ovi Maps server architecture, Nokia's Maps servers have now been 'fixed' and will, after a frustrating couple of months of being broken, successfully match full seven character UK postcodes. Phew - just thought you'd like to know.
Yesterday Rafe had the opportunity to attend Nokia's Design Day: The Inside Story. The event, held at Nokia's London design studio, offers a closer look at a number of design projects. This year the topics included iconography (a global design language), gestures (future interaction methods), homescreens (empowering users through personalisation), and the Nokia N97 (merging the physical and online world). We'll have more detailed coverage next week, but, as a taster, here are a few images from the day.
In All About Symbian Insight 72 (AAS Podcast 131) Steve, Ewan and Rafe round up an eclectic collection of news including Google Calendar Sync, Spore, recent MOAP devices, recent stats and Omnia HD availability. In the second part of the show discuss moments of change - times when we've seen a device of technology that marks a significant shift. You can listen to AAS Insight 72 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
After a lengthy (but evidently productive) beta period, the Skyfire (cross-platform) web browser has now been released as a full v1.0. You may remember that Skyfire, like Opera Mini, is a proxy-based browser, in that all web content is parsed and compressed before making its way to your phone, saving time and bandwidth. Skyfire's main advantages over Opera Mini are that it offers full multimedia (including Silverlight, Flash video, RealMedia, etc) and Ajax support, meaning that it should work with just about any web site. Skyfire's Raj Singh claims that Skyfire have effectively reduced 'click fear'. Read on for screens, what's new, video from The Phones Show 81 (out today) and some useful links.
Nokia have continued to tweak their Ovi services with a few changes to Ovi Mail. The main visual change is that it is now integrated in the top icon bar of the main Ovi site, while in the background it will now automatically check for email and allow you to mark mail as read without requiring you to open said mail.
Just a brief note that Rafe's at Nokia's Design Day in London today and is posting updates on the AAS Twitter account through the day, so you might want to follow this, if you're not already.
Although specifically for the iPhone, Slide To Play have put together a Top Ten Things Developers For Mobile Games Need To Do and it's an article I want to send to everyone who makes a game on Symbian OS, including a number of N-Gage partners. On reflection, these are all pretty obvious, but the number of games that miss out these for no discernible reason could easily fill an online app store.
Managing a football team is easy, countless games have shown you how, on all platforms. But owning a football team and trying to make money... that's a different matter. Can Football Tycoon show us the way forward? Ewan, a Scotsman with an eye for money, takes a critical look at this new S60 game...
In the last of his video diaries with the Nokia E75, embedded below, Ewan chats at length about its multimedia capabilities - camera, music, recording, and so on. It's fair to say that he still likes the device and considers it well above average. Your comments welcome on both the E75's multimedia and also on the video diary format. Which device would you like to see Ewan tackle next?
PyS60 enthusiast Croozeus breaks the news of another landmark test release of the next-gen version of Python for S60, v1.9.5. Significantly, this includes 'listbox' support for touch-screen devices, meaning that we're one step closer to a full v2.0 release that supports all recent S60 phones (touch and non-touch). In other related news, there's heated discussion going on about Nokia's decision not to allow Python-coded applications in the new Ovi app store.
The rather brilliant N-Gage-exclusive 3D platform game Bounce Boing Voyage has been updated to include motion control on those phones which have accelerometers, where you can tilt the phone to control the main character (or you can use the traditional button controls if you prefer). If you've already bought the game you can get the updated version free, and if you haven't bought the game you can buy it from the N-Gage showroom tab. Instructions for updating existing games are below.
