Released as free widgets for the Nokia 5800 and N97, PixelsBeatPaper has released interactive maps of the titled underground systems. Nothing fancy, just clear scrollable maps. If you dig a bit further into their site, you'll see utilities for bill splitting, body-mass-index calculating and a countdown timer, all again only for S60 5th Edition.
As part of the Nokia Developer Summit, the widely publicised Nokia Hackathon ended with a victory for a Mexican designer, with Rocket, a social location widget that will be featured on the front screen of the Nokia N97. It's not known which social network this is compatible with. There's an extract from the press release below.
Not exactly a glowing review from me for the Nokia E75 in The Phones Show 80, I end up criticising everything from the small screen to the cluttered layout to the small battery to the bizarre 'folder' icons. Just being honest. Also in show 80 are a top 10 of iPhone gaming and a brief interview with Rafe about the Nokia N97. Here are the feeds for the QVGA and VGA versions for your feedreader.
You'll know the sort of content covered if you're used to the output of Nokia's own in-house Conversations team, so if you like the stories but would like to catch up with them with the minimum disruption to your daily life then there's also their new Blogbite podcast (RSS link). In five minutes or so (hence the 'bite' bit), two of the team race (and I mean race) through some of Nokia's announcements and oddball stories of the week. You can also listen over the web and it's in the Podcasting directory, naturally.
Google's YouTube team thankfully seem to work at a fair old pace. In this case following up a new client (S60) with several updates to fix bugs. The latest is v2.0.11 and fixes a major bug where videos played at high speed on some devices. You can get the (excellent and free) YouTube client for any S60 3rd Edition phone by going to m.google.com in Web.
Sulake, best known for their Habbo Hotel online community for PCs, have now launched a new online community for S60 devices called Bobba. It's still in beta testing so there may be some bugs, but you can download the Bobba application free from the Bobba.com website, and there are no charges for using the service either (though of course you may have to pay data charges to your phone network). Bobba is compatible with all S60 3rd Edition and S60 2nd Edition devices, including all N-Gage-compatible phones.
Nokia's upcoming launch of the Ovi Store in the US will not, apparently, come with carrier billing – the ability to have any purchases added to your phone bill, as opposed to inputting credit card details into the system. To be fair, no other on-device store has this facility in America, so Nokia aren't being unduly penalised in not having this feature. But it does create another step in the process for the end user, and the seamless experience Nokia were planning on isn't quite in place in that territory. Read on for more.
The Nokia 5800 is criticised by some for being a single-touch device that can only register one finger press at a time. But is this actually true? Not quite. With a bit of clever interface design the existing 5800 hardware is already capable of registering two simultaneous screenpresses at once, and you can see how this works in the full story below (you can even try it for yourself, and there's a video of a 5800 game using it). The reason this is worth mentioning is that Nokia is already using a more limited version of this method in their just-released Maemo 5 SDK, which is the latest version of the platform they use on their internet tablets. If Nokia's already using it there, it seems very likely they could use it on their S60 devices too.
Launched today is The Really Mobile Project. Rising from the ashes of the Mobile Industry Review, the familiar faces of Ben Smith, Dan Lane and James Whatley, joined by Vikki Chowney. They're promising a video-heavy look at the mobile world, mixed in with the usual writing we have come to expect from them.
One of the biggest developers for UIQ, DreamSpring, has followed up its commitment to porting its software to S60 with the announcement of DreamConnect. Think of this as a contact manager on steroids, with with an 'innovative business card layout', plus 'hierarchical categories that let you organise your contacts to accurately reflect your real life relationships'. Sounds interesting - hopefully, given the UIQ heritage, there's a touch version coming for S60 5th Edition.
The historical strategy game Age Of Empires III is out now on N-Gage-compatible phones, and yes it does indeed have an online multiplayer mode as well as a rather sweeping orchestral soundtrack. You can download it from the N-Gage application on your phone by going to the Showroom tab, then select "Options", then "Update Now". As always you can find out more about the N-Gage platform including a list of compatible devices by visiting the All About N-Gage FAQ.
Available now on many Nokia 5800 XpressMusic product codes, is a minor firmware update, v21.0.025, clocking in at 4MB over-the-air. To check if it's available for your phone, type in '*#0000#' into the virtual keypad and then 'Check for updates'. v21.0.025 brings interface speed enhancements, numerous bug fixes and a new 'breathing light' setting/control. Please comment below if you spot anything major that needs adding to this story!
Symbian World are running an interview piece with Boris Raczynski, founder of Mojo's Studio and the man behind Twittix (reviewed here on AAS). He talks about the Studio, upcoming plans for Symbian OS applications and where he sees Symbian going in the next three years.
Everyone else at AAS has asked if I can get as many Start Trek puns into this news story – the Nokia 5800 Star Trek edition coming out on May 1st in the UK (and I'm assuming a few more territories as well). And you know what? I'm not going to, because this is actually a pretty savvy mode on their part.
In previous articles, I've been more than happy to praise the S60 Music player. Unfortunately, it has just not kept up with the changing pace of technology. On the N95 and N95 8GB vintage devices, the music app was far better than the leading MP3 players of the time, notably the iPod Nano. But the iPhone music app has vaulted over the S60 app.... what could the Espoo Engineers learn from Cupertino Coders?
