Following on Symbian's announcement last week, Nokia have also published
plans to establish a research lab in Lausanne and Zurich, in
association with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. This center
will start by looking at pervasive communications, using all the human
senses, user context and interaction with internet services... which
sounds like a mix of Ovi's approach to bringing on board platforms such
as Facebook and MySpae, but also extending the S60 sensor platform
we're expecting to see later in the year.
In perhaps the biggest and most long-awaited firmware upgrade in the S60 world for many months, the so-far flakey Nokia N82 finally had its uber-upgrade released, to v20.0.062. It's on NSU now for unlocked/unbranded devices. See below for images and details, but the main additions are the addition of Flash Lite 3 (and Flash video) and integrated GPS Location tagging; plus Web runtime (widgets).
A second video link for this morning, this time to 'Gadget Show WEB TV', who reviewed Fring, the free VoIP and chat utility over the weekend. Great to see the coverage but the ultimate negative verdict was undoubtedly flavoured by the data speeds and coverage in the single demo area. What about Wi-Fi? What about 3.5G? Comments welcome - how well does Fring work for you?
OK, so they're a trifle basic, but it's a start. Google Mobile Help is the name of a new (official) YouTube channel, with videos helping newcomers to use Google Maps for Mobile and YouTube for mobile. There are four videos to watch at the moment (not counting an old GMail test one), mainly demoed on S60 and UIQ 3 hardware. Worth adding to your YouTube subscriptions list?
It ran all weekend in London and proved to be another good seeding ground for mobile ideas. Ewan's been at the Over The Air event and reports back here. And didn't you just know it would end with a Doctor Who spoof and light sabre duels? Big kids? Hah.
N-Gage fans will want to check out NeXtVideo's YouTube channel, as there are videos of almost every upcoming N-Gage title, including Brothers in Arms, Dogz, Midnight Pinball, Worms World Party, FIFA 08, and many more. Well worth watching and all we need now, Nokia, are the actual games to buy. I'm champing at the bit for Pro Series Golf, personally! (via S-W-L)
Oh yes, from this, Smartphones Show 56 onwards, there's both a traditional QVGA version to play and a hi-res VGA version as well. And they each have their own RSS feeds, so you can decide which one to pug into your feed reader or aggregator. Show 56 has News, a show FAQ, a photo tutorial and a brief video review of the Nokia N81 8GB. See below for all the links.
That's User Data Preservation to you and I. This nugget is from a normally reliable industry insider, mik3, over at My-Symbian. We already know that new firmware v20 is coming for the Nokia N95 8GB, bringing screen auto-rotation, but mik3 makes a point of mentioning UDP. I'm guessing that v20 will bring the UDP code, ready so that UDP happens properly for the next firmware update after that. If you see what I mean...
...BUT not for the platform you were expecting. Showing that there's (a tiny bit of) life left in the old S60 2nd Edition platform, here's news of what appears to be a camera-controlled, wireless multiplayer version of Bejewelled - that runs on the likes of the Nokia 6630 and N70. At least there are plans to port it to something more modern.
The Swiss Army Knife utility for UIQ 3 smartphones, known as Swiss Manager Pro, is now at version 1.70, adding some real enhancements over previous versions. Among the new items is a big text, configurable (time or free memory) status icon. There's also the free version... without the status icons and with less functions. Full changelog and screenshots after the jump.
Ocean Wars is yet another Java game that's popped up recently in Nokia Download! Here's Ewan's take on whether Ocean Wars is worth stumping up for. At first it disappoints in that at heart it's a very old game, but we think there's just enough innovation here to please seafaring gamers.
With Rafe at CTIA, Ewan at Over The Air and others all on holiday, it's time for a little Friday catchup, with some links you may have missed. All-Format Writer is a freeware Java application that can create documents in the various
competing ‘next-generation’ electronic document formats (ODT, DOCX, UOF and PDF) (via The Symbian Blog). Antony Pranata has a great tip for cleanly uninstalling PC Suite under Windows Vista. Al at the Nokia Blog has a great post about creating photos with High Dynamic Range (evening out extremes of light and dark). Finally, the insane(ly great) N82-toting Stavros has addressed the world. Again. Listen and learn!
