Ewan's been comparing the W950i with a non-smartphone 'Walkman' phone, the W900, and finds that the comparison reveals quite a bit about Sony Ericsson's thinking in the styling and interface of the newer, UIQ 3-powered device.
One of THE major launches of the last couple of weeks was Smart2go. The best intro to Nokia's mapping and routing software by far is Ed's write up of the free service at E-series.org. In the meantime, I've clocked up 300 miles driving with the premium voice-guided upgrade and will be doing a proper review and TomTom comparison as soon as Smart2go comes out of beta.
S60 and Vodafone last week announced the release of the first Vodafone specific software package for S60 to all S60 licensees. The customised version includes Vodafone specific applications, services and branding. The first two handsets that will receive this software are the Nokia N95 and the Samsung SGH-i520. S60 and Vodafone first announced their collaboration a year ago at 3GSM in 2006.
Announced over in our forums was that emoze, the popular (for those on flat rate data plans) push email/contacts/calendar system, has just been upgraded to work on S60 3rd Edition devices like the Nokia E61 and N73.
Krisse reviews this top flight S60 game and finds beautifully rendered scenes, great music, a good plot and a unique interface. Will anything spoil the idyll?
Remembering Michael Mace's excellent generic positioning (in the handheld industry) diagram from last year, I wondered where the current and upcoming crop of Symbian OS-powered hardware might sit in his Entertainment/Communications/Information chart. Comments are welcome as always.
Here's your game-for-the-weekend. Ewan has been reviewing Napoleonix for UIQ 3. A souped up, characterised variant on the likes of Chess and Chinese Chess? Maybe, but it looks gorgeous and is surprisingly playable.
Symbian's success story in Japan continues with the launch of the 50th handset to feature their MOAP platform and interface. The FOMA D903iTV is made by Mitsubishi and is available immediately. The Symbian press release follows.
If you've gotten a bit jaded with all the new handsets and press releases, take a stroll back through the last four days of mobile mayhem with Symbian's official 3GSM blog, a.k.a. William and Freddie finding off the wall pictures and stories which didn't make the main news sites.
Urgh. Oh the dangers of reviewing pre-production hardware. Our review N93i almost exactly a month ago had identical video recording performance to the N93 - production N93i devices have started turning up and Nokia have added continuous auto-focus in video mode!!
Nokia has apologised officially for the three day delay(!) in availablility of its rather splendid Smart2Go software system, citing higher than expected interest requiring adding extra capacity to its servers. Over 30,000 people have downloaded Smart2Go for S60 3rd Edition or WinMob 5.0 in its first two days. Other versions are planned. Full press release below.
With 3GSM now subsiding, there's time to update my huge S60 device comparison table. If you can help fill in the few remaining blanks... There's also a new table of S60 3rd Edition freeware (previously integrated with that for older 'Series 60'). Enjoy.
Remembering Michael Mace's excellent generic positioning (in the handheld industry) diagram from last year, I wondered where the current and upcoming crop of Symbian OS-powered hardware might sit in his Entertainment/Communications/Information chart. Comments are welcome as always.
Symbian's success story in Japan continues with the launch of the 50th handset to feature their MOAP platform and interface. The FOMA D903iTV is made by Mitsubishi and is available immediately. The Symbian press release follows.
