Nokia's Future Watch site devoted to their Next Gen gaming platform on S60 3rd Edition smartphones has now officially launched. The site tries to answer the most frequently asked questions about the new platform, something N-Gage Arena members have been waiting for ever since the Next Gen was announced. While Future Watch mostly repeats the information that Nokia's given out at various press conferences over the last year, this is the first time all the official statements have been collected in one place, and in amongst the familiar facts there are one or two gems of significant new information as well. Click here to find out more...
Makayama has announced Mobile TV Center 1.0. A world's first, it lets you watch recorded TV shows on more than 500 mobile devices, using your Windows Media Center. Compatibility includes many Symbian devices from Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. The full press release follows.
Ah, the customary spare moment for Steve to update his smartphone Grid, now with the addition of the Nokia 5500 and Palm Treo 750v. Which one is now the best smartphone for you? Plug in your prefs and let the javascript decide! [updated: also now has the P990i and N73]
Photography seems to be a hot subject today. Symbian Freak's Bigley Ling has posted a detailed comparison of still photographs produced on the Sony Ericsson K800 (not a smartphone, though) and the Nokia N93 and N73. Lots of technical info here for the camera enthusiast!
Following on from his two individual software reviews, Ewan Spence decides it's time to sit down and pick a winner. Papyrus or AquaCalendar? Read his head-to-head to find out which one pips the other at the post.
Nokia's Music Recommenders scheme, launched a couple of months ago, seems to be getting into its stride, with the first actual podcast by the 'godfather' of the scheme, David Bowie. RSS-ready, too....
Ewan reviews Aqua Calendar for S60 3rd Edition - yet another Calendar option for the power user? He'll follow this up with a direct comparison with Papyrus - watch this space!
The folks over at the N-Gage Arena mentioned about a month ago that they were working on a site to answer all questions about Nokia's upcoming Next Gen gaming platform. The Arena staff have now put up a link to the Future Watch site, however at the time of writing it's password protected and inaccessible to the public. In the meantime if you're interested in gaming on S60 3rd Edition smartphones you can still fill in the Future Of N-Gage Survey to give Nokia your opinion of what you think should be included in the Next Gen platform. Credit goes to to Arena member sbrasio for alerting people to the new Future Watch forum section.
The folks at Digital Lifestyles have been trying out 3's X-series in the guise of the only supported handset, the S60 3rd Edition-powered Nokia N73. Here's their write-up of the platform and services. Via Engadget.
Part review and part tutorial, our own krisse evaluates HanDBase for S60 3rd Edition and finds an impressive powerhouse with a huge data library behind it. It's spoilt only by a few late-beta niggles. Here's the big HanDBase review.
In another AAS exclusive(!), Steve Litchfield reviews Nokia's DT-22 tripod for the video-recording N93. Summary: it's tiny but well made, and its best feature is that, like the starship Enterprise, it separates so that you can use the top half on its own.
Continuing our two-pronged (video/text) review approach, here's the traditional version of my Nokia E60 review, which goes into slightly more detail and has extra screenshots.
