Nokia is going to be one of the main sponsors of GDC Mobile, the phone game part of the Game Developers Conference. GDC and GDC Mobile take place in San Francisco from the 5th to the 7th of March 2007. Nokia's Next Generation gaming platform is due to launch across a range of S60 3rd Edition smartphones some time in the first half of 2007, so a March sponsorship of a major gaming event would seem to be well-timed.
Symbian has released an official (video) webcast, in both RealPlayer and Windows Media format, with CEO Nigel Clifford talking about the significant '100 million smartphones' milestone. Here's the link.
Our first two podcasts feature the lightning talks from the All About Symbian pub meet. First up was my talk about what AAS has done in the last year and some of our future plans. Second was Lars Linstrom from Sony Ericsson who talked about the M600, P990 and W950 UIQ phones. In our videocast Steve takes a hands on look at the Nokia N93 Golf Edition.
Eagle-eyed observers may have noted the changed toolbar on the site, with 'Media' added. The new Media section houses regular and semi-regular audio and video content, all of which you can listen to or watch online, in your browser, or (if you prefer) use the provided RSS feeds to subscribe in iTunes or S60 Podcasting or similar, to make sure you never miss new content.
3, the 3G mobile operator, has announced the launch of X-Series. X-Series brings 'flat fee broadband access to mobile'. 3 is partnering with other companies to create X-Series services and applications, these include Sling Player, Google, Orb, eBay, Skype, MSN and Yahoo. X-Series will launch in the UK in December with other 3 countries to follow in the new year. The handsets that will feature X-Series include the Sony Ericsson W950 (UIQ 3) and the Nokia N73 (S60).
HanDBase, the professional database system that's been such a major player in the Palm OS and Windows Mobile worlds over the last five years, has now been made available for S60 3rd Edition (2nd Edition has been supported for a while), albeit in beta form. If you're into databases on your smartphone, get involved with the beta - this is one app that I for one really want to see mature on Symbian OS.
Symbian today announced, in their Q3 figures, that more than 100 million Symbian OS phones have shipped. There are over 100 different Symbian OS phones in the market from 10 different licensees and a further 49 are currently in development. In Q3 13 million Symbian phones were shipped, brining the total thus far to 37 million in 2006. Read on for more.
Another link to the prolific Shaun McGill, but here he shows how to add extra fonts to Mobipocket Reader on S60 3rd Edition. Pretty cool, I wonder if there's a way to tinker with the main system fonts though? Comments welcome.
Ewan's been struck by the buzz surrounding Papyrus and decided to try it for real. How does this S60 Calendar replacement fare on Ewan's E61 and N91? Find out in his review.
The folks over at PDA247 have seen a mountain of traditional PDAs in the last five years. On the editorial team, Philippa has been trying to get used to the Sony Ericsson P990i. Here are her thoughts so far. Summary: low RAM (echoes from our own review) and poor battery life are the main problems.
It's been a bit of an N93 week here. I took the Golf Edition out to the driving range at the weekend and was quite impressed by the vision behind Pro Session Golf and its implementation, letting me analyse a real world golf swing and find things that need addressing.
