Ewan and Steve have been busy reviewing the lastest games from ZingMagic for S60 3rd Edition such as the Nokia N73. Steve has been looking at BlokBlitz, a breakout clone on steroids. Ewan, meanwhile has been playing the block/gem matching puzzler GemMagic. Both games live up to ZingMagic's high development standards although both have room for improvement.
Thanks to Arjen for the news that in the last month there's been a major firmware update available (6.27) for the Nokia 9300(i) and 9500 communicators. No online update in this case though, you'll need to visit an official Nokia service centre. Read on for a summary of what's new.
Sony Ericsson is to purchase UIQ Technology from Symbian. UIQ Technology is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Symbian. UIQ Technology will continue to operate under its current management as a seperate business subsidiary of Sony Ericsson. This reverses the purchase on the Ericsson Mobile Application lab by Symbian in 1999. More on this throughout the day. For now, the full press release follows.
It is time for the 52nd Carnival of the Mobilists (CotM) and as it enters its second year it continues to swing. This week we have the usual round up of writing on mobile issues from around the web. CotM aims to raise awareness of writing on mobile issues outside a site or blog's regular readership and subject areas.
Thanks to those who emailed in about GooSync, a free service that uses SyncML to synchronise your S60 or UIQ Calendar with your Google Calendar. Looks pretty simple to use, too.
The number one request I hear from new users of S60 3rd Edition devices is for a better Calendar, something which the Papyrus project aims to fix. There's a major new version (1.2.04) just released and worth trying if Calendar is a frustration for you. There'll be a big, formal review along at some point too...
Following the release of Search, thanks to Daniel for pointing us towards Nokia's release of a new WLAN Wizard for S60 3rd Edition. Although it doesn't do much more than the WLAN bit of the existing Connection Manager, it has a shortcut through to Web and so should help new users get online through Wi-Fi more quickly.
More Nokia N93 goodness, this time on the way in the next few days, according to the 'ear to the ground' people at Symbian Freak. The firmware for the N93 jumps from v11 to v20 in one fell swoop, apparently, with extra applications, functionality improvements and bug fixes (including picture noise improvements) by the dozen. It's off to Nokia's Software Update for me, I think, next week!
Steve's been busy digging around the Symbian Platform Security issues to come up with a plain english guide to the scary world of application installation, signing and security (PlatSec). If phrases like self-signed, malware and Symbian Signed bring you out in a rash, this could be the best place to start.
Nokia's official Podcasting utility for S60 3rd Edition has been formally released, it's now a big fat v1.0. Here's the main download and here's the blog entry with details of how to preserve already downloaded content and settings when upgrading from a beta copy... Thanks, Darla.
