At the S60 Summit last week, Rafe got some serious hands-on time with the Nokia E50, the very latest (and diminutive) S60 3rd Edition smartphone. What can it do and who's it aimed at?
The good news. As previously news posted, Nokia has licensed Golf Pro 2, Synergenix's next-generation golf game, for some of their 3rd Edition smartphones. The bad news. It's horribly flawed in its current incarnation. Read on to find out why.
There's a new S60.com blog on the scene, only this time it's a podcast as well. AAS's Rafe Blandford is the main subject of the second show, available now. Listen especially to the middle section of his interview, as it sets out exactly where S60 needs to go. Very, very interesting. Show 1 features Darla Mack and is also worth a listen (persevere past the 'diva/pink' intro section and through the awkward transatlantic phone pauses).
This week's edition of the ever popular Carnival of the Mobilists is here, including a rant by one blogger about the Sony Ericsson M600i. Lots of good reading, as always.
For all those wondering what's happened to Sony Ericsson's UIQ 3 smartphones, note that the M600i has been spotted in the wild (even been sold on eBay this morning, it went for £820!!!) and is shipping in many markets in the next month. Clever money on the P990i says August and on the W950i says September. Comments (and other sightings) welcome!
OK, so we missed the original announcement of Theme Studio 3.0 a few weeks ago, but not to worry because it's been tweaked again (though still calling itself '3.0'). The new release of Theme Studio has bug fixes for installing to 3rd Edition smartphones, plus support for morphing themes and animated highlights. Here's the download page.
More from those Mobile Review Russians, seemingly on business in Paris, in this latest exciting installment of their Nokia N93 review. This one includes plenty of sample photos and video from the N93's absolutely cutting edge optics. Interesting difference in quality over the N80, too.
PC Suite has been tweaked again, for all Nokia smartphones. It's now at 6.8.22 and the changes include security and installation fixes. Bullet point changes below the break... There's also a cool and user-friendly set of Flash animations, most of which are here, to get across its purpose.
Staying with the video theme, Nokia's Nseries Studio site has been heavily updated with video footage shot on (and sometimes featuring) the upcoming 'DVD-quality' N93. Look for all the Tribeca Film Festival 'Storyteller' videos and the RSS-ready 'Open your eyes' video podcast where new directors put up short films each week.
It can only be 'The Blair Witch Project'... No, no, actually it's amateur videos of upcoming cutting edge Symbian-powered handsets, over on Google Video. See, for example, the Nokia N92, N93 (camera zoom), N93 (video recording and editing) and Sony Ercisson P990, M600 and W950 (show stand demos). And, in case you didn't see it a while ago, there's Nokia's own N92 promo.
Still trying to breath a little life into Series 90, the interface used in the Symbian OS-based Nokia 7710, I've compiled a directory of freeware for it. Not, err... such a long list in the end, although I'll bet there's something you might want to grab. Comments (and additions) welcome!
Although technically already announced to developers, S60.com has put up a pretty page (and detailed PDF) looking at not only S60 3rd Edition, but S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 (come on, keep up at the back), featuring built-in support for Firmware upgrades Over The Air (FOTA) - woohoo! This only apples to S60 3.1 (3rd Edition Feature Pack 1). Current devices can not be upgraded to 3.1
Nokia has released (to the global open source software community) the source code for S60 WebKit, the engine for its next-gen Web Browser for S60, as featured in all 3rd Edition smartphones. Press release below the break...
Steve's been having a bit of a GPS week here on AAS and here presents his review of SmartphoneWare's Google Earth Companion. Its purpose is to track your journeys and produce native Google Earth files that can be overlaid on the latter's maps and photos.
At the S60 Summit last week, Rafe got some serious hands-on time with the Nokia E50, the very latest (and diminutive) S60 3rd Edition smartphone. What can it do and who's it aimed at?
