Uploaded recently to Sony Ericsson's web site was an animated intro to their upcoming P990i smartphone, together with lists of features and highlights. Looking good, guys!
In addition to the already established freeware SkinInstall, for automating skin switching on the Communicator, there's now Skin Wizard S80, also freeware, for creating your own skins in the first place. The Nokia 9300 and 9500 will never have looked so good!
Thanks to Darla for spotting that Nokia have released their traditional free Christmas game for the N-Gage. And for all Series 60 smartphones, with a snowball-throwing Santa-meets-space invaders arcader. Put up with the cheesy music and N-Gage adverts and you've got a nice, free game to while away a Christmas afternoon.
Reading between the lines of various posts around the Internet and scanning the very helpful FCC-hosted user manual, it seems that the Nokia 9300i 'smartphone' is only a couple of days away, with clever money being for an announcement on Monday. Main changes are Wi-Fi (of course, including 802.11g), 1100mAh battery, predictive text input on the cover phone and a rich Instant Messaging client. More details as and when Nokia make things official.
Tommi, over on S60.com turns his attention to video on your Series 60 smartphone. Last year it was just the power users round these parts playing with mobile video. Now the wider S60 community is catching on. Tomorrow, the man on the street or your mother?
Ewokki on the AAS Forums has pointed me to his MIDP based winamp controlling software for the Nokia Communicators. Winamp Remote controls the MP3 playback application on your PC, while Winamp Remote Search allows you to look through your PC and build playlists and find tracks to load into Winamp's playlist. Still in beta, so you'll need to roll your sleeves up, but it looks to be worth it.
Steve reviews The Harpsichord Riddle, a photo-realistic scene-based adventure game around a musical theme. Don't expect Zork 2, but it's definitely worth the small registration fee.
Symbian's SDK-hosted emulators are perennially popular and not just with developers. New on symbian.com is WinTAP, to allow emulator applications to access the Internet through Windows' own connection. It's very technical though, only approach if instructions like 'abld build winscw udeb will then produce the pdd' don't fill you with fear.
Telcogames have been slowly making moves into the Symbian market, but that's about to change with their accquisition of Magic Productions. Magic, the company behind ports of Qwak and Another World, are strong in the 16-bit conversion market. These titles, which have great name recognition in carrier portals, are in the market now, with the recently launched Cannon Fodder and Nebulus following that tradition.
New over on 3-Lib is a big update to my media gallery archive for anyone needing high-res photos of Symbian-powered mobile devices, especially in lifestyle situations. Many recent devices are now covered, as well as long-lost images from Psion days.
Thomas Boys, after going beyond the call of duty in acquiring one, brings us this review of the Panasonic X800 Series 60 smartphone. Summary: good hardware and good software bundle but don't buy this for music or video functions.
With new UI features, sorting data in spreadsheets, bullets and numbering in Word documents, edit, insert and delete tables, and more support for external Bluetooth keyboards, Dataviz' Documents To Go UIQ has recieved a further update, and is available in the AAS Store now.
Ewan breaks into Nokia's HQ and ends up being given a detailed preview of the Nokia E60, perhaps the ultimate candybar Series 60 (S60) smartphone. Summary: it may not swivel, slide or snap, but it'll do everything else bar make the tea.
Couldn't resist a Link Of Interest to this Engadget entry, showing a (non-Symbian, thankfully) smartphone that tilts and swivels and slides. Some of Nokia's recent designs have come close to this, all we can say is "Don't go there.... please!"
