The March 2004 edition of PC Pro magazine (in the UK) comes with a review supplement 'The Complete Guide to Smartphones'. Interesting reading, with the P900 especially coming out very well indeed ('The Mr Big of smartphones') and winning a 'Recommended' award.
According to this Register report Nokia will release a version the Pearl scripting language for Series 60 devices. Perl allows for easy development of simple applications normally web based. Also of interest was that Nokia seem to be taking more notice of Open Source basic like language OPL and our own Ewan Spence gets a good mention for it. It even hints that Nokia may be put some resources into OPL's development.
The 2nd online upgrade for the P900 is now available from Sony Ericsson. They haven't published the Release notes yet, but one very welcomed bug-fix seems to be the one causing the phone to reboot during the installation of some larger applications.
Our new addition to the team, Jim Hughes, takes a look at Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc and finds it "decidedly chirpy." Find out if you agree with him in his review...
Nokia today have announced their first EDGE enabled Series 60 phone the 6620. This new phone is designed for the Americas showing their commitment to the north American smartphone market. Mobile Burn were at the launch and have a good preview. Full press release and photo in comments.
After weeks of hints, Nokia and Electronic Arts have officially announced that there will be a version of the ever popular "Sims" game on the N-Gage. The Sims allow you to take control and manage a character in an imaginary world. No mention of whether the N-Gage Arena will be supported, but it does seem an obvious thing to include. Release is penciled in for mid 2004.
The 3rd Photo Contest has now come to the Voting stage. The category was Architecture and was chosen by forum member Bassey (Who Won 2nd Contest). You now have 6 photos with which to pick you favourite. Good Luck to all who entered. *View Photos Here**Vote by Clicking Here*
The next two Nokia N-Gage Games (Marceille Desailly Pro Soccer and Sega Rally) are scheduled for release on Feb 16th. Thanks to Allack for the news. Nothing about Taito Memories though.
Futuremark have announced the forthcoming availability of bench marking software for Symbian phones. It will measure the performance and power efficiency of Symbian based smartphones and will include OpenGL ES API 3D game scenes, image processing as well as native Symbian applications such as address book and calendar.
Could this be the game that N-Gage Users have been waiting for? One that is really really worth hunting for? Read Ewan's Review of Fifa 2004 to find out.
Rafe gazes into his crystal ball to see what he can see. 2004 looks set to be an exciting year for the Symbian community. WiFi in phones, 20 new Symbian devices? With the normal guesswork and dodgy intuition of articles of this type Rafe gives us his opinion...
Before Christmas DoCoMo unveiled the 900 series of FOMA handsets. What wasn't clear is the fact one of these phones (from Fujitsu) runs the Symbian OS. This follows on from the F2102V and F2051.
Are Nokia pushing N-Gage users towards Software Piracy? There's a simple solution to the low battery life on the N-Gage,and the continual griping of having to change the MMC Game Card, but it's not something that makes easy reading for the industry.
