In this podcast we cover current developments around Nokia's Ovi strategy including Sync, Share, N-Gage, plus we chat about all aspects of the Nokia N96, following on from our hands-on preview. Finally, we rant and rave a little about Google's new native search 'client'. Here's the link: Insight no. 14, plus the RSS feed to sign up for the future.
One component of Nokia's Ovi which hasn't had quite so much attention is Sync. This just popped up on the main Ovi toolbar, trailing what Sync will offer. See below for the details.
The first batch of next generation N-Gage games has now become available through the public beta test, so we've started reviewing them. Our first ever Next Gen N-Gage review is Block Breaker Deluxe, an unofficial remake of the old classic Breakout.
Over on Guy Goma Kewney site, James Sherwood has pictures of a lovely mobile phone battery solution from MWC - the Philips 9@9j mobile phone takes not only a custom Lithium Ion battery, but also has a slot to take a regular AAA battery to top up the main battery for another three hours of talk time. If I was travelling, and I had the option to strap in a standard cell to my Symbian phone, I would be right there.
I forgot to mention that Smartphones Show 53 went live a couple of days ago, with some nice video footage of the Nokia and Sony Ericsson S60 and UIQ 3 hardware launches, shot by Rafe, plus comments from me, iPhone tips and a look at how far the Nokia E90 has taken me since my Psion-toting days, ten years ago. Rafe's Mobile World Congress video clips will feature in their entirety in exclusive AllAboutSymbian video podcasts in the next few weeks, so stick around.
As noted by SymbianOne Symbian recently updated P.I.P.S. and version 1.2 now supports the latest UIQ phones. 1.2 also adds a full-featured port of the Open Source zlib compression library. The 1.2 version was made available to S60 through the Novemeber Open C release.
Some events for your diary, should you be in the area. I'll start with the one I'm at(!). On March 5th at the 3Bs in Reading, UK, there's a chance to try out the Nokia N82 to take Xenon-flash photos and see me with my rock band, Shed Music. The fun starts at 8.30pm. On the same night, March 5th, WOM World are holding an Nseries get together at the Crown, in London, from 6.30pm. Finally, there's an S60 event in Milan, Italy on March 11th from 8pm. Phew!
With the MWC and now GDC events under our belt, Ewan Spence draws from all the clues that Nokia has been dropping and comes up with a connected, converged epiphany into the future of gaming. The unification of smartphone functions, social networking and gaming is just around the corner, perhaps. Personally, I can't see any real showstoppers.
Google has released a native client for Google search for S60 phones. The application, available via the Google mobile site, places a shortcut to a Google search box on the Idle screen (unfortunately only for devices with either a 'Ctrl' or 'pencil/edit' key), but is also accessible via the usual application launcher on all devices. Typing in a query to the search box and pressing search opens up Web and takes you to the results page for that Google query in one go. It uses the new Google Mobile search service we mentioned a few weeks ago. Read on for more.
Opening my email, I see I've won an amazing prize - the "brand new Apple Iphone Nokia 8GB"! It's allegedly part of the "Nokia 'N' Series New Year Program", and also comes with a cash prize of five hundred thousand pounds.... Oh it's spam? Darn. But isn't it interesting that viagra is no longer the big draw in email fraud, but phrases like "to promote the use of mobile phones with the world as a global village" are? More below...
Nokia is calling on mobile developers with new ideas to take part in its Mobile Games Innovation Challenge, and at least one winning game will be published by Nokia on its new N-Gage platform (which is based on S60 3rd Edition). Entries will be accepted from the 3rd of April 2008, so if you're interested it might be worth starting work now. Established developers and publishers can already apply to publish commercially on the platform, or find out more on the N-Gage developer site.
3D graphics benchmarks aren't the 'be all and end all' when it comes to games playing performance, but they're a good clue as to how capable a device is. So it was interesting to find out about a regularly updated and bookmarkable table of OpenGL ES benchmarked smartphones. It's topped by the 'if you believe Nokia' obsolete N93 and the N-Gage 1st access smartphone, the N81, comes in a lowly 22nd. Read on for comment.
The 'Vase' is just a concept device, to be sure, but it got me thinking. Is this the way to handle a smartphone interface where there's enough functionality to overwhelm beginners? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it's a question that's good to ask.
For your weekly dose of generic mobile writing, you'll find it over at Vision Mobile. Worth checking out over a cup of tea or coffee....
Popcap Games (or the online gaming equivalent of crack cocaine) have inked an agreement with Nokia to bring a number of their titles to mobile, and to use the SNAP mobile platform to provide multi-player support for the Java based titles. In rough terms, SNAP is similar to the N-Gage Arena, but primarily for J2ME applications, and it can also be run by a network provider as their own gaming portal (eg YourNetwork Gaming Portal, SNAP powered), which should make the networks as happy as the gamers.
