In AAS podcast 86, a.ka. AAS Insight 33, Rafe and Ewan talk about N-Gage's Brothers in Arms and Reset Generation, Samsung's 8 megapixel Innov8 device, the challenges behind device comparisons and open source in relation to Symbian.
Nokia's N93 seemed to be blazing a trail for a new generation of phones equipped with 3D graphics acceleration, with the N95 and N82 strengthening this assumption. However, this year's flagship device the N96 doesn't have any 3D hardware, so has Nokia changed its mind? In a special editorial, AAS's sister site All About N-Gage takes a look at what Nokia's options are for 3D chips with particular regard to their recently launched N-Gage platform. Will they get together one day, or is this a doomed romance?
Nokia's opened a new site called N-Gage Feedback Forum, which lets you submit ideas and feedback, and vote on other people's submissions too, all in a Digg-style interface. It's hosted by the consumer feedback company UserVoice, and it should be very interesting as long as Nokia does actually respond to the points raised. The top suggestion right now concerns the continuing lack of N93/N73 support...
If you have an N-Gage-compatible phone (at the moment that means the N81, N81 8GB, N82, N95 or N95 8GB) you may like to take a look at this article over on AAN which details an ultra-simple method for installing the N-Gage application. It works entirely through the phone's browser, and doesn't require a computer at all. We've mentioned this method before in other articles, but it seems a lot of people missed it and Nokia doesn't really publicise it either, so here it is again in greater detail.
In a not unsurprising move, Nokia's XpressMusic 5320, Nokia N78 and Nokia N96 are now listed as receiving a compatible version of the N-Gage games client ahead of the older Nokia N73, Nokia N93i and Nokia N93. Let's hope the latter three don't drop off Nokia's to-do list completely.... [mutter]
It's been a busy week over on All About N-Gage, with videos, polls, sales charts, themes, the big Brothers In Arms review, and other assorted gubbins. For those of you who haven't been following AAN lately, we present a quick round-up.
Nokia's unified login system Nokia Account is now working again and accepting new registrations, just click on the "New Account" link below the login form. As we noted before, it's not yet in use by most Ovi services, but the plan is for your Nokia Account username to replace all the separate logins Ovi currently requires. If you want to make sure you get your favourite username, it's worth registering it on Nokia Account now so you're ready for the unification. (Note that the registration only requires an e-mail address OR a phone number, you don't have to give both.)
Ride across the river with All About N-Gage's Ewan Spence as he takes a far away look at Gameloft's latest trick Brothers In Arms. The review starts with a very direct editorial about the idiocy of having a demo that lasts 20 seconds, though the full game is much longer of course and apparently it's great fun. Is it money for nothing, or is the game too strong?
Nokia is going to unify its Ovi and other online services using a single login system called Nokia Account. In theory you can already register your Nokia Account username on the official website, though the registration section seems to be down for maintenance right now so you may want to check back later (it did work yesterday and many have already registered). At the moment Nokia Account is only being used by a few services, most notably Nokia Chat, but eventually it will be used by the entire Ovi suite including Ovi Share, Nokia Maps, Nokia Music, N-Gage etc. We've mentioned this before in other recent AAS items, but a lot of our readers apparently still don't know about this unification, so we thought it deserved a bit more publicity.
The World War Two action game Brothers In Arms is now available from the N-Gage application's Showroom section. If you're having trouble seeing it, select Options and then Update Now, which should make it appear in the Latest Games section. If you still can't see it, exit N-Gage, open the phone web browser, select Options, then Clear Privacy Data, then Clear Cache, close the browser, start N-Gage up and click on the Available Games section of the Showroom. (Thanks to ccraig for tipping us off about the release)
