Nokia has announced that Real Time Traffic Information is coming to Nokia Maps, courtesy of ARC Transistance, the European network of automobile clubs. RTTI in Maps 2.0 (already in beta) should enable proper, dynamic routing that takes into account real world conditions. The full press release is below.
Smartphones Show 58 is up today, with a four way test of the top camera (smart)phones in the world, looking at the 5mp Nokia N95, N82 and Sony Ericsson K850i and the LG Viewty. Plus a review of the Nokia E90-competitor, the i-Mate Ultimate 9502.
Attila's been playing Herocraft's newly revived (from the Java version) Revival, now for S60 and UIQ, non-stop since it came out. Here's his review of this sumptuous and unsurprisingly deep strategy game. Revival isn't for quick-fix players, but Sid Meier fans will leap for joy.
Rita over at Symbian Guru has been collating a fascinating exchange of comments centred around the Nokia N95 and its impact both inside and outside the company. Rita goes off into an extended basketball/rugby metaphor that I'm afraid I don't quite follow, but she does make great points about the different strategies employed by Apple and Nokia. The first plays things safe and tests to the limit, the second produces bleeding edge releases ahead of the competition and then fixes problems as they go. Fascinating contrast.
Strands, The team behind the social music site, MyStrands, have updated their Social Music Player for Symbian S60 (and java) equipped phones. Picking up all the music on your device, Strands can recommend similar artists and songs, match you up with users that have similar musical tastes, and helps you navigate your musical neighbourhood. Conscious that other services are available, the big news for this update is the inclusion of support for UK based Last.FM, and the sending of your track information to that service as well.
Over on All About N-Gage, there's a special editorial on how N-Gage could potentially become a very large gaming platform indeed but not while it's left out of compatible phones' firmware. How many people will actually bother installing the N-Gage app if it doesn't come built into the phone?
Last week we covered the news of the next generation of the S60 WRT (widgets with contextual awareness). Voice of S60 is now carrying a podcast with Ganesh Sivaraman, head of global marketing of Web Technologies and Applications for S60, which discusses this topic, and there's also some updated information of the S60.com web site, including demos of various widgets.
It's All About Symbian Insight 22, a.k.a. audio podcast 71, in which we cover Skype Mobile, the new Nokia 5320 XpressMusic, new announcements in the world of Web Runtime and widgets, plus a discussion on whether touchscreen devices that require two hands to use will take off in the mainstream. Listen here.
With the announcement of LG's Secret, with 5mp cam, auto screen rotation, DivX VGA video playback, TV out, Office viewers, etc, I've been musing on what makes a smartphone 'smart'. How does my Nokia N95, for example, compare? I've been playing with the Secret's older brother, the Viewty and have been able to draw some conclusions.
I'm really not at all sure of exactly when this went live, but Internet Radio support for the Nokia E65 and E51 wasn't there a month or so ago and, well, now it is. Making my wife and a lot of other E65 and E51 users very happy indeed. Here's the Nokia Internet Radio download page - highly recommended. Comments welcome if you've got this working on non-listed compatible devices!
The developer site Forum Nokia has published the official detailed technical specifications for the recently-announced Nokia 5320 XpressMusic smartphone. It's a Symbian S60 3rd Edition FP2 device with a QVGA screen, 369mhz processor and a rather generous 85MB of free RAM. As mentioned before, the main standout features are dedicated music and gaming keys, 24 hours music playback, N-Gage compatibility, a dedicated audio chip and a low launch price (220 euros plus taxes).
Now that all the beta-testing games have been re-released, we can look forward to completely new titles on the N-Gage platform. But which one are you most looking forward to? Click here to let us know in our latest survey...
Tetris from Electronic Arts and Block Breaker Deluxe from Gameloft are now available to download via the N-Gage client showroom. The name Tetris will be familiar to most game players, but you can still check out the specifics in our review of the N-Gage implementation of the game. We're not sure the masses will be rushing to download this one, especially with the likes of S-Tris available for free. Block Breaker Deluxe might be a better bet - it is a Breakout clone which was the first new N-Gage game we reviewed.
Free software for our smartphones has never been so abundant. From Nokia's stream of useful freebies to technology demos from big companies to small utilities from home developers, everything now seems to be free. With so much freeware around, is there still a market for paid-for software? And which would be the top picks of the All About Symbian team, for both S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3-powered smartphones?