Wow. The uses for a S60 smartphone just keep on growing. AAS friend Saku Tiainen has just released BeatEd, a full, professional drum sequencer/machine - just plug in your headphone lead from your smartphone into an amp and you're away! Break out your guitar and start rockin' out. Links and video demo below the break, enjoy!
Nokia are giving away FIFA08 for N-Gage-compatible phones absolutely free to a limited number of people in Europe (we don't know the exact figure but it's in the thousands at least). It's on a first-come-first-served basis, so the quicker you act the more likely you are to get the game free. The most reliable way of getting the game free is to install the FIFA08 demo directly on your phone in the N-Gage application, then go to the special N-Gage Play site (play.n-gage.com) on your computer's browser to get the activation link sent to your N-Gage phone as a text message. When the message arrives, just click on its link to activate the game. UPDATE: If you couldn't get it activated on the mobile site, try again through the PC site! (via Symbian Web Blog)
The official N-Gage blog has announced that third party publisher Gameloft will be answering your questions at a future event. You can submit the questions by posting in the reply section of this N-Gage blog post. Questions can cover anything, including their current games and future plans for supporting N-Gage, or you can ask about other mobile platforms as well.
The Nokia N95 8GB just got a firmware update, to v20.0.016 (from v15). Apart from a few bug fixes and optimisations, the main changes are the addition of Automatic Screen Rotation (driven by the accelerometer, as on the N82) and support for more Bluetooth headsets. See below for details and comments.
In Smartphones Show 57, I challenge Stavros at Position Art (unsuccessfully - but then he is a genius), I cover Google's native S60 Search utility and there's an in-depth video review of the Samsung i550 business smartphone. Here's the main Smartphones Show 57 page, the high res YouTube version, and the QVGA (low res) and VGA (high res) RSS feeds.
Nokia has released official figures for Q1, 2008, revealing growth in 'Devices and Services' of 50%, year on year, net sales up 35%, overall phone market share of 39%, smartphones sales up 24% to 14.6 million in the quarter, with 10 million Nseries handsets and 2 million Eseries. Geographically, unsurprisingly, market share was down in North America, static(ish) in Europe and growing in emerging markets (e.g. China). Here's the full Nokia statement, tables and their own analysis.
Krisse delves into the economics and logistics of Nokia's upcoming Comes With Music system, explaining how it's possible in today's climate and then goes on to ask why other types of digitally protected content couldn't also be bundled in? Games? Applications? Videos? Thankfully, a line is drawn before we get to 'Comes With An Indian Takeaway'...
As I found out recently when doing my review of Samsung's i550, a lot of the success of S60 and the Nseries in particular is down to the existence of all Nokia's add-on utilities and applications. Many of which came through Nokia Beta Labs - which, Tommi informs us, is 1 today - so Happy Birthday!
In the latest of my semi-definitive (is such a term an oxymoron?) series of case reviews, I look at solutions designed to carry and protect the Nokia N82, from silicone sleeves to holsters to in-situ flips. If you own a case which you think performs better or have spotted something on the web that you think might fit the bill, please comment!
I'd been bending the ears of Nokia's Eseries team for ages about signing up with WOM World to handle buzz about their products and to manage triallist programs. And now it's happened, although my nagging was probably only a small part of the process(!) Here's the new, generic WOM/Nokia home page for you to keep track of via RSS. There will probably be an official statement along soon, too, hopefully with the announcement and trial-availability of at least one new Eseries smartphone.
Without wishing to harp on about the Nokia N93 too much(!), it was interesting to see the N93 get equal 'billing' with the N81 and N95 8GB in the title screen of Nokia's Mobile Games Innovation Challenge. Graphic proof below the break. I wonder if this actually means something? After all, we know that N-Gage support for the N93 is on the way...
All About N-Gage has just published an in-depth review of Asphalt 3: Street Rules for the new N-Gage platform. Is it a turbo-charged delight, or only fit for the scrapheap?
Craig Loxton's Tech Blog is worth keeping an eye on, partly because he's in the middle of a transition from the Nokia E90 to the E51, and partly because he's just discovered an unofficial way to get Blackberry Connect working on the E51 - and it's a lot, lot faster.
Samsung has shown off a new S60 3rd Edition smartphone at the Tele-Vision fair in Nieuwegein. The L870 is a quad-band slider with GPRS and UMTS support, FM radio, 3 megapixel camera and USB 2.0. The L870 is, notably, only 13.5mm thick, thin for a slider smartphone. Picture below.
Over on All About N-Gage, we've just published an editorial discussing the release version of the new N-Gage application, looking at where there's room for improvement. There are no major disasters, but somehow the rough edges of the app currently make it feel a bit rickety.