Following on from today's launch of N-Gage First Access, Ewan, in 30 minutes with the N-Gage First Access client gives us his first impressions of the system and a summary of the user experience of the N-Gage client. In the piece Ewan covers installation, game installation and the community features of the client application.
A pre-release version of Nokia's new N-Gage gaming platform is now available for Nokia N81 users. N-Gage First Access lets N81 owners download the pre-release version of the N-Gage application (through which all N-Gage activity takes place) and try and buy select N-Gage games. Other N-Gage compatible devices will be added to the service in due course. Read on for more.
Mobil.cz is reporting that next week, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Samsung will announce the G810, a new S60-powered phone. The rumoured G810 specifications are dimensions of 104x52x18mm, with a 2.6 inch QVGA screen, 5 megapixel camera with a 3x optical zoom, built in GPS, 150MB of internal memory and microSD card slot, GSM and UTMS (with HSDPA) cellular connectivity, Bluetooth 2.0, USB, and WiFi. These specifications would suggest it will look to compete with Nokia's high end Nseries devices such as the N95. Read on for more.
Always interesting to read good third party face-offs. Here, SMS Text News' Ben has been trialling both DataViz's RoadSync and Nokia's free Mail for Exchange for a staggering nine months. Here's his verdict, although personally the latter's price can't really be beaten(!)
Lenovo is to sell it mobile phone division to a number of private equity firms for $100m. Lenovo may not be well known for mobile phones outside China (where it is the number 4 handset manufacturer), but trivia buffs may remember its early (now defunct) association with S60. It became the sixth licensee of S60 in 2004 and released the P930 S60 handset in 2005.
So you've a messaging-focussed Nokia E61i smartphone and you keep eyeing up the models in the rival Nseries? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? To whet your appetite for MWC, at which I hope that at least one crossover device will be launched, here's my guide to (nearly) turning your E61i into an Nseries powerhouse. Qwerty and media? No problem.
OK, I give in. After numerous complaints about the video formats used in my Smartphones Show video podcast, I've reverted to plain old H.263-encoded MP4, which should mean that the show now plays again on everything from a lowly Nokia N70 to a Sony Ericsson P900 and upwards - so virtually everything. Show 52 is out today and includes my run down of the top S60 apps, plus reviews of the Palm Treo 500 and the Blackberry 8310. Here's the RSS feed, if you wanted to start grabbing the MP4s again...
Ah yes, CuteKeys. Those who know me well will probably be guessing that I took an immediate dislike to this (actually rather handy) utility - and the other AAS staffers are similar in that we're looking for greater simplicity in software, not an extra layer of custom hotkeys and another always-running background utility. But, no worries, as Rita has stepped up to the plate with a good run through and verdict on CuteKeys - is this your cup of tea? Comments welcome!
I'm taking part in a discussion over on Seesmic , a 'Twitter like' Video Chat site. One topic from the questions from overnight was 'what's cool on the N95?'(a lot of the users have just picked up the 8gb version). So I thought I'd walk through my N95 . Full video after the break.
Yes, the 3rd party app that started tongues wagging months ago, Mobitubia, is now out, rivalling newcomer emTube, of course. It seems to be freeware, too, and has a sumptuous interface. Link, comments and screenshots below.
SymbianGuru (no, not that Symbian Guru) has released a handy freeware solution for one-way-syncing your Google Finance stock data down to your smartphone. My Portfolio runs under Java and works on all S60 3rd Edition devices. for Series 60-3 mobile phones.
While not set available for download, Keynetix's RockNscroll system for S60 has been demonstrated at CES, and will be on show at both 3GSM and CTIA Wireless. A software solution for the N95 to harness the accelerometers, their demo video of the software has raised many an eyebrow in the blogosphere. The software will be available from free on their website forum in the near future.
