Spotting the new range of yes-you-read-that-right flight simulators from Warelex, I decided to take them for a spin around the sky. Summary? Fun and Frustrating, both at the same time, though the second 'F' should be lessened when the developers get a large-screened 3rd Edition version out the door.
Nokia and EA have announced an agreement that will see EA create games for both current and future Nokia phones. The agreement encompasses both Java Games, which will be distributed using Nokia's Content Discoverer, and Nokia's next generation gaming platform.
Nokia and Cingular today announced the the Nokia E62 will be available on Cingular from September 29th at a starting price of $150 (subsidised) which should ensure a competitive total cost of ownership cost compared to its competitors. The Nokia E62 is the US variant of the Nokia E61 and will also be available on the Rogers network in Canada.
Yes, oh yes, OggPlay is now available for S60 3rd Edition smartphones! Those of you (like me) with a hard disk full of .ogg files can now play music in this efficient format on current devices, at long last. In fact, it's double good news, as I hear there's a new version of Pocket Ogg coming up that also now works properly. Ewan's planning a head-to-head review very soon!
Shameless self/site promotion again, but I've been updating my (hopefully definitive) table of S60 smartphones and their attributes, with new models and more mini-reviews. Presenting S60 device history.
Ewan presents his long term thoughts on the N91 music smartphone. It may be big, boxy and shiny, but Ewan rather likes it and would even use it in the absence of any of the core S60 functions. Here's his Nokia N91 long term review.
Steve Litchfield's been trialling Route 66 for S60 3rd Edition. Has it improved since the very first 'Series 60' version? Sadly, not much, although it's still a competent choice. Here's the lowdown on what's good and what's bad.
The Nokia E50, E60, E61 and E70 have now been added to the Nokia Phone Software update service. Thanks to Stefan and Tommi's Blog for the heads up. The service is now also available on the Europe wide site.
AAS colleague Darla attended the opening of Nokia's New York City flagship store. Here's part one of her illustrated diary entry. I wonder when Nokia will hit London?
You may have already bookmarked my own 3-Lib web guide, but there's another mobile web portal on the block, 247mini, run by recent Nokia E61 convert Shaun McGill. It's pretty impressive, too, and well worth bookmarking from any PDA or smartphone.
GearLog have spotted that Nokia's officially introduced a new variant of the E70. The black-faced E70-2 has 850MHz GSM instead of 3G, effectively making it quad band and thus working properly in the USA. It's initially available only in the 'flagship' stores, though.
Herewith first news of a major firmware update to the E61. V2.0 is now available and is being rolled out to service centres over the next few days and (hopefully) via the PSU service. Full details here. Items that caught my eye: improved performance and better RAM use, plus audio improvements.
Now, don't get too excited. This huge list of improvements to S60, posted on Tommi's Applications blog, isn't stuff which is all definitely being implemented, it's strictly user requests. But it's still impressive that someone at Nokia is both talking and listening to real users, and we're promised that the list has been passed on to the right departments.
