Well known, cross-platform, games developer Polarbit has, for a limited time only, made four of its games titles available on Ovi Store for free. (previously £3). Raging Thunder, a car racing game, is available for both some S60 3rd Edition (E72) and S60 5th Edition (5800, N97 etc.) devices. Wave Blazer (power boat racing), Armageddon Squadron (arcade flight sim / shooter) and ToonWarz (3D first person Shooter) are available for S60 5th Edition only.
Yes, yes, there should probably be no such word as 'webinar' - but Quickoffice is using it anyway, to describe a new series of free video, online seminars centred around their office suite for Symbian/S60. If you have questions about an aspect of Quickoffice, or simply fancy learning a few new tricks, then check out the series. The first one is on January 20th at 8pm GMT (2pm CST) for half an hour. Each webinar will also apparently be recorded and an edited version made available for download later.
Two cracking posts on the Symbian blog today about application development and the story behind the applications. Mobbler, the music tracking web service; and Mobilyze, and in-development app to help patients undergoing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Nokia have announced that their Beta Labs are closing the online portion of the Mobile Web Server (MWS) product, launched some two and a half years ago, is closing at the end of this month. By allowing your mobile phone to act as a web server for the content it carried, MWS was an alternative ad-hoc style connectivity option for a number of users. Nokia have stressed that the local parts of the application will continue to work, and are reminding people that not all Beta Lab products have a happy firmware ending.
In All About Symbian Insight 101 (AAS Podcast 165), we round up the weeks news including updates to Ovi Suite, Samsung's 32 GB microSD card announcement, firmware updates for the 5800, N86, E72 and E75 and the release of Betalab's Gig Finder. We also discuss the UI concept proposal from Nokia for Symbian^4, before Ewan gives us some concluding thoughts on the X6. You can listen to AAS Insight 101 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
You may remember my own hard hitting multi-part review of the Nokia E72 a couple of weeks ago here on AAS? If you're after yet more E72 discussion in gory detail then I can recommend Clinton Jeff's mammoth one-piece E72 review, which manages to throw up all sorts of delightful details (e.g. did you know the E72's volume keys were backlit?)
Peter-Paul Koch, writing on the QuirksBlog, shares the results of a usability test comparing 10 different phones. What's most interesting is that the user in question might be considered the 'average' user rather than a tech-influencer (as is typical in online media). Consequently many of the observations offer insight into what matters in the real world compared to rarefied atmosphere of the 'media bubble'. Read on for more.
In another of my periodic hardware head-to-heads, I pitch a variety of full-screen, full-qwerty hybrid smartphones against each other, ranging from the 3 year old Nokia E90, still supported but hard to find for sale now, through to the N97 mini, the HTC Touch Pro 2 and the spanking new Motorola Milestone. Which devices punch the heaviest when the rubber really hits the road?
Thanks to Nokia Users for pointing out that a new firmware for the Nokia E72 is starting to make its way around the world. v22.007 promises 'new features' and 'updated applications', but I don't have a device to check with. Comments welcome if you can spot any of the aforementioned!
S60 has long been without any form of Wikipedia application besides the mobile web site. There are now two applications in early development, but do either of them significantly add to the mobile web site experience? David Gilson has been comparing all three and answers that question in this feature.
The Nokia N86 8MP just got a minor update to v21 firmware. Version 21.006 replaces v20.115 and is, unashamedly, a maintenance release, improving performance further and fixing a number of minor bugs. We might have to wait for an official changelog for this one, but please comment if you can add a specific observation. v21 is 700kb and is now available via Nokia Software Update and over the air on the phone itself in most regions. There's full User Data Preservation, but back up to memory card, just in case? (via CJ)
Kudos to Jon at tehkseven for a couple of beautifully done 'simple' themes. Just White (in 5th Edition, 3rd Edition and Eseries-tailored versions) and Just Black (again in 5th Edition, 3rd Edition and Eseries versions), the latter with full Ovi icons. Recommended if you just want something clean, clear and efficient.
In All About Symbian Insight 100 (AAS Podcast 164), we first look back at the decade just gone and consider how far we've come, before looking ahead to what will happen in the next decade. Steve brings news of an i8910 firmware update, Ovi Maps Racing and more and the teams answer questions relating to N97 Exchange support and briefly discuss what to expect at MWC You can listen to AAS Insight 100 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
A few brief updates from the world of The Phones Show. Programme 99 is now available, with my nine minute recommendations of smartphones to buy for seven different categories of user (you'll remember that I shortlisted these on AAS?) Plus our very own Tim Salmon and I have finished Phones Show Chat 19 and 20, one hour audio podcasts, both now available for download. Comments welcome on any of this content.
Coming out of the Symbian Foundation's developer wiki system is a handy Wikipedia widget that installs on any Symbian-powered smartphone with Web runtime (so that's most of them). Search results are all optimised for the small screen and it seems a quick and efficient way to access Wikipedia's content. I've included some screenshots from the widget below.