NS-Basic, the Palm OS-sourced BASIC language toolkit which has recently been ported to work under StyleTap on S60 and UIQ, has been significantly reduced in price, apparently to attract hobbyist developers rather than just corporates. The new entry price is $99 (about £50) and the 'Pro' version (which includes things like proper application signing) is down from $700 to $300 (£150). Still quite a lot of money, but hopefully now practical for a lot more people. For examples of what a StyleTap-hosted NS Basic application looks like, see RMR Software's S60 catalog.
Ewan starts a new series of personal articles looking at how different people set up their S60 smartphones. Specifically, looking at what's on their active standby ('Home') screen. He kicks off with mobile cyber celeb James Whatley. You can comment on James' choices below, or indeed on the article series as a whole.
Perhaps not surprising, but Nokia are really pushing the N96 this week - the really interesting Hello N96 blog has a Bluetooth video that was pushed to his N96(!) while in Charing Cross station, plus photoexamples of big screen advertising.
Yes, those clever chaps at Nokia are still trying to confuse us by offering more and more overlapping PC-hosted connectivity applications. :-) Communications Center just hit 2.0, incorporating a lot of feedback from the v1.x release. The software adds to the functionality of four of the standard PC Suite modules, namely Phone Browser, Text Message Editor, Contacts Editor and Multimedia Factory. Here's the download link if you want to give it a whirl.
The UK's Gadget Show remains a respected review source, even if they don't go into quite the tech detail that AAS does... in the latest Web TV episode, Jon Bentley goes into reasonable detail on the Nokia N96, covering the improvements over the N95 while also being disappointed by the slow speed overall, by the poor Wi-Fi reception and by the lack-lustre BBC iPlayer.
Possibly my most link-packed news post ever, but.... The Phones Show 66 is now live, with a video preview of the OLED-equipped Nokia N85 and video of the 5800 XpressMusic in action (Hi-res version RSS feed). It sparked comments on YouTube too, with Paul commenting that in Japan they have phones like the SoftBank 920sc, with OLED screen, 3x optical zoom AND Xenon flash. I'm impressed. And viewer Micky turns out to be making videos of his own, prototyping a wearable N95 body-cam. And I haven't even had breakfast yet...
The upcoming Nokia N79 has now got a support site available at Nokia.com, including the full manuals and user guides in many different languages. As always this may or may not indicate an imminent release, but Nokia devices are usually released within a few weeks of their support sites appearing.
Marble Maze, from Cahoona Games, has been updated. The infuriatingly simple ball rolling game (reviewed previously here) now allows you to create your own levels in addition to the 40 that come built in to the game. This game is always one I use when demo'ing my N95 to people – the principle of tilting the phone to roll the marble is disarming, coupled with the highly addictive nature makes it an almost 'must install as soon as possible' application.
In the latest part in my phone camera series, I put the five top camera-equipped smartphones to the test, evaluating their still photo results under a variety of scenarios (landscape, night, dim, macro, etc). Which really is the best? And will the winning phone be made in Finland? I look at the Nokia N82, N95 and N93, plus the Samsung G810 and i8510... [WARNING: Broadband essential, the article includes a fair number of example images]
In an extended edition of the All About Symbian Podcast (Insight #42) we reflect on the announcements out of last week's Nokia Remix Event in London. There's some a general discussion of the tone of the event, but the meat of the podcast focuses on Nokia's first S60 touch handset, the Nokia 5800 MusicXpress, before moving on to Nokia's new Comes with Music service.
...In the UK Mobile Choice Consumer Awards, apparently. It won best phone and best smartphone, although best camera phone was also Symbian OS-powered, the awesome Samsung i8510 - of which more in an editorial tomorrow. 'Reader's choice' went to the iPhone - of course(!) Here's the full list of winners.
There's a new version of the N-Gage app available for all compatible phones which (amongst other things) fixes the infamous 10,000 points bug. You can download the new version straight onto your device by opening the app, selecting "Options" and then "Check For Updates". Alternatively you can download the new version onto your PC and then install it manually, which you can do from the official website's "Get N-Gage" section. You can read more about the new version over on the official forums. (via the Official N-Gage Blog)
You can't help thinking that some people are going to be disappointed by the Nokia N96. First they hear it's got built-in digital TV. "Oh, no, that's not available in most countries yet". Then they latch onto the prominent marketing blurb about it 'coming with BBC iPlayer'. "Oh, no, that doesn't work with 'normal' data, you have to use 'Wi-Fi'. And so on. If I may say so, a bit of a product pitching mess all round...
Google has soft-launched Picasa Web Albums for S60, making available an optimised version of the service via their usual m.google.com starting page. There are some screenshots below. You can play slideshows, comment on other peoples' media and, of course, organise your photos into albums. Note that not all the functions seemed to work as I wrote this - maybe some switches have yet to be thrown!
