Mac developers Mark/Space have released Missing Sync for Symbian, providing (among other things) automatic Bluetooth syncing of data between phone and Mac. Here's the TUAW write-up. More on this next week when I'll be starting a new series of features looking at S60-Mac connectivity and compatibility.
As we bid Ewan farewell as he girds his loins and heads off into the thick of the Edinburgh Fringe for another year, he explains some of his must-have phone apps and services to help get him through 25 days of mobile journalism. Good thing he's got a meaty data tariff, I say...
For those who grew up with 'Series 60' and are now trying to get used to 'S60 3rd Edition', there's a timely article here from Ravindra, pointing out that the old d-pad shortcuts on the 'home'/'standby' screen are still available as an option. I can quite see his point and I'll bet that many people reading this had totally forgotten about this alternative app launcher.
In AAS podcast 86, a.ka. AAS Insight 33, Rafe and Ewan talk about N-Gage's Brothers in Arms and Reset Generation, Samsung's 8 megapixel Innov8 device, the challenges behind device comparisons and open source in relation to Symbian.
It's good to see Samsung S60 handsets now getting more compatibility love - Fring has just announced that their chat and VoIP solution is now available for the i550, which I reviewed a few months ago. More Samsung S60 devices to follow, surely.
You may remember GyPSii, a GPS-aware photo and text social utility, from a few months ago? It has now been partnered with Samsung worldwide, according to Unwired, for use in their smartphones, meaning that we should see GyPSii preloaded on several forthcoming Samsung S60 phones, including the Innov8.
A short post, but just to draw people's attention to a new guide on Nokia Beta Labs, showing how to configure a number of populat XMPP-based chat/instant-message systems to work with Nokia Chat, reported on a couple of weeks ago. Good stuff, but let me know when they've worked Skype chat in as well...
I really must try and meet Mark Guim from 'The Nokia Blog' sometime - I've been accruing things from him that I wanted to link to for a while. Time to share, I think: he's a keen photographer, publishing N95 8GB-shot slideshows from a public garden; there's a walkthrough of Psiloc Connect; a great observation about the new version of Qik; the start of his detailed and well-illustrated review of the Nokia E71; and the discovery of the ProClip car mount kit. Good reading, all.
Living near a big city, it's all too easy to think of my phone/smartphone experience as being typical of the norm. During the course of a week away in the country, I made several observations which show that we should never take 'our' mobile environment for granted or assume any level of capability in other mobile users. And, along the way, I managed to crash an 'iPhone' and get a couple of people to go all dizzy while explaining what I was doing with the N95 8GB...
StyleTap have now confirmed that their Palm OS emulation system is now in private beta for Symbian OS - I didn't get an invite into this stage, but by applying to be a beta tester, you might be lucky. After a short while, it will be opened up to all beta testers, etc. The significance of StyleTap is that there are still many people in the world who are hanging onto ancient Palm handhelds and Treos because they depend on one or more specific Palm OS-only apps - StyleTap will help them move fairly seamlessly onto S60 and Symbian.
Nokia's N93 seemed to be blazing a trail for a new generation of phones equipped with 3D graphics acceleration, with the N95 and N82 strengthening this assumption. However, this year's flagship device the N96 doesn't have any 3D hardware, so has Nokia changed its mind? In a special editorial, AAS's sister site All About N-Gage takes a look at what Nokia's options are for 3D chips with particular regard to their recently launched N-Gage platform. Will they get together one day, or is this a doomed romance?
Nokia's opened a new site called N-Gage Feedback Forum, which lets you submit ideas and feedback, and vote on other people's submissions too, all in a Digg-style interface. It's hosted by the consumer feedback company UserVoice, and it should be very interesting as long as Nokia does actually respond to the points raised. The top suggestion right now concerns the continuing lack of N93/N73 support...
Samsung today announced the high-end, feature packed Samsung INNOV8 (model number i8510). It is an S60 slider with a 8 megapixel, autofocus camera with dual LED flash. The phone runs S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and other key features include a 2.8 inch screen, WiFi, 16GB of on board flash memory, optical sensor, integrated GPS, accelerometer sensor, and DNSe audio technology.
Widgets on mobile seem to be a hot topic this year; we have already covered the technology several times on AAS. But now that the first S60 Widgets are becoming available what is the reality like? In this feature Ewan takes a look at some of the Widgets he finds most useful.
If you have your mobile phone with you all the time, surely that's where you'd expect to see your social networks enabled? Well, even with dedicated mobile sites, and the occasional java utility to get to sites such as Facebook and MySpace, users aren't biting (reports the LSE in this PDF report). With only 47% using their mobile to check email or browse the web there's a lot of work to go before you can address the tiny 7% that use the mobile for social network usage.