In All About Symbian Insight 70 (AAS Podcast 128) Steve and Rafe talk about the upcoming N97 and the return of Comes with Music to the UK. However the main part of the show is taken up with answering questions from listeners. We touch on Ovi Store, Nseries branding, screen resolution and more. You can listen to AAS Insight 71 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
In the third of his tutorial series looking at Nokia Messaging, Asri al-Baker looks at the email setup process, using the Nokia 5800 as a guinea pig device. This guide applies for all users who are not using the E75 (at the moment) because this has a different (newer) version of Nokia Messaging. Asri explains the decision point about dropping back to S60 Messaging or deciding to press on with the (beta, but soon-to-be-commercial) 'push' service, the core of Nokia Messaging.
Many people have noted that the Download! client now gives a message saying that it will be "temporarily unavailable" today, while at the same time the Ovi Store site currently asks for a name and password to access it. Could something be stirring behind the scenes at Ovi Store?
The world's first mobile MMORPG TibiaME (available on Symbian S60 1st, 2nd and 3rd Editions and Java J2ME) is still going strong, and has received a new update. The magic system has now been made more detailed with a new spell system, and the game world has had an entire new island added to it. The basic game world and client are free, but it costs extra for the gold client and for access to the premium areas of the game world.
If you already have Nokia Messaging installed and working then this will seem old hat to you, but in the interests of completeness, and for newcomers to Symbian and S60, Asri al-Baker explains the different ways to get Nokia Messaging on your nearest and dearest. Asri's planning other articles in this series on Nokia Messaging, so do please give him some feedback.
Following on the heels of the Nokia N96, the Nokia N85 and Nokia N79 have both received significant firmware upgrades, to version 20.175. There are the usual small fixes and application updates, which seem to have squashed most of the major bugs. The major additions are turning controls (flip to silent for incoming calls and alarms) and Nokia's email wizard, together with email notifications on the active idle screen (homescreen). Read on for details, screens and comment.
AnotherGuest is famous for his various ports to the Symbian platform of classic games from older computer platforms and open source projects, and his latest release continues that trend. Crimson Fields is a turn based war game on a traditional hexagonal grid where you can fight to overcome an opponent who's trying to do exactly the same to you. Ewan dons his military gear and wades out to do battle.... with the interface itself.
DreamSpring, the developer of DreamLife, is running a "Buy One Get Another One Free" promotion to offer users who purchase a copy of DreamLife for UIQ a free upgrade to DreamLife for S60 when it's released. The offer is finishing at the end of May 2009. You can find more details at the official web site.
YouTube Mobile, the native S60 client for the video sharing service, has been updated and is now (almost) fully compatible with touchscreen phones running S60 5th Edition, such as the Nokia 5800. All main functions work perfectly, with touch-screen control and support for text entry fields and a virtual keyboard. See below for screens, comments and links.
Forum Nokia regularly publishes example applications; they are intended as examples for developers, but occasionally are useful enough to be downloaded and installed by consumers. New today is Route, a basic GPS tracking widget. AccuWidget, an existing WRT example, which shows weather forecasts, has also been updated. Both widgets support miniview, which means they can be added to the homescreen of the Nokia N97. Miniview is something that all widget developers should consider implementing.
Nokia recently announced it was refocussing its service strategy in certain areas. Nokia said it was looking to 'provide a better, more simplified service' and would work more closely with third parties. The implications of this announcement are now starting to emerge: mocoNews reports that Nokia is closing its Kirkland (Seattle) offices and Reuters reports that Nokia is halting investment in its media sharing site, Ovi Share. Read on for more.
In All About Symbian Insight 70 (AAS Podcast 128) Rafe, Ewan and Steve talk about the recently released Nokia E52, the N96's firmware upgrade to version 20, the newly released Pandemonium and the N97's processor and specifications. Rafe also reports on UI changes proposed for Symbian^4. You can listen to AAS Insight 70 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Over the weekend the news arrived that a beta of Ozone, a WebKit based web browser, had been released for S60 3rd Edition. Ozone, previously available for UIQ 3, claims better standard compliance and faster performance that the built in S60 browser. In the full news story we take a closer look at some of Ozone's features and include some illustrative screenshots from both S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition.
Ozone is now available for S60, at the same beta 0.9 version that appeared for UIQ 3 last year. Ozone is a web browser that "not only delivers advanced features such as client-side database support, application cache, zooming and multiple windows, but also provides the best web-standards compliant experience that's available". The beta download is at www.o3mobi.com. Comments welcome if you've tried Ozone.
Kudos to Ricky Cadden and Rita El-Khoury for this awesome and rather definitive guide to Twitter on your S60 phone and similar guide to Facebook. They table, elegantly, all the native, Java and web-based solutions and make it very easy to decide which one(s) to try first.