In AAS Insight 27, the latest All About Symbian podcast, we talk about some recent firmware upgrades for a number of devices before moving on to a wide ranging discussion from topics out of last weeks S60 Summit. Areas covered include the future of user experience, Samsung and the S60 platform, the future of software development and widgets and WRT.
This is 2008 and, being away from home, I wanted to revisit some of the free satellite navigation applications that I'd previously played with over a year ago - surely one of them had developed into something that could get me home? Or is successful real time navigation still the preserve of the commercial applications like Nokia Maps, Wayfinder, CoPilot, etc.? Here's my attempt to find my way home using amAze, Nav4All and Google Maps for Mobile...
I know quite a few of you rely on my definitive pub-quiz-helper, Trivopaedia. It's now been brought up to 2008 levels, with up to date stats for v2.3 . It's available in Mobipocket reader and iSilo formats (i.e. compatible with any portable device or any platform), in addition to being fully online as well - and of course it's still free.
One of the most well received projects in the demo area of the S60 Summit at Barcelona this week was Shaker Racer - a radio controlled truck using not the regular RC sticks, but the accelerometers in a Blue-tooth-connected S60 handset. I had to find out more, in our special video report.
Steve takes a look at Marble Maze, the latest game to make use of the accelerometers in the latest Nseries devices. The principle is easy enough, tilt your phone to roll the marble around the maze to reach the end while avoiding the holes, but is the 21st century version a rival to the classic wooden real world original?
Nokia Wellness Diary has just been updated to v1.18, significantly bringing seamless data import from Nokia's Sports tracker and Step Counter applications - seems like Nokia really want us all to get fit... v1.18 also brings support for S60 3rd Edition FP2, as used in the upcoming Nokia N96, among others.
The long awaited firmware update for the N95-3 (US version) is now available according to Symbian-Guru (sources from Howard Forums and N95Users). The update brings the US version of the N95 up to speed with its world siblings. It adds demand paging, Flash Lite 3, Web Run Time, Idle Screen Nokia Search and significant performance improvements.
What are the first 10 applications you install on your phone? That's the question that was poised, and answered, by Mark Guim of the Nokia Blog. Also weighing in with responses were a number of other S60 Bloggers: Vaibhav Sharma of the the Symbian Blog, Steve Rowlands at S60 Blogger, Gerrymoth at Nokia Addict, Zack Epstein at Symbian-in-Motion and Stefan Constantinescu at IntoMobile. Read on for a summary of the applications mentioned and their popularity.
In AAS Insight 26, the latest All About Symbian podcast, covers opinion on new devices (HTC Touch Diamond, Apple iPhone 3G, Blackberry Bold), looks ahead to the S60 Summit, gives a first impression on the Nokia N78, the N-Gage games transfer issue and the launch of Nokia Maps 2.0.
[Update: this is now live, no password needed] Nokia's latest Flash-based novelty site is about to go live. The Mapsters are a small tribe of robots and err... aliens, who specialise in trampling on perfectly good cities and turning them into two-dimensional maps. For a preview go to www.themapsters.com/preview and use username 'mapsters' and password 'preview'. And there we were thinking that Nokia's Maps were created by the Navteq people.... (watch out for the jaw-dropping Flash earthquake effect in the opening sequence)
With version 1.76, out an hour ago, Sports Tracker's name continues to seem a little restrictive - Nokia just added support for user-shot video clips (taken during your walk/run, which then appear on the Sports Tracker web site), plus support for devices like the N78 and N96. Comments welcome on how they've handled video resampling during the scan and upload process - if at all. Comments also welcome on whether videos are compatible with the Sports Tracker widget.
[Updated] Nokia has announced that Maps 2.0 is finally available, after several months in (a very wide) public beta. The press release, with official changelog over v1.2, is below, plus also the less formal changelog for the full v2.0 release over the v2.0 beta. See also my preview of the Nokia Maps v2.0 beta. And here's the all important download link (build 2102 is the one you want). Nokia Maps (as referenced in my recent Location Based Search feature) is a core product for the next five years and has enormous potential, both standalone on devices and as part of (Maps on) Ovi.
Orange and Nokia today announced a three year strategic international partnership on mobile services. The two companies will work together to provider users with an offering of music, games, advertising, maps and location based services. The relationship will see 10 Nokia handsets added to the Orange Signature range with services integrated into the familiar Orange user interface.
The eagerly-awaited next gen N-Gage game Snakes Subsonic is now available from the N-Gage application's showroom. However, one of us couldn't see it even after selecting "Update Now", click on the headline to find out how this problem was solved.
The N-Gage platform aims to usher in a new age of high quality connected phone gaming. However if you upgrade to a new phone, you cannot transfer any of your N-Gage games from the old phone. In a special feature article All About N-Gage looks at why this is such a damaging policy for N-Gage, what the unintended consequences are, and a number of potential solutions. Will Nokia change their minds on this issue? Update: Looks like Nokia has indeed now changed their minds, their official blog has announced a game transfer system is on the way! Read the Nokia blog's statement.