Nokia has issued a press release today revealing some of the first 3rd Party games due on the Next Gen N-Gage gaming platform: Asphalt 3, Brothers In Arms: Hell's Highway, Brain Challenge, Midnight Pool and FIFA 2008. Also, publishers Indiagames and THQ Wireless have now officially announced their support for the platform, joining Gameloft, EA and Glu Mobile. Nokia's Gregg Sauter is due to give a speech at the Game Developers Conference later today in San Francisco, where he will presumably give more details on this and other Next Gen gaming matters.
One of the companies that Rafe caught up with at the recent 3GSM was Abaxia - you might not recognise the name, but they play an interesting role in the S60 ecosystem. Users of the Orange Signature devices will be familiar with their work, as they are the company who programmed Orange's alternative Home. That's not all they do though, as Rafe found out in the All About Symbian Podcast #15 .
Y-Browser, possibly the best third party file manager and general utility for S60 3rd Edition smartphones, has been officially updated. Version 0.8 includes an overhauled interface, working ZIP archive support and an extra icon pack, plus the usual mail folder and text/file viewer plug-ins. Free and highly recommended.
Widsets, java-hosted online widgets that bring you news or filtered web lookups, have a steadily growing following. They're also partly funded by Nokia, fully compatible with every Symbian OS smartphone in the last few years and the always excellent E-series blog has just published an eloquent Widsets write-up.
Thanks to the E-series blog for pointing out that Nokia has released a free Time Zone Upgrader utility, updating the rules for automatic Daylight Savings Time adjustments in some countries. Especially applicable to those the in the good ol' USA apparently.
One of THE major launches of the last couple of weeks was Smart2go. The best intro to Nokia's mapping and routing software by far is Ed's write up of the free service at E-series.org. In the meantime, I've clocked up 300 miles driving with the premium voice-guided upgrade and will be doing a proper review and TomTom comparison as soon as Smart2go comes out of beta.
S60 and Vodafone last week announced the release of the first Vodafone specific software package for S60 to all S60 licensees. The customised version includes Vodafone specific applications, services and branding. The first two handsets that will receive this software are the Nokia N95 and the Samsung SGH-i520. S60 and Vodafone first announced their collaboration a year ago at 3GSM in 2006.
Announced over in our forums was that emoze, the popular (for those on flat rate data plans) push email/contacts/calendar system, has just been upgraded to work on S60 3rd Edition devices like the Nokia E61 and N73.
Krisse reviews this top flight S60 game and finds beautifully rendered scenes, great music, a good plot and a unique interface. Will anything spoil the idyll?
Nokia has apologised officially for the three day delay(!) in availablility of its rather splendid Smart2Go software system, citing higher than expected interest requiring adding extra capacity to its servers. Over 30,000 people have downloaded Smart2Go for S60 3rd Edition or WinMob 5.0 in its first two days. Other versions are planned. Full press release below.
With 3GSM now subsiding, there's time to update my huge S60 device comparison table. If you can help fill in the few remaining blanks... There's also a new table of S60 3rd Edition freeware (previously integrated with that for older 'Series 60'). Enjoy.
