Nokia's free Smart2Go maps and routing service for S60 and Windows Mobile smartphones has finally gone live, only 3 days late and it would be churlish to complain too much. There will be a review along fairly shortly, I'd expect, once any of the AAS team get a chance to draw breath...
You may remember a news post a week or so ago about Nokia integrating their 'Search' tool (which accessed online databases like Yahoo) and their 'Search' tool (which lets you search for any text content on your device)? Yes, the names were confusing everyone and they were supposedly combined. Except noone told their web team and it hasn't been available. But it is now. Recommended for all.
If you're heading over to 3GSM, perhaps it's not too late to add Symbian's new free utility AmiGO to your S60 smartphone (a UIQ 3 version is 'coming soon' - let's hope it arrives in the next couple of days!). AmiGO offers a map-based guide to bars, clubs, restaurants, plus handy Spanish phrases in audio format, a friend-finder functionality for other AmiGO users, plus news and a prize draw.
In this special feature Steve looks more closely at specific criticisms of the S60 UI and application set. He argues that some of these are answered in S60 3rd Edition's Feature Packs, some are down to user education, but there is still work to be done
Nokia and T-Mobile have announced that they are working together to help bring T-Mobile's core services to the market on S60 devices and to improve the ability for S60 licensees to create devices for T-Mobile. T-Mobile is the third such operator collaboration for S60 following on from Vodafone and Orange last year.
Nokia has today announced that they will make their mapping and navigation solution (smart2go) available for free download. Initially available for S60 and Windows Mobile 5 it will later become available for other platforms. It is the same solution that is found in the Nokia N95. Mapping and route planning will be available free, but turn by turn voice navigation will be a premium service. Location is via any Bluetooth GPS. The download will be available from this Saturday.
Nokia has now integrated their long available Internet-based Search utility with the local (i.e. on your device) Search previously only (officially) available with the Nokia E50. Less confusion and more functionality all round. Mobile Search is available for every S60 3rd Edition smartphone. The full press release follows. Update: See comments below before visiting site...
Good games for S60 3rd Edition seem to be arriving in a steady stream. Quite a number of them from ZingMagic's direction, it has to be said. Here I review Magi-Mix, a superbly-implemented and very challenging word puzzle.
X-Plore is a file manager for S60 phones from Lonely Cat Games the authors of Smart Movie and Profimail. X-Plore is currently available as a free beta. It includes the usual file manager features and also includes a images and text viewer. It does not use the standard S60 UI elements and consequently is able to fit more information on the screen at one time.
According to a report on Pocket Gamer, a secret workshop for American and Asian publishers and developers on Nokia's next gen gaming platform was held in Santa Monica last week. Perhaps most notable in the article is the incredible list of publishers that apparently attended the event: Disney, Sega, Sony, Universal, Square Enix, Capcom, THQ, Glu Mobile, Digital Chocolate, EA, Tecmo, Namco and Vivendi. The article also claims 3rd party publishers just got their development kits in January, which could suit a Summer launch and Xmas advertising push fairly well (old generation N-Gage titles usually took 6 - 12 months to make). These revelations seem to confirm what All About Symbian exclusively revealed last October. Another event will apparently be held in Madrid next week for European publishers and devs.
In addition to podcasting, street magic and PSP gaming, it turns out that Ewan's not bad at Bridge either - here he reviews ZingMagic's Omar Sharif Bridge for all S60 3rd Edition smartphones.
Oh yes! The hugely respected cross-platform hypertext document reader iSilo has now entered open beta testing for S60 3rd Edition. Here's v4.33 - if you do install it, be sure to feed problems back to the developers.
