Samsung has extended the deadline for submissions to SIQ 2009. You now have until 28 August to submit a widget and be in to win £15,000. For developers who have already submitted a widget, Samsung will accept resubmissions enabling developers to polish their widget further.
As it's the weekend we've got a round-up of eight new game reviews over on Ovi Gaming, as well as a few other features. Following our new format, the reviews are brief but include long gameplay videos and lots of screenshots, to give an idea of what the game is really like. All the relevant links are below...
It's part 3 of Ewan Spence's 'real world' test of the Nokia N97 at the Edinburgh Fringe and it's embedded below. In this part, he looks at some interface oddities, and at Email and Web use. A couple of minor items of errata: the GMail Java application can go fullscreen in portrait mode too, but it's not obvious - you have to dive into Settings | App Mgr | Installed apps and highlight Gmail, then use Options | Suite Settings, turning the on-screen keyboard 'Off'. Also, the E75 uses microUSB as well as the N97. OK, scroll down to watch!
Symartic, developers of ExtGPS, have announced that they will soon be releasing Symabook, a Facebook client application, for S60 3rd Edition and S60 5th Edition. The application allows you to update your Facebook status and view your news feed, friend list and photos. Symabook has a custom UI which is designed to allow you to view photos more easily and make the best possible use of screen space.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've been lamenting the rather poor service provided by Ovi Store's search function. However, instead of just complaining about it we've set up an alternative unofficial Ovi Store search using Google's Custom Search Engine. You can try Unofficial Ovi Store Search over on Ovi Gaming. This is still very experimental, so let us know what you think in the comments thread.
Yesterdays news of the Nokia - Microsoft alliance around enterprise software and services has been generating a lot of interest. One of the interesting side stories is that Nokia's Symbian phones already have an outstanding Office compatible software suite, in the form of Quickoffice, which ships with every current Nokia Symbian phone. Quickoffice have released their own statement today noting that its Symbian business represents only a portion of its overall business and that it will ship on 200 million Nokia Symbian phones before Microsoft's product is even released. See below for comment and their statement in full.
Ewan is, as you might have noticed, a big eBook fan and when he switched to the Nokia 5800 he found himself deprived. The only practical eBook reader, Mobipocket, was written for phones with hardware buttons, specifically a * key, providing the essential full-screen toggle function. Thankfully, he's spotted that the N97, having a basic qwerty keyboard, does provide a way to enter the * character and, again thankfully, Mobipocket Reader responds appropriately, as is demonstrated here, along with notes on getting and installing the software. Ewan's a happy bunny and you may be too if you own an N97 and wondered whether to get re-acquainted with your eBook collection...
Nokia today announced that it has reached the mile stone of one million activated Ovi Mail accounts in just over six months. Of these accounts 650,000 have been created on a mobile device. Nokia says Ovi Mail 'is quickly establishing itself as the email account for the developing world', underlining that, with Ovi Mail, people can get their first email address, set up and manage email entirely on their phone, without any need for a PC.
It's August and it's the time of year when Ewan Spence disappears into the caverns of Edinburgh to report for his Fringe podcast - and we do like to load him up with something he hasn't seen before and ask him to road test it properly. This year it's the Nokia N97 and embedded below is the second of his reports, covering the N97's keyboard and camera. Comments welcome, as usual, along with any questions for the bearded one!
Where is North? Can your phone tell you? Yes, if it's an N97 with a compass app. But should you bother, asks Ewan, in his review of N97Compass? Predictably something of a luddite, he opts instead for a plastic compass and paper map! Ewan does make some good points about the irritating need for calibration and the bare bones nature of the utility though. And note that the free Ovi Maps 3 also shows directional information if you're zoomed into your current position, etc.
Over on AAS's sister site Ovi Gaming, we've been continuing our review of Ovi Store games available for Symbian devices. Our latest batch of reviews includes five titles, an incredible three of which have won our Recommended award: slick arcade game Bubble Popper Deluxe, charming puzzler BlockGO, old favourite Tower Bloxx (aka City Bloxx), arcade conversion Ms. Pac-Man and Yahtzee-clone Yacht II. All of these reviews come with long gameplay videos and lots of screenshots. The games were reviewed on a Nokia 5800, but they should also be available for most other S60 5th and 3rd Edition devices too.
In All About Symbian Insight 82 (AAS Podcast 144), Rafe and Steve round up software news from Quickoffice, DataViz and Digia. Steve reprises his Mobidapter review and we discussing some of the forthcoming hardware content on AAS including the Samsung i8190, Nokia 5530, E52 and E55. You can listen to AAS Insight 82 here or, if you wish to subscribe, here's the RSS feed.
Check Flights is a small and simple widget from the Nokia Ovi Store that lets you (guess what?) look up flight information, whether you're rushing to catch one or meeting someone off a plane. Ewan takes a quick look at Check Flights and gives it the thumbs up, partly because it's totally free, albeit with on-screen adverts, and partly because of its Calendar integration.
In the last few days there has been considerable comment, in various media channels, on some of the changes that are set to be introduced with the Symbian^4 release, including the breaking of backwards compatibility due to the retirement of AVKON and introduction of Orbit, which we first reported on back in May. With Symbian starting the process of communicating the changes to developers, and with renewed discussion online, it is worth revisiting the subject. Read on for further details.
Now live is The Phones Show 87, also embedded below, featuring (since I've been away on holiday) 24 testimonies from my audience, sharing their current choice of phone/smartphone and why. Plenty of Symbian representation in the choices, with the all-conquering Nokia E71 being most 'picked'.
