Over on Ovi Gaming we've taken a look at four touchscreen-based budget titles available for €2 each: crazy golf simulator Pirates Cove Mini-Golf, GClue's adaptation of Reversi/Othello, puzzler Electric Beams Touch and reaction timer Speed Tester Touch. There are also gameplay videos and screenshots of all four alongside the reviews.
With announcements from many platforms on new developer studios being commissioned, success stories for independent coders, and huge download numbers being related in the media on what seems a daily basis, where is Nokia? Why is the Ovi Store not getting written about? Because unless the Ovi Story is told, developers are not going to want to take part in a software warehouse that appears to be a ghost town. Read on for my take...
Haptic feedback is rapidly becoming an integral part of the touch screen experience. Immersion Corporation, a leading supplier of haptic technology, has recently joined the Symbian Foundation and its technology is expected to become available to developers in the near future. This article looks at the technology, what can be achieved, and its impact on battery life.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've reviewed six games that are available in Ovi Store for one euro each: African board game Mancala Touch, Japanese-themed arcade game Go Sushi, turn-based puzzler Octopuzzle Deluxe, computer classic Mine Sweeper Touch, geographical tutor Flags Trivia and foreign vocabulary builder Dictiomania.
One of my most essential Web Runtime apps, for S60 5th Edition, is Device Info - mainly for showing free RAM, but it does have plenty of other uses. It has now been updated to v2.0, with extra readouts, including IMEI. Grab it here for the 5800, N97 and Samsung i8910 HD. (via Wampyre)
Solving a charging problem chez Litchfield, I was struck by the realisation that all chargers are not made equal. If this seems obvious to you then feel free to skip this chatty tutorial, but otherwise you might like to read how I sped up the charging time on my Nokia N86 by a factor of almost four simply by using the (ahem) right mains charger. Item of trivia: mains charging of a modern smartphone can be up to twelve times faster than microUSB trickle charging - quite a difference.
Over on Ovi Gaming we've recently been doing some reviews and videos of cheap, simple touch-based Ovi Store games for S60 5th Edition devices. Touch Card Match is a colourful version of memory, Spin The Bottle Touch is an underwhelming bottle-spinning simulator, Chessboard Touch lets two people turn a phone into a timed chess board, and Freecell Touch is a no-frills ultracheap version of the classic card game.
Never mind its geek-perceived flaws (e.g. pointed out by me!), I was interested to note that Vodafone just published their current top 10 selling phones (presumably for the month of July) and that the Nokia N97 was at no.1, i.e. it's the best selling phone on Vodafone right now. Snapping at its heels was the Nokia 5800, followed by a herd of feature phones. The Blackberry Storm and an Android phone were at the bottom of its top 10 - the full list is below.
The Symbian Foundation today announced the first details of Symbian Horizon, an application-publishing program, which aims to reduce the barriers developers face when taking their products to market and thus increase the profitability of creating Symbian applications. Symbian Horizon will place applications in a number of partner app stores including Nokia's Ovi Store, Samsung's Application Store and AT&T's MEdia Mall, effectively acting as an application publisher on behalf of developers.
Nokia has released their Q2 2009 results. Profits were down 66% year on year, but this was ahead of market expectations. Nokia cut its prediction for H2 2009 profitability and market share for 2009, which has driven down its share price. However the underlying results are encouraging, given the economic climate, although some concerns remain in the high end of the market. Converged devices sales (smartphone) were up at 16.9 million, compared with 15.3 million units in Q2 2008 and 13.7 million units in Q1 2009. The 5800 shipped 3.7 million units, while Eseries and Nseries shipments were 4.7 and 4.6 million respectively.
As we've already mentioned, All About Symbian recently had to be restored, after being hacked, from an overnight backup. While we lost some forum postings, a regular backup strategy meant that we didn't have to roll back too far to get to a working state. What would happen if something catastrophic befell a Symbian phone rather than a Symbian web site?
Over on Ovi Gaming we've been reviewing and videoing some freeware touchscreen titles for S60 5th Edition devices: Speedtouch is a minimalist but fun whackamole clone, Bubbles Touch is rather poor (in fact it gets our lowest score ever), and Fridge Magnets Touch turns your phone into a ouija board thanks to its internet connection.
Fans of Spb Software's rather nifty world TV application, SpbTV (AAS shop link, support us by buying this way), should note that it has had a big update. Version 1.1 (download page) for all Symbian/S60 devices adds lower quality streams for anyone on a slow or weak 3G/EDGE connection, adds full support for TV out (making your smartphone into an Internet TV appliance!), plus better startup notifications (percentage reports while index building). Plus a litany of minor fixes and optimisations for a wider range of devices. Recommended.
Nokia have made available a number of new and updated applications for the N97 through the device's 'Software update' application. They include Ovi Maps 3.1, N-Gage 1.3, Nokia Messaging 10.0, Ovi Contacts 1.20, and a small helper application for freeing space on the N97's internal C: drive. Read on for more information and screenshots.
Steffen Geraner, despite English not being his main language, has put up a lovely little walk through and real world assessment of some of Ovi Maps 3.0's 'extra' features, including speed cam warnings, tunnel handling and 3D buildings. Worth a read. Maps 3.0 is turning into a pretty huge product - look out for more features on it here on AAS over the summer.
