PC Pro magazine (in the UK), whose March 2006 edition is now on sale, has a group test of 'PDA phones', featuring the Nokia 9300 and 9500. As you'd expect, given that PC Pro has always been very pro-Microsoft, neither win an award, although they liked the wide screens and PowerPoint editing facility.
3-Lib has added extra weightings, future-proofing and software catalogue attributes to the big, free, Grid. Which is your perfect smartphone? Let the Grid decide!
Nokia has put up lots more goodies on its web site concerning the new 9300i smartphone and (indirectly) its older sisters, the 9300 and 9500. Thanks to Brent Laursen over on my-symbian for the heads up. Here's the 9300i user guide and some extra applications.
[Huge personal plug alert] Programme 1 in a new 'TV' series looking specifically at smartphones has aired. The show covers all software platforms and is currently free to download online. Read on for details...
Expansys (Germany) have started listing the Nokia 9300i, quoting February 6th. Here's the link (in German, obviously). If you spot other appearances round the world, use the Comments, please.
Forget those 'match and tap' puzzles, this is the real thing. The classic Mastermind game on steroids, Steve finds that Enigma is brain-manglingly challenging and slickly implemented for both Series 60 and Series 80. Read the review.
MetrO is a freeware tube routefinder that works for many cities around the world, on all Symbian-based smartphones. Steve's been putting it through its paces on his Nokia 7710 to let us know what it's like.
Steve Litchfield is surprised by the speed and efficiency of Roadmap of Great Britain for the Nokia Communicator (9210/9300/9500). An alternative to the voice-guided navigator that's distinctly handy to keep on your MMC. Steve also looks at the London street map sister product (for both the Communicator and S60). Here's the review.
Just spotted this, released over Christmas. Emil Tchekov has produced OPeLo, a freeware Windows OPL editor, with color syntax highlighting, pop-up command lists and more. Your code can be translated by using the official OPLTRAN tool. Nice idea!
Steve Litchfield's discovered that Opera Mini's now alive and working and has been playing with it for a couple of days. Here's his review. Summary: it may change the way you browse on your smartphone - it will certainly chop your GPRS bill down to size...
AAS's own Arjen Broeze has come up with a utility to create Nokia 9500 or 9300 skins from scratch or by editing existing ones. It can also automatically generate all needed graphics from a single master image, install and activate skins without the need to reboot, and automatically install Desk and cover phone wallpapers. And we can't resist mentioning that this was all written in OPL. Nice one, Arjen!
Anyone caught out by bugs in PC Suite 6.7 might like to note that there's now a bug-fix available, see here, apparently fixing a clash between Windows XP SP1 and File manager. Anyone fancy being the guinea pig for this one?
Ewan goes in search of an Internet Relay Chat client that will work on all his Symbian smartphones and finds it in the free JmIRC. Here's the full review.
3-Lib's grid of mobile/smartphone solutions is now fully interactive! You can apply your own weightings for any smartphone functions and the grid will recalculate scores as needed.
... are just two of the short articles posted by AAS-friend Asri Al-Baker over on i-Symbian in the last day or so. Plenty to read and thanks to Al for giving us a heads up.
