Strands, The team behind the social music site, MyStrands, have updated their Social Music Player for Symbian S60 (and java) equipped phones. Picking up all the music on your device, Strands can recommend similar artists and songs, match you up with users that have similar musical tastes, and helps you navigate your musical neighbourhood. Conscious that other services are available, the big news for this update is the inclusion of support for UK based Last.FM, and the sending of your track information to that service as well.
Free software for our smartphones has never been so abundant. From Nokia's stream of useful freebies to technology demos from big companies to small utilities from home developers, everything now seems to be free. With so much freeware around, is there still a market for paid-for software? And which would be the top picks of the All About Symbian team, for both S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3-powered smartphones?
Yep, Ben from IntoMobile has spotted this Motorola competition for (very) amateur film makers. Interestingly, the second 'round' of the final (the bit to actually win the £10k) has to be shot on the Z10 itself. Very cool on all fronts.
Skype has released an official mobile client. The application is written in Java so it should run on a variety of phones including both S60 and UIQ phones. The application uses an Internet connection for status and contact information and for Skype chat (instant messaging). However while the application does allows you to make calls, it routes them through the PSTN (phone) network rather than over the Internet. This means you will be charged for both incoming and outgoing calls of any type. Read on for more.
While I'm posting Motorola UIQ 3 news, I thought I'd mention this post from last week at MotoSmartphones, saying that by mid week this week (i.e. about now) the UIQ 3-powered Z10 should be available in O2 shops and also SIM-free in the usual places. Shout if you manage to find one in the flesh!
It seems that Motorola just announced a tweak to the venerable UIQ 3-powered Z8 'kick-slide' smartphone. At an event in Korea, the Z8m was unveiled, although details are still sketchy. It seems that there might be 4GB of built-in flash memory, in addition to an expansion slot. Can anyone fill in more detail on this story?
Sony Ericsson's Q1 results show an increase in overall device shipments of 2% from last year, but the good news end there with the average selling price dropping from 134 EUR to 121 EUR and profits dropping 42% to 181 million EUR. Sony Ericsson cite higher research and development costs (as a % of sales) along with slower sales growth of high end handsets.
Yes, it's that time in the month. PDA Essentials magazine is out, issue 74, this time with a two page feature on N-Gage, a two-page tutorial on location tagging your photos on the N95, plus a review of the Sony Ericsson W960i as part of an iPhone killers group test. Good reading, as usual!
Escarpod is a free podcatcher for UIQ 3, which can be used to download and play podcasts directly on your UIQ 3 smartphone. It has received UIQ Technology's Application of The Month for April 2008 (previous apps included ShoZu, AquaCalendar and Google Maps, among others). Some screens and details of Escarpod below the break!
Forget all the new fangled brain games, Steve has turned to the
classics - Chess. Odesys Chess promises a challenging AI opponent, as
well as a strong online multi player environment. Steve is impressed,
but not enough to tell us his ranking, in our latest review.
The Swiss Army Knife utility for UIQ 3 smartphones, known as Swiss Manager Pro, is now at version 1.70, adding some real enhancements over previous versions. Among the new items is a big text, configurable (time or free memory) status icon. There's also the free version... without the status icons and with less functions. Full changelog and screenshots after the jump.
Fed up waiting for N-Gage to go live? Console yourselves with this brand new games compilation from PDA maestros Astraware. After yesterday's announcement, and after a week or so of actual pre-release gameplay, Ewan presents his review of Astraware Boardgames, for both S60 3rd Edition and UIQ 3. Summary: classic games, well pitched and well implemented, Boardgames only falls short of Megagame status by a gnat's whisker.
It's.... AAS Insight 19 (aka AAS audio podcast 68), mainly concentrating on the news of UIQ 3.3 and what it will mean, but also chatting about the split of Motorola, the v21 update for the Nokia N95 Classic and the usual software spots. Here's the Insight 19 listening link, here's the RSS feed for you to subscribe for the future.
