Thanks to this week's Carnival for pointing me towards one of the best articles on smartphone convergence I've read for ages, posted by Tomi in "The year the i-Pod died". Highly recommended reading.
Ewan reviews the classic strategy puzzle, Super Miners, here in its latest S60 3rd Edition incarnation (but applicable to all other Symbian OS platforms). Summary: classic puzzle, superbly implemented.
You may have already bookmarked my own 3-Lib web guide, but there's another mobile web portal on the block, 247mini, run by recent Nokia E61 convert Shaun McGill. It's pretty impressive, too, and well worth bookmarking from any PDA or smartphone.
Swiss Manager, from CellPhoneSoft is an all round system utility for UIQ 3 phones. It includes three main modules, Task Manager (switch / end tasks), File Manager (copy, paste, delete, rename), and System Information (free memory, device information, and more). Swiss Manager is freeware.
Though AAS have not yet been able to get a review model out of Sony Ericsson, others thankfully have. Here are detailed reviews from My-Symbian and The Register, both with a very different slant. Rafe suggests that UIQ 3 is a bit like Marmite (love it or hate it) - read the reviews and make up your own mind!
Sony Ericsson has joined the Eclipse community as an Add-in Provider member. Eclipse is an open source platform designed for building IDE's for various platforms and languages. Read on for more information and a UIQ 3 developer round up.
PDA Essentials issue 52 is now at newstands across the UK, with a group test of 'Blackberry killers', in which the Nokia E61 was pronounced 'a clear winner'. There's also a guide for users of other mobile OS for migrating everything to S60, plus a full review of the UIQ 3 Sony Ericsson M600i, with the verdict 'Superb as a mobile email handset'.
While I've been hammering the S60 3rd Edition-powered Nokia N93, Rafe's been having some serious one-on-one time with the UIQ 3-powered Sony Ericsson M600i messaging smartphone. Here's the full and detailed review. Summary? Powerful and innovative, but not all features work well for both one-handed and stylus-driven modes.
Simon Judge is reporting on his blog that some operators (Vodafone Japan) are locking down S60 3rd Edition handsets so that only Symbian Signed applications can be installed. This means that self-signed applications can not be installed.
This week the Carnival of the Mobilists is hosted by Abrio Mobile News. Despite reaching middle age with its 40 outing the CotM remains as vibrant as ever including the best writing from across the web. New to the Carnival this week is AAS favourite Matt Miller from ZDNet's Mobile Gadgeteer.
One week on, mid-August, and we've found plenty to keep you interested and challenged. Here's the AllAboutSymbian Week in Review, if you're in a hurry to catch up...
Opera recently announced that more than one billion pages have been viewed with its JME browser (i.e. 'runs on anything') Opera Mini. To celebrate, Ewan reviews Opera Mini 2 and concludes that, for his usage, it is the perfect mobile browser.
Steve continues his exploration of the world of text input and observes that the presence of a usable QWERTY keyboard can actually change how you use a smartphone. While not for everyone, the increasing range of keyboard-equipped devices open up new possibilities for smartphone users.
