In which Steve realises that your smartphone should always help and never get the way of real life, performs a subtle U-turn and muses the fact that there's really no such thing as the perfect mobile device for everybody. Read the editorial...
Steve Litchfield gets to grips with UIQ 3, the user interface behind the upcoming Sony Ericsson P990. What's new, what's different and what's been fixed?
Ewan gives his impressions after 30 minutes poring over the upcoming Sony Ericsson P990 at the Smartphone Show. Summary: a genuine flagship smartphone.
Thomas Boys takes a chatty look round the recent Smartphone Show on Day 1. With starring entries from the P990, many Symbian handsets and the Orange man.
Long time tech book publisher O'Reilly moves into the Symbian space with Nokia Smartphone Hacks. Ewan's reviewed the book, and while it's full of useful info, the American focus and inclusion of Series 40 feel a bit strange in a Symbian targeted book.
Steve plays with the new Nokia Music Pack and then goes straight back to the music solution he's been using for the last year. Read the full review here.
There's a huge number of exhibitors at The Smartphone Show (opening a week today), so rather than list them all, we've picked out a few highlights for you to think about visiting - including the All About Symbian team who'll be in The Media Zone.
Two events co-incided this week which are relevant to anyone interested in Symbian gaming, or gaming in general. The first was Gerard Wiener (head of Nokia's Games division including N-Gage) having a meeting with Japanese games publishing giant Square Enix at the CTIA mobile entertainment trade fair in San Francisco. The second was an interview with Yoichi Wada, the President of Square Enix. During the interview, Wada stated that the future of gaming lay with online games both on PCs and on mobile phones. He said they wanted to get away from the current console-controlled games market and go to a model where software was king. He explained Square Enix's plans to expand into the mobile phone online world. Even more tantalisingly, their mobile phone Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games, already released on Japanese FOMA Symbian phones, would be released in North America and Europe towards the end of 2006. That would of course be just in time for the Nokia Next Gen MoGaSo's first Christmas.
There’s a huge change in Symbian OS with OS 9.1 coming out. While the directors and Marketing Managers will be prowling the floor of The Smartphone Show for the latest edge available to them, the people who do all the work, the little programmers, will all have the chance to learn about the new OS, API calls, and the low level magic they can use from the people who programmed it. Ewan previews the Developer Training options available at The Smartphone Show.
Issue 42 of mainstream magazine PDA Essentials, out today, has a 7-page Symbian review roundup pitting the Sony Ericsson P910i, the Nokia 6680, the Nokia 9500 and the Nokia 7710 against each other. No prizes for guessing the author, by the way!
Nokia's E3 website this year had a section on their Next Generation of games-capable smartphones which are due to launch in 2006. The site told us a lot about the Next Gen which will replace the current generation N-Gage: the Next Gen will have next generation graphics, the games will be sold entirely as downloads direct to phone or via your PC, and the games will work on a wide range of Nokia Symbian smartphones, not just one model. It also said more information would become available in September including details of the launch games lineup, but a source tells us the official press briefing may happen on October the 1st. Hints at the contents of the announcement may also be revealed during the N-Gage chief's webchat on Thursday 22nd of September.
