If the Nseries devices are to bring the latest multimedia technologies and smartphone functionalities together, then the obvious gap of gaming needs to be filled. So where does this leave Nokia’s other N-xxx device, the N-Gage? There’s going to be a lot of eyes at E3 – the biggest gaming conference in the world – at the end of May - thanks to today's announcement.
Steve Litchfield enthuses over his Nokia 9500 Communicator and looks back at its Psion roots. The best of the old and the best of the new, all in one box? Almost.
Gerard Wiener, the boss of Nokia's Games division and effectively the head of N-Gage, spoke for over an hour in the chatroom on N-Gage.com today. As you'd expect, there were record numbers of N-Gagers present and he was asked a lot of questions on a very wide range of topics, from N-Gage 2 to an expanded Arena online service, from tour buses in Northern Ireland to customer service in Pakistan. Read on to find out more...
While everything is nice and happy in the partnership in Symbian, there's alway rumblings about Nokia's influence. It's not as if they would ever leave... But Ewan has taken at look at some of the coding mantra inside Symbian OS, and speculates that Symbian could well have coded a trap door for any partners looking to bale out. Read on...
Although it was announced some time ago, EB Games will soon become the first retailer to stock the N-Gage QD for $99 (€77 or £52) on their website (and presumably in their physical stores too). It has a release date of the 16th of April. Unlike previous special offers where you had to sign up for a phone service, it appears that this time $99 really is the price of the QD. You go into the shop with $99, you come out with a QD and nothing else to pay, ever.
Gerard Wiener, the head of Nokia's Games division and effectively the boss of N-Gage, is going to participate in an online chat on Thursday the 7th of April. Anyone can attend, you can find out more details by clicking here.
Rapid Mobile Enterprise Development for Symbian OS (An Introduction to OPL Application Design and Programming) is the descriptive but slightly lengthy title of what author Ewan Spence has been calling "The OPL Book". As reviewer Steve Litchfield discovers this book is the best introduction to OPL yet, covering the development from scratch of two example applications, and featuring an extensive refererence section including the full OPL command reference. For those yet to take the plunge into Symbian development, OPL's RAD approach provides an ideal way to start writing Series 60, UIQ, and Series 80 applications. This book appears to be the perfect companion for that journey of discovery.
With 40 plus phones already available, and another 40 odd due out through 2005, Ewan's a bit worried that Symbian's number of handsets is leaving open an area that might cause problems. Fragmentation of the OS and UI, and confusion in the end- user. Read the rest of the news to find out why...
Nokia has launched the website for their flagship RPG Rifts at www.rifts-promiseofpower.com. The most elaborate N-Gage game site since Pathway To Glory, it contains many tantalising glimpses at what's to come. The developers' blog indicates Rifts has just reached the beta stage so we should be seeing some more in-depth previews appearing soon.
More Downloadable Demos for the N-Gage, it's the turn of recently released "X-Men Legends" to get the preview treatment. And if you're wondering how Activision have improved, I'll simply quote Wolverine. "No darlin'...Spiderman's a sissy."
In an interview published on N-Gage.com, Capcom has revealed that the N-Gage version of the hugely popular board game Catan will now feature live online multiplayer (with up to four players per game). As the interview says, this is the first time people around the world can play Catan together wherever they are.
There are menus, there are 3d menus, and there are great big spinning cubes that scream 'usability' at you. Infocube is one of the latter, and Gordon Ross, the Founder of Infocube, is a tireless attendee at trade shows. And he's very English about it. Ewan caught up with him to ask him why the future of menus is cubed. Read the interview here.
