The Chinese MMORPG Anrufen is now available in an English-language beta version for Symbian S60 3rd Edition phones, which can be downloaded from the official Anrufen website. There's also an official forum for reporting problems with the beta.
"To compare or not to compare? That is the question." Nokia has protested many times that the 5800 XpressMusic is not an iPhone competitor, but rather a lower-priced alternative - and I agree in this detailed editorial over at All About iPhone. There's no doubting that the 5800 was influenced by Apple's flagship, but the differences in functionality and emphasis run pretty deep, as is obvious as I run through each device's strengths and weaknesses.
We-Fi, the free software networking system that helps you find free and open Wi-Fi hotspots, has now been sanctioned by Nokia and is included in many device's Download! catalogs. We-Fi's a great idea - if it doesn't appear in your S60 phone's Download! then you can also grab it from here. It's also available for Window Mobile, Windows and Mac, by the way, and it's truly international. Can you get involved and help expand We-Fi's hotspot knowledge in your area?
It's the 14th of February again, and in its honour you might want to download some themes for your S60 device. Pizero has a rather splendid "Valentine 09" available for both S60 3rd and 5th Edition devices (so that includes the 5800), while Babi has a theme simply called "Lovely" available for S60 3rd Edition. Those of you with the N-Gage versions of DChoc Cafe Solitaire or DChoc Cafe Sudoku should pop into your cafes today to see them decked out in Valentine's day decorations. (And if you've recently bought a 5800 and want to know how to install themes, check out our newly-written theme tutorial.)
Google Documents is a wonderful online resource, of course, but up until now spreadsheets have been rather off bounds to mobile users, with just an unfriendly column-by-column view. As long as your phone has a Web-kit-based browser (e.g. iPhone, S60, G1) then there's now a whole new view, with your spreadsheets looking (roughly) as they should and with full editing. Each row can have its elements edited in one go, which is a kludge but also kind of handy. On the downside, the weight of javascript involved does mean that the page isn't that light though, and largish spreadsheets can be slow to open and manipulate. Screens below.
Ahead of next week's Mobile World Congress next week Symbian has issued a press release with a roll call of the latest companies who pledged their support to the Symbian Foundation. These include Atelier, Bank of America, Gemalto, HP, Imagination Technologies, Mobica, MySpace, Nanoradio AB, OMRON Software, Qualcomm, SanDisk, SESCA, SiRF Technology Inc, and Virtual Logix. This takes the number of companies endorsing the Symbian Foundation to seventy-eight. Read on for more.
CellPhoneSoft have announced, in a reversal of their previous statement, that they will be ceasing to support and develop their UIQ portfolio with immediate effect. They had pledged resources through to the end of 2009, but with rising levels of piracy and a drop in income from registrations they've pulled the plug.
Congratulations to Kristian at the Nokia Beta Labs for the blog post this morning. Not for the failure of the Contacts on Ovi database (because we wouldn't want to cheer on that sort of thing), but for coming clean and laying out a full explanation online to the problem. One of the lessons of the modern web is that news travels very fast, and hedging explanations is never a good thing. Looks like The Cluetrain Manifesto is in full operation at Beta Labs.
The webmail component of Mail on Ovi, which was previewed at Nokia World last year, is now live (in beta status, naturally). Along with the webmail component, you can now also use Mail on Ovi on S60 devices by adding the email address to either the built in Messaging application or the Nokia Messaging service. Mail on Ovi had previously only been available via Beta Labs on Nokia's Series 40 handsets. Mail on Ovi gives you a username@ovi.com e-mail account, based on your Ovi username, with a space quota of 1GB. Read on for more details and a short video demo...
Our cousin site once-removed, All About iPhone, hosts this week's Carnival of the Mobilists, number 160, with some excellent generic mobile reading to start your week...
That's just what AAS regular kflyer has been doing for the last few years. No PC needed, just a Series 40 (and then S60) phone, writing articles, managing Wordpress, answering email and so on. Opera Mini is one particular star of the show here, but Miyuru also deserves credit for sticking at such an ambitious task in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. In this article, he describes how he's been able to manage his blog using just his phone.
Google's desktop web site has been offering the text of public domain and other licensed books for a while, but they've just launched a mobile version as well, books.google.com/m . Ostensibly formatted for Android devices and the iPhone, it works after a fashion on S60 devices too, with their Webkit-based browsers. Some screenshots below to show how it works...
NS Basic, the hybrid (and cross-platform) Basic/object-oriented development system has officially added "support for Symbian OS S60 5th Edition". The new v1.1 of the NS Basic SDK also features "an improved user interface for applications created with the tool". See the NS Basic release for pricing and more. (via Symbian One)
The Phones Show 75 is now live, with something of a personal essay on device convergence, demonstrated on the Nokia N82 (though a few other devices could have filled the same role as well). Plus a hands-on review of Noka E71 rival, the Blackberry Bold 9000.
Kudos to SymbianpOp and getting there first with a detailed and illustrated look at the new version of Buddycloud. This free software (for Java, S60, etc. and with special emphasis here on touch and S60 5th Edition) lets you interact with friends, with full status and (favourite) location updates, derived from GPS, cell towers and Wi-Fi, plus there's interoperability with the likes of Twitter and Facebook. An interesting read!
