At the WIMA conference, currently under way in Monaco, Nokia and Rovio unveiled a preview of Angry Birds Magic, a version of the hit game that will be used to help promote NFC (Near Field Communication). The game, which continues the avian-porcine conflict, has levels that can only be unlocked by touching another NFC phone or NFC tag. The game will be pre-installed on Nokia C7's as part of the Symbian Anna update.
Today, at the Where 2.0 conference, Nokia announced the introduction of a 3D view for the web version of Ovi Maps. The 3D view, which is available for 20 metropolitan areas, uses photo-realistic 3D models to add an additional dimension to the traditional digital map view of the world. In addition, five cities also have a street level view, made up of connected 360 degree panoramic images. The new views are implemented as part of Ovi Maps 3D beta, which requires a browser plug-in to be installed.
As Easter approaches, the time is right for chocolate eggs - but what's this? The eggs have been stolen by those dastardly pigs? Yes, it's the same story, as the Angy Birds need to take back Easter. Angry Birds Seasons has received another update for the April, providing you more levels, more frustration and more physics-based feather-throwing fun.
Ovi Maps 3.7 (3.07) for Symbian^3 devices is now available for testing via the Nokia Beta Labs website. The biggest change is the modularisation of Ovi Maps into four key components: Maps, Drive, Check-in and Guides. Other updates include improvements to search, a redesign for the Places pages, the addition of location-based advertising, integration of weather into the Guides module, new voice files for navigation and easier view switching in Drive mode.
Making a brief appearance on stage as part of the Windows Phone 7 presentation, Marco Argenti, Nokia's head of developer experiences, stressed the partnership of Nokia and Microsoft, but provided no new updates on the progress of the partnership. That’s to be expected, the day was Joe Belfiore’s, and he used it to showcase the new elements of the “Mango” update, likely to form the backbone of Nokia’s Windows Phone devices going forward in 2012.
Nokia today announced the forthcoming availability of Symbian Anna, a software upgrade for all Symbian^3 devices. The update is focused around three key objectives: delivering improved usability, enhancing enterprise functionality and improving developer productivity. The update underlines the importance of, and Nokia's ongoing commitment to, Symbian. Symbian Anna will ship with new devices later this quarter and be available to all existing Symbian^3 devices in a similar time frame.
Every so often, Rafe lets us 'moonlight' over at other sites, in this case the Ovi Daily App blog. Which is where I've been reviewing Headlines, an innovative way of subscribing to and presenting news feeds in a visual and user friendly manner. It's fair to say that I encountered a number of limitations along the way, but at least some of these can be fixed in a future version and my review is, overall, optimistic.
Is it a marketing tie in for the School Holidays in the UK? Is it the third title in a long line of addiction? Is it a pretty smart game in its own right? Angry Birds Rio is all that and more. Now available in the Ovi Store, Rovio’s latest release promises a continuation of the adventures of the feathered fury, as well as showing 21st century marketeers an interesting angle in promoting a motion picture.
Updated for the 2011 Season, the official F1 timing application is one of those must-have applications for a niche group – the smartphone users who are also Formula 1 fans. Last year’s review (here) covers all the relevant ground, but with Symbian^3 handsets now available, can you still keep up to date with the hectic pace, fastest sectors and lap times during a race weekend?
Nokia Beta Labs has announced yet another experimental project, called Nokia Drop. This project sets out to push content from your desktop browser to your phone. Pushed content comes in the forum of URL's, files, images as files, or images as wallpapers. The desktop end requires a browser plugin; Firefox and Chrome are currently the only supported browsers. The phone application is available for S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3. Read on for more.
Nokia has officially 'graduated' Ovi Maps 3.6 (the version with Social check-ins, live traffic services and on-device country map loading) from Beta Labs and into the Ovi Store. This doesn't preclude further updates of course, but the application is stable and complete for now. If you want to check what version you have installed, tap on the "?" icon, then "About Maps" and then "Versions". The version of Ovi Maps now in the Ovi Store is v3.06 11wk10 b01.
From the team that brought us Nokia Bubbles comes Nokia Sleeping Screen, amping up the current OLED time and date display to include animations, better notification displays, night clock mode and even total screen blackness when the phone is covered (e.g. in a pocket). Video and details below, though you'll want to note that this currently doesn't work with the LED torch mode on the C6-01, C7-00 and E7-00, sadly. Still, it's in beta and I'm sure they'll fix that in time.
We do like to highlight bargains every now and then and, thanks to a tip off from reader Gary Moncrieff, it seems that most of the Smartphoneware titles in the Ovi Store have been reduced from their usual $10 (or so) tickets to just 1 pound (or local equivalent). If you've been eyeing up any of the following: Best Safe, Best Reminder, Best Crypto, Best TaskMan, Best SpamKiller, Best Jotter, Best Converter, Best Blacklist or Best Full Screen Message (among others), then grab them now rather than later. A few titles remain at higher prices, so do please check, etc.
The story so far. The N8 and other Symbian^3 phones came with Nokia Social networking 1.1, which was limited and slow. Version 1.2 was auto-detected and added limited social media sharing, but it was up to the 1.3 update to improve performance, insert status updates in Contacts, and extend sharing to full resolution uploads. Sadly, 1.3 was pulled after 3 days by Nokia for unspecified stability reasons, but the good news is that it's now available again, improved, fixed and facelifted, for all Symbian^3 phones over at Nokia Beta Labs and, presumably, available to a wider public on-device or in firmware at some point thereafter. Read on for new screenshots, comments and links.
I was impressed by Peter Krass's write-up over on the Ovi Daily App blog, looking at three free weather forecasting solutions for Symbian smartphones. He reviews ForecaWeather Free, AccuWeather and Weather Touch, all free or ad-supported. In particular, I had a 'duh' moment when he revealed that Weather Touch has a second, forecast screen that you only see when you rotate your phone into landscape mode. How the heck didn't I spot that before?
