Steve Litchfield's been trialling Route 66 for S60 3rd Edition. Has it improved since the very first 'Series 60' version? Sadly, not much, although it's still a competent choice. Here's the lowdown on what's good and what's bad.
The Nokia E50, E60, E61 and E70 have now been added to the Nokia Phone Software update service. Thanks to Stefan and Tommi's Blog for the heads up. The service is now also available on the Europe wide site.
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.
Map24 has launched Map24 Mobile, a free mobile version of it's mapping and routing service. The mobile version downloads data over the air (watch those data charges) and includes full map coverage of Europe. The application is currently in Beta and is available for both 2nd and 3rd Edition S60 devices.
Nokia's Eseries range of devices may have an enterprise focus, but that does not mean their users are not interested in music playback. In this article Steve describes how to get the optimum music performance out of your Eseries (E60, E61, E70) phone.
According to a report on Gamesindustry.biz, Nokia is to be joint sponsor along with PC World of the 2006 BAFTA Games Awards. Nokia will sponsor the Gameplay award which is voted for by members of the public, and is apparently carrying the N-Gage brand. This continued support for the name implies that they're going to continue using it with their Next Gen games service due to launch in the first half of 2007 on new Nokia S60 smartphones.
Attention N-Gage and N-Gage QD owners: the acclaimed pirate-themed strategy game High Seize is now just €9.99 via download at the N-Gage Game Shop. Arcade game Mile High Pinball and martial arts simulator One are also still available at the reduced price of €9.99.
Yacht has been around as a game since long before computers, but it's still a good mobile gaming application. ZingMagic's Yacht for S60 v3 (versions for UIQ and S80 are also out there) is a perfect slice of fun, as I found out in my latest review .
The team behind ShoZu , the photo uploading toll for those with cameraphones and accounts on services such as Flickr, have let us know their server will be down for up to 24 hours from 4am GMT on September 5th. Check your watches when you post!
A tiny bit skewed by not including free applications, but there's still plenty of merit in an app being nominated as a 'Handango Champion'. Here are the official 2006 finalists (click through and choose 'S60' or 'UIQ', warning - it's a Flash-based site)
I don't normally post software news items here (after all, they're listed in the right hand strip, in date order), but TimeTrack was one of my most-used utilities on S60 2nd Edition and it's now available for all 3rd Edition devices. Recommended for any professional who needs to account for his or her time.
S60.com continue to put out licensed games as free 'exclusives', this month featuring shoot-em-up Galaxy Fighter. Curiously, their exclusives are for only older S60 2nd Edition smartphones though, which is a bit of a shame...
Raccoon, the port of the Apache webserver for S60, is now available, as a preview release, for S60 3rd Edition. The web server, once connected and running on the phone, is accessible from any web connected computer or the device itself.
Shozu, the multimedia upload tool for smartphones, now supports sending videos directly to YouTube, the video sharing service, from your phone. YouTube is now an optioanl destination for your video uploads. Shozu's advantages is that you can upload a multimedia item just once, but send it to multiple destinations.
In our S60 3rd Edition Essentials Rafe and Steve pick the applications that you really need to install on your S60 3rd Edition smartphone. Of course everyone has a different opinion so be sure to leave your choice in the comment thread.
