DDH Software, developers of HanDBase, the cross-platform (including S60) database solution, have launched a competition, rewarding the best two 'Applets' (i.e. designed databases, such as Pet Health or CD tracker) with full commercial runtime licenses, 'enabling the winners to turn their entries into commercially-available standalone mobile applications'. Importantly, the 30 day trial version is fine for creating the applets. Press release below the break.
Attila's been playing Herocraft's newly revived (from the Java version) Revival, now for S60 and UIQ, non-stop since it came out. Here's his review of this sumptuous and unsurprisingly deep strategy game. Revival isn't for quick-fix players, but Sid Meier fans will leap for joy.
Over on All About N-Gage, there's a special editorial on how N-Gage could potentially become a very large gaming platform indeed but not while it's left out of compatible phones' firmware. How many people will actually bother installing the N-Gage app if it doesn't come built into the phone?
The developer site Forum Nokia has published the official detailed technical specifications for the recently-announced Nokia 5320 XpressMusic smartphone. It's a Symbian S60 3rd Edition FP2 device with a QVGA screen, 369mhz processor and a rather generous 85MB of free RAM. As mentioned before, the main standout features are dedicated music and gaming keys, 24 hours music playback, N-Gage compatibility, a dedicated audio chip and a low launch price (220 euros plus taxes).
Now that all the beta-testing games have been re-released, we can look forward to completely new titles on the N-Gage platform. But which one are you most looking forward to? Click here to let us know in our latest survey...
The Nokia Music Store is now available in France, with a pricing of 1 euro per song, 10 euros per album, or 10 euros a month to listen to all the store's tracks through a PC. As with the other Nokia Music Stores, tracks can be bought onto a PC and sideloaded onto a phone, or bought and downloaded directly onto certain phone models.
These N-Gage promotions seem to be appearing thick and fast! This one is very simple and easy to enter though: just play any Gameloft N-Gage game (Asphalt 3, Brain Challenge, Block Breaker Deluxe) on your N-Gage phone (currently N81, N82, N95 and variants) and upload at least one score to the Arena before the 18th of May 2008. Everyone who does this is automatically entered into a draw for a range of prizes.
Nokia are giving away FIFA08 for N-Gage-compatible phones absolutely free to a limited number of people in Europe (we don't know the exact figure but it's in the thousands at least). It's on a first-come-first-served basis, so the quicker you act the more likely you are to get the game free. The most reliable way of getting the game free is to install the FIFA08 demo directly on your phone in the N-Gage application, then go to the special N-Gage Play site (play.n-gage.com) on your computer's browser to get the activation link sent to your N-Gage phone as a text message. When the message arrives, just click on its link to activate the game. UPDATE: If you couldn't get it activated on the mobile site, try again through the PC site! (via Symbian Web Blog)
All About N-Gage has just published an in-depth review of Asphalt 3: Street Rules for the new N-Gage platform. Is it a turbo-charged delight, or only fit for the scrapheap?
Over on All About N-Gage, we've just published an editorial discussing the release version of the new N-Gage application, looking at where there's room for improvement. There are no major disasters, but somehow the rough edges of the app currently make it feel a bit rickety.
Props to Devin for a fabulous guide to improving the quality of your photo results taken with a smartphone's auto-focus and LED-equipped camera. From fill-in flash to partial focussing, I couldn't have written a better guide myself - a must-read.
As the new N-Gage platform has finally (and properly) launched, All About N-Gage has updated its Frequently Asked Questions section to answer our readers' most common queries. If you can't find the answer you want in the FAQ, post about it in this item's comments thread and we'll try to get back to you.
...BUT not for the platform you were expecting. Showing that there's (a tiny bit of) life left in the old S60 2nd Edition platform, here's news of what appears to be a camera-controlled, wireless multiplayer version of Bejewelled - that runs on the likes of the Nokia 6630 and N70. At least there are plans to port it to something more modern.
While in San Francisco last month, Ewan popped in to see N-Gage's 'Ikona'. Here's his exclusive interview with the man who is N-Gage's public 'face'. Find out how he got started with N-Gage, and find out just how important the N-Gage blog now is to Nokia.
EA Mobile has released an official version of Tetris for the new N-Gage platform. Is it up to scratch in these 21st century days? Head on over to All About N-Gage's Tetris review to find out.