Today at 4pm BST (but also archived for later playback) Symbian are running a developer webcast focusing on the Accredited Symbian Developer (ASD) program /exam. ASD is an accredited exam program designed to test the skill / knowledge base of developers. After the exam has been taken a report is provided that allows you to quantify and individual or group's underrstanding of Symbian fundamentals.
krisse explores the wonderful world of emulators, running on your S60 smartphone and allowing you to run up classic old games and applications designed for previous generations of computer and games console....
It's now official (and rather ironic, considering my editorial of today), but all those who find the S60 3rd Edition Calendar restricting can now use a more fully-featured third party alternative. Enter Papyrus 1.2 (ignore the version no. and compatibility list, that's just Handango being slow). Ewan's already onto it, with a review in progress....
According to the latest research from Gartner, MobHappy reports via ITPro, smartphone sales are up 75% from 2005 worldwide, with Nokia accounting for 42% of the entire mobile device market, or over half of all converged devices.
A demo of Nokia's upcoming next gen game System Rush Evolution is now available for download from the N93 software support page. It will install and run on other S60 3rd Edition phones, not just the N93. Unfortunately it's unplayably slow on the E61 I tested it on, presumably because the E61 doesn't have the N93's 3D graphics accelerator chip. If that's the case, then we can probably expect a slew of new 3D-accelerated S60 models to appear early next year in time for the launch of Nokia's Next Gen games.
In the first of a series of UIQ 3 application reviews, Steve gives the top-down racer Dreamway a run for its money. Worth a look for all smartphone owners, actually, as it's also available for all S60 and previous UIQ devices.
Nokia's long-awaited combat racing game Payload for the N-Gage and N-Gage QD is now on sale in the N-Gage Game Shop as a download for €9.99. You can find out more details about the game itself by visiting the Payload game info page.
Orange and Nokia today announced that they would be working together to customise S60 for Orange signature devices. S60 is one of Orange's preferred software platforms. The Orange signature device program includes those devices which express or enhance the Orange brand and lifestyle with an emphasis on high end devices.
Just in case you missed them, I've been quite impressed by Alessandro Pace's introduction and getting started with development articles on the subject of Flash Lite, a new way of producing content for some (but currently not all) Symbian OS smartphones.
SmartphoneWare's Full Screen Caller comes under Ewan's scrutiny in his review. It's fair to say that he wasn't bowled over by the utility. See what you think and feel free to comment!
SEPT Solutions have launched the first version of Mobile Office, their Open Office (OpenDocument) file viewers, for S60 3rd Edition. Versions for 2nd Edition, Series 80 and UIQ will follow, along with editing functionality.
Still pressing for recognition of the significance (for some) of qwerty keyboards on mobile devices, Steve has a chance conversation in London and is shocked how narrowly many people seem to still use their smartphones. Here's his subsequent musings.
I was interested to see this blog entry reviewing one of the cheap add-on macro lenses that you can buy for standard fixed-focus smartphone cameras. Good stuff - but I can't find anywhere that sells them online - over to you guys in the comments?
Ewan harks back to 70's action TV with the game 'I Hate Guns', for all S60 editions. There's a plot of sorts but it's basically a platform game with lots of beating baddies up - here's his review.
