Ewan reviews Pocket Sudoku, the latest freeware entry into an admittedly crowded genre. Summary? Functional and free, although it's fairly inflexible and it doesn't hold your hand like the more commercial offerings.
If there's one thing sure to bring up more questions, gotchas and technical problems in the All About Symbian forums, then it's how memory works on your smartphone. Steve's taken a look at this issue, and his guide to making the most of your memory is essential reading.
The Register's Andrew Orlowski has had a pretty bad time of reviewing Yahoo! Go! for Series 60, with a constant stream of unwanted data traffic, an application shouting "use me!" all the time and perhpas a rather unwarranted personal attack on members of Yahoo. A long read that's more about why PC web services don't work on phones rather than a balanced product review - nevertheless it's entertaining.
Yahoo has launched ZoneTag, a free S60 v2 application to aid uploading of photos to Flickr, together with GPS or cell-tower-aided positioning information (via tags). Other features include setting privacy viewing options and customised tags.
Trivopaedia, beloved of so many for (ahem) checking answers in pub quizzes, is now updated to v2.1. A free download in iSilo and Mobipocket formats for any PDA or smartphone.
Steve Litchfield takes a detailed look at Onskreen's Fusion system for integrating latest news and information into your Series 60 idle/standby screen. Summary? It's cleverly done, but linked to inappropriate story URLs and could be very expensive in terms of GPRS.
It seems those sneaky(!) OggPlay developers have been coding without telling anybody. While everybody's links have been to the project home page, there have been lots of updates going onto the downloads page. Why not upgrade your S60, S80 or S90 version of OggPlay now?
Following on from Nokia's release of Python as Open Source and my own intro article, it seems that applications are starting to appear. Just to recap, with Python anybody can create their own Series 60 programs very quickly. Here's a gallery of apps so far and here's my own Musician 1.5, hopefully a professional example of what can be achieved.
Nokia has confirmed the N91 Music Phone, initially due out for Christmas 2005 has been delayed due to isses with the Music DRM (reports The Register). As the N91 launch date continues to slip (and starts to get a whiff of vapour ware), the Sony Ericsson Walkman phone from 3GSM is starting to look more and more attractive. Not least because its 4gig of memory is in flash, while the N91 runs off a 'miniature' hard drive.
I've updated the 3-Lib smartphone comparison Grid again - see which device it recommends for you! Also updated is my A list page, with a surprising winner. At least I give my reasons...
Steve tests Mobile Search for Series 60 (and 80), for finding specific text strings in your PIM data and file system, and finds that it's now quite usable, with more promised from the developers in the future. Here's the review.
Gamasutra have posted a long and interesting interview with Nokia about their upcoming N-Gage platform plans, along with a photo of a smart concept device. Thanks to Engadget for the heads up.
It must have been tough at the bars of 3GSM, because the latest N-Gage competition, Snakebite, sounds just like something invented after all the beer had been drunk dry. Simply post a score online from Snakes before the 28th of Feb and you could win one of many reptillian prizes (including a snake-bite kit, a Snakes T-Shirt, '277 Secrets Your Snake Wants You to Know' or even a copy of Whitesnake's 'Snakebite' album. The mind boggles...
Ewan's broken out his N-Gage to review the latest epic from Nokia. Civilisation (II) is a port from the classic PC game of the early 1990s and looks to be solidly implemented.
Programme 5 in the popular TV-style Smartphones Show is now online, with a feature on what makes smartphones smart and cool things to do with them, a look at the competition, in the form of the Orange SPV C600, video from our Rafe from 3GSM and some basic Symbian UIQ/generic tips.