Symbian Themes, the leading website for customisation elements (including themes, wallpapers and operator logos) for your S60 phone has been relaunched. The site is now part of a wider Mobile Themes brand, has a new design, and new features such as automatic screenshot creation of uploaded themes and device compatibility information with more, such as an online theme creation tools, scheduled for the near future.
The Sendo Smartphones web site has a short but interesting piece speculating on the possible merging of Sendo X2 development work and Motorola's latest announced UIQ smartphone.
Rally simulation/game ChaseHQ2 Evolution looks a million dollars from the screenshots. But be warned that all is not currently sweetness and light. Have you got 8MB of RAM free? No, neither had I. Here's the full review.
PyS60 is now available on SourceForge. This means you can get and contribute to the source code for the Python runtime for S60. Python for S60 is rapidly gaining a dedicated following. For those wanting to learn more about Python for S60 Jurgen Scheible's comprehensive Python S60 tutorial and the Python Series 60 Wiki are very useful.
A new blog has been added to S60.com, the S60 Multimedia Blog, written by Jukka Ekland and it will be covering all aspects of multimedia related to the S60 platform. There are already several intering posts including one about the inclusion of Real Player in the S60 SDK (of interest to developers) and another about MP4 video recording (of general interest).
Steve's been trying to stay platform-impartial, as part of reviewing smartphones for his TV show, but it's just... so... hard.... It's not just in sales that Nokia's S60-based smartphones are ahead of the Windows Mobile competition. Read on...
Have you ever wondered about keeping structured data and lists on your smartphone? Steve Litchfield introduces HanDBase for Series 60 and shows what it can do.
Ewan's been doing some hard thinking about the issue facing music on your smartphone, and, in summary, he's having a few doubts about the whole concept. Read the article (and the second opinion) and then let us have your thoughts in the comments thread.
Navicore has announced the launch of a new version of its navigation system for S60 phones - Navicore Personal 2006. New features include updated maps from Tele Atlas, 7 digit UK post code support, traffic and POI updates via GPRS, multiple modes (cyclist, pedestrian, car) and integration with the phones contact store. The S60 version is available immediately and Series 80 and UIQ will be supported later in the year along with European map availability.
3D Tracking is an innovative service which allows you to see where you (or rather a suitably set up mobile) has been. The service allows you to view current and past routes and positions. It uses information from a Bluetooth GPS to send location information (via a small piece of Java software) to their servers and display the results overlaid on Google Maps or Google Earth. The service is available at no charge.
Analysts In-Stat only heap ridicule upon themselves with this piece of research. The "big winners will be Microsoft and Linux, at the expense of RIM and Palm OS"? Er... what about Nokia (and Symbian OS) with its 60% worldwide share of the smartphone market?
Nokia has officially teamed up with (get this list) Intel, Motorola, Modeo and Texas Instruments, to form a new organisation devoted to seeing DVB-H established as the worldwide mobile digital TV standard. Pretty cool, especially as the announcement was made in the USA, home of competing proprietary digital TV systems.
The Smartphones Show programme 3 is now online. The 20 minute videocast features a preview of the Nokia 9300i and has a real world run through of TomTom MOBILE 5 in action on a Series 60 smartphone, plus other features.
Opera Mini, the java midlet based version of the popular mobile browser, is now officially and freely available worldwide from the Opera Mini website. We've previously reviewed the free browser and gave it the thumbs up. Full Press Release Follows
