Telcogames have been slowly making moves into the Symbian market, but that's about to change with their accquisition of Magic Productions. Magic, the company behind ports of Qwak and Another World, are strong in the 16-bit conversion market. These titles, which have great name recognition in carrier portals, are in the market now, with the recently launched Cannon Fodder and Nebulus following that tradition.
New over on 3-Lib is a big update to my media gallery archive for anyone needing high-res photos of Symbian-powered mobile devices, especially in lifestyle situations. Many recent devices are now covered, as well as long-lost images from Psion days.
Thomas Boys, after going beyond the call of duty in acquiring one, brings us this review of the Panasonic X800 Series 60 smartphone. Summary: good hardware and good software bundle but don't buy this for music or video functions.
Ewan breaks into Nokia's HQ and ends up being given a detailed preview of the Nokia E60, perhaps the ultimate candybar Series 60 (S60) smartphone. Summary: it may not swivel, slide or snap, but it'll do everything else bar make the tea.
Ewan interviews Chia-Lin Simmons from Audible about their plans for spoken word audio content in the Symbian world. Here's the interview. Summary: all very polished, but as with ROK TV, you might want to wait for unlimited GPRS tariffs before subscribing.
This actually appeared a few days ago, but most people missed it. There's a Flash demo of the new next-gen S60 webbrowser over on S60.com. Pretty cool stuff and serves to demonstrate yet again the difference between what a true smartphone can do and a glorified WAP feature phone...
Futuremark has announced the new SPMarkJava06 benchmark for evaluating handheld devices performance in running Java applications. The benchmark includes test for the latest Java functionality (MIDP 2, CLDC 1.1, JSR 184). Read on for a quick overview and results from several Symbian devices.
Now up to v1.15, Domi Hugo's essential Series 60 file manager continues to blaze a trail for freeware applications. Changes in this version include better cursor control, more error checking for free RAM, progress bars and improvements to the hex editor. Download available at www.gosymbian.com.
There's just one month left to register your interest in the Nokia/Macromedia Series 60 Third Edition Programming Challenge over at Forum Nokia. With a prize fund of 100,000 Euros split over various categories, tehre's plenty of scope for Developers to work with. And if it helps you get your applications ready for S60 v3, then Nokia will probably think 'mission accomplished' when the final builds are submitted in March 2006.
Only launched a couple of days ago, Steve snatched the review copy of Virtual Pool Mobile out of Ewan's jet-lagged hands and has been up all night trying to beat the pool hall bosses. Here's the full review. Summary: great physics, this is as real as it gets, though more work is needed on the sound effects.
Opera has today released v8.5 of its advanced browser for many Series 60 smartphones. The highlight is the new zooming system which lets you zoom right in or out of text and images. Here are the Download and Changes pages. The new version is a free upgrade if your device came with Opera already bundled.
OK, so it's in an unofficial Nokia blog, but it's still good to see freeware applications get more exposure. See Tommi's blog for a really good plug for Series 60 freeware and a list of starting points.
Ever so quietly, Nokia has upgraded and updated its (free and fabulous) Mobile Search tool for all Nokia S60 smartphones from the 6630 onwards. The new version is 1.2.a and can be downloaded here. If you haven't heard of the tool before, see also Rafe's detailed analysis and in-depth test.
