With pervasive Internet something that we've all become accustomed to, i.e. every device having access to the Internet, it's not surprising that Wi-fi tethering has seen a resurgence in interest. One of the first solutions to allow laptops (etc.) access to your phone's mobile Internet over wi-fi was that from Joiku (see our review in early 2008, and as covered in my interview) and, four years later, the solution is still as relevant as ever - in fact, it's had a major facelift, making it a clear candidate for a full review here.
Learning to spell is something we all have to do. Despite having spell checkers, many editors [hey, that's me, almost a name check! - Ed] will tell you that many of us still need to learn! If you’re the kind of parent that likes to install games for the kids on your smartphone, then one to add to the library might be AppCRAFT’s eLiteracy. It is designed to help kids spell common words, numbers, colours and more.
Google Reader is a blogger’s best friend. However, there is a distinct lack of Symbian applications for this most useful of web-based RSS readers. This has left most of us using a browser to consume content on the move. However, that might be set to change with a new Qt application, which brings the Google Reader experience up to date in the Symbian Belle style. Read on to find out more.
Yes it's another vertical shooter, a genre that demands solid controls, a smooth gradient curve, the ability to keep everything legible, and to put a lot of graphics on the screen while not having any frame rate issues in terms of stuttering or slowing down of the action. The Visiting of Turjah might not have the speed, but she's got it where it counts.
One of the classic arcade games is Qix, where you have to move your cursor around, creating rectangles and filling up the playing field. Hit a pre-defined percentage and you'll clear the level. The key is to do that safely and not be killed. But can it be updated for a smartphone and changed from rectangles to circles? Bubble Filler is about to answer that question.
Bejeweled 2? After all this time, only now does it get a review? Yep, and that's for two reasons. The first is the rather obvious "we haven't done it yet" and the second is that there may have been many java versions from EA, there might have been a raft of clones that have come close, but this is the licenced Popcap version, with the "HD" optimised for Symbian tag, and given the playing field of the Ovi Store, I suspect this is the one that many people will flock to.
If you’re a budding explorer or have a taste for history, then Extreme North might be the title for you. It’s more than a game, it’s an interactive history lesson. Filled with short text passages and mini-games, you are taken on a voyage of discovery about Arctic exploration in both the 16th and 19th centuries. Read on to find out whether this is one history lesson that can overcome the attention span of the online generation.
Gedda Headz starts with an interesting premise, take a bundle of two player mini games on a smartphone, and pit the whole world against each other in a massive multiplayer game where people can earn reputation, improve the strength of their character (which is, naturally, a head) and buy new accessories and heads to help in the game. Give it all some balance, so new players can have a fair crack at the whip if challenged by an old-timer, and then roll it out as a huge social network/game hybrid. And it almost works.
As a maths scholar myself, I do love it when some of it ripples through into the real world. In this case it's Cam Measure, written in Qt for Symbian touch devices, based around one of the simplest mathematical constructs of all - the right angled triangle. Armed with a camera and accelerometer-equipped smartphone, you've then got the basis of a system for measuring distances and heights - all without actually moving from your current position. That's the theory, anyway!
Given that smartphones have supplanted PDAs, they need to be up to every sort of PIM duty, including note taking. While Symbian has the venerable Notes application, it’s something of a data silo. That is, unless you are fortunate enough to use and understand SyncML services. For those who don’t even know what those are, then perhaps SymNote by Talv Bansal will be of interest. It’s a note taking application which synchronises to the SimpleNote cloud service. Read on for our review.
