In the great explosion of Tetris clones in the mid-eighties, many companies sought to tweak the format very slightly to have a game that was a bit like Tetris, but couldn’t be called the same if it ever came to court. One of the more popular alternative formats that’s still programmed by developers is the “spinning block of four colours/try and match three colours in a row” format.
While not a stand-out genre in the mobile world, the addition of accelerometers into mobile handsets has brought about the frustrating return of the marble rolling game. If you can recall the little puzzles of your childhood where you rolled a marble around a maze to get to an exit – then this is exactly the same - with even some pseudo 3D thrown in. Just don’t throw your phone against the nearest wall in frustration!
In part 1 of our Nokia E7 review, Rafe looked in detail at its hardware and gave first impressions of using the device. In part 2, I looked at the E7's 8 megapixel EDoF camera in detail. In this, part 3, I am looking at using the E7 for multimedia, video playback, gaming and more... In part 4, coming up next week, David Gilson will look at the E7's core competencies: email, messaging, Office document handling and so on.
Action Bowling has an impressive list of bullet points, including “Bowling alley, bowling ball and pins built according to PBA regulation specifications”, so before you even download the title, it’s setting the standard quite high. Luckily, Action Bowling (ten-pin, not lawn or carpet bowling) does just enough to clear it. Scrappily, but it does manage it.
quickNet is a simple application designed to help you switch between the various radio modes available in your Symbian device. The premise is that it’s easier to launch an app, rather than dig through the menus and submenus of the Settings application. There aren’t any other applications like this around for Symbian, so read on to see how well it works in practice!
Following on from my mental note that “Uno is a bit like Mau Mau” in my review of the Gameloft HD game, here comes Lonely Cat Games with Mau Mau for Symbian! The gameplay is similar (by design) but does Mau Mau have a trump card to help it stand out against the colourful competitor? [editor's note: this was one of my favourite S60 games back in the day - give it a chance!]
In part 1 of our Nokia E7 review, Rafe looked in detail at its hardware and gave first impressions of using the device. In this, part 2, I look at the E7's 8 megapixel EDoF camera in detail. How much do you lose in terms of quality, compared to the N8's stellar camera? What about low light photos? What about video capture? And reading QR codes? It's all tested below. In part 3, coming up in a few days, I'll be looking at multimedia, video playback, gaming and more...
I don’t know, you wait all that time for a Petanque game, and then two come along in the space of six months. If you’ve moved up from the 5th Edition handsets and you enjoyed Big Roll in Paradise and found that it’s not available on Symbian^3, then perhaps Woody Games’ Petanque Boule Fighters will sate your desire for throwing balls around your touch screen.
Gameloft continue with an impressive run of mobile games, and our commenters can continue their impressive run by pointing out that, just like most games from the console developers, it’s been available on other platforms before. I’ll trump them on that, because Settlers has had a long life on the desktop before Gameloft bought its current incarnation to any of the smartphone platforms. But was it a good decision to bring it to Symbian?
Here I'm reviewing the final retail version of the E7 - the new king of Nokia's Eseries line up. This extensive first review part focuses primarily on the hardware, but it also considers the device's business and multimedia credentials. Future review parts in the coming days from Steve and myself will look at each of these, and other areas in even more detail.
