Encoding / playback improvement are dependent upon the phone being used and the program being watched (it seems not all programs are converted to all resolutions / bit rates).

Get the new widget by going to www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/ in Web on your phone.

The functionality available (playback over 3G, download ability, streaming live TV) varies depending upon your operator (Vodafone and 3 allow connections over 3G) and device (and sometimes firmware version too).  The officially compatiable devices include the Nokia N85, N86, N95, N95 8GB, N96, N97, 5800 and E71, the Samsung i8510 and i8910, but iPlayer also works on other devices including the recently released Sony Ericsson Satio.

If you can help add information about possible wider device compatibility then please do so in the comments thread.

"Just like the rest of the AAS readership, I've been having my own hardware dilemmas. I'm not blind and I can read the tea leaves, spot the signs in the sky, test the wind of change, and so on. There's an industry wide trend towards large, media-friendly touchscreens, driven by the excitement around the Apple iPhone. Yes, yes, Windows Mobile and Symbian (in the Nokia 7710) had large touchscreens first, by several years, but you can't argue with the fact that Apple popularised the concept and made it practical for the mainstream"

Read on

Here's the Symbian Foundation theme download. Screenshot below:

The Norwegian browser company are doing their best to make mobile browsing faster, so even without using the Opera Turbo feature (which involved server side compression) you'll notice there's a certain zip to bouncing around the Internet, with good on-screen feedback.

We'll be giving Opera Mobile a full review over the next few days, but for now, here are some screenshots of it in action on S60 5th Edition.

Extracts from the press release:

Opera Software today unveiled the beta of Opera Mobile 10 for Nokia and other Symbian/S60 handsets. Most notable in the new Opera Mobile 10 beta is a sleek design, which Opera first introduced to the world in the recent release of Opera Mini 5 beta. The crisp, new look introduces the Speed Dial, tabbed browsing and the always convenient password manager to Opera Mobile. Opera Mobile 10 beta is optimized for both touchscreen and keypad-style navigation.

Performance was prioritized in this beta. It is twice as fast as the previous Opera Mobile released for Symbian/S60, and users will discover significant speed improvement when downloading pages, zooming and panning. Opera Turbo is also integrated, saving end users both time and money with its server-side compression technology.

Opera Mobile 10 beta is available for Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung smartphones running Symbian/S60, 3rd and 5th editions. The beta is free to download to your computer from http://www.opera.com/mobile/next/ or directly to your mobile phone from http://m.opera.com/mobile.

You can get Google Mobile App for yourself by going to m.google.com in Web on your phone - the version for S60 5th Edition (with no 'C' key, among other aspects) comes up as 'Not compatible' but you can persevere as long as you're happy to get to the utility another way.

Once a search match is found, you're shown any results, optionally sorted by distance from your current location, in the usual way.

Google India has done a demonstration video, embedded here. Of note is the complexity of phrases which can be used and also the multi-language abilities - apparently Mandarin (Chinese) is now supported. Comments welcome if you've got the time to try this out fully!

From Google's announcement, on the subject of Mandarin support:

Up until now voice search has only been available in English, but the new version of Google Mobile App for Nokia S60 devices works for Mandarin speakers, too. We're really proud of the work we've done with Mandarin speech recognition, both because it's the most spoken language in the world, and because of the engineering challenge. To get Mandarin speech recognition to work, we had to learn a lot about this fascinating language — the differences between traditional and simplified Chinese, its tonal characteristics, automatic segmentation of text into words, pinyin representations of Chinese characters, sandhi rules, the different accents and languages in China, unicode representations of Chinese character sets...the list goes on and on.

Mandarin speakers can now search by voice for complex queries like 清华大学附近的水煮鱼 (which translates to "water-boiled fish near Tsinghua University"). Although this only works on the Nokia S60 at the moment, we're working on adding support for Mandarin speech recognition to our products on other mobile platforms, such as Android and iPhone. And bear in mind that this is a first version of our system in Mandarin, and it might not be as polished as our English version. For example, if you have a strong southern Chinese accent, it might not work as well as for people with a Beijing accent. However, our system will improve over time, so please give it a try!

(hat tip to Clinton Jeff for the YouTube link for the second video clip)

"There have always been large mobile devices, of course. The original Psion Series 5 palmtop, by modern standards, was a huge beast. As were the first few all most generations of Pocket PC. But these were unashamed two handed devices. Either held in two hands and operated with thumbs or by holding in one hand and using a stylus.

Then we had the rise and rise of S60, from about 2004 to about 2008, its classic heyday, with a determinedly one-handed interface, enabling (for the first time) 'smart' operating systems to be used 'on the go', in traditional mobile phone form factors."

Read on

Backing this up, the posted a link to Forum Nokia's device spec tables.

Having, essentially, the re-download system locked to just your Ovi username brings the Ovi Store into equivalence with the Apple and Android app stores - which I've long felt is something that needed to be in place. Now - how is it working out for you in practice? I imagine there are crossover pains for people buying items before this latest store software update?

N-Gage

(aka the Next Generation Gaming Platform)
Died aged 6 of neglect and misunderstanding,
October 30th 2009, Helsinki, Finland.

Born October 7 2003, Helsinki, Finland to a proud parent company, Nokia, the N-Gage had a difficult birth as it struggled to overcome physical defects that, while revolutionary in vision, left many people wondering what had happened during the design and testing period of the initial handset – concerns that would be repeated throughout the life of N-Gage.

I've made mistakes and its no disgrace,
the final page that I can't erase
even though I look back on my past,
could have loved you more could have made it last
Time has changed me I hope you'll see,
no one could bring your love to me
The fork in the road looks more like a knife,
when the cards have been dealt and pains in your life
my time has come there ringing the bell,
so long my love, goodbye and farewell.

Lost Love, by T. P. O'Connell

The full obituary can be read here.

The closure of the N-Gage service is a blow to Nokia's service ambitions. However it is also fair to say that N-Gage really pre-dated the Ovi strategy. As a result, in both vision and execution, it did not fit fully fit into the Ovi service portfolio, especially after the launch of Ovi Store earlier this year.

Clearly Nokia will look to push its gaming strategy forward under the Ovi Store umbrella, but it is a long way from both dedicated gaming unit (N-Gage first generation) and a gaming focused platform and community (N-Gage second generation). N-Gage was never able to move beyond a niche community. Its ease of distribution advantages has been overtaken by the rise of App Stores; similarly online service elements are now relatively common. Furthermore the lack of graphic acceleration hardware in recent Nokia S60 phones have left N-Gage games looking lacklustre, in eye-candy terms, when compared to the iPhone and other mobile gaming platforms.

Key points

• Nokia will no longer publish new games via the N-Gage service. Instead games will be made available via the Ovi Store. Nokia term this an 'evolution of their mobile gaming service', but there's no getting away from the fact that represents a failure of the N-Gage service.
   
  
• N-Gage games can be purchased until September 2010. Other parts of the N-Gage service, including N-Gage Arena, will be availale throughout 2010.
   
• The N-Gage application will continue to ship on some older devices. However new devices will not ship with the N-Gage application.
    
  
• All current N-Gage will continue to work. The online (Arena) elements will continue to work throughout 2010. However, subsequently, the online elements of N-Gage games will no longer work.
    
  
• Nokia's future gaming strategy will be based on Ovi Store distribution.
  
  Nokia are 'actively working on offering more community elements through Ovi' and will 'encourage developers to use community features in their applications'. This suggests Nokia will, in the future, offer common community / online elements, perhaps based on N-Gage technology, to developers publishing their games through the Ovi Store.
  

More details and comment shortly.

Further information, including a list of frequently asked questions, is available on the N-Gage blog.

From the press release:

"Statistics shows that almost half of all crimes committed in the street are mobile device theft. In addition, many people accidentally leave their phone in a store, on a school desk or in a taxi. With any of these scenarios, there is the possibility that someone will steal sensitive data, and use the phone under the owner’s service plan, running up a large phone bill that the owner might be responsible for. Handy Phoneguard minimizes worry and the effects of negative financial impact by providing full-time protection for the data stored on the S60 smartphone.  It even assists in getting the phone back by remotely sending SMS alerts with the new phone number — a strong, combined defense to protect the owner’s sensitive, personal data and financial obligation if the phone goes missing.

Handy Phoneguard allows users to configure the S60 smartphone to automatically lock after a certain period of time. To eliminate risks of private data unauthorized use, the application stores the chosen folders (Calendar, Contacts, Log, Messages, Photos, etc.) under password protection. Even if the device is missing, Handy Phoneguard will remotely support the smartphone security and ensure the stored data’s safety. The owner can block any access to applications or folders by sending a “LOCK” command, as well as completely wipe the data by texting “WIPE”.

Handy Phoneguard is available for 19.95 USD (14.95 EUR, VAT included) via download from http://www.epocware.com and http://www.penreader.com. 
Supported languages: Brazil Portuguese, Bulgarian, Chinese Simplified PRC ,Chinese Traditional Taiwan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German ,Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norvegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Spanish LA, Swedish ,Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian."

Screenshots (S60 3rd Edition)

Screenshots (S60 5th Edition)

Purchases made in the past are also apparently honoured, regardless of the device used. See below.

Here's the official video launching the re-download feature:

From the press release:

"With this latest Store release, we’ve added a simple way for you to restore content that you purchased and downloaded through Store to your device. We take very seriously the fulfillment of content that is acquired through the Store, and while we can’t prevent certain events that may cause damage or the loss of content, we can make it easier for you to re-acquire it. Please watch this short tutorial below to learn more about how to redownload previously purchased content.

As the tutorial explains, if you use the Store through our mobile client application, you’ll be required to upgrade to the newest version on S60 devices—look for version 1.5(387) or higher—and on Series 40 devices—look for version 1.6.1 or higher—to take advantage of redownloading. The latest version of Ovi store for S60 devices is rolling out now. If you receive a prompt to update your client, please accept it!

If you shop the Store through our mobile web site at store.ovi.com on your Nokia mobile browser, the feature is enabled today. And regardless of how you shop the Store, we will honor purchases made before this new version, so if you purchased the BlockGO game in August and it didn’t download properly, give it another shot by visiting the My Stuff section of the store.

We hope content redownloading will improve the way you use and enjoy content acquired through the Store by providing a simple, easy, and no-hassle way to make you and your content whole again.

We also updated our search experience, making it easier to access what you’re looking for across our entire content catalog. We highly value your feedback, so let us know what you think."

"BLStream, an inspired leader in emerging visual technologies, usability and entertainment on portable devices, announces the release of its first Open Source project, Open Video Hub - a Symbian-based online video player. With support for most popular video sites, powerful and easy-to-use interface, and extensible architecture with additional support for video upload, Open Video Hub enables Symbian-based phones to play, download, store and share videos. Together with source codes, all previously developed plugins were made public, including YouTube, Daily Motion and Metacafe.

Additional features include accelerometer support for auto rotation of video, local caching for offline playback and support for other
video servers, with SDK available for 3rd party developers. More information to be found at www.openvideohub.com, as well as at Symbian Exchange & Exposition in London, October 27-28th, 2009, where the product will be showcased by BLStream's representatives."

Link: Open Video Hub web site for information and downloads

Required additional link: Symbian Signed Online

From the press release :

"The S60 version of DreamConnect inherits many of the ground-breaking technologies from its UIQ and Psion predecessors. It features a clear display of information in business card format, key match, global find and hierarchical sub-categories, designed especially for users who have a large contact database.

DreamConnect's unique business card layout allows at a glance information viewing by presenting important and most frequently used information first. Category based layout customization works together to achieve greater clarity and instant contact recognition. It cleverly manages screen space to show 3 times more information than standard Contacts while maintaining easy access to using the details.

DreamConnect provides powerful and instant search of contacts using the unique KeyMatch and flexible global find. Global find allows users to perform a specific search on all text and numbers to locate information anywhere within their DreamConnect database. KeyMatch significantly reduces key presses on numeric keypads and shortens input by matching all of the letters (and the number) represented by each keypress.

The S60 version of DreamConnect boasts hierarchical sub-categories, giving S60 users the ability to organise their contacts and capture their relationships in a meaningful and realistic way.

DreamConnect for S60 3rd Edition FP1 is Certified Symbian Signed and available in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. The FP2 version is Symbian Signed and available in the same languages.

More details on DreamConnect for S60 can be found at http://www.dreamspring.com/products/dreamconnect-for-s60/dreamconnect-for-s60.html. A trial version is available at http://www.dreamspring.com/products/dreamconnect-for-s60/download.html for users to try before purchase."