All About Symbian - Series 90 News

Eggstreme: Sizzler Supremacy - a free Symbian game for Easter

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 08:59:49 +0100

The makers of the free Xmas game Snowed In have come up with a similar Easter-themed free game called Eggstreme: Sizzler Supremacy. It's available for every Symbian platform (S60 3rd, S60 1st/2nd, UIQ3, UIQ2, Series 80 and Series 90). The S60 3rd version supports all screen resolutions including the N80 and E90. You can download the relevant game file by going here, and you can get the free unlock code by going here.

Last chance to get Snowed In 6 for free

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:25:38 +0100

Twelfth Night has come and gone so Xmas is well and truly over, but you can still get Snowed In 6: Deep Freeze for free if you hurry. Simply download the game from this page (click on the relevant "try" button), install it on your Symbian device, and then head on over to the unlock code page to get your free key. SI6 is available for all Symbian platforms, and the offer ends on the 15th of January.

You can see a gameplay video of Snowed In 6 over on the Unofficial Nokia Gaming Blog, and there are screenshots of all the Symbian versions below:

S60 3rd Edition

S60 1st & 2nd Edition

UIQ3

UIQ2

Series 80

Nokia 7710 (Series 90)

Merry Christmas to all our readers!

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:27:07 +0100

All About Symbian would like to wish all its visitors a very happy Christmas. If you're hankering after some Xmas-related Symbian action while defrosting or digesting the turkey, don't forget to check out our recent features on Symbian Christmas Games and S60 3rd Edition Christmas Themes.

A Symbian Christmas

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 14:06:53 +0100

Ah yes, Krisse does like to roundup Christmas/wintery games each year, with a couple of new entrants this time round. There are games for all Symbian platforms, most of them are free, and at the very least they should keep you going until Nokia decides to throw the switch on their N-Gage store..."As the festive season comes around again, we're taking a look at what's out there for people who want to make their Symbian phone a bit more Xmassy...

During the 1980s, it was extremely common to see Xmas-themed and Winter-themed computer games on 8-bit and 16-bit systems. This has somewhat died out lately, mainly due to the immense costs, long development times and global markets of console games. However, the Xmas/Winter game tradition is alive and well on smartphones, and there are seasonal games for every kind of Symbian.

We've divided up this article into flavours of Symbian: S60 3rd Edition, S60 1st & 2nd Edition, UIQ3, UIQ2, Series 80 and Series 90. Just scroll down to the section appropriate to your device."

Read on

Blazar - cheap enough and cheerful?

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 07:57:21 +0100

It's been around for a while for S60 and UIQ (in all varieties), but Krisse brings us a detailed review of scrolling shoot 'em up Blazar in the modern age. That'll be the 'we're all kicking our heels, seeing what else is out there, waiting for N-Gage to be properly available' age, then....

International (lack of) warranty and phones, phones, phones

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:45:46 +0100

A couple of interesting links from IM's Stefan Constantinescu, spotted yesterday. Firstly a tale and mini-rant on Nokia needing to honour warranties globally in this global age. And secondly a super-hi-res poster showing Nokia's phone range from the very start until 2006. Well worth a download.

Your Friday game, whatever your smartphone

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 08:22:40 +0100

We do love featuring game reviews on a Friday - Krisse brings us a review of a veritable Symbian classic - S-Tris 2, freeware for just about every Symbian OS-based smartphone in existence!" A very wise person once said that if you don't know what Tetris is, then you're either dead, very close to dead, or living in Peterborough and probably an estate agent.

S-Tris 2 is a freeware Tetris clone from Dutch smartphone developers Elements Interactive, and is available for pretty much every Symbian platform and screen resolution: S60 1st/2nd, S60 3rd (176x208, 240x320, 320x240, and 352x416), UIQ2, UIQ3, Series 80 and even Series 90 too. You can get all of these versions and more, right now, for free, from Elements' S-Tris 2 download page.

Other smartphone sites would stop there. However, here at All About Symbian we like to give exposure to freeware games as well as commercial games, so we're going to do a short review of S-Tris 2."

Read on

Mippin under the microscope

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 05:39:53 +0100

Web portal, proxy service or online RSS reader? Sometimes the boundaries can get a little blurred. Ewan takes a detailed look at Mippin, launched yesterday, and finds it surprisingly useful.

"Following up on our podcast interview with Prashant Agarwal, I’ve been taking a closer look at Mippin this morning. The obvious question – do we need another portal – is a tricky one to answer. Certainly the majority of the readership of AAS are going to be happy with the full web experience that both S60 and UIQ offer, but Mippin offers a much cleaner interface, and a much more regulated view – every site would have the information in the same place. Something that I’m sure the general public will appreciate."

Read on

Reminder: AAS Pub Meet next Monday

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 13:01:39 +0100

Next Monday, the day before the Symbian Smartphone Show, is the All About Symbian Pub Meet. It is a completely free and open event and everybody is very welcome to come along and join in. We'll be giving away a Sony Ericsson W950 and a Nokia E61i along with a raft of other prizes. There's also going to be two lightning talks, one from the people behind WOM World (about what they do) and one from Robert Harmsen (Trends in Mobility).

There'll be plenty of discussion around lots of different subjects and a chance to meet lots of like minded people. You can come and meet the AAS team (including Ewan in a kilt), but we're also expecting a variety of developers (one with an edible surprise allegedly), bloggers and attendees from the bigger companies at various points in the evening.

Please remember though that most people are attending as individuals (i.e. not representing companies) and really the pub meet is an excuse to have a good chat, share some time together and have something to drink.

We also know we're not the only event going on that night. Of course we can't really think of a reason why you would want to be anywhere else. That said bear in mind that you may be able to fit in more than one event as we'll be in the pub until closing time or there about...

You can get all the details you need, such as how to find the pub, on the pub meet information page.

Note: We'll be in a room at the back of the pub (upstairs). It is also quite easy to walk straight pass the pub without realising it, but it is there - honest.

10 things that have really puzzled me

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 18:19:02 +0100

If you've ever looked at an aspect of the Symbian or smartphone world and asked 'Why?', then you know exactly how I sometimes feel. This being Friday, here are some of my puzzlers for weekend pontification....

Why do companies like Symbian (they're not alone in this, you know) bother issuing time-limited DRM-like certificates for software when they're so trivial to get around? You'll recognise this if you've ever tried installing an older item of freeware or a theme. You get the message 'Certificate expired' and you sigh, pop into 'Clock' and set the year back one notch and then try installation again, successfully, before putting the year back right again. What purpose does the expiry of certificates then serve? Beats me.
Why did it take Nokia and Sony Ericsson SO long to realise that computers like RAM and that they were shipping device after device in generation after generation with far too little of the stuff. From Nokia 6630 to Sony Ericsson P800 through to the Nokia N95 and Sony Ericsson P990, RAM shortages have been an utter CURSE in the Symbian OS world. A monkey with half a brain could have figured out the bottleneck sooner, I'd have thought.
Why are Sony Ericsson so appalling at marketing their smartphones? They have a developer network second to none and here at AAS we're always receiving press releases about this and that developer initiative. But who cares about developers and third party software if there are relatively few smartphones to run it on? Nokia and S60.com rightfully shout from the rooftops about every new device, what it can do and they keep on shouting. And hiring the likes of WOM World to help spread the word has helped enormously. But Sony Ericsson only seem to stick their head up above the parapet once a year and trying to get news from them is like getting blood out of a stone. And marketing? When was the last time you saw an advert for the pretty decent P1i?
The Nokia N93i. Yes, the N93 wasn't perfect and I can see why they wanted to slim it down and make it prettier. But some of the design decisions - putting in focussing in video mode, a totally unique feature, and then ripping it out again before production made absolutely no sense. Yes, I and a few other bloggers complained about the motor noise, but we meant for this to be filtered out in software or reduced mechanically, not FOR THE ONLY REAL UNIQUE FEATURE TO BE REMOVED! Add in the terribly reflective main display that can't be read in sunlight, the UPWARDS-FACING microphones and the decision to can the original N93 (and - apparently - stop developing firmware for it) and you honestly and truly have to hope that whoever was product manager for the N93i is now serving the community more helpfully in some institution.
Ah yes, interfaces. Why on earth are there four (and arguably five) totally different ways to launch some applications in the Nokia N95? Why are the tiny main control icons in UIQ 3 tucked away in a corner of the screen where they're almost impossible to reach with a fingernail? And how on earth did it take EVERYONE so long to realise that simply redesigning the S60 'menu' button icon as a 'Home' key (as in the E51) would (roughly) triple S60's accessibility for new users?
And talking of interfaces, which illegal substance WAS the designer of the Nokia 3650's CIRCULAR keypad smoking? "Woo, round and round we go, I can see it now..." [hits 'Submit to production' button and falls over]
Why does it take so long for an Nseries camera to start up? Lesser smartphone cameras start in a (fraction of a) second, as do dedicated digital cameras that share (or surpass) the same quality of lens. So why on earth does it take the Nokia N95 five seconds to get ready to snap a picture? In five seconds, my 8 year old has long since finished doing whatever it was that looked cute and moved into the next room to do something different, leaving me about to snap a picture of nothing at all...
Why was it that, despite OPL being one of THE crown jewels in Psion's treasure store, an onboard language that enabled the creation of THOUSANDS of user-written applications, started my own career in the Symbian world, and created an entire device-recommending community, it was never given even a couple of official man hours by ANYONE at Symbian or Nokia or anyone else with money in the smartphone world. How come it's OK to spend 10 million dollars on an ad campaign but too risky to spend 10 thousand dollars on an intiative which could potentially do the same for a modern manufacturer as it did for Psion, only on a larger scale?
How come Nokia, as the single biggest Symbian shareholder and licensee, never sponsor Symbian's London Smartphone Show?
Why on earth did I title this piece '10 things' when I've only managed to come up with 9? Oh, hey, I made the 10 after all!

Steve Litchfield

PS. Actually, number 10 could have been my traditional pre-Smartphone Show rant about why Nokia ship a lot of devices with trial versions of multiple anti-virus suites, all designed to slow devices down and hog their RAM, when there is precisely zero chance of a Symbian OS 9 device contracting or being affected by malware in the first place. But then you've heard me on this well worn track many times before, so I decided not to mention it. Ah, I seem to have done so anyway....

Announcing the AAS Pub Meet 2007!

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:10:22 +0100

Ho yes. Another year has flown by and we present the All About Symbian As-Official-As-It-Gets 2007 Pub Meet. Prizes, Demos, Speakers, Chit-chat and good beer. In case you haven't been to one before, here's AAS video podcast 21, in which I waffle on about what to expect from the pub meet and some other minor event happening the next day over in Docklands...

Please get in touch if you would like to provide a prize or sponsorship.

"Every year on the night before the Symbian Smartphone Show, All About Symbian organises an open meeting for Symbian users, developers, manufacturers and 'interesting people'(!) to come along for an informal get-together. This year is no different, and we hope that everyone who comes along will find a warm welcome, friendly conversation and have a good night out."

The videocast is embedded below:

Multimedia from All About Symbian

The Symbian Smartphone Show goes 'final'

Tue, 04 Sep 2007 13:22:24 +0100

Symbian has finalised its agenda and show layout for its annual Smartphone Show in London, on 16-17th October at the ExCeL centre. Listed below are some of the last minute speaker sign ups and some thumbnails, plus links. The show is free to attend, as is the AAS pub meet on the evening of the 15th, details to be announced, but the prize list is pretty impressive....(!) Oh, and keep the evening of the 16th free as well - watch this space.

Show Latest:

New speaker: Bobby Yerramilli-Rao, Corporate Strategy Director, Vodafone
Bobby Yerramilli-Rao is Corporate Strategy Director at Vodafone, and as such is instrumental in setting the strategy for the company as a whole [more...]

New Sponsor: Blackberry Connect
The BlackBerry® solution offers a variety of services that go far beyond email. With support available for Symbian OS™ via BlackBerry® Connect™ technology, [more...]

Show Highlights:

All the major handset manufacturers will be there in October
The Terminal will be hosted by some of the world's biggest handset manufacturers including LG, Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, Fujitsu [more...]

The Symbian Developer Network will be live at the show
Symbian Developer Network LIVE! For developers, the Symbian Developer Network is going live, quite literally, at the show and is your chance to meet the people who produce the SDN; research the ASD exam questions and run the Symbian Academy [more...]

More about the event:

Don't miss the biggest smartphone event of the year with the opportunity to experience the future of mobile direct from the industry's most forward-thinking players.

The world's biggest brands are going mobile and they're doing it first on smartphones. Consumer electronics, Internet, entertainment, commerce and publishing are all going mobile and they need your help to get there.

At the show:

Here & Now - Today's most successful smartphone services, presented by leading innovators and entrepreneurs
Mobile Futures - Ground-breaking technology that will power tomorrow's phones and deliver tomorrow's experiences
Symbian Developer Network Live! - All the tools and support needed to build the future of mobile
My Show - Log in to meet and network with the smartphone community; before, during and after the event

Speakers include:


Nigel Clifford, CEO, Symbian	Toshio Miki, MD, DoCoMo	Lee Williams, Senior VP, Nokia	Bobby Yerramilli-Rao Corporate Strategy Director Vodafone	Mats Lindoff, CVP & CTO, Sony Ericsson

David Wood, EVP Research, Symbian	Jim Balsillie, Co-CEO, RIM	Guido Mangiagalli Head of New Channels, Visa Europe	Tomi T Ahonen Best Selling Author	Padmasree Warrior EVP and CTO Motorola

Link: The Symbian Smartphone Show

Opera Mini goes landscape!

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:24:29 +0100

The best loved (and free) phone browser in the world just got better. Opera Mini 4 has just hit beta 2, with a mountain of changes, including 'landscape' mode, detailed below. The usual caveats about it using Java and being RAM hungry apply, but that aside, it's just about perfect!

"12 reasons to love Opera Mini 4 beta"

1) It's fast and it's revolutionary

Impress your friends and wow yourself with Opera Mini 4 beta as you quickly navigate the entire Internet on the world's only super fast and free mobile phone browser. Access any site at any time, anywhere, and on almost any phone.

Opera Mini 4 gives you the power of full Internet browsing — all inside of your mobile phone.

2) It really is that easy

When you go to a web page, Opera Mini will show you the overview of the page, then suggest where to begin reading. Then, Opera Mini zooms quickly in on the web page and focuses on the content you want to read.

3) Text and images just fit — less scrolling

Opera Mini dynamically changes the size of text and images, making it more convenient to read, and saving you a lot of unnecessary scrolling!

4) View pages in Landscape mode

Want to view the Web on a wider screen? Just hit * # and flip your phone to the side to enjoy browsing in Landscape mode. Change your default view to landscape by turning "Landscape mode" on inside your Settings menu.

5) Search just multiplied

Now you can search for and access info even quicker on the go. Find whatever you need using Opera Mini's multi-search Start Page. Several starter search engines, including Yahoo!, are available directly from your Opera Mini Start Page.

6) Create or grab search!

Just like in Opera for your computer, now you can create your own Web search from any search field on the Internet using Opera Mini. Simply click on the search field that you want to grab on a Web page and then choose "Create search" within your menu alternatives. Then you can enjoy making frequent searches without having to type in the site link again.

7) Opera Mini's got a mouse!

Opera Mini now gives you a virtual mouse, so you can easily scroll in any direction. Move the mouse cursor towards what you want, and then it quickly snaps your view to the link or content.

8) Become a power scroller

Now you can scroll at warp speed using your phone keypad. Find your way around on the web pages quicker using simple keypad commands. Simply hit 2 to go up, 4 to go left, 6 to go right and 8 to go down. Opera Mini will snap the view to the content. Hitting 5 zooms you in and out.

9) Fast = cheaper browsing

Because Opera Mini 4 quickly delivers the Internet to your phone, this drives the cost of your data bill down. Since Opera Mini loads your requested web pages at over twice the speed of the other mobile browsers on the market, that means you get more content in less time. Since Opera Mini compresses the data before it is delivered, that means less data has to come through. Since less data means less money, you actually pay less to get faster service!

10) Too wide? Just resize!

Opera's unique "Small Screen Rendering" feature (the function is titled "Fit to width") lets you better enjoy web pages on the small screen. Fit any web page to width and Opera Mini 4 beta will adjust the page structure on the fly, so you can see more and scroll down a single column. That way you can browse up and down without also having to worry about horizontal scrolling.

11) Keystrokes for quick browsing

While browsing with Opera Mini 4 Beta, you can take control over your viewing options with a few quick keystrokes. Just hit 1 to open the Context Menu, where you can turn on Small Screen Rendering (Fit to width) or reload the page.

Or, before you click on a link, focus the cursor on a link to check where the link will take you. You can then choose whether you want to open the linked page with images turned off. If you choose to browse with the images turned off, you can still choose to load these images in the page you are browsing by selecting "Load images." You can even load the image in its uncompressed, high-quality, original size by choosing "Open image."

12) Tools and support for web designers

Because Opera Mini 4 Beta strives to deliver the best web browsing experience possible for every device and medium, we offer great support for web designers who want to make their websites look even better to those browsing with Opera Mini. In this latest beta, we have included all of the cool CSS support that web designers need to make their web pages look pixel perfect on in the mobile web world.

No Outlook needed! Syncing to Mobical

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 11:57:05 +0100

Steve Litchfield has been getting twitchy feet over his reliance on Outlook as the PIM partner to his smartphones and he's overjoyed to find a Web-based PIM that's totally cross platform, that supports just about every smartphone ever made and which is completely free! In this walkthrough, he explains how to set Mobical up and start syncing.

"There's one big thing that's always got me down about keeping Symbian OS smartphones synced with my PC and that's the reliance on Microsoft Outlook, which is both the default and often ONLY PC client software that's fully supported. Syncing is important for two reasons, of course. It maintains a full backup of your important PIM data on a physically separate computer and it lets you access the data (or enter new entries) on perhaps a larger screen and keyboard.

Now, I've got nothing against Outlook, but the way it's part of an enforced activation process against a specific PC's hardware makes me nervous. Wouldn't it be great to have a way to seamlessly sync with something totally neutral and platform-agnostic? No reliance on Microsoft and their activation schemes or fees. Just fool-proof syncing to a home on the web."

Read on....

Opera Mini 4 Beta now available

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 09:59:43 +0100

The beta of Opera Mini 4 is now available from the Opera website. The new version renders a full page overview from which you can then zoom in to read the page (very reminiscent of S60's browser overview / minimap mode). Other new features include the introduction of a mouse and power scrolling making it easier to move around pages and a quick access context menu. Read on for more and screenshots.

The beta seems reasonable stable, although as a Java application it does use a fair amount of RAM on Symbian devices. The rendering is good, although not quite perfect in places. However it is very impressive to see this sort of application created in Java and given it can run on a great many devices should prove popular.

Web pages are not rendered in exactly the same way you would see them on a PC. Instead text is rendered in to columns which are are the width of your phone's screen. This minimises the amount of scrolling needed when reading text.

As before Opera compresses the pages and images on the server side before it sends them to the phone. This means pages load more quickly and less data is consumed than traditional browsers. The side effect of this is that is much more practical to browse full web pages rather than mobile version. A good example of this is the BBC News website, Opera says it takes around 40kb in Opera Mini versus 240kb in other mobile browsers. Opera tested against the S60 web browser running on an N93 on a UMTS (3G) network and found that Opera Mini 4 was on average twice as fast. My own tests suggest there is a significant difference, but it might not be as large as Opera suggest and of course there are other factors to take into consideration.

The previous version of Opera Mini used a fit to screen model (effectively squashing a website into one thin column). This works quite well on a mobile device and although the full page view is now the default you can switch to fit to screen in settings or via the new context menu (as shown above).

The new mouse and power scrolling features make moving around the enlarged pages (compared to the previous version) much easier. It is among the fast navigation experience around a page that I've seen on any mobile browser.

Opera Mini 4 is not yet fully featured, notably some of the security features found in version 3 are not present. Opera says it will adding these and additional features later.

You can see more information on Opera Mini 4 here. We'll have a full review once it is out of Beta.