EA produces its traditional annual update for one of their major titles. But have they done enough to warrant an upgrade? Ewan Spence decides to leap in and play 'spot the difference' from the 2008 version in his review over on All About N-Gage...
A couple of days ago, I was invited to spend the day at Nokia's Testing Labs at Farnborough, UK, being given a tour of the facilities and numerous demonstrations along the way. The aim was to spread the word about how rigorously Nokia test their handsets' hardware and on that front I was extremely impressed. AAS video podcast 37 is a fairly full 35 minutes of footage from the tour (taken on the N93 and N82, for those that are interested) and will let you see and hear what I saw. Enjoy.
I couldn't resist linking to this Flash site promoting the new Nokia N96 Bruce Lee Edition. Apparently the phone comes with rare photos, a Bruce Lee doll, a special back cover and a wrist strap adorned with nunchuks. There's also a somewhat amazing YouTube video (below), of Bruce defeating some Chinese table tennis champs... (via Unwired View)
Today, Nokia and IBM announced Lotus Notes (which has 140 million licensed users) support for all S60 3rd Edition-based phones. 'Lotus Notes Traveler' can connect to corporate email accounts via Lotus Domino Server, and provides real time access to email, calendar, address book, journal and to-do list data. Availability is December 2008.
Always good to see some enthusiasm from Nokia for carrying on developing Mac OS integration software, as can be seen from this article and video featuring Marko Lindgren. One tip for the Nokia Conversations team though - next time you have really poor audio on an item, don't make it even harder to hear by adding non-stop cheesy music!
At the Mobia Asia Congress, in Macau, Nokia reaffirmed its commitment to TD-SCDMA (also known as Chinese 3G) and said it was working on an TD-SCDMA enabled S60 handset for release in 2009. This follows on from the news that Digia has integrated TD-SCDMA into S60. China is one of the key emerging markets for mobile and China Mobile is one of the world's biggest operators (by customer numbers).
You've got to love those who push the boundaries - here, Vaibhav has found that putting the 1200mAh BL-6F battery into the Nokia N96 does fit, with the battery cover only 'bulging a little'. A 25% boost in battery life in exchange for putting up with a little bulge? Hmmm.... tempting!
The latest branch of Nokia Music Store has gone live in Italy, if you head over to music.nokia.it you'll find instructions in Italian on how to use the service. Interestingly in this globalised age the press release for the launch emphasises the need for local music, giving a statistic that 54% of music bought in Italy is Italian. Full text of the release is below.
Totally non-Symbian but still a valid link-of-interest for many, Engadget have been evaluating the Blackberry Storm, very much a Nokia Eseries competitor, and have come up with a refreshingly honest critique of the sprung-screened Storm - I've played with one and agree that this is one technology the Symbian world should steer clear of. Comments welcome if you've tried one too... BGR has also released its Storm review on the same day - longer, but with some very pointed criticisms. Both worth a read.
Every so often you find yourself in a situation where you wish "If only my phone could do this..." because it lacks the necessary hardware for a task. In a slightly tongue-in-cheek editorial, AAS takes a look at hardware features which are not available on modern mobile phones but perhaps should be. As always comments are very welcome in the thread below, especially your own suggestions for potentially useful phone features.
Nokia have been awarded the Green Award 2008 Grand Prix with their 'Power of We' campaign. This was an internal campaign designed to encourage discussions around environmental issues affectingNokia . By promoting their environmental programme to the global workforce, the individuals in the company could start to make a positive change to the world.
Along with a couple of other invited guests, I was privileged to get full access to Nokia's testing labs at Farnborough this morning. Two teaser photos are below the break, but there's lots more to come, once I've digested and edited all the raw video and photos I took for All About Symbian. Watch this space!
UK Publisher Tag Games has been working on a GTA styled mobile game for many months, and now Car Jack Streets is available for download. Given that the Tag founders were part of the original design team for the first Grand Theft Auto, it's no surprise that this is an addictive little mobile game, that makes best use of the smartphone environment. Ewan's full review can be found here.
Epocware have updated their security/reminder application Handy Safe Pro. Allowing you to store passwords, user names, pins and other paraphernalia (and manage them on your device or via an included PC application), this latest version has a recovery operation for accidental deletions, sub folders, and URLs now act as hyperlinks into the Web Browser.
Electronic Arts' football simulator FIFA 2009 is now available on the N-Gage platform. Just open your phone's N-Gage app, go to the Showroom section, select "Options" and then "Update Now" to see it. (It should also become available through the N-Gage website over the next day or two, if you prefer to install games through your computer.) This release is a bit of a surprise, as it had only just been announced a few weeks ago and hadn't even made it into N-Gage.com's upcoming games list. Obviously EA were working on this a long time before they announced it.
Yup, the infamous Carnival has reached 150, so congratulations all round. It's hosted at AAS favourites Mippin too, so double the reason for a link of interest here!
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