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Along with the brand new touch N97, Nokia also unveiled new software at its Nokia World show in Spain today--bringing a free new version of Maps and updated email/IM services.
It's been a long time coming, but after dabbling with touch on the midrange 5800, Nokia has finally brought a touchscreen to an S60 "N-Series" smartphone, the N97. Take a look at our hands-on impressions and the complete rundown on Nokia's new flagship.
Posted by Nick Broughall at 9:30 AM on November 28, 2008
Pretty much all anybody talks about when they talk about phone gaming these days is the iPhone. Sure, you might get the occasional reference to N-Gage, or Brickbreaker might get an update, but that's about it, right? Wrong. As of today, if you're the proud owner of a Nokia N95 8GB, N82 or E90 handset, you can now play Quake 3 Arena on your mobile, with full multiplayer.
Of course, playing a full-blown FPS with a phone's awkward, packed keypad isn't exactly appealing, so the ported game as full Bluetooth keyboard and mouse support. Just forget for a moment what playing a game with a full keyboard and mouse while watching your phone's tiny screen would be like for a second and consider that this is actually a triumph for modern handsets. The fact that we can play a game that required top-of-the-line hardware a decade ago on our mobile phones is newsworthy just in itself.
If you own one of the three compatible phones and want to get your Quake 3 Arena action on, click the link below and follow the instructions. Just remember though - you'll need to own a copy of the game for this to work.
[Symbian Freak via Decoder]
Before 2007, using the internet on your phone would make you want to kill yourself, if you were dumb enough to believe the crap splattered across that tiny screen even was the "internet." But the combination of increased bandwidth and better mobile software means that more phones really are promising to deliver the real internet, in living colour. We tested eight different browsers, and while some put smiles on our faces, others proved that rendering HTML correctly is a far cry from actually giving you an awesome web experience. And what about 3G vs. Wi-Fi? Everything the carriers have told you is a lie. This is the true state of mobile web.
VMware, which consumers know mostly for their Fusion desktop virtualisation software, is moving into the mobile space, albeit surreptitiously. The company has announced VMware MVP, a thin layer of software that will interface between handsets' hardware and operating system, allowing for a standardised development platform across any handsets that include it. What does this mean for regular consumers? For now, not much. If the tech finds enough support for hardware vendors, though, the consequences could be major.
It's no secret that UIQ effectively died when it merged into the Symbian Foundation earlier this year. But at a Symbian event this week in London, Sony Ericsson reiterated that the platform is destined for certain death and mentioning that it "didn't attract the operator, manufacturer or consumer interest needed to stop it from failing." Ouch.
Samsung also included this puntastic entry into its offerings at London's Smartphone Show. The INNOV8, Samsung's first 8MP camera phone, comes with a 2.8-inch 16 million colour LCD, 8GB or 16GB of flash memory (with an eternal SD card slot), an optical mouse, HSDPA and WiFi connectivity and a GPS navigation and geo-tagging service. The camera part of the mobile utilises smile shot, blink shot and face recognition, and you'll also get a couple media editing programs thrown in for good measure. No word yet on price or availability, or whether the lens is good enough to make the 8MP sensor worth it.
Samsung is still supporting another, non-Google open operating system for mobiles, showing off a couple of Symbian-based smartphones at a recent event in London. The Samsung I7110 doubles as a phone and a navigation device, while the Samsung L870 is being marketed as a fashion slider.
Qik, the service that turns a smartphone with a data plan into a live-streaming webcam, now works with over a dozen feature/non-smart/dumb phones with a new J2ME client currently in alpha. If you're a proud owner of one of the following 13 phones, you can start fiddling with the alpha today; and on top of that, Qik wants your help in bringing the Java alpha up to speed on another 10 S40 Nokia phones that are currently unsupported.
The latest beta for Opera Mobile 9.5 is out now. It adds a few things to the mix, but they're pretty big. Besides being faster, it now comes with widgets, making it the first mobile browser to offer extensions (though Firefox Mobile will be right behind it)—you can grab the SDK to make your own here. The five that come with it are Twitter, AccuWeather, a clock, Shopping List, and Bubbles, a Tetris knockoff. Finally, Symbian UIQ users can also get their 9.5 beta on now.
