After the brace of S60 devices announced at MWC, I've done an update to my comprehensive S60 comparison table. Still a few 'Unknown's, so comment if you can help fill any in. Also of note is that Forum Nokia now has the official specs of the new Nokia devices online.
Opening my email, I see I've won an amazing prize - the "brand new Apple Iphone Nokia 8GB"! It's allegedly part of the "Nokia 'N' Series New Year Program", and also comes with a cash prize of five hundred thousand pounds.... Oh it's spam? Darn. But isn't it interesting that viagra is no longer the big draw in email fraud, but phrases like "to promote the use of mobile phones with the world as a global village" are? More below...
Nokia is calling on mobile developers with new ideas to take part in its Mobile Games Innovation Challenge, and at least one winning game will be published by Nokia on its new N-Gage platform (which is based on S60 3rd Edition). Entries will be accepted from the 3rd of April 2008, so if you're interested it might be worth starting work now. Established developers and publishers can already apply to publish commercially on the platform, or find out more on the N-Gage developer site.
I couldn't resist passing on Nokia's Nseries team's latest marketing skit, showing off the inner workings (ahem) of the Nokia N78. Funny stuff, see below!
You've got to love all the cool widgets and utilities coming out of Nokia Beta Labs. They just announced the availability of Nokia Text Messenger, a Windows Vista desktop gadget to show your received text messages and let you send new ones.
3D graphics benchmarks aren't the 'be all and end all' when it comes to games playing performance, but they're a good clue as to how capable a device is. So it was interesting to find out about a regularly updated and bookmarkable table of OpenGL ES benchmarked smartphones. It's topped by the 'if you believe Nokia' obsolete N93 and the N-Gage 1st access smartphone, the N81, comes in a lowly 22nd. Read on for comment.
The 'Vase' is just a concept device, to be sure, but it got me thinking. Is this the way to handle a smartphone interface where there's enough functionality to overwhelm beginners? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it's a question that's good to ask.
There's a really nice video interview just up on the BBC site with Nokia's N-Gage head talking about the next gen games platform and demonstrating several of the games. And the video interview, just like my own Smartphones Show, was shot ON an Nseries smartphone, apparently. Cool points all round!
For your weekly dose of generic mobile writing, you'll find it over at Vision Mobile. Worth checking out over a cup of tea or coffee....
It seems that some firmwares for the Nokia 6110 Navigator have a major issue with the core navigation function and that Nokia are recalling some handsets (those that are branded) and fixing others with firmware updates. See the comments below for more info, it's a licensing screwup... (via IntoMobile)
Popcap Games (or the online gaming equivalent of crack cocaine) have inked an agreement with Nokia to bring a number of their titles to mobile, and to use the SNAP mobile platform to provide multi-player support for the Java based titles. In rough terms, SNAP is similar to the N-Gage Arena, but primarily for J2ME applications, and it can also be run by a network provider as their own gaming portal (eg YourNetwork Gaming Portal, SNAP powered), which should make the networks as happy as the gamers.
Ewan continues to ponder on the ramifications of Mobile World Congress. How will the next year or so pan out and who will be the winners and losers? More importantly, in which direction is the smartphone industry heading?
MoCo News is carrying a number of reports from the Games Developer Confernece in San Francisco, including this keynote from Gameloft's CEO Michael Guillemot. With news that there was no Christmas spike in mobile game sales, he compared the current market to that of the end of life of a console - which should promise an upturn in 2008 as new hardware, techniques and greater public visibility will help drive awareness and (hopefully) sales.
If you haven't already, do check out All About N-Gage today as we have a huge wave of news about Nokia's S60 gaming platform. Perhaps most interesting of all is a leaked video of the upcoming Creebies game, a first party title exclusive to N-Gage which seems to be a bizarre mixture of (fluff)Friends, the Sims and Animal Crossing. Also appearing is a "Making Of" video for the N-Gage-exclusive 3D fighting game ONE.
From accelerometer enthusiast(!) Andrew Galpin comes news: "The first of Samir’s two new apps have been released to beta testers. The first one, ShakeMe (video below), allows the user to perform certain actions on their phone by Shaking it, rather than using a keypress. Currently it supports 4 modes, with more to be added in the next release! More below."
