In a rare indication of sales figures, the president of Vir2L Studios (the developers of Elder Scrolls: Shadowkey on the N-Gage) has posted on the official Elder Scrolls message boards that the estimated userbase of the N-Gage is 1.5 million. The post (explaining why Vir2L chose the N-Gage format instead of Symbian) coupled with Nokia's "1 million N-gages" statement last September shows solid albeit unspectacular growth for the format. It also indicates that the QD has sold more units and much more quickly than the original model, which shipped around 500,000 before being discontinued. The QD was a step in the right direction, it seems.
Activisions First Person, World War Two Shooter, is a strong franchise on the home consoles. But is it any good on the N-Gage? Ewan reviews Call of Duty and wonders just how bad it can get.
jDictionary Mobile have just released their excellent Advanced English Dictionary for the Nokia 9500/9300. AED is not only a very concise English dictionary, but actually more like an encyclopedia. It contains up to 140,000 entries and more than 1.4 million words.
Wildpalm have released PhotoArt for UIQ devices, and updated PhoneSecure for UIQ. Photoart allows you to alter your camera images and pictures to different tyles of painting styles, while PhoneSecure allows remote locking and barring of the handset by sending a coded SMS message.
iAnywhere, owners of AvantGo (the offline, web style syncing news and article service),have launched an updated version of the service. Available for Palm OS 5, Pocket PC (2000, 2002, 2003), Symbian UIQ and Symbian OS v.6.1 Series 60, you can find more details in their press release.
UK Retail Charts organisation ELSPA will no longer report weekly retail sales of N-Gage games and units (reports Spong.com). Nokia are pointing out that the N-Gage is still being counted in exactly the same way as previously, and will still feature in the monthly charts and reports. There may be mitigating circumstances (such as "does this chart include Mobile Phone Stores or just Gaming stores?") but this will not inspire confidence in the marketplace - which is something the N-Gage family needs in abundance.
Yesterday's MacWorld Keynote from Steve Jobs (I mean, a 512mb MP3 Player and an ITX Mini Clone... where's the iNewton?) has got me thinking - why do Apple have such presence, even with non-Mac fans? Is this something Symbian are missing out? Read on...
W.A.Y.D. - What Are You Doing - from Corisoft allows an alternative way to enter Agenda information. It also allows you to see, at a glance, what you are doing today, for the week and for the month.
Psiloc have recently released Arabic and Hebrew localistions for UIQ. These localisations allow writing and reading in the languages and also converts much of the system specified text make phones more user friendly for these locales.
Via those excellent virus trackers at F-Secure comes news of another Series 60 virus. This one has is a bit different since it actually modifys SIS files on your phone. Thus gving another infection route (when you send a friend the SIS file). It also has the usual spread by Bluetooth infection route too. Forunately there are, as yet, no reports of this in the wild.
eDictionary Reader allows you to open various dictionary files from PPCLink. The dictionary engine features unicode support and related word hyperlinks.
It's now time for you to pick your favourite photos from the 4 displayed * here *. This poll will close on 23rd January 2005 & Good Luck to all taking part.
As the press release says "The UIQ Alliance Partner Program provides an increased choice of UIQ compatible technologies and knowledge that will be introduced to UIQ customers." I'm sure that makes it crystal clear, so I won't need to elaborate on that. First into the Alliance is Decuma, who bring with them chinese and japanese handwriting recognition, along with the usual western characters.
