Recent News Headlines - Software
The Ovi Store client now available for N86, E52 and E55
You may have noticed that the newer S60 3rd Edition FP2 phones, the ones that ship with the new v7 version of Nokia's Webkit-based Web browser, had been left high and dry regarding a client for Nokia's Ovi Store - trying to install the existing client resulted in an unusably slow experience. There's a new, Web v7-compatible client now though, v1.05(313) - you can get it from going to store.ovi.com in Web on your device - it's a 620k download. In use, the new Ovi Store client is faster than I've seen on any previous device. Anyway, that's one less thing for the Ovi Store people to fix up! (via Ovi Applications)
Mobile Task Manager updated to v1.2 with more prioritising and organising features
Back in July I reviewed Mobile Task Manager, a Java powered To-Do list and was pleasantly surprised at the flexibility it offered. I also hoped it would continue to improve. Well developer Tommi Laukkanen has released v1.2 with plenty of updates and a handful of bug fixes, mostly focused on prioritising your to-do's to make the best use of your time. You can download the free app here.
Kinoma Play
How about a new way to look at, integrate and play online with your media? That's what Kinoma Play promises, for S60 3rd Edition and QVGA screens at least. Integrating Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Last.FM and many others, together with all the content already on your phone, seems like Kinoma Play is all-encompassing. Here's Ewan's largely positive assessment of this (commercial) new media suite.
Get photo-geeky with XpressEXIF
If you're a camera geek like me and wish there was a way to view the EXIF information for photos on your S60 5th Edition phone, well now there is. XpressEXIF does need a little fiddling around, plus Python, and there are a few caveats, but SymbianWorld brings us a walkthrough showing that viewing EXIF data is possible with this utility.
Tweets60 - the free alternative to Gravity?
Guest author David Gilson provides a brief look at Tweets60, a freeware alternative to the well known commercial Gravity. It certainly lacks Gravity's polish, but how useable is it in real life? David also explains why he prefers freeware - it's to do with lack of hassle more than lack of cost, a very valid viewpoint.
Nokia Braille Reader - no, really
A little bit of lateral thinking by the Nokia Beta Labs team sees Braille Reader coming to touchscreen S60 5th Edition phones, making the most of both touch and haptic feedback. I'm not qualified to comment on its usefulness, but see below for the launch video.
Where Next for Comes With Music?
It's coming close to the one year anniversary of Nokia's all you can eat music service, “Comes With Music”, and that birthday is pretty important to those who picked up the first wave of devices from The Carphone Warehouse. Because the 'all you can download' part was only ever going to last a year... so the flow of bits and musical bytes is about to run out for the early adopters. Or is it? Read on for my thoughts.
Opera Mini 5.0 debuts
A new release of the Java-hosted Opera Mini is always a big event. This is a beta launch, but still extremely interesting, with Opera Mini 5.0 adding smooth font aliasing, multiple browser windows, a password manager and much better support for touchscreen phones. On the downside, the application is larger, at 220kb (still small in the overall scheme of things, though), and custom form and editing fields mean that you can't now copy and paste text in and out of the application. I was going to produce a walkthrough of the new features, but there's absolutely no point because our good friend Stefan has already done this in good detail. You can get Opera Mini 5.0 by going to mini.opera.com/beta in Web on your phone.
FExplorer Pro surfaces
It was an early Series 60 legend - the file manager utility that also cooked the tea and did the laundry. And today FExplorer has surfaced into the modern Symbian age, fully updated for all S60 3rd and 5th Edition phones, courtesy of SBSH. The bad news: it's now commercial software, as Ricky Cadden reports, along with a selection of screenshots. However, if you don't think you can rise to the purchase price, there's also a launch competition to win 5 license keys.
Three Apps on my Smartphone, and I'm still rolling along...
Are bulging App Stores overrated? Whichever Symbian-powered phone you own (or even if you have an iPhone, Blackberry, etc), could you manage with only three third party (i.e. add-on) applications? And if so, which ones would they be? Steve Litchfield conducts a spot survey and ponders a few personal theories...
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