Symbian and Palm OS

I’ve thoroughly tested the brand new Opera Mobile 10 beta on all the supported mobile phone platforms (Windows Mobile Professional / Standard and Symbian S60). In general, apart from some problems, I liked what I saw – particularly on Symbian and the touchscreen version of Windows Mobile.

The browser is available for download HERE for both operating systems. For Windows Mobile, a unified download (for both subtypes) is provided.

1. Windows Mobile

It was two and a half years ago that I’ve reviewed the initial version of LivePVR.

I’ve already mentioned BOLT (essentially, a Java-based, enhanced version of the Windows Mobile-only Thunderhawk), which, with the version released at MWC, became pretty usable.

Just like last year (see my previous year's article HERE), I have REALLY a lot to report on Web browsing, the just-announced stuff and so on.

Opera

Let’s take a look at how one of the competing operating systems, Symbian, fares. As you may recall, I use the Nokia N95 as my main phone because of the
• (comparatively) high-quality camera (no Windows Mobile or BlackBerry phones can match it, let alone the, in this respect, even worse iPhone 3G),
• call recording (no such thing on most WinMo phones and all BlackBerries/iPhone models),

At last, I was able to afford an iPhone 3G without an expensive data / phone plan (meaning a much higher starting price). Of course, I've been playing with the device since then. See my review HERE.

This article may be of interest to not only BlackBerry users, but also those of Windows Mobile; particularly ones that would like to know more about Sid Meier's Civilization IV: War of Two Cities from Concrete Software, also promised for Windows Mobile. I’ll also elaborate on three titles also existing for Windows Mobile.

U Mobile Game have just released a brand new vertical scroller shooter Dragon Bird for both Windows Mobile (both Pocket PC and Smartphone) and Symbian (both S60v3 and UIQ3).

Availability

I've updated the following tutorials / bibles:

The Multiplatform Lyrics Bible (info on the just-added lyrics-displaying capabilities of Conduits Pocket Player 3.7)

1. (WinMo, desktop Windows): The creators of Shadow of Legend, a really promising multiplayer (!!) MMORPG I’ve several times reported on, have announced (see http://www.shadowoflegend.com/web/News.aspx?ID=452 ) the forthcoming, vastly enhanced 2.5D version of their game. 

Listening to or watching podcasts is great fun. If you think they are boring, meaningless or can’t entertain you during, say, a long fight, you’re wrong. For example, watching all the clips of X-Play, played back on my VGA HP iPAQ 214 (thanks to Smartphone & PPCMag / iPhone Life’s Hal Goldstein for the gift!) could entertain me for long-long hours.

Compared to the capabilities of desktop multimedia players (see for example the excellent WMP vs Winamp vs iTunes vs MediaMonkey for more info on their capabilities), the mobile ones certainly lack when it comes to fetching, searching for, editing, storing and, in several cases, even accessing / displaying different kinds (album art and/or other images; textual genre / composer / title etc. info; lyrics etc.) of information in audio files.

Along with tags and cover arts, lyrics are also highly sought-for and widely used metadata, particularly with non-English folks who would like to know the lyrics of the songs they listen to.

In my last Bible of Windows Mobile, Symbian and Blackberry webcamera applications directly usable in desktop messengers like Live Messenger, I haven’t elaborated on the apps that are a bit different: they let for using your camera-equipped handset as a camera for your messaging application running on your desktop PC (connected to your handset). OctroVideo is radically different: it allows for your handset to be used as a Web camera in itself, without running any external application.

Many of you may already have heard of Another World (also known as Out of this World in the US and Outer World in Japan; Wiki page HERE; Abandonia page HERE), which was one of the best vector-graphic action-adventure games back in 1991-1992.

Compatibility

Not all notebooks or desktop computers have a built-in web camera. With desktop PC’s, this isn’t that big an issue: as you don’t carry them around, you can just buy an inexpensive, clip-on USB camera and you’re set. Not so with notebooks, UMPC’s or Tablet PC’s – with them, purchasing (and carrying!) a cabled solution might be overly suboptimal. Then, just using your camera-equipped smartphone may turn out to be the best solution; preferably over a wireless connection like Bluetooth.

Nicky Boom was a nice platformer game released for the Commodore Amiga and MS DOS back in 1992 (Wiki page HERE).

In my latest Misc News collection, I’ve already recommended Towers Trap, a brand new game on two mobile (Windows Mobile and Symbian S60) and desktop Windows platforms. GameZoneProject’s official page is HERE. No matter what platform you have, I really-REALLY recommend giving the trial a try and play through the (initial) tutorial. (Again, you’ll have text rendering problems on VGA Windows Mobile devices). I’m pretty sure you’ll like the game.

Now that I’ve become a proud owner of a super-mobile HP TC1100 Tablet PC, using mobile devices (smart phones) as external modems have became essential for me. Up until now, I’ve done most of my Web browsing, YouTube watching outdoors with some of my mobile devices.

In this part of my MWC report series, I show most of the (advanced – that is, I don’t show plain, “boring†Bluetooth headsets) advanced Bluetooth goodies I’ve seen in Barcelona. First, some A2DP news, together with a quick review & comparison of the Plantronics’ new Voyager 855.

A2DP (Stereo Bluetooth audio) news

There were tons of, in cases, brand new and/or forthcoming stereo (A2DP) Bluetooth headphones and/or speakers. Just to name a few:

Cresyn

Cresyn’s new headphones (I haven’t tested them); among others, the CS-BT713 and KS-Kleer (direct homepage of the BT800 is HERE; note that it’s Korean only and there aren’t pages on the two listed headphones at all, their being so new):

Gear4

The Gear4 folks showcased their BluPhones (official product page HERE):