Device Arena

Today marks the global launch of the Nokia N-Gage mobile games service with more games, additional compatible devices, and an expanded online offering. Millions of Nokia device owners can now find, try and buy high-quality made-for-mobile games directly from their mobile device. Players can also connect with one another through the N-Gage Arena community. They can meet friends, find others to play multiplayer games, discuss topics on the message boards and via live chat, and participate in tournaments and hosted events.

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Ericsson unveiled its M700 mobile platform, the world’s first commercially available LTE-capable platform, with peak data rates of up to 100Mbps in the downlink and up to 50Mbps in the uplink. These speeds match, or in some cases surpass, fixed-line data rates, enabling a superior user experience, supporting advanced real-time mobile services such as online games and video streaming.

The M700 is optimized both in terms of size and power consumption and comparable to standard 3G platforms available today. The first products based on M700 will be data devices such as laptop modems, ExpressCards and USB modems for notebooks, as well as other small-form modems suitable for consumer electronic devices. A rich set of interfaces allows easy integration with other handset platforms to create multi-mode devices. Samples of ASICs will be available during 2008 and commercial release is set for 2009, with products based on the platform expected in 2010.

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Spb Software House upgrades its outstanding Spb Mobile Shell software to version 2.0. Spb Mobile Shell is an application that completely overhauls the innate Windows Mobile user interface, making it more direct, logical, and slick.

The software first hit the market in 2007 and quickly gained recognition among end-users and mobile device manufacturers. By the end of 2007, Spb Mobile Shell became the best-selling Pocket PC application in the world, was named the best interface/menu improver by Smartphone & Pocket PC Magazine, the Best Evolution Application by Handango, and the Best Program for PDA’s by the Shareware Industry Awards. Spb Mobile Shell turns the Windows Mobile device into a better phone: gives access to crucial information at a glance, enables one-hand navigation, minimizes the number of taps to launching programs, changing settings, making calls. The new Spb Mobile Shell offers a great choice of haptic animation, it is more futuristic and practical in design, yet it is lower in memory consumption.

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Nokia and THQ announced an agreement to bring Team17’s Worms World Party to a range of Nokia devices through the N-Gage games service.

Adam Comiskey - International VP THQ Wireless commented, “Worms has always been a great success on mobile devices and the N-Gage technology has allowed us to produce the most advanced, faithful and visually impressive mobile edition of Worms to date.”

“Worms is an excellent fit with the new N-Gage service,” added Gregg Sauter, Director of 3rd party publishing, Nokia. “N-Gage is all about fun games that are easy to pick up and hard to put down - which is the Worms experience in a nutshell.”

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Yamake for N-Gage, by Nokia Games Publishing, makes it possible for players to create their own games from a range of mini games by adding content, then playing and sharing them with friends and the wider Yamake community.

“Yamake is a groundbreaking new game for the N-Gage platform. Players can make, play and share games that are customized using user-generated multimedia content, and we are proud to be pioneering this new way of playing,” said Dr Mark Ollila, Director of Technology and Strategy and Head of Games Publishing, Nokia. “This is exactly what the future of mobile gaming should be about - creating games that you love and want to play, then sharing them with other players.”

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S60 software, developed by Nokia, is licensed to some of the world’s leading mobile phone manufacturers including LG Electronics, Nokia and Samsung. Today at the Mobile World Congress, these licensees announced six new devices based on S60 3rd Edition complementing their device portfolios and leveraging the next wave of Internet experience and usability enhancements.

“Consumers are increasingly demanding intuitive Internet experiences and S60 on Symbian OS is ideally positioned to deliver compelling devices for a wide range of market segments. We are delighted to see new S60 devices launched by these leading manufacturers,” said Matti V?nsk?, Vice President, Mobile Software Sales & Marketing, Nokia. “S60 strategy is to give consumers choice and simplicity, delivering the best consumer experiences that allow their mobile devices to add real value to their lives.”

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Verizon Wireless, and Research In Motion (RIM) announced the availability of BlackBerry^® Professional Software, a wireless e-mail and data solution specifically designed for small- and medium-sized businesses. Based on the core functionality of BlackBerry^® Enterprise Server, BlackBerry Professional Software gives smaller organizations enterprise-grade security, control and performance for a fraction of the cost.

“Our small business customers now have a mobility solution that allows user-friendly wireless access to e-mail, calendar, Internet, and intranet applications with advanced security,” said Rob Miller, vice president – marketing for Verizon Wireless. “BlackBerry Professional Software from Verizon Wireless addresses the needs of small businesses for an in-house solution that is affordable, simple to install and easy to manage.”

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Nokia today announced that the Nokia N95 8GB had the distinction of being the first ever mobile phone to receive Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) certification. The DLNA is a body advocating the interoperability of wired and wireless consumer devices. For the consumer, this accolade translates into convenient and intuitive connectivity between your DLNA Certified home electronics devices, personal computers, and your Nokia N95 8GB.

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Nokia has released a huge speed-boosting and enhancing firmware update for their N95 8GB flagship. v15.0.015 is pictured below (previous was v11) and is available now from Nokia Software Update (depending on your region and operator branding, of course). Updates include Flash Lite 3 video support and the Web Run Time engine (Widgets). More details below.

Changes so far:
The likes of Gallery and Search are now both faster and also kept resident in memory (even after pressing ‘Exit’), in the same was as Contacts, so that they’re much more responsive when needed.

Speed of access to the integral 8GB flash memory disk has been improved. Doing an ‘Image store’ from PC Suite only took 30 seconds to scan my device, rather than several minutes on v11 firmware.

Bugs have obviously been quoshed under the hood. In particular, the one that was stopping lots of third party themes working has gone - PiZero’s New Gold, here I come.

All About Symbian

The long-awaited Playstation emulator for iPhone has just gone public! Version 0.1 is now officially available via Installer.app and manual installation via the link below. Psx4iphone allows you to play Playstation (psx) ROMs on your iPhone. Ahh the memories. The zodttd forum also has a few threads that may be useful. This thread is home to a growing list ROMs known to be compatible with psx4iphone and a pretty comprehensive FAQ thread is maintained in this thread. The existing Gameboy and NES emulators for Apple’s first mobile handset are definitely fun but psx4iphone kicks it up a notch. Do you remember how annoying it was to come home to your NES after playing Playstation all afternoon at your buddy’s house?

The Boy Genius Report