Nokia Beta Labs' enhanced calculator for S60

Nokia Beta Labs has released an Enhanced Calculator for S60. This is ported from the old S40 calculator which users have found being more intuitive than the current version on S60 devices. Its standard calculator is similar to Calcium by using the direction pad to input operation. It also includes a scientific calculator and a loan calculator by switching modes via the menu.

Sadly this port is a java app and startup on S60 takes four seconds to start. I'll stick with the default S60 calculator, Calcium and cCalc for now.

Google Maps for mobile devices

Google recently updated their Google Maps for mobile devices on Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile to version 2.2. For those no using such platforms, the Java version is also updated. One major new features is Transit which is available to around 50 cities at the moment.

The preferred way to download download the app is with your phone directed at google.com/gmm. It will check your web browser useragent and serve the corresponding page for download. There is no direct page to download with your desktop browser. For those who prefer to download to their PCs then transferring it to the phone, you can easily bypass this with the User Agent Switcher Firefox extension with the appropriate useragent info (search google for it) and download it with Firefox. The following are some of the links for the major mobile platforms.

Download Google Maps for: Symbian S60, Java Micro Edition, Windows Mobile
The Palm version is version 2.0.2.0: Palm OS devices

Quickoffice Premier 5 for S60 @ $1!

Update: Offer over, seemed too short.

For a limited time of 24 hours, the good folks at Quickoffice are offering Quickoffice Premier 5 for S60 at ONE DOLLAR! I've been wanting to get this for some time to replace the default view only version that came with my phone but never wanted to pay the steep price of over $50. $1 fits my budget just right. Non-US customers may have problem purchasing with their credit cards, paypal works well.

Get Quickoffice Premier 5 for S60

Singapore street map in your pocket

Street map services seem to be the rage these days and ever since Virtual Maps (owners of streetdirectory.com) got burnt by SLA (Singapore Land Authority) in the courts, a number of map services have surfaced. Even SLA launched its own free online map service.

Now SLA makes their maps mobile by partnering with Mapking to release a free Singapore street map for Windows Mobile devices.

SLA StreetMap Mobile

Singapore Land Authority (SLA) and MapKing (Singapore) Pte Ltd have jointly launched a mobile version of the online StreetMap@Singapore, named SLA StreetMap Mobile. It can be downloaded for free onto mobile devices running on Windows Mobile OS and can now be viewed on PDAs and PDA phones.

However it lacks features such as routing navigation and GPS support. I suppose that will be in a pay version marketed by Mapking.

Symbian does an Android

Nokia recently announced its offer to acquire the shares of Symbian from its partners. Nokia intends to consolidate the various iterations of Symbian, namely S60, UIQ and MOAP, into one single platform under a newly established Symbian Foundation and to open source Symbian in the next 2 years.

This is not too dissimilar to Google's Android initiative which many would view as the reason for Nokia's bold direction. The rise of open source Linux on smartphone devices like Android poses a serious challenge down the road.

As a major shareholder of Symbian, Nokia has all this while been the main purveyor of Symbian OS even though it started out as a partnership with a few other well-known mobile phone manufacturers such as Sony Ericsson and Motorola. Symbian has made little impact in terms of being a smartphone OS brand unlike RIM, Windows Mobile and iPhone which dominate the enterprise space; Symbian is generally treated as a mainstream proprietary OS for low to mid range phones with little to no emphasis on smartphone features. By making this strategic move, Nokia will prevent Symbian from becoming obsolete and evolve into an accessible platform for all mobile device manufacturers to incorporate into their hardware.

Oh, and also Happy 10th Birthday to Symbian.