I Hate Guns review

All About Symbian have a good review up of I Hate Guns- “On starting a new game, you’re presented with a graphical cut-scene, elegance in its simplicity. You answer the phone, and a mysterious stranger pops up in the top corner, like something out of a 1950’s screwball comedy, informing you that your daughter (who you never told anyone you had) has been kidnapped from her foster parents. And like the good absent father that you are, it’s time to knuckle down, hit the American Mid-West, and go get her back.

Just like Lee Majors in The Fall Guy, you’re not one for guns (hence the title), so while every one of the enemies will have some form of deadly weapon (sword, pistol, machine gun, Celine Dion CDs) you’ll be using your five deadly weapons – two hands, two feet and a brain.

As a sideways platform scroller, I Hate Guns breaks none of the rules that you have in your brain about playing these games. It is level based, you’ll be collecting jewels, coins and other items as you traverse the desert to reach your daughter – and the story continues to develop…”

Route 66 still flawed, reviewed for S60 3rd Edition

All About Symbian have posted a review of Route 66 and they mention a certain problem that has caused great discussion here- “First impressions are bad in that the CD-based installer is buggy, refusing to install the application onto any of my 1GB or 2GB expansion cards. In the end, I managed to get it to install Route 66 to a smaller 512MB MMC card and then I manually juggled these files into a corner of my main 2GB card. In fact, given that the installer also formats the card and wipes any files you do have lying around, this juggling is just as well, but the procedure is inelegant to say the least.

Activation is by SMS and worked well for me, letting the application work within a minute of installation. Not much seems to have changed to the interface and menus of Route 66 over the years. This is partly a good thing, as I was immediately at home, and partly a bad thing as it means that there’s a fair chance that most of the problems haven’t been fixed either.”

Navicore Personal mini review

My travelling has been accompanied by TomTom products for a few years now ever since Clove lent me a TomTom GO to review. I was amazed at the time just how well it worked and because I have absolutely no sense of direction Sat Nav is a required application for me. When I say no sense of direction I really mean no sense of direction at all! With the acquisition of a Nokia E61 one of the first tasks I wanted to manage is of course GPS and there are now a few options available which do the trick but the question is if they do it as well as TomTom Navigator? 

My understanding is that a standalone software release of TomTom Navigator 6.0 for S60 3^rd is not imminent and thus I will have to miss out on what I consider the best navigation software on the market. Let’s be fair though because TomTom marry this with some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced so it’s not too much of a loss after allJ The first GPS product I will look at is Navicore Personal which is unusual in that when you purchase it you can download it straight away. As an example of pricing it is 149 Euros for the UK and Ireland version (approx. £100 / $190) which is comparable to others being offered but in some cases actually more expensive than TomTom Navigator 5.0 on a SD card. When you consider that you can currently buy TomTom Navigator 5.0 with a GPS receiver, cables and cradle in a Treo 650 compatible bundle for £68 you have to question the value of this product in the current market. 

There are some interesting bits bundled with the product though- you get real time traffic information and a safety camera database included with permanent free use. People like TomTom have a yearly subscription to their traffic service so in theory you will get your money back quite quickly. So how does the traffic service perform? The Traffic partwas interesting- when I tried it I could not get it to wok so I phoned up Navicore- they took my details and said that they were working on the problem. Within 24 hours I had received an email saying that it was no working and it worked without a problem. Good customer service… 

Where I live traffic is a constant pain and having a guide to what’s happening is a must for me- the amount of times that TomTom traffic has saved me a few hours is countless and thus for me whilst this problem is there Navicore Personal has limited use. Indeed, I often use GPS even when I know where I am going just for the traffic service- any of you living near the M25 will know what I mean.  I have so far tested it by going from Crawley to Nymans Gardens and to Chessington World of Advantures. Both times the routing was accurate apart from an oddity with one particular roundabout near my home. NP told me to take the 2^nd exit which is fine except that it thought that the 3^rd was the 2^nd? Not a problem because I knew but a potential problem for people new to the area.  Beside the glitch above it worked as well as TomTom for general navigation and for re-routing, indeed it is quicker than TomTom for working out routes and some of the navigational indicators are also better. When you ae leaving a motorway junction a little box pops up displaying the next roundabout and showing which exit you will use. This is great for ensuring you are in the right lane ahead of time. Instructions are always given in good time and I found myself quite used to the system after 10 minutes or so. The real surprise is that I now prefer it to TomTom Navigator from an interface point of view. The indicators seem more logical than on TTN. 

As for the voices they need a little bit of work and the E61 does not help. Considering the Nokia can play music through its speakers in very high quality I would expect the sound of the voices to be clearer. The English speaking lady sounds far too American for my liking and the English speaking man sounds like he is trying too hard to be a comforting news reader. I want Terry Wogan to direct me to my destination or even Sean Connery! I found that the medium setting was quite low and the top setting was too loud, especially with the lady speaking- somewhere in between would be nice. All of the other usual features are included such as non connected route planning and favourites so you won’t be missing anything.

To sum up this mini review everything works well and it is a good product. Is it worth Euro 149? Just about in my opinion. Fair to say that this in my opinion is a competent GPS application that does everything asked of it- a few tweaks here and there wouldn’t go amiss though. Available from Navicore for a variety of mobile devices.

E61 Crystal Case Review

Last week Brando sent me a Crystal Case for the Nokia E61 to test and it got me to thinking about Smart Phones and cases. I used to carry my traditional style PDAs in cases all day and every day and they became a required part of my set up. Each case had to have spaces for credit cards etc. and thus no wallet was needed either.

When I received my Treo 650 that all changed and the thought of carrying it in a case was alien to me. Hon earth can I put a smart phone in a case and still use it practically for phone and PDA use throughout a working day? The problem is that a certain level of protection is required as well and this we are left with cases that fit snugly to the device, allow all of the features to be used and also let the design of the device show through.

I had a Crystal Case for the Treo and to this day it is the only one I use on a regular basis because it offers a certain level of protection whilst keeping the phone dimensions roughly the same and allowing that lovely modern Treo design with the gorgeous antenna showing (the lovely and gorgeous bits were a joke by the way).

Take a look at the Nokia E61 image on the left- it is a pointless photo for this review because you cannot tell that the phone is even in a case and that’s the beauty of this product. It fits the E61 absolutely perfectly and even on the back it is moulded to the slight centre drop down of the E61. Having no touch screen is an advantage for this case because no flip up part is required. Without this the case itself is a lot more solid than for example the Treo variant. Access to all functions is good but some have mentioned that the QWERTY keys nearest the edge of the case are more difficult to press- I do agree with this and it takes some getting used to but in my view it is not a big hinderance as I can still type at good speeds with the case on (this review is written on the E61).

The front and back part of the cases clip together very firmly and at no time have they come apart in my testing. The majority of damage done to PDAs is usually from minor scratched and dinks when dropped- this case may not save the device from a big fall but in my view it will stop 90% of the normal damage caused to a phone through day to day use. It’s fair to say that the case itself is quite scratchable and will suffer from the odd mark but beter that than your £200 device suffering the consequences. At least I can now put my phone in my pocket without worrying- that was one thing I would not do with the Nokia until now.

It is $14.00 which is excellent value (especially considering the state of the US$ at the moment) and I for one view this as the best accessory I have for my Nokia at this time. If you own another device take a look around the Brando site because there are cases available for various models.

Available from Brando for $14.00. Pros: great value, looks superb on the phone itself, design quality. Cons: can get scratched easily.

USB cradle from Brando

Last week I received a USB cradle from Brando which retails for $20. It is one of the sturdiest effeorts I have seen, indeed it looks like an old style desk accessory you would see on the criminals desk in an episode of Columbo (I know what I mean anyway:))

Brando have been clever in this case because it effectively replaces the two cables that come with the device (one for charging and one for syncing) with a standard mini USB cable that does both. If you require a quicker charge there is a socked for a 5v cable as well- for example my PSP cable works perfectly with it.

The other annoyance I have with the Nokia is the connector socket- it works fine but can be a bit fiddly when attaching the standard cable to it- again, this cradle gets around that problem by creating a very tight fit for the outer edges and the connectors are flexible enough to enable the user to simply slot it in without a second thought.

The final point of design is the fact that the E61 is slanted when in situ and thus this makes the screen a LOT easier to read when on your desk. It’s also nice to see a cradle heavy enough to cope with a device being put in and removed and not fall over countless times a day.

The point I am making is that this is a wonderfully designed accessory that adds a lot to the device itself and I only wish that cradles for all PDAs and Smart Phones had been designed with this much care and attention because some of them are awful.