Mobile Fun Blog

iPhone software 3.0 Beta 1 is now available to developers, and as we couldn’t wait to get our hands on it, we asked our guest reviewer Darryl Mitchell to have a play with the new software and let us know what’s new and if it’s any good. This is his review:

I’m going to start with the Home screen and work my way through. The new things about the home screen that are noticeable so far is there are a few new icons. Its not all that noticeable, but the phone icon, the ipod icon and the messages icon have changed, and now have a more contemporary brushed effect. You’ve also got the new spotlight feature which is really helpful if you want to search for songs, emails or contacts, it searches everything. You just swipe to the right and it brings up the spotlight search screen. Its a really good feature and is surprisingly fast, I thought it was going to lag for quite some time, but it’s quick and snappy. That is it for the new home screen.

Moving on to the phone features, there’s not much added to the this bit, however, when you get a missed call or it shows you your recent calls, it now shows you what they called you from, for example if you called them on their mobile, or work phone you can now see this in the Recent calls screen. So that’s a really easy way of showing where they called you from.

The Nokia Beta Labs Boys & Girls really have been busy this week! Normally we have to wait months for new software to play with, but they’ve just released a new version of their ‘Point & Find’ application. Point & Find is an application that lets you access information and services on the internet, just by pointing your camera phone at everyday objects. It then uses GPS data, along with a database of virtual tags to figure out what you’re looking at, and then sends the relevant information back to your phone.

You’re probably thinking, “sounds great but what does that actually mean?” so I’ll give you a few examples:

• You’re walking down the street and you see a poster for a new movie. By pointing your camera phone at the poster, you’ll be able to view movie trailers, check showtimes, book tickets and get directions.
• You’re out shopping and the latest gadget catches your eye. You scan the barcode with your phone, and are able to read more detailed product information & get the latest reviews. You also get a price comparison from leading online retailers so you can check to make sure you’re not paying too much.

This software is still a very early Beta, so that means that there will be bugs and times that it won’t quite do what its supposed to, but I’d say its still worth a try!

Point & Find is available at the moment for Nokia Symbian S60 handsets (Most NSeries) and is available to download from the Nokia Point & Find website.

Download it, Try it, and let us know how you get on with it.