From the excellent Wikipedia page:

“The game is played by revealing squares of the grid, typically by clicking them with a mouse. If a square containing a mine is revealed, the player loses the game. Otherwise, a digit is revealed in the square, indicating the number of adjacent squares (typically, out of the possible eight) that contain mines. In typical implementations, if this number is zero then the square appears blank, and the surrounding squares are automatically also revealed. By using logic, the player can in many instances use this information to deduce that certain other squares are mine-free, in which case they may be safely revealed, or mine-filled, in which they can be marked as such (which, in typical implementations, is effected by right-clicking the square and indicated by a flag graphic).

There are various subtleties here. One is the time counter itself, adding a certain pressure and stress level. Next, there’s a ‘?’ mode, where you can flag a square as possibly containing a mine, as an aide de memoire to help your future logic. (Whether placing a flag or a ‘?’, the mechanism is the same – you tap the bottom of screen icon and then the grid position, a system that you quite quickly get used to.) When there are no mines near your chosen square, the surrounding squares are ‘auto-cleared’, always a helpful time saver in this genre.

Next, the whole grid can be scrolled around, to enable you to get to squares on a larger grid that aren’t visible at the start. This is a sensible design decision by the developers as it means the square sizes can be kept quite large and ‘finger-friendly’.

Game navigation is faultless, the sound effects are tastefully restrained (with a suitable explosion at the end if you fail) and this is almost a perfect implementation of the game. And written in Qt, as you perhaps might have guessed, so it’s effectively Symbian^3/Anna-only, plus a handful of S60 5th Edition phones which have nice large internal disks.

Mine Sweeper, as a game in general, is one of a class of games which offer infinite gameplay. Never mind platform, puzzle and adventure games which can be solved once and then never quite enjoyed as much afterwards, ‘random’ set up games like this offer a logic challenge which is always subtly different – so you can come back to the title week after week. Add in the ‘can I beat my previous high score?’ effect and Mine Sweeper is a definite keeper on modern Symbian smartphones.

Nokia 5230 S60 V5 App : Mine Sweeper is a post from: Nokia 5230 Blog

Shazam, the music identification service, has updated its Symbian client to version 3. The update features a cleaned up user interface. The main screen now only features the large button which triggers audio sampling. The buttons for your previous ‘tags’ and Shazam music charts have been moved to the top of the screen as tabs, along with a new settings page. The latter gives access to upgrading to the paid version of Shazam, as well as linking to one’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. Read on for more details and screenshots.

The settings page also has a ‘Check for Upgrade’ option. That will hopefully be unnecessary when the latest Ovi Store update is rolled out, which will perform version checking and automatic upgrades. However, in-app upgrades will likely be faster than app-store upgrades, by virtue of not having to pass approval procedures.

Nokia 5230 S60 V5 News : Shazam Updated to V3 is a post from: Nokia 5230 Blog

Opera Mini and Opera Mobile have received big updates, to versions 6.1 and 11.1 respectively. There’s the main changelog below, but I’d highlight the iPhone-like web page text selection as the main reason to upgrade. They’re both free, work on all Symbian phones, and are available now from m.opera.com in the ‘other’ web browser on your Symbian device.

One field does it all

You can now type both web addresses and search queries in your browser’s address field. Or, if you prefer, you can still use the search field with your favorite search engines.

Auto-suggest saves you typing

Suggestions from Google search and your browser history appear as soon as you begin typing. Select what you want, and you’re done.

Address entry is finished for you

Domains such as .com, .org, or .net are added automatically when typing a URL. Now, they also learn more from the sites you visit—such as .gov, .edu, .co.uk or that of your country.

Easy and powerful text selection

When you want to select text, hold your finger on what you want. Handles appear around a word that allow you to select precisely. You can then copy the text or search with it.

Complex pages made simple

An option to have webpages laid out in a single-column view makes it easy to read large webpages with many parts on a small screen, without needing to scroll back and forth.

Special enhancements for Opera Mobile

Nokia 5230 S60 V5 News : Opera Browser Updates is a post from: Nokia 5230 Blog

First Aid Box covers a wide range of health topics, from relatively trivial injuries to various emergency traumas.

This application can be best described as an e-book – in the form of an application. There are introductory passages about general rules that first aid practitioners need to follow. Tapping through to the “Categories” section then lists the health topics covered by the application.

Talking of the topics, all but one topic refers to emergency events. The one non-emergency topic being Diarrhoea, not that this doesn’t deserve a medical reference. However, I found it strange that this was the only non-emergency condition covered, when things like allergies and common cold treatments are just as valid, since the authors went beyond emergency topics.

With that in mind, my description of an e-book in the form of an application becomes more relevant. I can only recommend using this application as a reference to become familiar with, before an emergency arises. If you are going to keep this as a safety net in the event of an emergency, you may well find yourself hard-pushed to be an effective first aider by simply reading from this application in-situ.

Nokia 5230 S60 V5 App : First Aid Box is a post from: Nokia 5230 Blog

As with all of Offscreen Technology’s applications, Elements Touch is a simple affair. There are no menus or options, just the content. Speaking of the the content, it is a pleasure to look at. What you’ll find is a colour coded table of elements, with a wood-effect background. The brightly coloured user interface, perhaps, may help to put you in a studious mood!

The happy looking period table, laid out on a virtual wood desk

However, the colour coding is perhaps one hint however, that things are over simplified. There are no labels for groups or periods; nor is there a legend for the colour coding. I can see that adding text around the edges of the table may spoil its aesthetics. Academically speaking though, it is incomplete. The shape of the periodic table lends itself well to providing space for a legend, as any Google image search demonstrates.

A selection aid appears as you drag your finger across the screen to help you see what your finger is blocking out

Tapping on an individual element brings up a small information box for that particular element. These boxes present useful information for an enthusiastic pupil starting out in Chemistry or Physics. Offscreen have made the best use of the screen area available. However, I wonder whether it would have hurt to make the data view scrollable, so that more facts and figures could have been included. The data boxes do show the element symbol along with its atomic number (i.e. number of protons), but the atomic number isn’t labelled as such, which will confuse beginners.

Hydrogen data

I’d especially like to have seen a proton and neutron count, along with details of each element’s ground state electron configuration. This would have made the app more useful to novice and advanced students alike.

Einsteinium data

That’s not to say there isn’t any educational value here. There are interesting tidbits of information like: melting point, boiling point, density, when the element was discovered; and its relative abundance in the Earth’s crust. The latter point being particularly interesting data for anyone following science shows like Wonders of the Universe. It coincides quite nicely with explanations of how elements are created in super novae and why heavier elements are vanishingly rare in the universe.

Carbon data

Elements Touch is not an ideal study aid, but considering the price, it’s worth grabbing simply as an aide-mémoire.

Nokia 5230 S60 V5 App : Elements Touch is a post from: Nokia 5230 Blog