Solstice is a free theme for the N97 and other Symbian S60 v3 and v5 devices provided by Pizero Symbian Design. Pizero provides both free and commercial themes and Solstice is probably meant as a showcase theme. Does it get the trick done?

Description

Solstice is an astronomical event that happens when the sun “stands still” twice a year, but as you can see from the screenshots this theme is all about summer. There are two versions of the theme; one with theme icons and one (the Lite version) using the default icons.

Will it last all summer?

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PhoneTorch is a freeware flashlight application for the N97 and other Symbian S60 v5 devices provided by Harald Meyer. If you have used the built-in flashlight feature on the N93 you know it can come in quite handy in many situations, and it’s actually a feature I’ve missed ever since I stopped using the N93. Is PhoneTorch a worthy replacement?

Features

The main feature is turning your precious N97 into a flashlight (or torch which is a synonym used in some countries) by using the white and red LED flashes. Phone Torch can also blank the screen and let you use the resulting white light as a flashlight. It also has a built-in Morse editor! Just type the text you want coded, press send and the Morse code will start flashing! You can also decide whether the red light or the white light should be used.

What’s the verdict – is it flashy?!

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Match´em is a free puzzle game for the N97 offered by moubail.com.

Gameplay

The goal of the game is to select groups of symbols that have the same shape and colour. After confirming your selection – either by waiting for 4 seconds  or by tapping the screen a second time – the group will be removed from the screen. The score depends on the size of the groups you remove, the bigger the better. With some strategic planning you can clear the odd symbols that are in the way first and then create really large groups and go for the high score..

The game makes nice use of the touch screen and runs smoothly in general. Both installation and getting started is fast and easy, so you’ll be up and running in no time. A game without hustle then – nice!

How does it match’em then?

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The N97 firmware update to v12 arrived sooner than expected and without any official change log. Is it still a must have update?

Features

The update doesn’t really contain any new features. And yes – in case you’re wondering – that means no kinetic scrolling for contacts, file explorer and so on! Instead, focus seem to have been on performance and stability. The touch interface responds a lot quicker and overall the phone feels better to work with. The amount of free RAM has also been optimized. And well… That’s about all you can be sure about since there is no official change log!

Installation

I updated via Nokia Software Updater without any problems. After a reboot it seemed like the update actually continued although there was no information about this. The phone was frozen and didn’t respond to key strokes or screen taps. After a while though things went back to normal and I pulled out the keyboard… Only to have the phone crash completely! After a hard reboot by removing the battery everything worked fine though. So, a few strange happenings and a scare or two during installation but everything eventually ok – a normal Nokia firmware update then!

What difference does it make?

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The Tech Buzz Widget is one of several home screen widgets for the N97 provided by Mippin. It provides a news feed about general technology news like mobile phones, computer software, media players etc. Content is aimed mainly towards home consumers, but some business analysis in the technology field is included as well.

Features

The news feed is retrieved and updated automatically. You can determine yourself how often, anywhere between every 5 minutes to just once a day. Data amount is not that huge, so the application is definitely useful even if you’re not connected wia Wi-Fi. The feed consists of 20 different articles at any given time. On the home screen it shows a slide show with the different news headers, and once you activate the widget all articles are available offline so you can navigate between them without any waiting time. Mippin also provide their widgets for other mobile platforms (e.g. Android).

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