I love owning a phone with so few hardware buttons. In terms of daily use, my N1’s power button, volume rocker, clickable trackball (plus four touch sensitive back, menu, home, and search keys), are more than enough for me to get by. I could probably eliminate one or two of those and function without hassle. However, I don’t don’t play complex games on a regular basis – mostly because I rarely have the time to kill but also because, in those rare moments I do end up gaming, I’ve transitioned from 2D fighters and racing games to the simplest, easiest to play, tap-here-tap-there kind of games. This transition began when I purchased my Nexus One. Some of you may recall my third video from the Nexus Questions and Requests series, where I tested out some console emulators. Gameplay was possible, but not all that much fun. Multi-touch wasn’t effectively employed, and It’s difficult to be enveloped by a virtual world when you’re struggling to engage the most basic control system in this one….

Now available for Android and Java Micro Edition is Sony Ericsson’s new 3D Landscaping SDK which enables rapid rendering of high-quality three-dimensional maps. Stokholm, Sweden is the only map currently available, but I expect adoption will spread rapidly.