Today, Handango, the leading provider of mobile downloads, announced the finalists for the fifth annual Handango Champion Awards, which recognize outstanding mobile software developers and their applications. The 2005 Handango Champion Awards finalists were determined by customer votes on Handango’s Web site, www.handango.com, and Handango partner sites.

Winners will be announced at the annual Handango Partner Summit in Miami, Florida on June 23, 2005. Awards will be presented for BlackBerry®, Palm OS®, Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC and Smartphone as well as Symbian OS™ UIQ and Series 60 applications in the following categories:

• Best Application for Work
• Best Application for Play
• Best Application for Life
• Best New Application
• Best Industry Application

A complete list of finalists is available at: http://www.handango.com/Awards/2005Finalists.jsp

Concrete Software is nominated for Best Application for Play for its Aces Texas Hold’em – No Limit™.

“It is always a pleasure to honor and reward these extraordinary software development companies and their exceptional applications,” said Randy Eisenman, president and chief executive officer of Handango. “Our customers hand-selected these finalists as the best-of-the-best from Handango’s catalog of more than 50,000 applications. These finalists should be proud of their accomplishment in such a dynamic industry.”

At the luxurious awards ceremony, Handango will also present “Developer of the Year” awards to one company for each mobile operating system. The “Developer of the Year” award acknowledges outstanding overall accomplishments in development, marketing and business practices.

Each recipient of a Handango Champion Award will receive an awards package including a $5,000 marketing stipend, placement in a special edition of the Handango Champion Newsletter and a variety of promotional opportunities. Handango will also feature the winners and finalists on Handango properties and provide additional marketing support to the winners.

Concrete Software Inc., a leading developer of mobile entertainment, announced today the release of its Microsoft Smartphone version of Aces Texas Hold’em – No Limit™ poker game. The Smartphone release closely follows the highly successful release of the Pocket PC version which was released earlier this month.

Texas Hold’em has become extremely popular, spawning off television shows like Celebrity Poker and filling up the casinos with hold’em players. The popularity has also moved over to video games with Aces Texas Hold’em taking the lead in the mobile market having versions on mobile devices ranging from Blackberry to Palm handhelds.

Concrete Software, a leading mobile software company, released its follow up hit to Aces Texas Hold’em™ for mobile phones with Aces Omaha – No Limit™. The new release was immediately noted, receiving an 8 out of 10 rating from What Cellphone Magazine for this months published issue. UK’s best-selling mobile phone buying guide previously made Aces Texas Hold’em – No Limit™ game, the game of the month and was thrilled with Aces Omaha™ calling it “A highly addictive game.”

Aces Omaha – No Limit™ is played very similarly to Texas Hold’em which has become extremely popular being shown on television all over the world. With Omaha each player has four cards and has to use two of the four with community cards to make a poker hand.

No Limit Texas Hold’em is quickly becoming one of the most popular poker games to watch and play. From Celebrity Poker to the World Poker Tour, you can find No Limit Texas Hold’em practically everywhere, including the mobile arena. We were recently approached by Concrete Software to check out their mobile version of the game. They assured us that we would enjoy it.

Aces Texas Hold’em No Limit is a poker game where you take on virtual players of all different skill levels. The game itself is easy to learn using the same rules as poker but only giving each player two cards and sharing 5 community cards. With no limit, you can call out your opponents on an “All-in” bet, or bet any amount. Playing against five default players, you can work your way up to the Hold’em Pro level. If you lose all your money, you’ll have to refill your bankroll and try again to become best of the best. What’s nice about this version is that there are a number of customizable features to ensure you remain hooked.

Aces gives you the opportunity to play against up to 22 players simultaneously. Of these, you can create or modify as many opponents as you would like, setting their names, intelligence levels and money. (You can choose to create your own nickname as well.) The play can be set Tournament style until one player wins, or players can be set up automatically to sit in when others lose their money. Blinds can also be set to stay the same, increase on a timer, or by the number of rounds. A great feature is the ability to choose game speed which will move the game along quicker, especially after you’ve folded. This way you’re not waiting forever for the round to end.

Aces looks pretty sharp. The graphics are about as good as you can expect from this type of game and you’re given the ability to configure the cards in different sizes so that they can be easily readable if necessary. The sound is limited to effects, but they work quite well in this setting. Though games like this are quite easy to configure controls for, I found that the menus, actions and choices were laid out so well and easy to access, that it was a joy to maneuver the game.

Aces Texas Hold’em No Limit is a great title to get your hands on if you’re at all into this type of poker game. It plays realistically, can be customized to your tastes and can be played over and over. It even keeps statistics on the number of hands played, hands won, folds and more. Concrete Software assured us that we would enjoy this game and it’s good to say that they were correct. If you get the opportunity to check it out, by all means do so.

What Cellphone, UK’s best-selling mobile phone buying guide, named Aces Texas Hold’em – No Limit best game for the month for September 2004. The award winning game released in July of this year was the follow-up release to the hit game Aces Texas Hold’em – Limit. “… once we started playing, it was impossible to put down – even for a poker novice.” What Cellphone gave the game a 9 out of 10 rating.