"Smartphone product customisation" is a reference to the increasingly complex process of providing software variants for different countries and operators. Effectively this means a physical device will arrive, at one of these factories, from Nokia's Asian assembly lines as a blank slate. It will then be customised as appropriate. While the main focus will be on software, there may also be variations in the in box accessories, documentation and related material. In some cases a small amount of additional assembly may also be carried out (e.g. fitting a certain colour casing).

A typical Nokia device has several hundred different versions (product codes), with the main changes being made in the software. Building, testing and deploying these variants is a complex process. Being able to rapidly customise and deliver devices is a key competitive advantage and ties in with Nokia's stated aim of being operator friendly.

In its press release Nokia specifically mentions the benefit of reduced transport costs and reduced time to market by locating assembly lines closer to their component suppliers, but reduced labour costs will also be a major portion of the anticipated increased efficiency in smartphone production. 

Moving the core manufacturing operations to Asia is not a surprise; Nokia has been something of an odd man out by maintaining global manufacturing facilities. However, it will still be seen as a blow to the pride of Nokia, and continues a pattern of painful adjustments as the company continues its strategy transition.

Most of the manufacturing will move to Nokia's plants in Beijing (China) and Masan (South Korea), but some may also be relocated to Dongguan (China), Chennai (India), Manaus (Brazil) and Hanoi (Vietnam).

The severity of the 4,000 job losses is made clear by their impact on each plant - Komarom (2,300 out of 4,400 jobs), Salo (1,000 our 1,700) and Reynosa (700 out of 1,000). Employees who lose their job will be supported a locally-tailored program that will include financial support and assistance withe local re-employment.

From the press release:

"Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market. By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive," said Savander. "We recognize the planned changes are difficult for our employees and we are committed to supporting our personnel and their local communities during the transition."

As a consequence of the plans, the number of steps in manufacturing and the amount of work carried out at the sites in Komarom, Reynosa and Salo are expected to decrease substantially. The changes are anticipated to impact approximately 4,000 employees in total.

Personnel reductions are planned to be phased through the end of 2012. Nokia will offer a comprehensive locally-tailored support program, including financial support and assistance with local re-employment.

In fact, production values look quite good at Air Strike's start, with a super glossy splash screen (which wouldn't screen-cap, sadly), plus a promising couple of animated intro pages:

So you've got a carrier-based fighter bomber (which means the action all takes place out at sea) and are despatched to find and blow up as many enemy fighters and warships as possible. The missiles at your disposal are seemingly both infinite and equally effective on planes and boats - one hit and both are goners. Not terribly realistic, but this simplification keeps the gameplay manageable, as you'll see.

In further simplifications, your plane flies at constant height and constant speed and you just have two controls, rotate anti-clockwise (the down icon) and rotate clockwise (the up icon). In between is a large, somewhat satisfying 'FIRE' button, each tap on this launches a pair of missiles. Having both directional and fire controls right next to each other means that your right thumb has to operate both - a system which works acceptably in practice but isn't quite as fluid when the game hots up as if controls had been split across both thumbs. I suspect the reason for the 'one thumb only' controls is because the developer hadn't mastered (or was unable to optimise performance for) full multi-touch.

Around the screen we have various score readouts, a 'radar' display showing roughly (from a strictly 'screen up' perspective, thankfully) where planes and boats are in your vicinity, readouts of health and fuel, and controls to get back to the main menu (sound off/on, Help, etc.) and to adjust the game's animation speed. This last control is a bit redundant, though I guess could be useful if you're playing on an older, slower phone.

Come to think of it, the radar's also somewhat redundant, in that enemy planes will seek you out mercilessly - you don't normally need to go looking for them. At least the radar gives you an idea of which direction they're coming in from, ready to launch a few salvoes to ambush them.

In practice, gameplay involves wheeling in circles and figure of eights, breaking the arc to loose off missiles when needed. The enemy fighters try to lock on, especially when you travel in a straight line for too long (so best not do that then!) and generally swoop around until you've managed to either shoot them all down or get shot down yourself.

The latter happens when your plane runs out of 'Health' - each missile hit knocks a bar or two off the reading and if it gets to zero then you crash into the sea. Rather nicely, the more you get hit, the more your little plan sprite shows damage, by way of glowing parts and then increasing amount of smoke. Happily, every 300 points you get a complete health and fuel top-up, so getting to multiples of 300 is your main objective when playing. In practice, I was getting well into the thousands after half an hour of practice.

Air Strike is well paced, in that there's rarely a dull moment - there's always something to shoot at, something to dodge. Other than the obvious limitations (a single 'sea' backdrop, no new 'bosses', weapons or power-ups to keep things exciting), my main complaint was that the aircraft depicted are too similar, all looking like F-16s to my eyes. At the very least, your airplane should be a different colour, surely? As it is, when you're surrounded by eight swooping, wheeling enemy planes, the centre of the screen gets ridiculously confusing because you can't often tell which is your aircraft amidst the mass of gleaming metallic silver.

I was also disappointed not to have at least a basic 'high score' table - you just get a top of screen 'hi score' reminder while playing. Having lasted for a good 15 minutes and got several thousand points before dying (thanks to a lapse in concentration), I expected at least a confirmation screen, a congratulations, or a place on a high score table somewhere.... anywhere. Instead, it was just back to the main menu and 'Start' all over again.

Limitations and minor complaints aside, Air Strike is well worth £1.50. It makes absolutely no pretense at flight simulator realism - it's an arcade game pure and simple and, as such, works surprisingly well. Great for a ten minute blast on your way into work?

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 7th Feb 2012

Nokia Suite, for Windows, is here, if you want to grab the latest version. Note that Nokia Software Updater for Mac can't (officially) be used to update to Belle, for technical reasons (it doesn't manage the backing up of all the necessary data properly).

Although your user data should all be preserved (Nokia Suite takes your device through a full backup/wipe/restore cycle and note to follow the instructions given on-screen exactly, you only need to enter your SIM PIN number, all other device prompts can be ignored), the usual precautions should be taken. i.e. sync your PIM data to another computer or phone or to the cloud. User settings, bookmarks, text messages, and predictive text dictionaries will also be preserved across the update, but applications installed to (or with components on) the system (C:) disk will be lost - you'll have to download them again from the Nokia Store (or wherever you sourced them). Note that a number of applications in the Nokia Store are known to currently be incompatible with Nokia Belle - see here for a list.

See below for a breakdown of the full update procedure and notes from us.

Post-update, on the editorial C6-01...

Your device will be notified in its normal regular check for updates over the air, but the instruction is clearly 'Use your PC to update'. If you're wondering where your update is, see Nokia's official Belle availability page.

Included in the 250MB plus update (some users have reported up to 390MB - it's variable according to device, variant and previous firmware version) is the new Nokia Belle on Symbian OS, with a large number of improvements:

• A major reworking of the user interface, with an emphasis on ease of use, updated design language and flatter navigation hierarchy. Specific items are detailed below.
    
• Better use [a new memory management scheme] of the 256MB of RAM in all Symbian^3/Anna devices. In practice this will mean no occasional 'Memory full' errors and (hopefully) foolproof execution of even the largest 'HD' games. Applications which are running will, on the whole, stay running, whatever else you start up. Overall performance is better, in terms of UI responsiveness and multitasking.
    
• Qt 4.7.4 is baked in from day one, meaning far fewer installation problems for Qt apps and faster (and more silent) installs in general.
   
• Full NFC functionality (on the Nokia C7, at least, which has the necessary chip!), including: tap and share (share images, videos and contacts), tap and pair (pair Bluetooth accessories through a simple tap), tap and access (read tags to find information) and tap to play (unlock new levels on NFC-enabled games).
    
• Improvements in screen real estate, with slimmer top status bar and optional (in some apps) bottom toolbar, meaning that all phones will have a larger useful display area. 
    
• Homescreen widgets will now come in up to five different sizes (1x1, 2x1, 4x1, 2x2, 4x4) and allow a greater degree of interactivity. In addition to dragging widgets around a homescreen in 'Edit' mode, you can now also drag from one homescreen to another. Widget re-positioning when moving from portrait to landscape mode remains intelligent, with some tweaks for the new variety in widget sizes.
    
• New drop-down menu, Android style, to access notifications, connectivity toggles (including a welcome one for 'Mobile data', which previously required an involved trip into 'Settings') and system status information from most places in the UI. 
    
• The Symbian homescreen system now supports up to six pages (previously the limit was three for most phones and five for the smaller-screened E6).
   
• A rewritten application launcher with default 'flat' structure, i.e. all applications are presented in one big scrolling grid of icons, though as I explained here, it's easy enough to make new folders, including one called 'trash' (or similar), somewhere to put all the apps you don't think you'll even need - this significantly reduces the amount of vertical scrolling needed. There's an option to switch the icons to alphabetic order, or to quick match/search the list, but happily your original order is also remembered so that you can switch back at any time. Newly installed applications are now marked with a red asterisk until they've been opened for the first time. 
    
• An application can be 'added to the homescreen' from the main app menu, by long pressing its icon.
    
• The bottom softkeys and (optional) bottom toolbar are replaced with a single toolbar comprising up to four icons (Back/Exit, Custom 1, Custom 2, and Menu). This, for most applications, in theory, gives the UI a flatter hierarchy, with less use of menus and with more direct interaction.
    
• Improvements to the lock screen, which will now have information about missed calls, messages and emails. The lock screen also now supports a transparency effect, showing the underlying homescreen wallpaper.
    
• Update to Web, with numerous optimisations and easy access to multiple windows through a permanent toolbar icon. Like desktop browsers, Web keeps track of your 'Most visited pages' and this can be set as your 'homepage' if needed. A long press and drag on web page text now pops up a 'Copy' option, for copying text to the system clipboard.
    
• Update to Music Player, with a 'floating track list' in the album art 'cover flow' view.
   
• Updates to several other Symbian stalwart applications. Calendar gets an overall facelift and Notes now brings up a white (and AMOLED-unfriendly...) editing screen.
   
• Update to Camera, showing the new, streamlined UI that featured in the Beta Labs N8 Camera update. Although functionality is the same, far fewer taps are needed to get to the majority of settings and functions. Note also that the 'Close-up' mode for the N8 video capture (i.e. with continuous auto-focus) is also included, so no need to install that as well.
  

Availability

The Nokia Belle update is available for the Nokia N8, C7 (and variants), C6-01, E7, X7, and E6. It is currently not available for the Nokia 500 for technical reasons (different hardware platform, unique device constraints). Like all of Nokia's software updates, it is rolled out in stages. This means that the update may not be available for your device immediately.

The update is now widely available in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Middle East for unbranded devices. The update is also available for about two thirds of operator branded devices, although this varies widely from market to market.

Nokia has provided a page detailing the product codes for which the device is available here. 

Procedure

1. If you have not already done so, update Nokia Suite to the latest version.
2. Make sure your smartphone is in 'PC Suite' mode (Settings>Connectivity>USB)
3. Plug your smartphone into Nokia Suite and wait while it's recognised, installed, as usual. 
4. If your PC is online, the software will check for update availability. You can go into the updater tab to force a refresh of this, if needed.
5. The update is downloaded. If you've previously installed Belle on another device and the version number is the same, the same update source is used, saving you (and Nokia) download time and bandwidth.
6. Follow the prompts on-screen. Nokia Suite does a full backup of all your PIM data, user settings, bookmarks, text messages, and predictive text dictionaries. Any miscellaneous documents/files/databases/whatever found on the internal disk will be copied to E:/Nokia_Belle, to make sure you don't lose them.
7. Nokia Suite then completely wipes the internal (C:) disk as part of laying down the Belle OS.
8. You may be asked by your phone for your SIM card PIN - this is the only thing you should respond to.
9. Nokia Suite then restores your data, backed up above.
10. Nokia Store will prompt for an immediate update to the latest QML version - accept this and wait while it installs. 
11. While you're there, look for Nokia Social 1.5 in the Store and download the update to this too, since the Belle firmware still contains the old v1.3 variant. Note that, once run and logged into Facebook, Nokia Social will take some background time updating your Contacts thumbnails. Please allow for this and accept that Contacts will appear to be constantly changing for a while.
    
12. Note that any applications that had been installed to the internal (C) disk will need re-installing from the Nokia Store or from your original SIS files etc. 

Known issues

As with any major OS update, there are bound to be some minor glitches. So far, I've noticed:

• 'bottom left' taps, on the back icon or on the application grid icon, aren't always recognised - if the OS is busy in the background, taps can get missed.
• playing back FLV video files is broken, most files play erratically, if at all.
• some applications that had been installed to mass memory (E:), usually games, don't reappear in the main app menu after the Belle install. These titles seem to have to be re-installed/downloaded as needed.
• trying to share a photo or video from Gallery results in 'Feature not supported'
• random Wi-fi disconnects on some models (e.g. the E7) are still present - I was hoping the Wi-fi stack would have gotten a rewrite, but it seems not.

More as and when we discover it!

Steve Litchfield, Rafe Blandford and Ewan Spence for All About Symbian, 7th Feb 2012

When FlickrUp is launched for the first time, you’re invited to login. Web based authentication is used, allowing you to login either with your native account or through your Facebook or Google account.

Post-authentication, the primary screen of FlickrUp shows you four horizontally scrolling lists of thumbnails. These correspond to your Photostream, Photosets, Galleries, and Favourites. Touching these takes you to a vertical list of thumbnails accompanied by their title, description, upload date, and privacy status.

 
Main screen and Photostream.

While viewing a single image, details can be overlaid by tapping, and swiping sideways takes you to the next image in the current set. The triple dot icon on an image page brings up the comments for that image. This feature really helps FlickrUp shine as a social application rather than just an image browser.

 
Viewing image details and comments.

On the lower left corner there is a (tiny) icon for launching the main menu. Rather than rows of text, the menu is a table of labelled icons, which looks good. The first two options allow you to browse your contacts’ uploads and view recent “Interesting” picks from the Flickr editor. A simple search function is also available here.

 
Main menu and contacts photos.

The next icon takes you to the upload screen, which is resplendent with options. You can even select multiple files, set options for each of them, and then leave FlickrUp to perform a batch upload. In addition to setting title, description, and tags, you can select which resolution to upload, and the privacy and parental control content.

 
Upload options.

If you don’t want to diddle with options every time you upload, you can choose your defaults via the settings page. This page also lets you select which local folders you’ll choose uploads from. Those who are keen on optimising the battery life of their AMOLED smartphones will be glad to know they can choose between a light or dark theme.

 
Settings menu.

FlickrUp does have some limitations that surprised me though. I would have expected an image download capability – this would have been a great way to get new wallpapers for your phone. There’s no option to share images via your social networks either – even the Twitter and blogging options that you can set up on your Flickr account are not included.

Overall though, FlickrUp is a great product despite the limitations discussed above.  It’s designed completely within the Nokia Belle style guide, and is one of the quickest applications to switch between portrait and landscape that I’ve seen. I’d reasonably expect an app like this to cost as much as £3.00, but FlickrUp is free on the Nokia Store. Apart from the “About” page, there aren’t even any advertisements!

Highly Recommended.

David Gilson, 5^th February 2012.

We'll be a publishing a formal textual review of the Nokia 500 soon. If you have any questions that you would like answered please leave them in the comment thread , or send us an email, and we'll do our best to answer them.
   

Key hardware features

• 111.3 x 53.8 x 14.1 mm in dimensions, 93g in weight, 73cc in volume; monoblock touch form factor
    
• Changeable back covers, three are included with each Nokia 500, and additional covers will be available as accessories (similar to C5-03 and Nokia's earlier XpressOn covers).
    
• 3.2 inch capacitive TFT touchscreen; 640x 360 pixels resolution (nHD)
    
  
• 5 megapixel full focus (EDoF) camera (no LED flash); video capture at 640 x 480 (VGA and 15 frames per second)
    
  
• Integrated GPS with location support for GPS, A-GPS, WLAN and Cell-ID location techniques.
    
• Compass (magnetometer), accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensors.
    
• 3.5 mm Nokia audio connector for audio out
    
• FM Radio with RDS
    
• microUSB (USB 2.0) for file transfers and charging (2mm charger also available)
   
• BL-4U (1100mAh) battery with easy access battery cover (standby by time of 20 days and talk time of 7 hours (GSM) and 5 hours (WCDMA).
    
• WCDMA 850/900/1700/1900/2100 and GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 (HSDPA Cat 10 - 14.4 MBps, HSUPA Cat 6 - 5.76 Mbps)
    
• WiFi: WLAN IEEE802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.1
   
• Processor: ARM 11 at 1 GHz, RAM: 256MB
    
• 2GB mass memory and microSD card slot (supports sizes up to 32GB)
     
• In box contents: Nokia 500, Nokia Battery BL-4U, Nokia Connectivity Cable CA-101D, Nokia Headset WH-102, Nokia High Efficiency Charger AC-15 and 2 additional battery covers.
     

More details are available in our Nokia 500 launch story.

Having been something of a pioneer in phone-shot video over the years, it's fair to say that I lusted first after focus of any kind (the N93, shown above, was perhaps the first phone in the world to shoot usable video, back in 2006), then later after continuous auto-focus - after all, surely having the phone always working to keep the centre of frame in focus is a good thing, right? Well, not always...

Some of the various approaches to capturing video on phones over the years:

1. No focussing of any kind, lens is left focussed on the horizon. Examples include most phones and smartphones prior to about 2008.
     
2. No focussing, but the lens is left in a 'hyperfocal' position, i.e. ensuring maximum depth of field. Examples include the Nokia N86 and N8 (in its default scene mode), with subjects from about 70cm to the middle distance being very crisp at all times.
     
3. Pre-focus, the user half presses the shutter button (or taps the screen, as appropriate) at the start of the clip and whatever's in the centre of the viewfinder becomes the focus subject. If you pan around and change the subject later in the clip, the original focus is retained - meaning that the new subject may be out of the depth of field for that lens position and so will appear blurry.
     
4. Continuous auto-focus, as it sounds, the software monitors the sharpness of whatever's in the viewfinder and if not happy with what it finds, steps in to 'experiment' with different focus positions until high enough sharpness is found again. This 'hunting' for focus whenever the subject is changed produces two effects: one, a slightly unsettling zoom in and out again (because the different focus positions all have slightly different fields of view); and two, an unsightly blurriness that clears up after a second or two once focus is restored.
     
5. Extended Depth of Field, also known as 'Full Focus', pioneered by Nokia in the phone world and using optical and electronic tricks to mean that everything from 40cm to infinity is crisp. This approach works surprisingly well, with the main disadvantage being that you can't film anything up really close (so no arty shots of small animals and flowers!). 

Although I've hinted above as to some of the pros and cons of each approach, options 2, 4 and 5 offer the best results for typical user-with-phone video capture. Typical subjects include:

What's interesting in the table above is that mode 4, continuous auto-focus, which you would think is going to win out overall by virtue of being more sophisticated, doesn't sweep the use-case board. Instead, modes 2 and 5 also do extremely well, neither of which involves any dynamic re-focussing of the camera phone optics. This turns out to be the achilles heel of mode 4 - the need to continuously monitor sharpness and adjust focal length to maximise it means that 'hunting' (as described above) is a real issue.

To illustrate 'hunting' and general continuous auto-focus behaviour, here's a test video, shot on the Nokia Lumia 800 with continuous auto-focus turned on. The bulk of the video includes side-by-side comparison with video capture of the same subjects with an EDoF-equipped smartphone, in this case the Nokia E6, typical of the breed. I'm not saying that the optics and sensor in the likes of the E6 are better than that in the Lumia 800 (or other a-f-enabled devices) - they're not, but the absence of 'hunting' does make for a less flawed experience for the video viewer:

Aside from me hopefully having just dispelled the myth that 'continuous auto-focus' is necessarily the best way to go (I'd argue that, clip for clip for casual users, EDoF video is best, as almost everything will always be in focus, etc.), it's worth pointing out that one way of having the best of both worlds would be to have the option of enabling or disabling continuous auto-focus, depending on subject and need.

This can, thankfully, be achieved on most smartphones. For example, on the Nokia N8, using the new Camera application, hyperfocal (mode 2, above) is the default, but you can also turn on 'Close-up' mode, in which continuous auto-focus is used to great effect. (In case you're wondering about the 'Close-up' name, it's because continuous auto-focus is only ever really needed for things closer than a few metres - the default hyperfocal system is fine for everything else.)

To take another example, behaviour is much the same on most Windows Phone devices. For example, on the HTC HD7 (and similar), continuous auto-focus can be simply turned off in settings, with 'off' reverting back to typical hyperfocal depth of field. Things are slightly more complicated on the Nokia Lumia 800, since, although auto-focus can be turned off manually, the lens is left in the last position used - so film something close-up with auto-focus on and then switch the feature off, and everything at normal distances will then be very blurry. (You thus have to make allowances if you want to switch focus modes, remembering what you last filmed and picking a subject at more typical distance in auto-focus mode, before then switching the feature off again.)

In summary, if your smartphone does have continuous auto-focus when capturing video, recognise that the first few seconds after switching subject will be subject to 'hunting'. So, for example, you're shooting some kids playing and then you swivel round to talk to mum or dad on-cam. Having turned, wait a couple of seconds before asking them whatever you were going to say. Recognise that these 'hunting' sections of video may have to be snipped out later in a video editor.

In practice, it's quite easy to simply allow an extra few seconds at the start of each planned clip 'in your head' - you probably won't be able to see the focus 'hunting' on your small smartphone screen, but the effect will be there and much more visible on your big desktop monitor or TV later on. So just allow for it and move on.

And consider turning continuous auto-focus off altogether - yes, it means a bit more fiddling around (especially if you have a Nokia Lumia device), but the results may be more consistent.

(And if you have a Symbian-powered EDoF-shooting phone then you can basically ignore everything I've just said, apart from not shooting subjects closer than about 40cm, since your video will always be auto-magically in focus anyway!)

Steve Litchfield, 6th Feb 2012, for All About Symbian and All About Windows Phone

Symeo

Symeo opens up with a horizontally scrolling carousel of video categories. It has large thumbnails for each, and a white background which is not power efficient for AMOLED displays. User interface controls are presented as quarter circle icons in each corner of the screen – they’re non-standard but friendly looking. One of which is for search, allowing you to break out of Symeo’s curated content.

The categories on offer through Symeo are Music Videos, Movie Trailers, Upcoming Virals, Most Shared, and New Videos. It’s not clear to me how these channels are being compiled – YouTube does not have the same categories as these; simply searching for the above category names on the desktop yields different results than are listed in Symeo.

Symeo categories

When browsing categories, the thumbnail carousel has a 3D effect not present in the category list. On first impression it feels inconsistent, but it is a visual cue to let you know which kind of list you’re in. Frustratingly, video thumbnails are not accompanied by a title. Neither is there any extra information about the video when you tap through to view it.

Symeo category content

In a video list, there are two icons, one to play and one to share the currently selected video. You can share via Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. However, Facebook authentication couldn’t be completed as the confirmation page couldn’t fit on the screen, and for some reason Symeo wouldn’t let me scroll down to tap the accept icon. Because of there being no video information, sharing is the only way you can find out what you were watching!

Setting up social network sharing

Failing to show Facebook’s accept button

The video player is a custom solution, rather than sending the video stream to Symbian’s built-in player. There are controls for volume, timeline, pause, fullscreen, and back (to list) – unfortunately, it has a litany of issues. Firstly, it does not force the phone to stay awake during playback. Secondly, it ignores the volume keys, and so you can only adjust via the on-screen slider. Thirdly, when fullscreen mode is engaged, the player controls are removed. However, the fullscreen control icon area is so small that it’s very difficult to find when working blind.

Symeo’s custom video player

The next disappointing part of Symeo is that the streaming quality is exceptionally poor, and there are not any settings to change the quality of the stream that Symeo uses. Furthermore, there’s no download option either, so you cannot view videos offline.

Symeo is an interesting idea, and when content is curated in the right way it can add value. However, I’m afraid the pieces didn’t fit together for me with Symeo. It’s not obvious how the curation is achieved and so how good a source of information is it? The streaming quality is almost unwatchable, and the user interface is awkward. To be fair, I should note that this is only a version 1.0 product, and so things may yet improve in later versions.

Symeo is free in the Nokia Store, but if I were you I’d stick with the CuteTube - it's £3 but worth every single penny....

David Gilson, 3rd February 2012.

From the article:

I believe it is fairly safe to say that the Nokia N8 is still the king of image quality when compared to today’s best smartphones based on its superior dynamic range, low noise, and accurate color - not to mention higher resolution. All things considered, the iPhone 4s comes in a solid second in this test. Although its hardware may not be totally up to snuff, I could understand getting an iPhone in place of an N8 if editing and sharing are more important that the utmost image quality to the user due to the social platforms (think Path and Instagram) and image editing software available only for the iPhone. 

Here's one of the test images. Note, in the original article, that you can click through each blogged image to see the full photo in various sizes on Flickr. Nice job.

You may also remember my own original top camera phone comparison, though this was pre-iPhone 4S... I suspect the latter might have nipped into second place in that test too, but I reckon the N8's peerless standing is still intact a full year and a half from first availability.

(via)

In Corning's words:

Watch and share "A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked," to see how Corning's highly engineered glass, with companion technologies, will help shape our world. Take a journey with our narrator for details on these technologies, answers to your questions, and to learn about what's possible -- and what's not -- in the near future.

This podcast was recorded on Wednesday 1st February 2012.

In this podcast we cover:       

• Looking ahead to the Belle upgrade for existing Symbian^3 devices
    
• Nokia Q4 2011 results
    
• 1.5 billion Series 40 phones
    
• 360Cities comes to Nokia Maps
    
• Nokia Social 1.5
    
• Review: CNN App for Symbian
     

You can listen to all 200 editions of the AAS Insight Podcast in our media section.

I should say up front that Tune It is nowhere as ambitious as the commercial Tunerific, which I reviewed back in 2011. Rather than try and sample a guitar's audio output and produce interactive animations to show the pitch, Tune It goes altogether more old school, simply producing reference tones that you then use to tune your guitar by ear.

But don't switch off, thinking that the application is too trivial to be bothered with. For starters, Tune It is free (and no ads in sight), so you've got nothing whatsoever to lose by installing it and keeping it in a corner of your smartphone.

Secondly, and going a little philosophical, there's a distinct benefit to staying 'old school' and low-tech, in that the commercial sampling tuners reduce tuning each string to tweaking the tuning pegs and watching the fancy animations - you essentially stop fiddling when the display says so and never mind how the string sounds. Ultimately, as a player, you want to improve, but you also want to improve your musical ear, I'm often appalled by the numbed of players who carry on strumming something which is obviously out of tune because they just can't 'hear it'.

I should emphasise that I haven't got 'perfect pitch', but I can recognise when a note's not 'right'. In part this is because I've usually tuned my guitar by ear, playing a tuning fork to get a reference tone and then tuning by harmonics across the strings, or by playing the appropriate notes on a nearby electronic piano or organ and tuning to those.

Or, as here, by using a tool which can generate each of the string notes directly. The idea then is to train your ear to hear the differences between two plucked string tones and know not only which one is higher pitched (not that easy, especially when the difference is small) but how far the guitar string is 'out'. You'll end up being able to tune guitars quicker and quicker by ear and will feel a whole lot more musical than if you'd relied on pure electronic sampling tools.

In addition, every guitar has its own little, miniscule idiosyncrasies, i.e. no instrument is perfectly intoned. By tuning by ear, you'll eventually be able to make these little allowances as you go.

That's the theory then of why tuning using a simple app like Tune It can be 'better' then sampling utilities - but it does rely on you having a good musical ear and I accept it's not for everyone. Tune It does its best to help by producing genuine string tones, complete with harmonics and decay, rather than just 'pure' tones (as if from a 1980s keyboard). So you're not having to compare something weedy and pure with a live, messy, complicated, real world string. You effectively compare like with like, making the job much easier.

In terms of interface, you have to step through strings one at a time - each screen tap 'plucks' the string, as needed, then you move onto the next string with 'Next' and so on. This system does have the advantage that you don't have to tap accurately - after all, you've got a guitar in your hands, too, the phone is probably next to you on a table, so it's nice to just be able to tap anywhere on the virtual fretboard to hear the string sound again.

Three different tunings are supported, though in 20-odd years of playing I've never used anything other than 'standard' - I guess I'm not good, or experimental, enough! A nice tutorial walkthrough is also provided, albeit being slightly unnecessary for such a simple application and interface.

Obviously Tunerific is the most accomplished of the two applications, having both the sampling and string-sound functions, but if you just want something fast, free and effective then Tune It comes recommended. And will do its best to stop your tuning ears getting lazy!

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 3 Feb 2012

The diagram below is courtesy of Nokia Conversations:

The page explains:

There’s both a linear polariser and retardation layers between the surface of your phone and the display. When light hits your screen, this is what happens:

1. It hits the linear polariser, this vertically polarises the light. (Polarising means – roughly – aligning the wave vibration in a particular direction).
2. Then it hits the circular polariser retardation layer. This converts the light again, making it right-circularly polarised.
3. Then it hits the screen and bounces off it, switching the rotation of the light to leftist.
4. It goes back through the retardation layer. When this happens, the light becomes horizontally polarised.
5. Finally, it hits the linear polariser, since the light is horizontally polarised at this point it can be blocked entirely by this optical solution.

So why doesn’t the light from your phone’s display get blocked? Because it only goes through the second half of this journey so the light is unpolarised when it hits the final filter and goes through.

Good stuff, just the detail we needed.

It should also be noted that CBD isn't the only technology that aids outdoors visibility of smartphone screens - for example, a similar (though not as effective) goal was implemented on the Nokia X7 by closing up the various screen layers to eliminate any air gap - this technique is used by other manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson.

It should also be noted that CBD is effective on both AMOLED and traditional TFT/LCD screens (examples of the latter include the Nokia 701 and 603).

Skype for Nokia Belle (version 2.1.23 - 6.9MB) can be downloaded from the Nokia Store. Once you have downloaded and installed the application, you'll need to enter your Skype username and password. Contacts and current IM conversations will be automatically downloaded. You can optionally choose to import names and numbers from the Contacts application, so that you can call these numbers via Skype.

The screenshots here show the updates to the user interface. The selection bar/tabs at the top of the screen give access to the major sections of the app (Contacts, IM, Call, History and Skype Extras). The Belle style toolbar at the bottom of the screen is context sensitive, giving access to the most common commands for the current view.

Here's the description for Skype from the Nokia Store:

With all the benefits of Skype on your phone you can save money and stay in touch when you're on the move.

• Make free Skype-to-Skype calls and IM on 3G or WiFi.
• Save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad.
• Share pictures, videos and other files from your phone.

It's free to use Skype in a WiFi zone. If you use Skype with a mobile data connection, operator charges may apply, so we recommend an unlimited data plan.

Skype is also available for Symbian Anna (Symbian^3) handsets, of course. More details on Skype's Symbian page.

Thanks to Finnish First for the tip.

Rather than reproduce every last detail here, let me point you towards the press release of Strategy Analytics and that of IDC.

In summary, here's the picture for overall mobile sales, courtesy of IDC:

Top Five Mobile Phone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q4 2011 (Units in Millions) 

Although Nokia is still comfortably the top selling phone maker in the world, its lead has been halved by Samsung, while Apple is now firmly in third place with its much more profitable iPhone range. The whole market grew by 6%, year on year, less than in previous years but still heading upwards, in line with population and increased penetration in developing markets.

The table below shows the breakdown in terms of 'smartphones', though the very definition is something which is coming under increasing attack, not least from (what were previously considered) 'feature' phones, which increasingly have full Internet access, email and social clients, touch-based games, and more...

It's not entirely clear whether Samsung's Bada phones are included in the total above. Nokia's sales of 19.6 smartphones (around 95% Symbian) in Q4 would, a few years ago, have been dominant, but it's a sign of the times that smartphone market leaders, Samsung and Apple, both managed around 37 million sales in the same period. Over the course of the year there wasn't that big a difference between the top three and Samsung, Apple and Nokia are way ahead of the trailing pack, just as they are for wider mobile handset sales.

Significantly, the entire 'smartphone' market grew by 63% over the year, a big contrast to the 6% growth of the overall market. The 'smartphone' segment is now up to 36% and will be 50% by the end of 2012, surely a sign that we should soon drop the moniker altogether and just talk about 'phones'? If nothing else, it would make these news stories simpler to write and simpler to understand!

In short, the idea is to keep things really simple, really colourful and yet allow the creation of little pieces of art that can be proudly shown to the parent sitting nearby (or driving, perhaps - this app could be a good way of keeping a son or daughter quiet on a long car journey).

If the graphics below seem over-simplistic to you then think again - they're deliberately pitched at four and five year olds and might even be a nice diversion for six and seven year olds, too.

I was looking at the free sampler application, with five line drawings to endow with colour, but if the app is a hit with your small ones, then you'll want to grab either (or both of) Pack 1 Coloring Fun and Christmas Pack Coloring Fun, each of which has fifteen images for your £1 purchase price.

The interface (as you'd hope, given the target audience) is simple. Pick the drawing you want from an initial carousel and then you're off and colouring. The right hand side crayons are part of a vertical carousel - although it's not obvious at first that there are more colours available, the very first flick or drag gives the colourer an immediate grasp of how it works.

The drawing tools are kept similarly simple, with only two of note - one to perform the main 'filling' of enclosed sections with colour, as already eulogised, the other a brush to add extra strokes as needed, shown below:

The bottom tool (obviously) erases whatever the colourer rubs it over, while the dustbin tool reverts the image to black and white, ready for the child to start again.

The top 'back' icon returns the colourer to the image picking carousel, but the current image is saved, so no accidental returns followed by a "All my colours have gone!" cry. This also means that the child can be 'working' on more than one image at a time, which is a neat feature.

The (rather antiquated!) floppy disk icon is supposed to be for saving each masterpiece, not only internally, but also to a bitmap file that can be used elsewhere on the phone, such as emailing off to a proud grandparent:

At least, that's the theory - the quoted folder gets created but, on this free version of the application, no images actually appeared, no matter how hard I tried. Maybe this only works on the paid versions? The functionality's not a huge loss, but worth noting.

Although the limited (15 images each on the paid versions) 'canvases' may seem a problem, the very fact that a child can erase the colours from a drawing with one tap and have fun starting again with totally different colour scheme means that there's some extended value here - I'd even go so far as to suggest that you as a parent might like to go into each image and (ahem) accidentally wipe it of colour before a car journey: "Oh, dear, all the colours have gone, can you help colour all the pictures in again?", and so on!

We grabbed the free Coloring Fun because we were round at a relative's house, where there was a bored five year old (my own daughter is now way too old!) and it worked very well, installing in seconds and entertaining as needed. If my own kid(s) were at the right age, I'd have no problem paying a pound for each of the two paid image packs.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 2nd Feb 2012

The Qt Labs blog also notes that the new version includes an update to the Notifications API (improves the end user experience and fixes issues with the N9 implementation), additional Qt Mobility examples (to help you get started with coding) and an update to the Symbian Complementary Package (new Analyze Tool plugin and new CODA 1.0.6 installation package).

Also worthy of note is the inclusion of Qt 4.8, although this is only for desktops; it is not directly relevant for mobile developers.

The Nokia Developer News blog notes that the SDK also deliver improvements that make it easier to integrate in-app purchasing.

In the SDK installer and the SDK maintenance tool you can now access advanced settings in which to specify your network’s proxy settings or add new SDK content repositories. This allows adding dynamic content to the SDK. Available today, the In-App Purchase API is the first new SDK content repository.

The Qt SDK 1.2 is available as a free download, and it can be used on Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS, and Ubuntu Linux powered PCs. Existing Qt SDK users can get the new version using the built in software updater.

Star Chart.

As is standard on mobile astronomy applications these days, Star Chart has an augmented reality mode. As you tilt and rotate your phone, it will show you the view of space from the direction you’re looking. It automatically determines your location from the phone’s GPS receiver, but you can set a manual location.

The Nokia Belle style toolbar at the bottom has an icon of an eye which toggles the augmented reality mode. Turning it off allows you to navigate the sky by swiping across the screen. While it may be easy to lose your bearings in this mode, Star Chart helps by overlaying an equatorial grid, and a coloured hue above the horizon. When the time of day is upon your local sunset, you’ll find a glorious red haze surrounding our local star.

 
Atmospheric view.

You can also stretch and pinch to zoom in and out. Doing so will reveal objects that were too dim to see before. This is a deceptively simple way of implementing a magnitude (brightness) filter for those who are not perhaps familiar with aspects of astronomy. In real life, the dimmer an object is, the more you have to zoom in to collect enough of its light to detect it.

 
Zooming into a cluster.

Tapping on an object in the sky will target it and bring up a list of its vital statistics. There is also a button to auto-zoom onto a targeting object. This is good for a quick look-up but you will have to go hunting out specific objects because this version of Star Chart does not have a search function!

 
Astronomical data on display.

As essential tool for any astronomy companion is a red monochrome mode to preserve your night vision. The crescent moon icon on the toolbar toggles this on and off. Having this enables you to go out observing in the night and use Star Chart as a guide. However, it lacks many other tools that you would need for serious observation.

 
Night vision mode in action.

Star Chart is currently at version 1.0, which is shown by not even having an option to overlay constellation lines and names. It is currently limited to toggling planet and star names. Neither is there an azimuthal grid option or the ability to set a future date so you can plot where objects will be in the future – e.g. if you were planning the evening’s observations during the day.

Star Chart is available in the Nokia Store for £1.50. What it lacks in comprehensiveness it makes up for in simplicity and could be a great way to get a child interested in astronomy.

I'll be revisiting this should it get seriously updated in the future.

David Gilson, 31^st January 2012

At the same meeting, I remember a friend (who worked at Symbian) indicating (under his jacket) the very first Nokia 9210 prototype and (quietly) decrying my two box system as old hat. And he was right, of course, the 9210 launched in 2000 and the world of smartphones was born (a full seven years before the iPhone - tell that to your kids, and they won't believe you, etc...)

But that's never stopped many people wondering, ever since, whether a two box solution is practical. These days, the phone and data parts are built into everything, of course, so the 'two box' bit refers to form factor and capabilities. With 'smartphones' getting ever larger (I've just been reviewing the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Note, at 4.65" and 5.3" screen respectively), to the point where they are actually quite clumsy to use as 'phones', is there now a case for returning to the two box concept and splitting the main functions of communications and display?

In this feature, I'm going to be looking at combining a Nokia N86 (chosen because of its terrific camera, great/traditional 'phone' form factor, and because it's great for music) with an Apple iPad 2 (great for games, applications, Web, email and social networking). So as not to duplicate functions and expense, I'm obviously looking at the Wi-fi-only version of the latter, using Joikuspot Premium on the N86 to provide mobile broadband to the tablet.

Is this the best of both worlds or simply a clumsy and inefficient solution? Would I not be better off with a one box system such as the Galaxy Note? Let's investigate.

Here's the set up then, the top rated (by me, at least) but somewhat ageing Nokia N86, showing JoikuSpot Premium in action, and the 2011 Apple iPad 2:

The whole two-versus-one argument is extremely subjective, of course, which is why I haven't awarded any 'wins' above. I did think it notable that the two box solution costs less than the single device tested, plus there's the flexibility that if one component fails (e.g. the phone) then you can switch to another while retaining the other major component (e.g. the iPad). In fact, the presence of an older iPad model (with slower processor, less RAM and no camera) means that a budget two box solution could be achieved for around £250, sourced second hand. 

On the other hand, the 'one box' solution has the advantage that everything's supremely integrated and you never have to fiddle about getting one component online:

Definitely a case of pros and cons for each. The possibility of combining the best bits, the strengths of an older, now cheaper Symbian smartphone and the arch-tablet of our times, the iPad, did appeal to me though. You really can have a phone which is phone-sized and with the usual Symbian strengths of decent battery performance, navigation and great audio, while also having a huge screen for work, reference, gaming and entertainment.

One possible big flaw for the two box approach is battery life - if you're intending to stay online on the iPad for most of the day, then the effort of keeping the ad-hoc Wi-fi hotspot going will kill the phone battery several times over. The N86's battery life isn't great at the best of times and it's really only suitable for running a hotspot in short bursts. You can't just leave it 'on' and active all day. If I were to repeat the experiment, I'd probably go for the Nokia E52 or E55, with the large BP-4L 'hero' battery. 

My gut feel is that, although the two box solution produces a more expansive, more immersive and more flexible mobile computing system overall, issues of bulk, inconvenience and battery life mean that a good all-in-one 'converged' solution (and, trust me, the Galaxy Note is one such) edges it overall. Comments welcome if you agree, if you disagree, or if you've tried something similar! 

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 31st January 2012

PS. Bonus link to JoikuSpot Premium product page

Robo-E is a galactic garbage collector, and a local supernova has interfered with his positronic brain. That’s the story told by the game’s help page, which also stresses that his name is pronounced “Roboy” – to prevent confusion with a certain Pixar character! The help pages also have a demonstration of how to play the game, indicating where to make gestures with an animated fingerprint.

 
Robo-E help pages.

This science fiction incarnation of the classic puzzle genre requires you to place chunks of toxic waste onto yellow rings. The junk will be disintegrated when you load all rings, and you’ll progress to the next level.

 
Loading the disintegration rings.

The trick and attraction with this type of puzzle is that you can’t just blithely go shoving the blocks around – you have to plan ahead. Each level has walls that limit the play area, and you are only able to push blocks. So, if you happen to shove a piece of junk into a corner then you’ve already lost, as you can’t pull it back!

 
What not to do!

Your lowest move and push count are recorded as a high score for each level (or should that be low score?), which can be reviewed in the level selection screen. The graphical quality of this page is a leap ahead of anything else in the game. There is a three dimensional carousel that is clearly hardware accelerated. Swiping through this list also reveals that there are 32 levels.

 
Level selection screen.

I found this type of puzzle genuinely challenging, and your success will depend on how many moves ahead you can store in your mind. This is why I don’t think 32 levels is particularly limiting. It will take a while to complete all of them, and then there is the ongoing challenge of bettering your high/low-scores.

It has to be said that the graphics in this game are rather basic. However, this can be forgiven as the main robotic character is incredibly cute – at least to a nerd like me. Robo-E is somewhat orientation-agnostic. As you rotate your phone, Robo-E just adjusts his own orientation and the rest of the user interface is unchanged.

Playing in landscape.

Robo-E is available on the Nokia Store for £1.50. At that price, I really think this is a great title for puzzle fans. It’s the ideal mobile game in that you can dip in for a quick go without having your attention demanded for extended periods.

Highly Recommended.

David Gilson, 30^th January 2012.

I should stress up front that I've no knowledge of Nokia's plans for 2012. We know that it is committed to Windows Phone now, as well as Symbian, the latter in 'franchise' status (a term I still find confusing), but I for one am still optimistic for a couple of last great Symbian smartphones announced this year. Is it possible that one of these could be high end and succeed the amazingly popular N8? Of all the Symbian^3/Anna phones, it's the only one that has really made waves, the only one that has endeared itself to millions of users.

So... sitting down with the N8, how would I improve it? And yes, I know that product timescales dictate that this very (hypothetical) thought process would have had to have taken place inside Nokia a good year (or more) ago, but the exercise is still worthwhile here, if only to recognise that even the mighty N8 has shortcomings and to consider practical ways that it could have been bettered.

Let's call this imaginary new device the N8-X...

____________________________________

Form factor

There's general agreement that the N8 form factor is just about perfect, in terms of size and feel in the hand. The use of metal is uniformly praised, the device is very tough (I've dropped mine countless times) and I'd class the N8 as 'reassuringly heavy'(!) The screen bezel on the N8 is such that a 3.7" or 3.8" display could be squeezed in fairly easily for the N8-X, taking the phone closer to the 4" screen 'sweet spot' of today's  competing Android smartphones (plus the upcoming 'iPhone 5' is rumoured to be around the 4" screen mark).

Screen

At (say) 3.7" diagonal, Symbian nHD (640 by 360 pixels) would still work quite well in terms of pixel density. If Symbian was still being developed with a high budget and many future devices, I'd suspect that we might see pixel doubling to 1280 by 720 displays on 4" and 4.3"-screened devices, but even with Accenture on board for development now, I think it's a little late in the day to radically overhaul Symbian's basic screen resolution - so nHD it is.

The N8, famously (along with the C7), missed out on the ClearBlack Display revolution, being specified just a few months too early in the grand scheme of things, so the N8-X would have CBD, making for clearer, higher contrast visuals, indoors and outdoors. In fact, there might as well be an oleophobic coating as well - this worked well on the C7.

It goes without saying that the N8-X should have Gorilla Glass - the N8 was pioneering here and the technology is now more or less standard in the smartphone world.

OS

Symbian Nokia Belle, of course, the latest iteration of Symbian, with the most 2012-friendly touch UI yet. Some of its design points are a little alienating to long-time Symbian users, but I reckon it's well worth getting over these points in order to gain the performance improvements under the hood and in main applications. Plus increasing amounts of software, both utilities (latest Nokia Social) and HD games are appearing and requiring Belle as a minimum.

Combined with a slightly larger and even clearer AMOLED screen, Belle should prove quite palatable on an N8-X, even set against the eye candy of huge 720p displays on some of the (significantly larger and less pocketable) Android competition and the 'retina' iPhone 4. Display technology certainly won't lead the world (though CBD is nice), but it'll easily be 'good enough'.

Processor, memory

Although Symbian is generally pretty good at multitasking, there's no doubt that it could be snappier. Belle will help with this, of course, but in the N8-X I'd be looking for the same 1GHz chip as in the 701, together with its faster GPU and the 512MB of RAM (double what's in the N8, of course). 

The N8-X, like the N8, should also have the best of both worlds in terms of mass memory and expansion via microSD. I don't think the current '16GB plus card' arrangement should be touched, to be honest - every time Nokia has moved to 32GB mass memory we've hit performance problems and they're simply not worth it. With the card expansion as well, anyone who needs an extra 32GB can simply pop in a card as needed.

Camera

As good as the N8's camera is, with a huge 1/1.83" sensor and Xenon flash, the very fact that anyone appreciates why it's good will see them wanting even more. Although the best of the competition just jumped to 16 megapixels that kind of resolution on a sensor in a phone isn't really warranted - the law of diminishing returns definitely hits somewhere around the 12 megapixel mark, even with 2012 sensor technology.

So what would I want from the N8-X's camera? To be honest, not a lot extra. Maybe the sensor could be made larger still, perhaps 1/1.5" - which in turn would mean that 16 megapixels would actually make sense. The optics are already excellent, but I would ask for basic camera glass protection, as on the N95, N82 and N86 - hang the extra millimetre, not having to wipe the glass free of fingerprints before every photo would be a big convenience for me. And there's the really nice feature that opening the sliding protection could start the Camera app, just as on the older models quoted.

And yes, I realise that a larger sensor and camera glass protection would necessitate a slightly thicker 'hump' on the N8-X's back, but this is a specialised smartphone and every purchaser will hopefully know exactly what they're buying - not everyone aspires to a phone that's razor thin.

Having a proper Xenon flash, 100 times brighter than LED, was a major feature of the N8 camera but it was let down ever so slightly by being dimmer than that on the N82 (for example). It's all relative, but I'd like a bigger Xenon unit, something which could light up a room like that on the N82 could, rather than just nearby subjects. With the extra camera hump thickness on the N8-X, fitting in a larger Xenon flash module and capacitor should be no problem.

Battery

Definitely a change needed here. The 'integral' battery system of the N8 simply doesn't work, in my view. Although brave souls can change the BL-4D battery if armed with the right screwdriver, running out of power for most people means having to wait until the device can be charged again. All of which I don't understand, since the N8's twin sister device, the C7, with identical core specifications, manages to have a battery door and removable battery and yet its body is still a good millimetre or so thinner.

In short, there's no reason whatsoever why our hypothetical N8-X shouldn't have a metal battery door, C7/701-style, and the savvy photo-centric user can simply pop a charged, spare battery in a pocket in case power runs out after a lot of shooting while out and about.

In fact, with virtually the same width and thinner than the C7's BL-5K, I can't see why the 'hero' BP-4L Li-Poly battery shouldn't be used in this new device (hey, why not shoot for the moon)? With 1500mAh, I don't see why the N8-X would ever really run short of juice before the end of even a busy day.

Speaker(s)

The N8 comes with a loudspeaker that's a cut above the rest of the smartphone pack, with a larger cone and a power amplifier similar to that in the likes of the old Nokia 5800 and X6. While good enough, while we're redesigning the N8, why not put in an extra speaker, matching the two older music phones? After all, the N82 (the N8's spiritual predecessor) had loud stereo speakers, so let's put the same units either end of the new N8-X. You'd be surprised how often having a decent set of speakers helps in a phone...

2012 must-haves

Aside from the remarks above, there's not that much else the N8-X needs to hold its head high in the 2012 phone world - NFC is the big omission in the current N8, explained by the device's specifications being set in stone before NFC was available to the designers, no doubt. So the N8-X would have to have NFC, for tapping to share, pair, and so on - NFC in Symbian Belle is more advanced than on any other mobile OS, so it's a shoe-in on our hypothetical device.

So there we have the Nokia N8-X, my personal wishlist for what Nokia could create in an N8 successor. Not that anything I've said here will have any influence of course - as I said earlier, for an N8 successor to be announced this year, the design would have been set in concrete way back at the very start of 2011. But I can still dream....

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 30 January 2012