ExCeL London - the host of the previous two Nokia World events.

Nokia Converations had this to say on the change of format:

We have made some changes to the format and date of Nokia World 2012. Instead of a single, large-scale event as we have had in years past, we will run a number of smaller, more intimate events with specific audiences in mind. Think less CES, moreSXSW.

The first of these will take place in Helsinki on September 5-6. (A while ago we announced that it would be held on September 25-26, but the date has now been advanced by a couple of weeks.) This invitation-only event will cater primarily to our operator and retail partners.

With these more intimate events we want to provide the most enjoyable and rewarding experience tailored for each audience.

Other Nokia activities will be announced in the weeks and months ahead. Stay tuned!

In an admittedlly self-serving observation, we noticed there was no mention of press events, but these will of course come in due course, and hopefully news on developer events too. We will, of course, report as and when we learn more about Nokia World 2012.

We expect things won't be THAT small!

Here's the 'how it works' video on smartphone accelerometers, you'll love the clever way a microscopic cantilevered beam of silicon is created in the heart of the accelerometer:

And, while we're here, here's Bill's take on how LCD displays work, albeit on a larger scale than smartphones (and note that many phones now use AMOLED tech, which is subtly different again). 

Finally, here's a (slightly dated) look at the main constraints designers have to face in designing 'cellphones':

Well presented content throughout.

More videos like these on Bill's YouTube channel.

As usual, the table is part reference, part subjective opinion. And where obviously appropriate, I've allocated a row winner, in green.

	Nokia 808 PureView	Samsung Galaxy S III
First sold	May 2012	May 2012
OS	Nokia Belle FP1	Android 4.0.4 plus TouchWiz and other Samsung extensions
Form factor, materials	Solid plastic body, full-face Gorilla glass capacitive touchscreen, 170g	Larger but lighter, essentially two-handed form, plastic body, full face Gorilla glass, 133g
Dimensions	124 x 60 x 14 mm	137 x 71 x 9 mm
Connectivity	Pentaband 3G, Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, 'USB on the go' (to USB disks/accessories), NFC	Quad band 3G,  Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, integral wifi tethering without needing third party software, USB on the go, NFC
Input mechanisms	Adequate virtual qwerty landscape keyboard with writing aids, plus qwerty or numeric 'T9' input in portrait mode. Compatible with most Bluetooth and USB keyboards.	Pretty good multi-touch virtual qwerty keyboard in both portrait and landscape modes (where appropriate), with writing aids. Compatible with most Bluetooth keyboards. S-voice (based on Vlingo) allows some voice recognition and control.
Display	4.0" (360 x 640 pixels) AMOLED with ClearBlack Display polarisers, true RGB pixels, readable in bright sunlight	4.8" (720 x 1280 pixels) Super AMOLED, pentile pixel layout (some argue that this effectively halves the 'real' resolution), just about readable in bright sunlight
Interface	(Symbian) Nokia Belle FP1, kinetic scrolling everywhere, multi-touch where needed, six homescreens of live widgets, whole interface works in portrait or landscape mode.	Android 4, customised with TouchWiz additions, kinetic and multi-touch, of course. Seven homescreens of live, often interactive widgets. Most applications work in landscape mode, but homescreen and app menu is resolutely portrait only. S-Voice interface with customised 'wake up' audio control
Speed	Good, 1.3GHz ARM 11 with 512MB RAM and a graphics processor to help out with effects, transitions and multimedia, plus a dedicated PureView camera GPU.	Generally very good, with a quad-core 1.4GHz Exynos processor, plus GPU. The processing power has been demonstrated by playing back smooth 1080p Flash video in web pages - amazing, in a phone. As with Symbian, there's full, no holds multitasking.
Memory capacity (storage)	Up to 512MB of C: (system) disk, plus 16GB mass memory and flexible microSD expansion, e.g. adding an extra 32GB. Apps can be installed on any disk. Plugging in the phone to any desktop computer allows mass memory and microSD to be mounted and treated like any other disk. Plus generic USB disk support via 'USB on the go', adding up to 128GB extra.	16/32/64GB (depending on variant) of integral storage (MTP-mountable on a desktop), plus microSD expansion, quoted up to 64GB. Plus generic USB disk support via 'USB on the go', adding up to 128GB extra.
Camera (stills)	Superlative 38 megapixel stills, though usually running in 5mp 'PureView' mode, offering zero digital noise and 'perfect' pixels with lossless 3x digital zoom. Huge 1/1.2" sensor and Carl Zeiss optics. Exposed camera glass. Proper shutter button. Genuine Xenon flash and tuned camera hardware make for foolproof evening/social shots.	Good 8 megapixel photos, 1/3.2" sensor. Results will be similar to those from the Galaxy S II with near identical camera hardware - see my SGS2/N8 photo comparisons. A variety of extra camera modes in software. Not having a camera shutter button has to be a negative though...
Camera (video)	1080p video capture is superb and at high bitrate, a variety of focus options, plus intelligent (non-lossy) 3x digital zoom; audio capture in stereo and with pro-quality digital mikes and RichRecording software and electronics, capable of handling a very wide volume range.	Full 1080p capture, with continuous auto-focus good audio capture at normal volumes, in stereo.
GPS and navigation	Good GPS, backed up by Nokia Wi-fi location, with Nokia Maps 3.9 worldwide free sat-nav. Maps can be pre-loaded by continent, country or area.	Good GPS, with Google Maps Navigation and (somewhat robotic) voice guidance. Maps can now be pre-loaded into a cache and then pulled back later, but not, as far as I can see, on a country level.
Audio out	Loud, high quality mono speaker, 3.5mm jack, A2DP, FM transmitter to car radio, plus Dolby Digital Surround Sound (through HDMI port)	Adequate mono speaker, 3.5mm jack, A2DP.
Multimedia playback	Video playback is terrific, with a wide range of codecs supported. YouTube playback in high quality requires a third party download (e.g. CuteTube), 360p via the mobile YouTube web site.	Video playback is excellent on the big HD screen. Excellent HQ YouTube support means that quality streamed video is never far away, too, on that 720p screen, bandwidth permitting.
Web browsing	Symbian Web (webkit-based), functional without ever really impressing, though it's faster on the 808 than on any previous Symbian handset.	Stunning rendering speed on a stunning display. The Android browser on the SGS III is fairly unbeatable in mobile, with text reflow, etc. At 720p resolution, many sites also don't even need zooming or panning if your eyes are good enough.
Email	All purpose Mail client provides 'push' facilities for Mail for Exchange, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! mail and many others - works well on the whole but some limitations and performance annoyances when 'rich' emails come in.	The odd pairing of Gmail and a generic email client persists, as is usual for Android, but it should all work well and at very good speed here, bandwidth permitting.
Other application highlights out of the box	Microsoft Office Mobile editing suite/cloud integration, Dictionary, Zip manager, Photo editor, Video editor, Nokia Social Networking (Twitter and Facebook)	Full Polaris Office editing suite, plus Dropbox, various digital content hubs/stores and the usual Android core applications.
Application store and ecosystem	Nokia Store client, hundreds* of high quality native Symbian applications are compatible. There's an automatic update system but installs are somewhat intrusive where the Qt Smart Installer is involved.	Google Play (the new name for the Android Market...!), and access to many thousands* of high quality native (based on Java) applications. Applications can be automatically or manually updated.
Battery	1400mAh, replaceable when needed, microUSB charging, casual use should last 2 days.	2100 mAh, replaceable when needed, microUSB charging, casual use should last 2 days.
Ongoing firmware support and OS updates	Symbian's long term prospects are of course time-limited now. Support and minor upgrades will continue at some level though, for another three years. Many OS modules and components can be upgraded, over the air, as-and-when using the 'Sw update tool' in the device.	Prospects reasonable, this is Samsung's flagship for 2012, though any core Android updates will take many months to appear, since the OS has to have TouchWiz applied and then tested as such.

* yes, yes, overall numbers in each store are much higher, but I'm estimating the number of genuine high quality applications/games. Not novelties or copycats or junk.

As ever, it's interesting (though not that relevant) to add up the green 'wins': the Samsung Galaxy S III scores 6 to the Nokia 808 PureView's 4. Which sounds about right to me, allowing for the context of today, the smartphone world in 2012. I would emphasise three things though:

• the high number of rows/attributes for which I simply couldn't pick an overall winner, either because doing so is entirely subjective (i.e. depending on personal preference) or because the two devices were simply too evenly matched.
• the 808 and SGS3 are very different form factors. You only have to hold each to realise that. I excluded the SGS3 from my article last week because I felt it was too large a leap in form factor for an existing N8 owner. Look at the dimensions here - the 808's significantly bigger than the N8 and yet the SGS3 rather dwarfs it. 
• the 808 and SGS3 have very different core specialisms. The 808 is utterly focussed(!) on the camera functions, while the SGS3 is more an all-rounder and access to the huge library of Android applications or even some of Samsung's new S-gimmicks is likely to be an attraction.
  

Which one would I pick, given the choice? I'm not going to answer that until I've tested full retail versions of each. Watch this space!

Comments welcome as usual.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 22 May 2012

When: 11th June from 6pm

Where: LBi HQ, Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1

What: Part meet-up, part podcast recording…  Starting with “Mobile Question Time” a panel of mobile experts will debate topical (mobile) questions from the audience, all followed by drinks and socialising.

More info:Full details of the panellists and registration at Eventbrite

This event is generously supported by LBi and Nokia.

361 Degrees also now has an associated newsletter:

Updates on each episode (and bulletins between seasons), 'behind the scenes' news , comment round-ups and personal views from the team. 'Back Chat' also offers a way to respond directly to the team on the topics we discuss each week.

You can sign up for the newsletter here.

About 361 Degrees

361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology. From consumer to enterprise and from fun to industry analysis, we investigate and discuss mobile technology and the mobile industry.

You can follow and subscribe to 361 Degrees on the dedicated mini-site, on Soundcloud, with an RSS reader or podcatcher, via iTunes via Zune or on any of the hosts' sites.

Steve Litchfield comments:

A really interesting and unusual podcast, guys, if a little elitist! One thing that struck me throughout was that you don't have to go high end and ultra-expensive in order to stand out, you simply have to be different.

With that in mind, I chuckled at the end when Ben said that the most kudos and interest he'd got from a device was when he pulled out his three year old Nokia E63, running Symbian - partly because of the case colour (a deep red) and partly because in these days of touchscreen slab dominance, anything with a qwerty keyboard has a slight air of 'going down the path less travelled'!

It got me thinking (with, in some cases, tongue firmly in cheek) of which other 'retro' smartphones you could lay on the table beside you at a meeting and gain instant respect and interest. Devices which don't cost an awful lot and yet which (I think) would say a lot more about you than a blinged out iPhone.

My top 5 suggestions:

1. A black Nokia E6 (the most serious suggestion in this list!) - still looks sooo classy, nearly all 'death star' black metal, with a form factor that surprises many these days and with a guarantee that never, ever will it be this phone that gives a 'battery low' beep in the middle of the meeting!
    
    
     
2. A Sony Ericsson P900 - although less elegant than the P800 from an engineering standpoint, the P900 reeked of top quality engineering. Admittedly it's chunky by 2012 standards, but I bet you still get some 'oohs' and 'aahs' when you open the flip and start tapping away on the big touchscreen.
    
   
     
3. A O2 XDA Orbit II - yep, Windows Mobile, now so far retro that it's surely going to be back in fashion. I never owned one of these, but am struck by the styling. Worth a punt in the board meeting, anyway?
    
   
     
4. A Psion Series 5mx - or, specifically the phosphorescent green prototypes (Proteas) which are now incredibly hard to find. With this lime green artefact sitting next to you and occasionally opening it to reveal a better keyboard than all your colleague's laptops, I guarantee you'll disrupt everyone's concentration! 
    
   (image from Pulster)
     
5. A Nokia 7710 - is it a tablet? Is it a phone? Yes, people were asking that many years before the Samsung Galaxy Note. If you go down this route, make sure you install the appropriate firmware to let you make a phone call, ostentatiously, in portrait mode, at some point during the meeting....
    
   
     

What do you think? What better respect-grabbers can you think of in a big meeting in 2012?

It's true that I have a lot of smartphones passing through my office, from 2000 (the Ericsson R380) to the latest Nokia 808 PureView (May 2012). In all shapes and sizes. And running around six different software platforms. So I'm well placed to comment on which device does what and to draw comparisons and summaries. And it occurs to me that, completely regardless of manufacturer or OS, almost any device after a particular point in mobile history could be used day to day as my main smartphone. It's true that the experience might not be as smooth or seamless as on some of today's phones, but the functionality was all there.... five years ago.

Pre-2007

Yes, 2007 was the cut off point. Until 2007, we'd had large screen PDAs with tacked on telephony (why the heck didn't the O2 XDA [shown left] - made by HTC back in 2002 and powered by Windows Mobile, the predecessor to Windows Phone - take over the world and become the first mass market smartphone?), we'd had also-large-screened clamshell communicators (e.g. Nokia 9210 and 9500), we'd had the front-qwerty Palm Treos, a smattering of Symbian UIQ touchscreen phones and a rising swell of d-pad driven small-screened 'Series 60' Nokia phones that kept adding more and more functions, coming in very much from the classic 'cell phone' direction.

But whatever the redeeming features of any of these (and, trust me, I owned all of them back in the day), none could do everything. By which I mean all the standard, expected functions and features that we take for granted these days:

• Wi-fi
• GPS plus mapping software
• Camera good enough to replace a standalone for most purposes
• Camcorder good enough for its output to be viewed on a domestic TV
• High quality stereo music output
• Sensors, including accelerometers
• Access to up to 32GB of storage

The watershed year

Up until 2007, it simply wasn't possible, seemingly, to get all these staples into the one device. There would be one model with a good camera, but not Wi-fi and no GPS. Another phone would have Wi-fi and a rubbish camera. Another would be good at music. And so on.

But everything changed with the arrival of the Nokia N95*, into which Nokia put the kitchen sink - every tech feature it could possibly cram in was included. The result was a headache for the company at first, since there were inevitable teething troubles, but the concept was good and, after a few firmware updates, the N95 sold in the tens of millions, as did its bigger and more powerful successor, the N95 8GB.

* Yes, I know the N95 was -announced- in 2006, but it didn't appear in the shops until 2007...

I can, in truth, pull out my N95 today, sync on all my PIM data and that from various applications, and use it in exactly the same way I use any other 2012 smartphone. Look past the now small 2.6" QVGA screen and restricting RAM, this relatively small device was the first phone of the modern age and can be used today (in knowledgeable hands) without any massive restrictions. You may remember we recently reported on Alvin Wong's attempt to use the N86 as his main smartphone? In his case the experiment was cut short because he basically broke the phone, but he'd be the first to admit that he was still fully functional on the older device.

Yes, 2007 was definitely the year. For another reason, too.

You see, while the N95 could (and still can) do just about everything required of a smartphone in 2012, five years on, the experience for the user, in terms of:

• the amount of information presented at once
• the speed of the interface
• the number of button clicks needed to do things
• the size of the learning curve needed

...was somewhat lacking. And this is where the Apple iPhone stepped in, famously, in the same year. The idea was to present an interface that anyone could use, with no menus to learn, few settings to tweak and which required less intelligence in the user by putting more intelligence in the software.

And, of course, was a great success, with its successors outselling the N95 and its followup devices by a long way. It's true that the first iPhone was little more than a feature phone in terms of functions, with no GPS and a terrible camera, but Apple kept iterating on the idea and adding in all the stuff the N95 had, to the point where, from the iPhone 4 onwards, it ticked all the boxes from my first list above as well.

In the meantime, Nokia and Symbian had (with a number of misteps, it's true) been working on adding improvements from my second list to add to the core convergence in their earlier devices. And following both Nokia's and Apple's lead, every other manufacturer and smartphone OS designer has been trying to build everything from both lists into every top end device.

No further revolution?

The upshot of all of which is that we're completely, utterly spoilt for choice.

Prior to 2007, I would be eagerly anticipating the release of the next big handset - "This is the one that gives me Wi-fi for the first time!" or "Wow, stereo music for the first time, I can retire my Walkman!", and so on. Every device brought something genuinely new to the table and changed the 'game' in a tangible way.

I would argue that, since the appearance of the N95 and iPhone in 2007, there has been little that's actually new. We've seen screens go up in terms of resolution and size, processors get faster (and more numerous!), GPUs get more powerful, cellular data speeds increase, RAM and storage memory increase, all substantial but 'evolutionary' rather than 'revolutionary'. 

Even tech additions like USB on the Go, DLNA and NFC don't really count, since adoption of the technology itself isn't totally mainstream yet.

So, spoilt for choice, I have 20 handsets in front of me (lucky journalist/geek/early adopter that I am, though I daresay you have a drawer with a few devices too?) all from 2007 or later and all of them, repeat ALL of them can function as my day to day smartphone with only relatively minor compromises on my part. I find this amazing, given the changes happening between 2000 and 2007.

A few smartphones of varying vintages and OS platforms - spoilt for choice indeed, since their core functions overlap to around 99%! From left to right: Nokia E72, Nokia Lumia 800, Nokia E7, Apple iPhone 3G, HTC 7 Pro, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, Blackberry Bold 9900

No longer do new smartphones bring something ground-breaking, something that completely takes your breath away. Yes, newer devices are generally better, in terms of:

• specs (e.g. HTC One X)
• experience (e.g. the latest Windows Phones, like the Lumia 800)
• intelligence (e.g. the Galaxy S III, with its various sensor-based functions)
• refinement (e.g. the PureView camera in the Nokia 808 PureView)

...but at heart there's little that's actually new in terms of raw functionality.

So the next time you feel yourself starting to get annoyed that your current smartphone isn't quite up with the cutting edge, the next time you get jealous of the next device's extra processor or extra half inch of display size, just take a moment and realise that these are all, at the end of the day, just post-2007 smartphones, and that they all, for the most part, can do exactly the same job for you.

Remember, if this was even ten years ago, you'd still be looking forward to a phone with a basic camera or even wi-fi, to name but two staples of the modern age.

Looking around at the mobile options available to us in 2012, we really are spoilt for choice. 

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian and All About Windows Phone, 21 May 2012

NB: In testing this accessory, I used both the Nokia Lumia 800, running Windows Phone, and the Nokia E6, running Symbian Belle, though in truth an FM Transmitter accessory like this is applicable to any device with a standard 3.5mm output (even an iPhone, Android device or Blackberry).

A little background, though. I wrote, last year, about FM transmitters in some of Nokia's Symbian smartphones, pointing out their advantages and bemoaning the fact the functionality wasn't more widely available:

In case you've been living under a stone for the last 4 years (this technology only became 'legal' in many countries at the start of 2007), an FM transmitter (Wikipedia info) is, as it sounds, a way of sending a phone's audio stream (usually music or podcasts) via a genuine FM frequency of your choice to your car (or home, or caravan) FM radio. The power output is very low and is restricted by law to just 50 nanowatts - which is good for your phone's battery consumption and yet still more than enough to reach your car aerial, typically less than a metre away. 

Alternative approaches to getting your phone's stored music collection onto your much bigger car speakers include using Bluetooth to a wireless car kit, or to plug in via a 3.5mm to 3.5mm jack lead, into an Aux port on the back of the car stereo. Both very valid and capable of higher quality, but most cars don't have fitted Bluetooth car kits and many car stereos don't have accessible Aux ports. And it may not be practical, cosmetically or mechanically, to rip out the existing stereo and replace it with a Bluetooth (or Aux)-enabled version. Making the humble FM Transmitter a great ad-hoc way of getting music transferred through a real 'lowest common denominator'/'low-tech' mechanism - after all, FM radios are built into just about everything around you and have been for decades.

In practice, I use the FM transmitters in my N8 and N86 almost every time I'm in the car - if I've been listening to a podcast in the house while getting ready to go out, I can hit 'Play via Radio' (again, note the new name) under 'Options' in any audio playback app on the phone and tap it 'on'. And the podcast carries on seamlessly via my fairly meaty (8 cones in all) car speakers with impeccable quality. Or, if I'm not on my own, I choose music from my mass memory or memory card that's family friendly and treat everyone to an album from Adele or Take That or similar. No messing with wires or Bluetooth pairing - it just works.

Well... it works most of the time. By its very nature, your phone is broadcasting a specific FM frequency at very low power. If you're unlucky and you've picked a frequency that's used by a local FM radio station then it's easy to get distortion and the two signals effectively interfering with each other. Even if, like me, you pick a frequency which works well in your area (I use 96.0MHz in Berkshire, UK), you'll find that as you travel across your country, local stations pumping out full power occasionally intrude and you might have to pause playback and mute the radio playback for a few miles.

Finding the perfect frequency for your area is purely a matter of trial and error. Literally. Pick a number (the range is usually from about 88MHz to about 107MHz, depending on the country) and try it. If you get interference, shift the number by 0.2MHz up or down and try again, rinse and repeat. it's a slight pain, but once you find a frequency that works well for you, set that on a preset on the car radio and you're off and rocking.

The last couple of paragraphs quoted are critical to the whole endeavour. Fiddling around, on a car journey, to avoid local station interference is a right royal pain, especially when within 20 miles of a city. Which is why the 'ClearScan' bit caught my eye in this £20 Belkin accessory - the idea is that the accessory takes a moment (actually around ten seconds) to scan the airwaves and then it picks the 'quietest' portion of the FM spectrum, displaying the result clearly so that you can then manually tune your car radio to this frequency.

The gadget itself is around 7cm long, with a nice chunky LCD display. One end goes into your car's 12V socket, the other end into your smartphone. Set something playing (a podcast or music or indeed anything which outputs audio) and you're set.

One press on the big 'C' (for ClearScan) button and a scanning animation appears on the display, followed shortly by a frequency (e.g. "88.4", below). My car stereo has a 'scan for next strong signal' button built into the steering wheel stalk, making it trivially easy on the move to fix interference problems. 

When a local FM station gets in the way, I simply press the 'C' button again and wait for the report. In fact, with my set up, I don't even have to look at the chosen frequency, since I can tap my stereo's 'scan' button as many times as needed to find it for me, all without taking my eyes off the road. Or, of course, a user could choose to use their car stereo's tuning buttons to dial up the frequency manually.

The '+' and '-' buttons on the Belkin's front let you manually tweak the frequency being transmitted, though I can't really see a use case for this.

On the unit's left/top side are three more buttons:

'M1' and 'M2', unsurprisingly, are memories. It's all very well getting new frequencies every time you do a 'ClearScan' but even the small amount of retuning you need to do on your car stereo is a bit of a bother. If you've found frequencies which do work quite well for you (perhaps one near your home and one near your office?) then pressing and holding a memory button allows these to be remembered. Matched with the memories built into your car stereo, changing the frequencies used to one of the two presets is a piece of cake.

The 'Pro' button is interesting, cycling between four different transmission modes:

• Normal
• 'Pro 1', Volume boost
• 'Pro 2', Volume boosted further(!, at the risk of distorting loud parts of the audio)
• Mono

In practice, 'Pro 1' worked perfectly in my car. In fact, transmission overall was much clearer than from my Nokia N8 - I suspect that the power produced from this 12V-powered accessory was significantly greater than from my self-powered smartphone. Not surprising in hindsight, but the stronger signal did make it easier to lock onto the signal and audio was clearer and less prone to interference.

What all this means in practice is that if your smartphone doesn't have an FM transmitter (in Nokia speak, 'Play via Radio') then it's really not that big deal, should you need the facility, to keep this Belkin TuneCast (or similar) in your car glovebox to perform the function rather splendidly.

Having a wire coming from your in-car 12V to your Nokia E6 or Lumia 800 (say) smartphone is a little bit of an inconvenience, but then you might as well go the whole hog and also take advantage of the USB port built into the TuneCast's 12V jack to charge the phone at the same time:

It's at this point that I found my first negative with the product - the output from the Belkin TuneCast's USB port wasn't enough to charge any of my Symbian smartphones. These are notoriously fussy about the voltage and current that they'll accept before 'Charging' appears on the display. Thankfully, my Windows Phones accepted the USB charge gratefully and I had no problems with this 'dual cable, dual benefit' approach on my Lumia 800.

I have a founding principle when buying electronics - never buy the cheapest (it'll be underfeatured, appallingly built and complete rubbish), never buy the most expensive (usually paying for a 'brand name' or unnecessary gilding) - pick something in between.

Here we have a product that's expensive enough to be pretty darned good, yet not so expensive that you go off the whole idea (adding FM transmission to your smartphone). The Belkin TuneCast I was reviewing can be found here on Amazon or elsewhere on the web, though do note that prices vary wildly (between £18 delivered and £50!)

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian and All About Windows Phone, 18 May 2012

(Although the HTC One S was used here, the camera in it is identical to that in the One X, so the comparison applies to both.)

From Deaconclgi's intro and conclusion:

As some of you may know, the HTC One S (and X) has the best camera that HTC has ever made. It has great specifications coupled with a great camera software suite and lightning fast shooting performance. I recently added the One S to my stable of smartphones and decided to put it to the test. Now, I don’t have any fancy lighting or other equipment, or even PC software to crop the photos so this is about as raw and unbiased, unprocessed method as you can get.

Basically, I found subjects to capture in varying lighting, distance and object conditions, loaded them to my laptop, and fired up Windows Live Photo Gallery to simply view the photos. I then used Windows 7′s built in split window organization feature and the built in Snipping Tool to take a screenshot of the equally zoomed photos.

...

The Nokia N8 continues to impress with its 12MP detail yet I find issue with the amount of digital noise/pixel noise that it shows in low-light. What surprised me most is that the N8 viewfinder becomes a grainy mess in low light. Thankfully the photos come out better than what is show in the real time viewfinder. The color accuracy is still a crowning achievement with the N8 as well.

The One S does a FANTASTIC job, especially considering HTC has had some of the worst cameras in the past. In ideal lighting conditions, it is a top notch performer. The camera captures plenty of detail, and provides eye pleasing results, even if a little saturated. Turn off the lights or find yourself outside at night and things get soft and purple like Barney. Even with the soft and cuddly purple, I am surprised at the overall photon capturing ability of the BSI (Back Side Illuminated) sensor on the One S. It appears to do an admirable job. I really hope that HTC can fix the sharpness and purple tinge in a future software update as those are the big negatives to an otherwise solid camera effort from HTC.

Sounds about right. I've reviewed both the HTC One X and One S for The Phones Show and concluded each time that their cameras were undoubtedly the best that HTC has produced, but still some way short of the results from the Apple iPhone 4S and a long way short of those from the Nokia N8. HTC seem to have gone all out to apply colour and edge enhancement, leading to wierd purple coloration when the light's low and unpleasant artefacts when you look closely at an image.

In contrast, the N8's policy of 'no enhancement whatsoever' produces photos which look less saturated but are usually a lot closer to real life colours, with digital noise left as-is, from the sensor, i.e. no noise reduction gets applied. What you see in the photo is what the N8 camera sensor saw and not the result of a few rounds of 'software knows best' filtering....

Nice comparison, Deaconclgi, I'll race you to the big, big Nokia 808 PureView / N8 face-off. See you on the other side!

Thanks to a tweet from Johan, it seems that the 1300mAh version of the BL-5K has started appearing in online shops, e.g here at Clas Ohlson, albeit for a somewhat steep price (about £35). 

So, my challenge to you the AAS reader and die-hard Nokia/Symbian fan, is to find other examples of either the new BL-5K or another uprated official Nokia battery available for purchase across the world.

And no, please don't include all the various fakes and outrageous cons from eBay and even Amazon ("BL-5K replacement, 2300mAh, Gold", etc.)- I'm talking about official Nokia batteries, sold by reputable outlets.

What can you dig up? I'd expect the 1300mAh BL-5K to be around the £20 to £25 mark, so the Clas Ohlson price is definitely on the high side? What about the BL-5J, original capacity 1320mAh, for example, used in the Nokia X6 and 5800?

This podcast was recorded on Wednesday 16th May 2012.

In this podcast we cover:       

• Nokia Maps Suite 2.0 update fixed
    
• Nokia Public Transport (beta) release, with support for older phones
    
• YouTube mobile site in 2012 - who needs a client?
      
• Twitter mobile site takes a step forward
    
• Review: Nokia DC-16 charger
    
• The Top 10 most beautiful Symbian smartphones ever
    
• N8 to 808 PureView: Where else would we go?
      

You can listen to earlier episodes of the AAS Insight Podcast in our media section.

We last mentioned Vlingo here on AAS back in September 2011, when the utility had just gone 'free' and was at v1.7.425 - there have been several updates since then, taking us up to today and v2.4.50, presumably some of the updates are to maintain compatibility with improvements at the server side, which is where the actual voice recognition takes place.

Just a few screenshots to whet your appetite - if you fancy the idea of voice recognition and haven't tried Vlingo yet then there's no better time - here's Vlingo in the Nokia Store.

When first installed, your Contacts are indexed, presumably for quicker matching of names spoken later on; shown in the mid panel in Vlingo's interface are examples of things you might like to say - these can be swiped left and right, to see more examples

Vlingo's Settings panes keep on growing. Of note here is that you can change the default web search engine and you can opt to optimise the recognition samples for speed or for lower data bandwidth, depending on the speed and expense of your data connection; also note the homescreen widget, providing a quick and convenient way into Vlingo.

Also note that I did a feature on the usability of Vlingo last year - admittedly on an older handset, but most of the things demoed will work fine here too, perhaps even better. From the piece:

That this was filmed in windy conditions outdoors - on purpose. I could have tested voice control in a nice quiet living room, but I didn't want to make things too easy for the software! Apologies for the gusty wind every now and again in the E7's microphone (filming the segment...!)

In the video, I refer to caveats to voice interrogation. There are, in fact, quite a number of caveats and disadvantages. Which is not to say that voice control isn't the future - or at least a crucial part of the future (watch an upcoming Phones Show for my vision of where we'll be in 2015). But, right now, I see the following as impediments to voice interrogation of our smartphones in daily life:

• Background noise. Away from cosy reviewer office tests, there's traffic noise, other people talking nearby, glasses clattering and music playing down the pub, wind gusts, in-car rumble and engine noise. Although both Vlingo (above) and Siri seem to cope surprisingly well with some degree of background noise, it's ultimately a problem and a factor in recognition results being less than perfect.
   
• Broadcast speech. TV sets and radios playing, most of which is speech, usually at reasonable volume. And it plays havoc with Vlingo, Siri or similar. Can you get away from the TV and radio?
   
• Accents. Current voice systems just about recognise classical American, English and some European tongues. But even I have trouble understanding many of the dialects and accents in my own country, I'm sure it's the same for many others. How on earth will voice software cope? Given huge resources and enough samples, it could be done. But not... yet. 
   
• Social factors. Testing all this in our reviewer office is fine. Testing it at home is fine - and may well save you some time. But what about on the train, on the bus, in the airport lounge, on the plane, in the open plan office, and so on? Your chatter into your phone will be bad enough for your companions. What about their chatter on all their voice interrogated phones too? It'll be an audio/aural nightmare!
   
• Bandwidth. All current systems farm out most of the recognition to servers online. Which means you need a fairly fast Internet connection on your phone for voice interrogation to work. Away from home/office wi-fi, you'd better be in an urban area and hope for a decent 3.5G connection. Anything less and it'd be far faster to type what you wanted to do or to enter.
   
• Mischevious offspring. By which I mean your kids. Whenever there's any kind of voice recognition going on, they love, simplylove messing around "Fifteen, chickens, octopus...", talking nonsense at the same time as you, to try and throw the software off. Usually successfully!
   
• It can be less efficient. We've all seen the Siri demos by Apple and some of them (e.g. setting a reminder) will save time. But quite a lot of voice interrogation uses (however cool) don't. For (a trivial) example, it's far quicker to look at the weather widget on my homescreen than to painstakingly ask voice recognition software "What's the weather going to be like today?" and then wait for an answer too....

Steve, AAS, 16 May 2012

Of particular note is that the experiment didn't reach the full two weeks because, despite warnings from this very site, Alvin used a micro-SIM adapter in the N86's slot and errr.... broke the little contact pins. The repair lasted long enough to make the experiment worth doing though, thankfully.

Here's Alvin's launch article on the N86 experiment (previously linked here on AAS).

Then, in chronological order, we have:

Two weeks with the N86 – Day 3, in which Alvin got reacquainted with the N86's still stunning camera:

There are so many things that Nokia got right with the N86 from a hardware design standpoint. First and foremost, the N86 is solidly built and still feels very much like it just came out of the box for the 1st time despite being three years old. Previous N95/N95 8GB/N85 owners will recall how build quality wasn’t really a strong point of those earlier dual sliders, but the N86 still feels like a top-end smartphone today. The sliding mechanism is still as tight as ever, the lens is pristine, the battery cover fits tightly without any creaks and none of the buttons feel abnormally loose. And the glass front looks and feels perfect.

I really like the physical size of the N86 not only because it fits really comfortably in my hand but also because it actually feels like a phone when I hold it up to my face, as opposed to almost every modern smartphone available today. What I love, however, is the experience of taking photos with the N86.The N86′s camera is still stunning even by today’s standardsThis is the first time in a really long time that I’ve felt like I actually want to take photos with a phone, simply because what the N86′s camera produces is never disappointing and the physical lens cover (another feature that’s pretty much non-existent on smartphones today) means it actually feels like a camera. I can start shooting with the N86 very quickly from standby, and it’s really refreshing to be able to trust that a smartphone camera will capture a more-than-acceptable shot even when all the settings are left on auto. I’ve actually put up a gallery of photos shot with the N86 on my Google+ page; it’s clear that the N86′s camera is still stunning even by today’s standards.

Four days on, we got Two weeks with the N86 – Day 7, in which the honeymoon period seems to be over and he's starting to miss things from the 2012 smartphone world:

I’ve spent an entire week with my Nokia N86 and I think it’s safe to say that the honeymoon period is over.... The N86 definitely isn’t the most stable smartphone in the world, and the software instability has definitely put a negative spin on my experience. In the past week, I have encountered several spontaneous reboots, Gravity force-quitting without warning (sometimes in the middle of composing a tweet), several instances of apps freezing up and frequent skipping during music playback, especially when I’ve got Gravity or Opera Mini running at the same time as the music player. Of course, I’ve already loaded the latest (and last) firmware version released for the N86, and it’s definitely less stable than the still-in-development CyanogenMod 9 ROM running on my Xperia Mini Pro.

I’ve begun to lament the absence of other apps that I depend on that are available on Android. Evernote is a big one; it’s a wrench to be pretty much unable to access my notes from the N86 because the Evernote mobile site is so horrible. Ditto for my inability to view anything I’ve saved on Pocket (formerly Read It Later) – I’ve found the service very useful for saving an article on my laptop before heading out so that I can continue reading it on my phone on the train and I simply can’t do this with the N86. I’ve also been pining for a proper Google Reader experience – Gravity supports Google Reader but it doesn’t support it particularly well. The fonts are too tiny and not all unread items in a feed are loaded at a time, which doesn’t help if I’m trying to triage my subscribed feeds quickly.

As I cross into the 2nd and final week of this N86 experiment, I think it’s worth mentioning that if I had to use this Nokia N86 for an entire year, if I had no other option, I probably could live with it just fine. We, as human beings, are highly adaptable, and although using nothing but the N86 as my everyday smartphone has been challenging in some areas, the key is in getting used to how it is. Yes, it has a small display. Yes, it has a numeric keypad that’s really not suited for entering large amounts of text. Yes, the software it runs can get really cranky. But there’s nothing about the N86 that I couldn’t live with if I had to. I’ve even adapted to the lack of proper notifications by observing vibration patterns to determine what’s just come in.

These days, we all love to complain about the smallest flaws on smartphones, like how non-standard icon shapes on Android makes the user interface look less elegant compared to iOS. Using the N86 has helped me appreciate how complex today’s smartphone platforms are, how much work goes into developing user experiences and how far we’ve come since S60 was cool. It’s amazing.

Finally, we have Alvin's 'piece de resistance', 'The N86 and me', a veritable treatise on the pros and cons of a mid 2000's smartphone OS versus the operating systems and interfaces of today:

The biggest difference between the smartphones of old, such as those running Symbian or Windows Mobile, and the smartphones of today lies in the prioritization of hardware quality and design versus software, user interface design and user experience. There is zero sense of fluidity or smoothness in S60v3 running on the N86, while modern smartphones like Windows Phone 7 have been built around fluidity and smoothness. Yet, in the past, buying a smartphone meant you were guaranteed top-shelf hardware components and nifty hardware features.

The N86, for example, still has an amazing 8-megapixel camera even by today’s standards. Its stereo loudspeakers sound better than any modern smartphone I’ve ever owned or reviewed. It had cutting-edge (at the time) display technology, a flip-out kickstand, hardware media controls and an FM transmitter. But S60v3 on the N86 is a complete bodge prone to spontaneous reboots, freezes and general weirdness. And in terms of usability, one has to wonder how an average N86 user even managed to figure out the menu structure or customize the homescreen. The settings menus on the phone are literally scattered everywhere.

On the other hand, any modern smartphone – take the Sony Xperia S, for example, provide an excellent and seamless user experience supported by a rich ecosystem of apps and services. Even a platform like Android, which is often criticized as being messy and complicated, is far more user-friendly than S60 ever was. Getting around the Android user interface is painless for most, the phone remains stable and problem-free in everyday use and there is a wealth of apps available for the platform. Yet, corners have been cut on the hardware; build quality isn’t great on the Xperia S, the loudspeaker is mediocre at best, and the 12 megapixel camera is hampered by an overly-small image sensor. But despite these flaws, the Xperia S is still considered one of the better high-end Android devices available at the moment, given how certain rivals competing in the same price bracket are encased in cheap glossy plastic, have Pentile displays or a worse camera. The only aspect of the hardware where manufacturers aren’t skimping on is the internals.

...Every smartphone platform developed post-iOS is built first and foremost with the web in mind. That’s how big the paradigm shift has been. It’s not even about touchscreens and user interfaces, it’s about how iOS, Android, Windows Phone and webOS are designed around the Internet. Social networking, online sharing, cloud storage, streaming media, desktop-class web browsing, downloadable games, email, instant messaging, background sync, integration with web services – all these aspects of modern smartphone platforms take priority over being able to dial a number straight from the homescreen, being able to sync data with Microsoft Outlook, supporting the greatest number of video codecs or making efficient use of limited hardware and data allotments. Symbian quickly became unappealing to the average consumer simply because it hadn’t evolved to keep up with the web-focused capabilities of post-iOS smartphone platforms.

In addition to some of the quotes above, Alvin also complained several times about random disconnections - although it's possible these were down to the OS, I might also point the finger at the dodgy SIM slot pin repair here. I guess we'll never know for sure!

Steve, AAS, 16 May 2012

Episode description:

We talk about ‘quality of service’ and how it needs to relate to privacy and customer support just as much as the software and – crucially – how it’s different to security.

Rafe mentions the challenges of cloud data storage for those with slow Internet connections, Ewan worries about his approach to back-up and Ben kicks himself about giving Path his data (again).

361 Degrees also now has an associated newsletter:

Updates on each episode (and bulletins between seasons), 'behind the scenes' news , comment round-ups and personal views from the team. 'Back Chat' also offers a way to respond directly to the team on the topics we discuss each week.

You can sign up for the newsletter here.

About 361 Degrees

361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology. From consumer to enterprise and from fun to industry analysis, we investigate and discuss mobile technology and the mobile industry.

You can follow and subscribe to 361 Degrees on the dedicated mini-site, on Soundcloud, with an RSS reader or podcatcher, via iTunes via Zune or on any of the hosts' sites.

Back in 2008, we were using QVGA-screened smartphones (e.g. N95 8GB) and Google was pre-Android and very much in the cross-platform mobile game. Having acquired YouTube, Google set about creating and updating a dedicated YouTube client for Symbian. This ended up at v2.4.10 in 2010, with a slick enough interface, adapted for touch but then Android took off and Google axed future Symbian development. Unfortunately, this client is still stuck, resolutely, using the QVGA video stream (i.e. 240p) from YouTube. And rather sadly, I still see this version promoted by Nokia in its Store, as if it's new and exciting - it's not.

Take a look at the comparison graphic below:

Cropped framegrabs from the same video (2012 Avengers Trailer) on the Nokia N8 at nHD resolution

Numbered from left to right, above:

1. from the QVGA stream served up by the YouTube 2.4.10 application
2. from the 360p (actually 640 by 344 pixels) stream served up by the current m.youtube.com site
3. from the HD 720p (actually 1280 by 690 pixels) stream served up within the commercial CuteTube client

The quality difference between 240p and 360p is vast, as I'm sure you'll agree. And immediately disqualifies the official (old) YouTube client from any serious use today.

The second and third crops are more interesting. The 360p stream from m.youtube.com looks pretty crisp, as indeed it should, since the resolution (theoretically) matches that of the nHD Symbian screen. But one thing noted in our review of the latest CuteTube was that slightly better quality could be achieved by altering the 'Playback' quality to '720p' and letting the phone hardware do high quality downsampling in its GPU to 360p. However, judging from the crops above, the quality difference is marginal at best - and with the disadvantage that a) you need CuteTube in the first place, and b) you'll significantly increase the amount of data bandwidth needed by the phone.

Now - please don't let me discourage you from buying CuteTube - it's one of the stars of the Symbian firmament and puts YouTube into a slick GUI, complete with download options, for saving videos for offline viewing. BUT - note also that for general purpose YouTube use, the mobile site now serves up the exact same underlying 360p .3gp video as it does for CuteTube in its default mode.

In addition, the range of functions now available, quite elegantly via m.youtube.com, is now quite wide:

With 'Show more' expanded and note the 'Sharing' pop-out toolbar; scroll down the page for top-rated and all other comments on each video

Suggested videos - these rather get in the way, in that they're inserted before comments, but it's a great way to follow a daisy-chain of videos around the site; and the (very Symbian Web-like) menu pane for all your YouTube functions once logged in with your Google account.

So what are you waiting for? At the very least, make sure you've got m.youtube.com bookmarked in Web!

Steve Litchfield, AAS, 15 May 2012

PS. It's obviously not just Symbian which has inherited a decent mobile YouTube experience. I was interested to note that, since day one of Windows Phone, that OS's official YouTube client has simply been a shortcut to m.youtube.com. In fact, it might even be that the existence of tweaks for Windows Phone has now drastically improved the experience for Symbian users. Shhhhh.......

Before looking at alternatives, I should perhaps state, fairly concisely, the 10 reasons why I and many others have stayed with the Nokia N8 so long:

1. great daytime camera, accurate colour rendition and great detail, with no artificial artefacts
2. great nighttime camera with Xenon flash ensuring crisp people shots with no blurring
3. excellent build quality with aluminium unibody
4. good Symbian multitasking and mature functionality
5. Nokia Maps/Drive world sat-nav
6. FM transmitter, providing music and podcasts to car radios when needed
7. high quality, loud mono speaker
8. expandability via microSD
9. the 'perfect' form factor in terms of feel in the hand (c.f. iPhone, also with 3.5" screen and similar size)
10. removeable battery (admittedly, you need to spend £2 on a Torx T4 screwdriver, but it can be changed when it gets too old)

There are other plus points, of course, but the 10 above are most relevant to me. Yet the N8 is starting to show its age, with the internal disk just starting to fill up for some people, with the 680MHz processor seeming a little slow in these days of multi-Gigahertz, multi-core smartphones, especially when web browsing, and with the internal BL-4D battery now at 18 months old for most users and typically at 75% or less capacity.

Plus, if you're anything like me, your N8 is now sporting multiple battle scars. And there's a fair chance, if you got the N8 with an 18 month contract, that this is up for renewal very soon - another reason to look around at the alternatives, at least.

________________________

Here are some of the 2012 contenders for your hard earned cash.

NB 1: that I've excluded the very biggest (4.7/4.8"-screened) 'superphones' since we're looking at replacements for the 3.5"-screened N8 here - I've set a reasonable upper limit of a 4.3" display.

NB 2: for each, I've 'scored' 'hits' from the list of 10 desired attributes or functions listed above from the N8. i.e. they're not review scores in any way, I'm simply looking at how well matched each is for an existing N8 owner.

HTC One S

• Sumptuous build quality in unibody metal
• Decent camera in most light conditions, the LED flash has five intensity levels, as needed. Look closely at its output though, and you see lots of artefacts and over-sharpening, plus the LED flash doesn't help with blurring of anything moving when indoors or at night.
• 4.3" 'Super AMOLED' screen is similar in visibility to Nokia's CBD on AMOLED, but remember that the N8 predated CBD, so any device here will have a better display almost by definition. Resolution is higher too, at qHD (540 x 960, c.f. nHD on the N8 at 360 x 640).
• Integration with Google services, Google Maps/navigation and access to 2012 Android applications
• Limited by non-replaceable battery, non-expandable memory (16GB)

Top 10 points 'hit': 1 (maybe), 3, 4, 5, 9 (maybe). Total: 4/10. [external link to Phones Show review]

Sony Xperia S

• Plastic, sealed construction, boxy design
• Novelty transparent LED strip at the bottom, awkward function key 'spots'
• Adequate camera with excellent speed and interface, though low light shots are disappointing and there's too much noise and artefacts even in daylight shots. The resolution may be 12mp but the sensor's no larger than most competitors and it's no N8 challenger.
• 4.3" 720 x 1280 LCD transflective screen, excellent in almost all light conditions
• Integration with Google services, Google Maps/navigation and access to 2012 Android applications
  

Top 10 points 'hit': 1 (maybe), 4, 5, 7 (maybe). Total: 3/10. [external link to Phones Show review]

Apple iPhone 4S

• Glass and steel construction with RF antennas built into the outer band
• High resolution (640 x 960) IPS LCD display
• World-leading application and game market
• Excellent camera that outperforms its stated sensor size, LED flash, rivals N8 in some daylight scenarios
• Great loudspeaker
• Limited, but intelligently implemented multitasking
• Google Maps built-in, needs third party software for full sat-nav (especially offline)
• Integral storage (various GB available) and battery

Top 10 points 'hit': 1, 3, 4 (maybe), 5, 7 and 9. Total: 5.5/10.

Nokia N9

• Beautiful unibody polycarbonate
• Sealed battery. Choice of integral storage memory (as on the iPhone).
• Decent camera, but ultimately limited by LED flash and relatively small sensor
• 3.9" CBD AMOLED display is genuinely beautiful, at 480 x 854 resolution.
• Meego Harmattan OS/interface is a geek's paradise, combining insanely easy to use multitasking with insanely fiddly ways of extending the phone to do things it can't do out of the box. Great geek community support.
• Nokia Maps/Drive isn't perfect, but good enough, and probably still has an update or two left in it.
• Disappointing loudspeaker.

Top 10 points 'hit': 1 (maybe), 3, 4 (maybe), 5 and 9. Total: 4/10. [external link to All About Meego, for more]

Nokia Lumia 800/900

• Beautiful unibody polycarbonate (the 800 is derived from the N9 above)
• Sealed battery and no memory expansion beyond 16GB
• Decent camera, but ultimately limited by LED flash and relatively small sensor
• 3.7" CBD AMOLED display is beautiful, with 480 x 800 resolution, though fonts can be a little small - there's the Lumia 900 too, with 4.3" screen, which also scores because it's full RGB and not 'pentile', but loses the holistic unibody screen-to-body curvature.
• Windows Phone's super modern, cloud-centric interface conceals a smartphone OS that's arguably nowhere near as function rich as Symbian. Good potential for the future, with updates though?
• No significant multitasking, applications can be frozen and then resumed when needed if you know the magic keypress(!)
• Nokia Drive is fully featured, as on Symbian, but Nokia Maps still needs a lot of work.
• Windows Phone Marketplace is quite extensive now, if not quite at parity with iOS and Android
• Disappointing loudspeaker.

Top 10 points 'hit': 1 (maybe), 3, 5 and 9. Total: 3.5/10. [external link to All About Windows Phone, for more]

You can probably see where this feature is going, but here we go anyway....

Nokia 808 PureView

• Plastic construction, but solidly built
• Thicker than the N8, thanks to a monstrous 41 megapixel camera with 1/1.2" sensor
• Xenon flash that's twice the brightness of the N8's
• 4" CBD AMOLED screen is supremely clear but pixellated compared to most of the devices mentioned above
• Fast 1.3GHz processor, 512MB of RAM (twice that in the N8), plus dedicated camera imaging processor
• Symbian Nokia Belle FP1 - think Belle on steroids
• Removeable 1400mAh battery, 16GB mass memory, plus microSD expansion
• Large loudspeaker

Top 10 points 'hit': 1, 2, 3 (maybe), 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Total: 9.5/10.

_____________________________

Now, before the trolls leap in to criticise in the comments, there's an implicit assumption in all the above scoring, that the reader (in this case, the N8 fan) is trying to find something that will do everything the N8 can do, and then a bit more besides.

While the iOS, Windows Phone and Android-powered devices have a far more vibrant ecosystem in terms of new applications and games, these aren't taken into account because I'd argue that many N8 owners have chosen their device in the first place based on what it can actually do rather that what apps it runs - with a little carefully chosen third party software, most Symbian phones can get close to the service functionality of their contemporaries. In which case, raw abilities and flexibility become the dominant differentiating factor.

The question of how sustainable such an approach is in the long term, through the (say) two year life of the 808 PureView is relevant, of course - it will depend on what you actually want to do with your smartphone. For me, the attractions of the N8 are heavily skewed to its hardware, as evidenced by the list of 10 attributes above, and so the 808 PureView is the slam dunk obvious successor.

The Nokia 808 takes the N8's functionality and adds: a more up to date OS version, a faster processor, more RAM, a better camera, a better flash, a better speaker, a better screen and a far more easily removable battery, with no real 'downside', other than perhaps physical material and thickness preferences. You may remember that I wrote before, at length, about why the N8 is unique in the smartphone world? With the 808 arriving imminently, the N8 won't be alone anymore. 

And, yes, the rest of the smartphone world be damned. With the Nokia 808, as with the N8, the extent of my 'modern' smartphoning will be email, some basic web searches, social sharing of my photos and comments - plus the usual application and game mix from the Symbian app pool. 

It's possible, of course, that I'm too caught up in the 808 PureView hype - if you're an N8 owner, what do you think? Is the 808 the same certainty for you or is there a viable alternative that I haven't mentioned?

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 14th May 2012

Charging a Nokia E7-00

The DC-16 is Nokia's latest external battery, and as you can see from the box below, it has been designed to complement the Lumia range of phones with the distinctive, Cyan, Magenta, Black, and White colour options. However, it will work with any device that charges via Micro USB.

DC-16 Box

The box simply contains the DC-16, the CA-189CD USB to Micro USB charging and data cable, plus user guide and warranty. The charging cable is an update of Nokia's CA-101D short USB cable which has shipped with devices over the last two years. If you're familiar with that cable, the CA-189CD is less than two inches longer, and the socket casings are made from a rubbery material which improves grip, but attracts dust like a magnet. As mentioned above, the DC-16 is available in the four Lumia colours, and the supplied cable will be of a matching colour.

Both ends of the DC-16

The DC-16 follows a very simplistic design, and can be mathematically described as a squircle prism; i.e. the shape used in Symbian Anna iconography. At one end, there's a Type-A USB port from which other devices are charged (i.e. the output); the other end comprises of a charge level indicator and a Micro USB port with which the DC-16 is charged (i.e. the input). This simple design is actually quite ingenious as the device can both charge and be charged with the same cable, just by reversing the ends at which they're connected, as shown in the configurations below.

Configuration - charging the DC-16

 
Configuration - DC-16 to charge another device

The DC-16's capacity is rated at 2200mAh, which is equivalent to less than two full charges of most smartphone batteries; it is also guaranteed for 500 charge cycles. Nokia say the output current is 950mA, which is quite high for a battery of this class. Anecdotally, it can quickly recharge our Lumia 800 to full (from empty). Time taken to charge the DC-16 itself will vary depending on your USB charger. If you're only charging from a PC, expect a long wait though. From a 1A wall charger, charging from flat can take up to 3 hours. While charging, the four green LEDs illuminate, with each going from flashing to constant in sequence to indicate the current charge level. For example, three constant lights with one flashing means the charge is between 75% and 100%.

Look carefully at the indicator end, and you'll find an embossed battery icon beneath the Micro USB port. This pinpoints a button, concealed by a flexible surface, which (while not recharging) switches on the LEDs to indicate the current charge level; e.g. four LEDs means the charge level is between 75% and 100%, and so on. The LEDs only stay on for 10 seconds so as to not waste energy.

DC-16 indicator LEDs

The DC-16 has a trick up its sleeve ­– you can connect the charger in-line (in series) with your phone. In this configuration, the battery will charge up first, and then allow current to flow and recharge the phone. I love this, but there are a few caveats to keep in mind, none of which are deal breakers. Firstly, the charge level on the DC-16 can repeatedly drop just enough to make it shut off current to the phone, and then switch on again, and off again, etc. If your phone is configured to emit a sound when it begins charging, this repetition can become annoying. Even so, if you're on the road and only have a single USB port to charge from, this flexibility is ideal, as long as you put your phone on silent! Secondly, if you're trickle charging from your PC, don't expect to be able to transfer data via the DC-16 – there's no through-data connection. Then again, in this configuration you already have two charging cables, so just use two separate USB ports on your computer instead.

'Daisy chaining' the DC-16 with a Lumia 800

The DC-16 retails for £30, or slightly less if you shop around carefully. It's difficult not to compare this to the Proporta TurboChargers, all of which offer higher capacities and a better ratio of capacity to cost. Also, Proporta's TurboCharger 7000 has more than double the potential output current, allowing for faster charging, depending on device. However, the strength of the DC-16, and why I would buy one for myself, is that it can easily slip in a pocket beside your phone. This compactness, combined with its clever design, make for a product I enjoy having in my tech-kit.

Recommended.

David Gilson, 10th May 2012

You can download iStyle from the Nokia Store here, free for 5 days from today.

One might argue that this is little more than a novelty, and you'd be right. But, after all, I was very taken with a recent Android 4 theme for Symbian, so it really does take all sorts. And, after all, as the old saying goes, "a theme change is as good as a rest"....

In my hands at the moment, I'm holding a Nokia 8800 Sapphire Arte, with truly awesome build quality and appearance - and it got me thinking. From the Symbian world, which designs, from all manufacturers, have had similar cosmetic appeal? Here's my top 5, but your comments welcome if you disagree with my selections!

__________________________________

In reverse order of beauty (in my humble and extremely subjective opinion!), and with links to our original reviews from back in the day:

10. Nokia E6

Nokia poured years of expertise into the E6's design and construction and in many ways it really is the best of all worlds. Cosmetically, it's blacker than black, with the highlights being all the metal detailing and fabulous keys/buttons. The smooth transitions between metal and plastic on the back are just stunning... [Original review of the white version from 2011]

9. Nokia 9500

This may seem an odd choice, but after two previous generations of Communicator (running GeOS and Series 80 on Symbian respectively), we at last had one which looked sleeked and stylish, with flowing lines all round. Yes, the 9500 is still a brick by most people's definition, but the superb contoured keyboard inside tips this device inside my top 10. [Original long term review from 2005]

8. Nokia N70

Another device that was beautiful because of the ugliness of what had gone before (think the Fisher Price Nokia 3650, 6630, 6680), the N70 was the first 'Series 60' smartphone to look the part. It was sleek and stunning, with great materials - and I loved it. Even better, the internals were up to the job too and the N70 lasted until the N93 came along and changed the camera phone game forever. [Original review from 2006]

7. Samsung i8910 HD

With hindsight, this was Samsung trying out full-face touch devices with cutting edge specs, but in the Symbian world, before it went mainstream with Android. Back when the i8910 HD came out, the looks - a 3.7" AMOLED display, sleek profile, minimalist buttons, were astonishing, especially when you fired up that huge screen. For a Symbian world used to TFT and LCD on S60 5th Edition, the i8910 was a revelation. Maybe not classically beautiful in terms of styling, but... brutishly, wonderfully beautiful overall. [Original review from 2009]

6. Sony Ericsson P800

"What?" I hear you say? "The P800 was pug-ugly!" Well, it was 'interestingly' coloured in blue and white, the hinged flip had the ugliest buttons in the world and the whole device was, in hindsight, rather portly. BUT. Use the supplied screwdriver to remove the flip and turn the P800 into its alter-ego - a full-face, stylus-driven touchscreen smartphone, announced five years before the iPhone and ten years before the (also optionally stylus-driven) Samsung Galaxy Note. In this guise, the P800 is transformed. For 2002 it was a glimpse into the future - yes, we had bigger stylus driven Windows Mobile communicators, but this was smooth, phone-sized and, yes, as beautiful as acres of translucent blue plastic can get.... [Original reviewette from 2003]

5. Nokia N76

There's something about 'flip' phone that screams style. After all, the Motorola RAZR ruled the world for a while - and with good reason, flip phones still look great and are often a triumph of styling over functionality. The ill-fated N76 was no different, essentially Nokia copying the RAZR design for Symbian and failing utterly in the process through poor choice of components, principally a poor TFT screen that you literally couldn't see when you went outdoors - which is perhaps where you might use a mobile device, Nokia? Anyway, there's good use of materials at least, with all the mirror finish bits (including the arty etched keypad) making sure the N76 made it into this top 10. [Original review from 2007]

4. Nokia 6650

Ah yes. Take two on the RAZR clone, this time with more of a unique Nokia slant, more attention to detail and more modern internals. Oodles of stainless steel on the outside, a really solid construction, a lovely outer 'cover' display and, sealing the 6650's place in the top 10, a gloriously beautiful set of LED backlights for the keyboard - watching the keypad cycle through seven deep colour shades is right up with watching Christmas lights in my household... [original review from 2008]

3. Nokia N93i

Yes, another device in this top 10 that's actually almost unusable in the real world - but which still stands as a piece of Symbian art, at least. The N93i was a complete no-go as a smartphone - it tried to take the classic N93 design and slim it down, adding a load of mirror-finish style, and it succeeded. But for some reason the product manager decided to stick in the same display tech as the N76 above, meaning that when you wanted to photograph something out in the sunshine you couldn't actually see the screen, rather foiling the point. But the mirrored front with embedded time and status display and the steel-effect keypad with lovely rubber dividers both swing my vote. Ultimately, the N93i also failed because the N95 arrived, rather stealing its camera phone thunder. But a beautiful device for its time - as long as you didn't try and use it when the sun was out. [Original review from 2007]

2. Nokia N86

The last two choices in this list probably won't be a surprise to anyone - I've mentioned before what lookers they are, both Nokia design classics. In this case, the N86 is the ultimate incarnation (in terms of materials and camera internals) of the classic N95 form factor. The main beautiful touch is the full-face sheet of tempered glass. Along with the superbly sculpted metal keypad, the N86 was and is simply a premium device to use. And the engineer in me appreciates the beauty in an all-metal slide mechanism inside - so no wobbles, no breakages in time. Beauty and premium experience all the way, even if a QVGA display seems err... restricting, today, in 2012. ['Pimping' the N86]

1. Nokia C7

So beautiful the company even made a version in Sapphire (the Vertu Constellation) and one in gold (the Oro), even the vanilla metal and plastic version shines, with mirror-finish screen and surrounds, curves everywhere you look and an oleophobic coating that keeps the screen looking smooth and clear. With Nokia Belle on board, plus FM transmitter, NFC and much more, I've already proclaimed the C7 to be a storming second hand bargain (average eBay price under £100), ironic (in a good way) since it looks a million dollars. [Original review, from 2010]

_______________________

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 10 May 2012

From the Twitter blog:

Today we’re updating Twitter for mobile web (mobile.twitter.com) in an effort to give every person on the planet a consistent Twitter experience. People who access Twitter from feature phones, low-bandwidth networks or older browsers can now enjoy the new version of Twitter we introduced in December. 

Like Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android, mobile.twitter.com is fast, like a native mobile app; it uses one-third less bandwidth than the previous iteration. We’re rolling out this new mobile web experience starting today, and will continue to make Twitter the most accessible way to connect with the world, even with the weakest signals and the simplest devices. 

Here's the new mobile version in action in Web on my Nokia N8:

Showing the main @timeline, my @replies and trending hashtags and topics (apologies for some of the content!)

Showing my Profile page, the web interface settings and the results of a Twitter search...

Notice that Web, as usual with generic web pages, renders the whole thing in white, which is quite unfriendly on AMOLED displays, as on the N8. It's for this reason that I normally opt for Dabr instead (dabr.co.uk), a third party interface to exactly the same Twitter APIs, but which boasts a number of 'dark' themes (e.g. 'Purple'), with potentially huge power savings for anyone browsing Twitter a lot.

And, just in case you're not already following all of us on the 'All About' team on Twitter, we're:

• @aas
• @stevelitchfield
• @rafeblandford
• @davidgilson
• @ewan

Water. A point which was brought home to me (again) this week, with a family Blackberry and a family iPad both being accidentally dunked in basins of water. In the Blackberry's case, it was fairly trivial to simply remove the battery and put the whole device in the airing cupboard for 24 hours. Stick the battery in and everything booted up fine.  As I write this, the iPad is still undergoing emergency surgery... 8-)

I remember several smartphones of Rafe's which ended up falling in his local stream. In each case, removing the battery and letting everything dry out restored the phone to operation. 

With a 'modern' sealed unit, you're utterly at the mercy of the conductivity and corrosivity of whatever liquid got spilled on your smartphone or whatever it got dunked in. No chance to yank out the battery, which means that you'll have the full battery voltage trying to create all sorts of nasrty short circuits and electro-chemical reactions inside the phone, with no chance to stop the damage. You just have to sit there and pray. And, probably, visit a repair centre and empty your wallet.

With this in mind, I'd like to add to the table in the original article:

Yes, perhaps I'm being a little pessimistic, but which of us hasn't had some water-electronics contact of some kind? Do you have any success or disaster stories to share here? What have you brought to life or destroyed?