All About Symbian - S60 Content

Review: Tasks Widget

Tue, 22 May 2012 06:40:00 GMT

The unique Swipe UI of the MeeGo Harmattan-powered Nokia N9 has inspired many Maemo and Symbian developers. One aspect of its UI is the multitasking view which gave live previews of applications and could be zoomed from, say, a three by three grid, to a two by two grid; and to close applications. Whenever one tries to graft the user interface of one mobile operating system onto another, though, things are never going to fit perfectly, but compliments to the developer of Tasks Widget, who has given it his/her best shot.

Event and meet-up: 361 Degrees Live in London on 11th June

Mon, 21 May 2012 16:49:50 GMT

The 361 Degrees team are delighted to announce our first ever public event. Here's your chance to come and meet the team, and readers from All About Windows Phone, All About Symbian, Mobile Industry Review and Wireless Worker.

Video: Making the Nokia 808 PureView

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:45:11 GMT

Nokia Conversations has published an 8 minute video about the story behind the making of Nokia's latest camera break-through - the Nokia 808 PureView. It includes interviews with a few of the team of almost four hundred people who have been working on the device over the last five years, insights into the technology breakthroughs that have gone into the device, and the origin napkin story. And, of course, the video has been shot entirely on the Nokia 808 PureView itself.

Nokia Pulse also gets Facebook login, better Maps integration

Mon, 21 May 2012 12:04:26 GMT

Nokia Pulse, its cross-platform location-based social network, has also gotten itself an update that allows Facebook login, along with Nokia Maps integration and contacts handling improvements. Screens and links below.

Smart Office is free right now

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:12:48 GMT

Although the text on Smart Office's listing on the Nokia Store claims it's for the 'weekend', there's also the strap line 'May Mayhem continues on Ovi'. Either way, if you'd been eyeing up Smart Office ever since our full review, then now's the time to grab it.

The Nokia Store client moves on again, adds Facebook login

Mon, 21 May 2012 07:55:31 GMT

Having established a few days ago that v3.24.053 of the Nokia Store client had been formally released from beta into the wild, we're now seeing the client leap off on a whole new 'beta' arc, with new functionality for v3.28.025, including optional sign-in using a Facebook account, a UI change and several stability fixes. Screens and links below.

Spoilt for choice... since 2007

Mon, 21 May 2012 06:00:00 GMT

The 'my phone (or smartphone platform) is better than yours' debates across the tech world rage on, somewhat amusingly. Yes, I know that megabucks are involved, that sales of successful products now reach into the many tens of millions, that each launch is bigger and better funded than the last. But I also can't help notice that we've only been seeing gradual improvements for the last five years and that, in truth, I could happily use almost any top-end device from that entire period to accomplish all the things I need a smartphone to do.

CamEfx provides novelty photo 'FX'

Fri, 18 May 2012 16:14:00 GMT

Regular followers of me on Twitter will know how much I despise image-filtering monstrosities like Instagram. Having spent the last decade trying to take better photos on my smartphone, the thought of deliberately mangling them seems to be anathema, to me at least. However, these sort of apps seem to be popular, so in the public interest I briefly tried out CamEfx, available for free in the Nokia Store.

Latest Nokia Store beta client blessed with full release

Fri, 18 May 2012 14:45:03 GMT

The last Nokia Store client that appeared in Beta Labs almost two months ago, v3.24.053, has made it through testing without further changes (unusually!) and is now being rolled out officially as an auto-prompted update when anyone goes into the Nokia Store on their Symbian (^3/Anna/Belle) device. The main changes for this version, you may remember, were fixes for download queue and purchase bugs.

Place your order now - SUBWAY Express on Symbian

Fri, 18 May 2012 08:54:12 GMT

Yep, everyone's favourite fast-sandwich vendor is now available on Symbian. At least, it is if you live in the Greater London area - no doubt the system will get extended in due course. Screenshot proof below, but SUBWAY EXPRESS does seem well built (in Qt) and available for free now - you can place extravagantly detailed orders for a pick up time of you choice from any of hundreds of included restaurants.

Fight: N8 vs HTC One S/X cameras

Fri, 18 May 2012 06:23:10 GMT

Ah. So there is someone else out there in the blogosphere who takes smartphone camera testing as seriously as me. Well, almost as seriously...(!) In this case, 'Deaconclgi' over at 'My Nokia Blog', who takes his beloved Nokia N8 and HTC One S and puts them through a set of demanding shots in varying light conditions, exploring the detail and coloration in their photos.

Coloring Book for your toddler(s)

Thu, 17 May 2012 10:40:40 GMT

You may remember that I reviewed Coloring Fun recently, a stab at producing a colouring-for-toddlers application to keep them happy for 10 minutes on a car journey or in a queue. I won't subject you to another full review, since Coloring Book is fairly similar, but I did want to highlight its existence in the Nokia Store and to provide you with some screenshots of this commercial application. And no, neither of the titles get the spelling of 'colouring' right. What's that? There's some magic land called America where they mangle words?....

Nokia Maps - updated maps, dated 30th April 2012

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:58:38 GMT

Well spotted by Nokialino, there are new maps available for Nokia Maps, adding latest road information along with extra traffic coverage. Some screenshots below, you will want to seek out a Wi-fi hotspot before checking for the update, since the downloads are large (typically hundreds of megabytes) and can't be done over 3G.

Review: IronWorm

Thu, 17 May 2012 09:28:10 GMT

It feels as if all the games I review lately are variations on established genres, so I was happy to find IronWorm, which seems to defy classification. In IronWorm (a remake of SwingWorm), you play a worm with a vendetta, and in his quest to chase down his nemesis, he has to climb and swing his way through increasingly complicated environments, with a gymnastic grace that deserves to be in the Olympics! His only weapon, and protection, is a mace-tipped tail, plus YOUR coordination and cunning.

BelleChat brings IRC with style

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:08:36 GMT

BelleChat is an IRC client for Symbian^3 devices (running Anna or Belle). The app's UI follows the Nokia Belle style guide, giving a visually pleasing and coherent user interface that matches the native apps. Features include split screen keyboard text entry, ability to join more than one channel at once and support for rendering output in mIRC colours.

AAS Insight #213: beautiful phones and what next for N8 owners

Wed, 16 May 2012 13:57:21 GMT

In All About Symbian Insight number 213, we start with the news of a fix for Nokia Maps Suite 2.0 installation and details of latest beta of Nokia Transport. Rafe and Steve discuss mobile web versus client apps, prompted by recent updates to Twitter and YouTube's mobile website; and David talk about his experience with the DC-16 charger. In the second half of the podcast, we revisit Steve's feature on the top 10 most beautiful Symbian smartphones, before moving on to talk about the upgrade options for Nokia N8 owners.

Don't forget Vlingo - now updated

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:54:22 GMT

In all the fuss over Apple's (effectively bought in) Siri and Samsung's (effectively bought in) S-voice, Symbian owners eager for a little voice recognition action shouldn't forget about Vlingo, free for our OS and recently updated to v2.4.50, bringing better recognition, new settings and under the hood improvements. Some screenshots and examples below, just to refresh your memory!

Concluding the N86 experiment

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:10:09 GMT

I'm not the only crazy N86 fan, it seems - the much respected Alvin Wong has been running a two week experiment using this three year old T9-based phone (the last great N95-style dual-slide smartphone) as his only device. No touchscreens, no qwerty keypads (physical or otherwise), no 2012 cloud computing (out of the box, at least). He took the experiment very seriously and has produced a number of extensive reports, some of which are quoted and linked below.

YouTube Mobile in May 2012 - who needs a client?

Tue, 15 May 2012 11:18:00 GMT

You all know I'm a fan of the Web doing the job of an application - remember 'There's a bookmark for that', from 2010? Over the last couple of years I've dipped into YouTube's mobile-optimised web site, m.youtube.com, watching it get better and better. Recent changes have improved it to the point where it's debatable whether you need to even think about sourcing a dedicated YouTube client. Read on for proof...

Towards Belle Feature Pack 1

Tue, 15 May 2012 07:45:57 GMT

Up on Nokia's official YouTube channel is a short promo video for Symbian Nokia Belle FP1, currently rolling out, highlighting a few of its highlights (I'll refrain from being picky and pointing out that some of things mentioned are (ahem) already available, even for generic Belle devices). In particular, the video highlights improved entertainment options, personalisation choices, boosted performance, 20 new and improved widgets and a faster browser with HTML 5 support.