All About Symbian

Meet Bing Translate: the new online Symbian translator in 2022!

Sat, 06 Aug 2022 20:20:20 GMT

Guest author Michael "Mivas Greece" brings us another interesting post! He writes: It’s been 10 years since Nokia released the legendary 808 PureView, the last Symbian device, and 8 years since the Nokia Store stopped accepting new apps until it finally closed. However, third party stores, such as SIStore and AppList, took over and they are still functional nowadays. The release of new Symbian apps has been on the decline over the years, yet some motivated Symbian developers continue releasing/updating apps, and now that Jtube's developers have struck again, we have a new Symbian app in 2022!

Nokia N97 and N97 mini: pimping sisters from 2009

Mon, 23 May 2022 08:10:46 GMT

Guest writer Nico brings the site a little extra retro action via the QWERTY-equipped Nokia N97 and N97 mini, 13 year old hardware rescued from an attic and pimped for 2022!

So long and thanks for all the fish...

Fri, 06 May 2022 08:40:00 GMT

Twenty years of mobile coverage, almost 25,000 articles across (at times) up to five sites, half a dozen writers, Symbian through Meego and Windows Phone operating systems, then cross-platform to iOS and Android for the last couple of years, Rafe Blandford’s ‘All About’ sites have had a good run. And most of it is still accessible and will hopefully remain so for a while. But I do have an announcement...

The laptop in your pocket

Fri, 22 Apr 2022 10:44:56 GMT

So yes a bit of an experiment. Writing about the laptop in your pocket ON a laptop in my pocket. In this case the Microsoft Surface Duo 2. No corrections or additions were made on any other device. It has been the dream of every mobile enthusiast for three decades to have a workable laptop, for Office, email, and so on, in a pocketable form. Think Psion, think Nokia Communicators. This is the latest attempt, in 2022!

Review: UGREEN Travel Organiser Bag

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 11:10:05 GMT

While utterly generic, I have a soft spot for 'gadget bags', as I call them. My go-everywhere briefcase has been filled in recent times with a myriad of cables and adapters - and this £17 UGREEN organiser bag arrived for review at exactly the right time. See the photos below - my wires have never been so easy to find and hard to lose!

All About... the Nokia 9 PureView

Mon, 04 Apr 2022 15:16:23 GMT

My own experience with the Nokia 9 PureView, released to much fanfare exactly three years ago, was limited to my loan review period, but there are plenty of people with years of experience with this troubled device. Thus, Kerwin over on NokiaMob has produced a very decent summary of the whole Nokia 9 PureView saga - warts and all.

David Wood on 30 years of PDA and smartphone OS...

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 20:36:26 GMT

If you haven't heard of David Wood before then you need to catch up a little. One of the creators of the Psion palmtops in the 1990s and then one of the architects of Symbian OS in the 2000s, he has tremendous insight - and, frankly, an impressive memory, dredging up codewords, anecdotes, and industry analysis from 20 years ago. I've covered his book here before, but the guys at the Nokia Chronicles podcast had him on this weekend and it's a 'must listen'.

18 years on... the Sony Ericsson P910

Sun, 13 Mar 2022 08:15:04 GMT

Michael Fisher has an ongoing video series looking at smartphones of yesteryear and in the episode below he looks back at the Sony Ericsson P910, a device with no less than four user interface interaction methods! This was back in the days before Wifi, when Sony's MemoryStick formats were a thing, and when styluses (stylii?) were an everyday sight...

OpoLua brings Psion palmtop apps to the iPhone

Thu, 03 Mar 2022 07:41:34 GMT

A brief history lesson. Today's smartphones are built on the lessons learned from the early days, when Symbian ruled the world (2002-2010) - and Symbian itself, a multitasking OS in the palm of your hand, was based on EPOC, a real time pre-emptive multitasking OS in the AA-powered Psion palmtops in the 1990s. These had a full development language onboard, OPL, and a huge number of applications were developed by enthusiasts (like me) for the Psion scene.

Fast forward to today and a developer has just released OpoLua, an OPL runtime for iOS, i.e. for iPhone and iPad. Meaning that you can now install and run Psion/OPL applications on a 2022 iPhone. Which is... pretty cool, even though app complexity now has in most cases outstripped those early OPL efforts.

Five obscure beginnings to some of our favorite smartphone features

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 15:32:24 GMT

There's a good feature up today by friend of 'All About', Zac Kew Denniss, a Brit who lives just down the road from me. He was writing for Android Police and has picked out five favourite hardware features from today's smartphones and where they first debuted...

Apple leads a Q4 2021 smartphone market share snapshot

Thu, 20 Jan 2022 16:00:04 GMT

Despite a pandemic and a global chip shortage, smartphone shipments actually grew by 1% worldwide, according to Canalys. [Remember them? We used to quote them heavily when exploring Symbian and Windows Phone market share back in the day!] There's little change year on year in terms of manufacturer, either, though it's worth noting that Q4 is Apple's biggest phone quarter - it hasn't been on top all year, every year.

Hands-on with the Astro Slide 5G at CES 2022

Sun, 09 Jan 2022 12:08:42 GMT

Planet Computers' latest QWERTY palmtop/communicator was shown to the world's press at CES 2022 in Las Vegas - and now we have real world hands-on video of the device. Promising a Psion-quality mechanical keyboard plus traditional smartphone specs and behaviour, this should be something special. Here's the first hands-on of something that's not a prototype, at any rate...

When classic smartphones become collectables

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 08:29:00 GMT

When a smartphone falls out of use in your life, there's a temptation to find a good home for it. Often a family member, often a second hand market like eBay, but sometimes - just sometimes - the phone is special enough, is unique enough, in fact is downright collectable enough, that you might like to hang onto it. Not necessarily just for pecuniary reasons, but perhaps sentimental reasons as well. As an example, I've picked out a dozen smartphones from my own collection that fit this bill. Classics one and all...

JTube - a new client for Youtube on Symbian heading into 2022!!!

Sat, 18 Dec 2021 09:04:00 GMT

Guest author Michael “Mivas Greece” contributes: "It’s been years since the Ovi Store for Symbian phones stopped accepting new apps and eventually shut down, however, thanks to the Symbian community, Symbian users have continued receiving new apps once in a while since. And now we have a new client for YouTube that works with not only most Symbian-based smartphones from 2006 onwards, but also a wide variety of generic phones - in fact, anything that supports Java.

The Astro Slide 5G saga approaches two years

Wed, 15 Dec 2021 07:32:00 GMT

Back in March 2020, so just under two years ago, Planet Computers launched the Indiegogo campaign for the Astro Slide 5G, the follow up to the Gemini and Cosmo Communicators, all with full mechanical QWERTY keyboards. While the latter two were more akin to the old Psion palmtop or Nokia Communicator form factors, i.e. clamshells, the Astro Slide 5G is similar to the classic 2010 Nokia E7 (on Symbian), with an external full touchscreen that slides out of the way when needed to reveal, in this case, the famous QWERTY key layout. We've been getting drip fed news from the Planet team over the last 12 months, so here's my round-up and summary.

HMD Global's Nokia has fallen into the same trap as the original

Thu, 02 Dec 2021 10:32:47 GMT

There's a good summary feature now over at Android Authority, reviewing five years of HMD Global's Nokia. With some ex-Nokia staff, though notably not the engineers, HMD Global sought to resurrect the Nokia brand and play on the goodwill for the name earned over the previous 20 years. The article charts the highs lows and err.. lows of the five years, with it contending that HMD fell into the same trap as the original Nokia (at least in its Windows Phone years) - chasing the mass market low end without producing something truly high end and aspirational.

The Mobile Phone Museum debuts

Wed, 24 Nov 2021 11:00:55 GMT

Ben Wood is a name that many know in the wider phone world and it seems that he's been busy in recent years, along with collaborator Matt Chatterley, putting together a physical (of sorts) and virtual Mobile Phone Museum, with over 2000 models, encompassing everything from low end feature phones to the most premium smartphones. Although you can't actually visit a physical museum, there are plans, post-Covid, for tours and exhibitions.

Pixel 6 Pro - imaging hardware that's finally worthy of study

Thu, 18 Nov 2021 07:32:00 GMT

For years people have praised Google's 'HDR+' (and then 'Pixel Camera') image handling and processing. Originally designed for Google Glass, to make a terrible, tiny camera produce good results, the multi-frame algorithms worked wonders on many phone cameras too, even by side-loading onto generic Android hardware. The system was much copied by all other phone makers, so that multiple frames per image is now commonplace. However, Google's imaging hardware has been lacklustre, even poor, in the last year, so it's a great relief to see all that good software now paired with genuinely competitive camera hardware. So, ahead of my various review tests and comparisons (versus iPhone, Sony, and yes, Lumia), I thought I'd 'focus' in on what's under the hood in my review Pixel 6 Pro...

Where it all started? 11 years before the iPhone...

Sat, 16 Oct 2021 16:38:18 GMT

The video embedded below appeared recently on popular YouTube channel DankPods, highlighting the Nokia 9000, the very first Communicator, with a chunky exterior that belay a full Internet (such as it was) computer and many of the 'smarts' that we'd recognise today. It's a good and fun watch, if a little 'jokey', but that this was a real product 11 years before Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone should get a few jaws dropping.

Android 12 is released to AOSP

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 08:02:14 GMT

Google's Android platform is complicated - it releases the core of the OS to AOSP, Android Open Source Project, which other manufacturers can take and add their own bits to, while it holds the rest for its own Pixel smartphones. The system actually works quite well, even if by the time most manufacturers finish work on their own implementation of Android version X then Google is up to version Y. It's been that way for years. In this case we have Google officially releasing Android 12 to AOSP, though unusually even the company itself hasn't finished working on the updates to its flagship line of Pixels - it seems that they'll get the fully realised update next month.

iOS 15 hits, here are the highlights

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 08:31:58 GMT

Apple released iOS 15 overnight for all iPhones going back to the iPhone 6s (from 2015, so this has had six full years of platform updates - and counting). And while All About Mobile isn't a new site per se, here's a bulleted list, with a few comments, on what's new. I have it installed now on my 12 Pro Max and have been impressed so far. There are even nods to Symbian and Windows Phone along the way, hence the cross-post to AAS and AAWP.

Head to head: Lumia 950 XL vs Sony Xperia 5 iii

Fri, 17 Sep 2021 13:10:00 GMT

Last year's Xperia 5 ii (read as 'mark 2') was almost a perfect match in terms of specs and expectations for a classic 'Nokia/Windows phone' user - excellent audio, excellent imaging, not too large or heavy, fully water and dust proof, and so on. But we now have the brand new Xperia 5 iii, sporting internal upgrades plus (nominally) the same dual-focal-length telephoto camera from the Xperia 1 iii - let's hope it performs better at its upper zoom factor than the flagship did! Here's the specs breakdown, anyway. [Note that this is cross-posted to AAS as well, as it's a modern equivalent to the best of the old Nokia Nseries, I contend...]

All About... Zeiss T* lenses

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 06:28:00 GMT

Carl ZEISS, later shortened to just 'ZEISS', has been an optics brand associated with cameras and then phone cameras, the latter since 2005 and the Nokia N90 transformer smartphone, but then used in over a dozen Nokia camera champions over the next eight years. And one can understand that ZEISS might have had a hand in designing and tuning the lenses in these pioneering devices. But there's a ZEISS trademark that's a little more mysterious and we've been starting to see it on phone cameras in the last couple of years - T*, with the legend often in a dark orange or red. So what exactly is T*?

Almost a decade apart: Nokia 808 vs Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra

Mon, 06 Sep 2021 14:23:00 GMT

Nine and a half years apart, we have two phone camera systems with near 1" sensors. Yes, it has taken the rest of the phone world a decade to catch up to the Nokia 808 PureView in terms of sheer sensor size. But a lot has changed in terms of processing power and multi-frame capture, enabling true HDR and night modes. So how, in terms of photo results, does the 2012 808 PureView match up to the very latest 1/1.12"-sensored Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra?

Review: Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra - the ultimate camera phone?

Fri, 03 Sep 2021 06:57:14 GMT

These being the 'All About' sites, there has been an emphasis on phone cameras over the years. Both my interest in the topic and Nokia's obsession with imaging has meant lots of chat about classics like the Nokia N8, 808, Lumia 1020 and 950, then recent iPhones and - here - my review of the 2021 Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra. With a few caveats, this is the single most capable phone camera system I've ever used.

Flashback to the Nokia N97 - did it 'kill Nokia'?

Tue, 31 Aug 2021 07:36:00 GMT

GSM Arena's Flashback series rolls in, with a look back at the smartphone that many claim killed Nokia - I think unfairly. For a Symbian geek like me (at the time), it was the ultimate device, the smartphone that did everything. The catch, of course, was that it tried to do so much that it failed in terms of user experience. As documented well by GSM Arena's Will, below.

Preparing the way: imaging on the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 08:25:00 GMT

It's not often that a camera-equipped smartphone comes along that goes so far 'up to 11' (pun intended) that even running through the imaging specs needs an article of its own. But with the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra in for review at All About Towers over the next week or two, it's probably a good idea to lay the imaging bare, especially for fans of classic Nokia imaging phones like the 808 PureView and Lumia 1020 - the Mi 11 Ultra is right up in the same ballpark, at least in theory, while having massively more horsepower and massively newer components. Which should bode well...

Review: Nokia XR20

Tue, 24 Aug 2021 09:47:48 GMT

It's not that often that I review a new Nokia, especially here mid-2021. True, this is the 'new' Nokia, under HMD Global, and true, most of the new Nokia handsets are somewhat 'meh', but the XR20 is a little different, as covered in my head to head and imaging showdown pieces here recently. So here I wrapped everything up in a review, in text and - yes - video form, all below. Summary? It's a nice idea but completely the wrong form factor, I contend. Note that because of the brand name, this is, I think, of interest to all the err.. 'All About' sites!

Remembering the Nokia N8

Sun, 22 Aug 2021 13:45:49 GMT

Abdulla Zaki, over on YouTube, has been retro-actively looking back at the 2010 Nokia N8. It's fun seeing these old smartphones through modern eyes and their high-tech cameras! In summary, gorgeous hardware, buggy software (at launch), and - ultimately - an ecosystem that couldn't compete.

Flashback to UIQ and the Sony Ericsson P910!

Tue, 17 Aug 2021 07:53:24 GMT

GSM Arena loves its retro spots (and we love them too) and this time it's the turn of the P910, the peak of Symbian's UIQ interface on phones, perhaps? Seventeen years on, how does the P910 hold-up? Surprisingly well, if you forget about doing anything meaningful on the Internet. But, obviously, don't expect much from the camera!

Pure, pure, pure? Five phone cameras from 2012 to 2021

Fri, 13 Aug 2021 08:13:00 GMT

I've done PureView shootouts in the past, but there are a few tweaks here. From the 2012 Nokia 808 PureView, which I've allowed to be tripod mounted here for low light shots (there being no OIS), through the trusty Lumia 1020 and the good all-rounder that is the Lumia 950, then to the iPhone 12 Pro Max in full ProRAW 'pure' shooting mode and the latest Sony Xperia 1 mark iii with 'Photography Pro' app and dual telephoto. It's the widest shootout I've ever done, in terms of timescale and is provided more for interest than to try and score generational points!

'Final' Delight CFW released for some Symbian phones

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 07:13:00 GMT

News from the Delight Custom FirmWare (CFW) team is that Delight for the Nokia C7, E7, and N8 are getting a 'farewell update'. This is a generic firmware for these models and has undergone a huge 'refactoring'. The final plan is to port this generic firmware bit by bit to the remaining Belle Refresh smartphones. See below.

Moore's Law no more?

Fri, 06 Aug 2021 08:27:07 GMT

In the interests of self-education, you might like to take a Friday look at a longish article up on El Reg this week by Rupert Goodwins, looking at the minutae of how silicon chips are made, down to the nanometre level, and how Gordon Moore's famous 'law', wherein chip density doubles every two years, is starting to fail as chip makers come up increasingly hard against the laws of physics. It had to happen. But it's a fascinating read over a beverage. Plus, you have to wonder, aren't today's chips (in phones, tablets, PCs) now small and fast enough? Do we need to push the boundaries even further?

The big, big 2021 All About sites accessory review update

Mon, 02 Aug 2021 09:46:00 GMT

Over the last three years on the All About sites, I've reviewed dozens of useful smartphone accessories. Most of which I still own. But, as I've bemoaned before, accessories have a habit of ceasing to be available, frustrating those who follow slightly older review links and hit a brick wall. Begging the question - what's still available and how has it held up in week-on-week use? Here's everything you need - and links which all work (where possible)!

GSMArena tackles Lumia 1020 vs the Mi 11 Ultra

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 08:03:30 GMT

See, it's not just me pitching old imaging classics against the new toys of today. GSM Arena has been working through some Nokia classics and here it tackles imaging from the 2013 Lumia 1020 pitched against the mighty 2021 Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra. It's fair to say that the two aren't easy to compare in terms of resolutions, so some creative decisions had to be made by the GSM Arena's George here. Still an interesting read, and, as expected, the Lumia 1020 still holds up in some ways, despite being eight years old.

Nokia 808: the most notable camera-phone ever?

Thu, 15 Jul 2021 10:33:26 GMT

GSM Arena just posted another in their series of 'retro' videos and it's a cracker, looking back fondly at the (2012) Nokia 808 PureView, which was claimed to be five years ahead of the rest of the world in phone imaging - and rightly so. Will at GSM Arena does a good and enthusiastic job, with only a single slip where he conflated in some Lumia 1020 (the 808's successor) functionality. Well worth a watch, whatever OS you now use and whatever imaging phone you now champion.

Should you take 'zoom' a lens at a time?

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 12:23:00 GMT

It's potentially a technological hot potato, yet 99% of the world has come down on one side of the argument and Sony on the other. And it's not something we've ever covered in any detail. Essentially, what should go through your mind when using zoom (or ultra-wide) in a smartphone camera? Specifically, should you think in terms of using a particular lens for a particular shot or should you 'wing it' and fiddle with the interface until framing is perfect? Here I demonstrate that the latter approach is fraught with image quality problems.

Rafe Blandford and the Nokia era

Fri, 25 Jun 2021 07:43:14 GMT

A recent short series of podcasts from two Australians has been getting luminaries from the Nokia world of 2000-2013 in to chat about their memories - and Rafe Blandford was the guest on the most recent. See this URL for the Nokia Chronicles podcast and more details.

The 'Leica Leitz Phone 1' launched, also a 1" camera sensor

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 13:03:48 GMT

Don't get too excited, for two reasons. First, the Leica Leitz Phone 1 is just a cosmetic reworking of the Sharp Aquos R6, and secondly, this is also a Japan-only release at the moment. Having said all that, it does look tasty all round - Leica is a global camera brand, so surely this will make its way into the West in a way that a Sharp phone wouldn't?

Understanding (and debunking) lossless, high-resolution, and spatial audio

Thu, 10 Jun 2021 09:32:14 GMT

A well deserved link-of-interest here to the all round best article on understanding smartphone (and general digital) audio I've ever read, by Prasad Naik at GSM Arena. It's long, but perfectly paced and very well informed. Most of all, it's realistic, pointing out the limitations at every stage and that the vast majority of people reading the article won't be able to hear any benefit in any of the new music 'formats' being pushed by companies in 2021.