Two-box solution or one? Symbian/iPad versus the Galaxy Note

12 years ago, I remember demonstrating to a packed room of enthusiasts to delights of pairing up my Psion palmtop with the Ericsson SH888 (titanium, indestructible), which possessed an infrared modem, meaning that I could get my palmtop online at a whopping 9.6kbps via Circuit Switched Data (this was before GPRS!) It was a working two box communications solution and it's with a certain nostalgia that I remember it as I look a modern 'two box' solution. How do the pros and cons of splitting one's electronics work out in practice?

How would you improve the Nokia N8?

It's somewhat amazing that the Nokia N8 remains in the top tier of smartphones a full 16 months after release - it's fair to say that this is almost entirely due to its camera, with perhaps build quality and gadget-complement contributing too. But no phone can go on forever. If you were Nokia and wanted to produce an "N8 mark II", what would you add/tweak? What's practical? What's worthwhile?

Accessibility and Nokia Screen Reader

In this guest feature, the 'almost blind' Nickus de Vos tackles an area that's often ignored: accessibility, looking at Nokia Screen Reader (NSR), enabling anybody with visual impairment to still use the main functions of a Symbian smartphone. If you have the right model, that is - NSR is currently only supported on the Nokia C5-00, Nokia C5 5MP, Nokia 700 and Nokia 701. What can NSR do, how well does it work and are there any caveats?

A view on Symbian in the Indian market

Following on from our editorial on the state of Symbian in the UK High Street, we have a guest feature from Aditya Singhv, editor of worldofphones.net, looking at the current status of Symbian and the wider phone market in India. The editorial also comments on some of the key differences between the UK (Western European style) and Indian mobile markets. It's a timely reminder that there are huge variations in the global market.

Why the humble phone loudspeaker needs to be just that: LOUD

As I sit at my desk looking at around a dozen smartphones of all shapes and sizes (hey, I'm a journalist, and privileged that way), running four different mobile OS platforms, I find my decision on which to use as my main phone based on a number of hardware factors (screen size, form factor, camera) that you'll probably empathise with, plus one that you might not expect. At the top of my list of characteristics for a perfect smartphone is a loud, high quality loudspeaker. Yes, really.

Symbian vs Android: app for app comparison: part 2

Symbian vs Android: app for app comparison: part 1

You may remember that, back in March 2011, I looked at the top applications for iOS (i.e. iPhone) and looked at how readily equivalents could be found for Symbian. I was attempting to show that the majority of apps in demand were also available in some form for Symbian - and I succeeded to a degree. But 2011 was the year that Android finally overtook Symbian as the biggest selling smartphone platform (in terms of sales per quarter) - so what about comparing the Android top 20 applications with Symbian - will there be a greater disparity?

Notable Symbian applications and developers of 2011

2011 was a tumultuous year for Symbian. While it was the year that saw Nokia declare its intention to terminate the platform, Symbian was still the most used mobile platform (by browser usage) - reports of Symbian's demise have been greatly exaggerated! Surprisingly, we have seen more, not less, activity and creativity in the Symbian developer community since the infamous February 11th announcement. Join me as I detail (in my opinion) some of the best Symbian applications and developers of 2011.

The biggest power drain of all... cleverer software needed

So there I was in a largish UK town on December 27th, visiting relatives. Naughty, I know, but I was staying in touch with email and Twitter through the day, because... well, this is me. And I totally killed two smartphones in five hours. And was on the way to killing a third. To find out why, read on, there's an issue here that I've moaned about before, that not many technologists acknowledge and which could do with addressing intelligently in each mobile OS.

Camera phone? Why not a standalone?

There's a very famous adage that addresses the question posed in the title ("Why not a standalone camera?") very adeptly and quickly: "Because it's the only camera that's with you". However, true though this is, the question and answer have provoked Tim Salmon and I to indulge in some friendly Christmas debate - comments welcome if you come down on one side of the argument or the other!

Choosing a smartphone platform: motorhome or plush hotel?

Holidays are a touchy subject in our household. But holiday plans got me thinking about smartphone platforms… Unlikely? Well, yes, but bear with me as I think I've hit upon a rather apt analogy. Do you prefer to cruise in a motorcaravan or to be pampered in a five star hotel - or something in between? And, having chosen, how would you cope living that way full-time? Your decision may affect your happiness with each platform!

Symbian with the Linux desktop in 2011

Two years ago, I wrote about living with Linux and S60. Since then the world has moved further toward platform agnostic cloud services. This has made using Symbian Anna and Belle in a cross platform environment easier than ever. In this guide we’ll take a look at how to take advantage of the cloud and USB mass storage in conjunction with the Linux desktop.

The N8 as reference point for Nokia's new Lumia 800

Over on All About Windows Phone, I've been putting the new Nokia Lumia 800's camera through its paces in detail. Why am I mentioning this here? Because it's impossible to cover a device like that without at least some frame of reference - in this case, the venerable Nokia N8. And, with many N8 fans perhaps wondering if camera technology is now good enough over on the Windows Phone side of the fence, it seemed appropriate to show some of my N8 vs Lumia 800 camera comparison shots. See below for the snaps and some choice quotes.

Overpriced at £1? Hard to swallow at £2? People have lost all sense of perspective...

Has the world gone raving mad? Have we all lost our sense of perspective? It seems that the madness of the Apple iOS App Store, where half a million applications jostle in a massive 'race to the bottom', price-wise has caused the rest of us in the mobile world to completely lose track of what an application or game is 'worth'. I saw a comment recently which declared that a full Symbian app was "overpriced" at £1 and another that a genre-defining, spare-time-consuming Windows Phone game was "hard to swallow" at £2.29. Really? Really?

The Nokia 701 and EDoF generation two

Much criticism has been levelled at Nokia's ever-growing pantheon of EDoF-equipped smartphones. From the C6-01 to the E7 and E6, each device's camera has been criticised for not allowing close-up ('macro') photos, despite all the other advantages of Extended Depth of Field processing. Has Nokia listened? Yes. Can you now shoot macro photos? Not quite, though you can get closer to your subjects. You'll also see significantly better photos in all conditions - the EDoF camera (and associated electronics) in the new Nokia 701 effectively represents EDoF generation two. 

Nokia Director's Cut - Future Tech at Nokia World

If you’ve ever worked on video editing, you’ll understand how stitching together clips of the same event from multiple devices can be a tedious and labour intensive task. Nokia's researchers are working on a way to automate this, and were showing off their work at Nokia World 2011. The result of their work “Director’s Cut” is a system that can intelligently cut clips together. Read on to find out more.

Nokia's Hydrophobic Future

Nokia’s Cambridge Research Lab is investigating several uses for Carbon nanotube technology. Built from a single layer of Graphene, a new type of Hydrophobic coating could make phones much more resilient to wet environments, while providing a cheaper alternative to current touch screen technology, which is based on rare earth metals. Since Graphene is a form of Carbon, one of the most abundant elements on the planet, the raw materials are much easier to obtain. We spoke to researchers at Nokia World’s Future Technology tent to find out more.

Flexible NanoTech at Nokia World 2011

The Nokia Kinetic was the bendy concept phone that garnered the most column inches from Nokia World’s Future Tent, at this year’s event in London. While several sites have written about the design and usage scenarios, few have commented on Nokia’s Carbon nanotube research that made it possible. It certainly looks like it’s a long way off, as the reliability of flexible components are still questionable, as hinted at by the Kinetic’s umbilical cable. Read on for the full story.

The big, big EDoF challenge

I've written about EDoF before, of course, explaining how it works and rationalising why it's used so much and who it's aimed at. Ten of the eleven Symbian^3/Anna/Belle smartphones use EDoF cameras, rather amazingly - Nokia has gone 'all-in' with the technology. But I wanted to come to a verdict once and for all - for me, this time: could I live with EDoF? Taking only the Nokia C7 with me for a whole weekend of family activities and leaving the N8 at home(!), just how good could my EDoF-taken snaps be? Or just how disappointing? We find out below in a truly image-tastic gallery, with comments.

Are the 2010 Symbian smartphones about to be obsolete? (That'll be a NO)

The smartphone world moves, as they say, at a frantic pace. What is cutting edge one month is replaced six (or even three) months later. Making rather a mockery of typical 18 and 24 month phone contracts, but that's another rant for another day. More to the point, we've had a number of new Symbian handsets announced and then made available in the last few months (Nokia 603, 700, 701), all running Symbian Belle. Where on earth does this leave the original Symbian^3 handsets from 2010? On the shelf? Not likely....