I'm struggling. I really am. To understand the whole concept of 'homescreens'. Symbian Nokia Belle allows up to six of the things and it seems that when I parade my one or two homescreens to the world I'm subjected to 'call yourself a power user?' taunts. But hang on, which of us have six 'homes' in the real world? Surely a homescreen is not a 'home' screen if there are six of them? And where the heck did the idea of a homescreen come from in the first place? With the help of the Nokia 9210 and Apple iPhone, I investigate....
It was tempting to put 'in the last decade' in the title, but in fact we've only had cameras in our phone for ten years, amazingly enough, starting with the Nokia 7650 back in 2002... Nokia features heavily in the top 20, as you might expect, the company has been somewhat trail blazing in imaging, as acknowledged even by Nokia haters, but watch out for the iPhone, plus a Samsung and several Sony (Ericsson) models, too. Enjoy this camera tech-heavy trip down memory lane....
The humble SIM card is changing – more devices are beginning to require Micro SIM instead of the usual “Mini” size we all use. Cutting a Mini SIM down to the Micro size isn’t too difficult, but returning a one to Mini size requires the use of adapters. If you’re not careful, these can damage your phone’s delicate connectors. What follows is an account of my adventures (and misadventures) using Micro SIM adapters.
We've covered the Nokia 808 PureView in some depth here on All About Symbian this week, reporting on the announcement and answering the most common questions. But, on the basis that a picture is worth a thousand words, I wanted to illustrate the single biggest aspect of Nokia's breakthrough in terms of how camera phones (and indeed cameras) can now work. Never mind the zooming, never mind being able to take 38 megapixel images, here's the real reason why PureView on the 808 is special.
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?
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.
NFC, widely touted to be one of the 'next big things' is here already in the Nokia C7, Google Nexus S and Blackberry Bold 9900, plus all the new Symbian Belle handsets have it built-in and other manufacturers and platforms are sure to follow. But what actually is Near Field Communications and how does it work? What can you do with it right now and what will it enable in the future? Here's a bookmark-able primer that should answer all your questions.
We've all been impressed by Apple's launch of their 'Siri' voice interrogation technology in the new iPhone 4S. But it should be borne in mind that something along the same lines (though admittedly nowhere near as adaptable) has been possible for ages on Symbian, even on extreme budget hardware. Just as a reminder, and with some comments on whether this is the way forward for smartphones generally, here's a demo of the free Vlingo in action on an old S60 3rd Edition handset.
One of the longest serving 'stars' in the Symbian software firmament has been Handy Safe Pro, working on every device from 2004 up to the present day. It's an encrypted database, of course, a way of keeping all your PINs, passwords, logins, reference numbers and much more, all safe from prying eyes. One key feature is that every entry can have a note and this can often run to dozens of extra lines. Which makes the tool very flexible, but how to get all of this information over to a new smartphone on another mobile platform? In this case, Windows Phone?
I've tried to like Nokia Social over the last 12 months, I really have. And in attempting to document how to use it effectively in the light of other, more capable, contact-social schemes like in Windows Phone Mango, I keep coming up against limitations and annoyances which should really have been addressed by now. At the risk of stating the obvious, here's Social's limited take on contact integration, my constructive comments, and five other things that should definitely be on the Nokia Social team's to-do list.
