It's a fair cop - that's one heck of a provocative headline. More accurately, this feature should be called 'How to use Google services with your Symbian smartphone', but that sounds a hundred times more boring! We all love our Nokia hardware and probably a fair number of great Symbian applications, but the lure of Android and the seamless Google integration becomes stronger and stronger each year. Yet there are things you can do to bring a lot of this Google goodness to Symbian - today.
Walking almost hand in hand with the age of Symbian (roughly 2000 to 2012), the term 'Nokia Communicator' is still a term that commands a degree of respect from many tech fans. But what did Nokia mean by this, which devices down the years have deserved the term, which was the last of the breed, and is the 'Communicator' now dead in the water?
As I mentioned briefly back in my review (part 2c) of the Nokia 808 PureView, the Camera interface has been completely rewritten - amidst the changes are a wider selection of Scene modes and for the casual user I really do think they bring the best out of the 808's camera hardware, giving access to a massive amount of flexibility with zero danger of messing anything up. Here's my guide to the options available.
Yes, the Nokia 808 is undoubtedly the most powerful and feature-packed Symbian handset ever created, I'm not disputing that and I love mine to bits. And, in a straight fight, the 808 tops its predecessor under most criteria. Yet I also wanted to acknowledge that the N8 also has a place, even in the modern smartphone world of 2012, that it offers ten things that the 808 does not, and that the typical '808 vs N8' comparison is not all one way traffic...
You'll remember my review of custom firmware 'CFW Symbian Anna 7.9' a few days ago? It seems as though many of you want a little more detail on what's involved, so here's a 20-step walk through some of the tricks and steps needed. Do please read through, especially the caveats, before proceeding - we take no responsibility for any phones killed in response to this tutorial!
After travelling across the West of England over the last four days, the disconnect between the hype at the cutting edge of the smartphone world (where a phone or system gets blasted because it 'only' offers 6Mbps downloads, etc.) and the reality for normal people has never been more evident. I know I've ranted in the distant past along similar lines, but the situation's getting worse, not better, with time.
The Nokia E6 has been around for a year now - the Motorola Pro+ for about six months. Yet this is the first time I've had both in the same place for direct comparison, and one which is still very relevant since both offer the rather rare (in 2012) qwerty candybar form factor, with always available keyboard and full capacitive touchscreen. I think it's fair to say that both devices are somewhat compromised, though there's an interesting tussle between the E6's higher quality components and the Pro+'s larger display and faster processor.
One of the very first things I did when getting the Nokia 808 PureView was to check availability of spare batteries. Nothing. And I still can't find a decent source for the BV-4D online, reducing the advantage of having a 'replaceable battery' to being able to pull it out if there's a problem. But a comment to yesterday's story about the N97 mini got me thinking. What existing Nokia batteries might fit - and work - in the 808? Might I already own a number of spare batteries for it?
Now well over two years old, the Nokia N97 mini is perhaps the 'forgotten' N97 variant. Everyone remembers the original, with the best specifications on the market apart from the two that mattered most - RAM and system disk space. This, plus the plastic build, earned the N97 classic something of an infamous place in Symbian history. The N97 mini though, that's a slightly different kettle of fish, in more ways than one. You can now pick up this touch/qwerty hybrid for £50 on eBay, making it something of an outright bargain, especially once it has been pimped(!)
Following our review series on the Nokia 808 PureView, here's the first in a series of brief tutorials, showing how to get the most out of the smartphone's stunning camera module. Here, I show how to shoot 'bokeh', photos enhanced through deliberate use of depth of field to ensure that part of the shot is out of focus, for artistic effect.
