You may remember that I featured the Top 10 Most Beautiful Symbian phones a while back? This is the exact opposite, a condemnation celebration of the very worst in cosmetics, practicality and pocketability... This is Symbian wierd, or at least as weird as phones linked by a common software platform can get. From the freak show below, see how many of the phones you owned - a prize (or at least major sympathies) if you owned the lot!
I've been over Nokia's greatest mistakes before, but there's another elephant in the room that needs addressing. It was a hot topic of debate back in the early days of Symbian and the ramifications of what was decided then worked themselves out in the following twelve or so years. Branding. I contend that Symbian as an OS has always been fighting a massive rearguard action - if the name itself had been allowed as much prominence as Android and iOS and Windows Phone have now, I suspect that Symbian's trajectory might have risen a lot higher and extended further.
Calling all armchair sports fans, if you don't have the time or fitness to be a sports star on the field, then all is not lost - you can pick up a sporting game for your smartphone and live out your dreams! In our latest top apps list, we look back over the our favourite sporting titles from the last couple of years. Whether you play football with a helmet or not, there will be something here that you'll enjoy playing.
If you prefer your games to have a cerebral focus rather than intense action, chances are you're a puzzle fan. As such, you need a game that will keep exercising your mind; so we're here to help. All About Symbian has reviewed more than its fair share of puzzle games over the years, so grab a cup of tea, load up your Nokia Store client, and read through our top five puzzle games list. We have something for everyone - physics puzzles, numeric puzzles, logic puzzles, and more.
If you like to spend your spare time with your mobile by plotting and managing your resources then you need strategy games before you become a Bond villain! Over the years, we've reviewed a lot of strategy games at All About Symbian, and here are the most notable strategiec game titles. Some require battlefield tactics while others demand you to relentlessly manage your resources. All of them should absorb your mind from the everyday problems of real life though.
One of the unique selling points of the Nokia E6–00 is its high pixel density screen. However, its 2.46" VGA display offers a unique challenge to developers who are used to creating applications for the nHD resolution Symbian phones. This difference greatly affects gaming, where re-factoring the user interface can be far less trivial than it might be in other applications. We take a look at the various approaches of bringing games to the E6.
So you’ve picked up your new Symbian smartphone for Christmas, grabbed one in the sales (the New Year tradition seems to start on Boxing Day here in the UK), or been handed one as a gift. Where to go next? Well whether you’re new to the platform or just need a little reminder, there’s a lot of Symbian out there on the web, so over the remains of the turkey and roast potatoes, we’ve gathered together 101 links to help you explore the world of Symbian and smartphones.
Maybe I'm turning into a sentimental old codger, but despite Nokia's efforts with the recent E7 (and N97 before it), the majority of modern smartphones are turning into either large screened tablets or tiny-screened thumb qwerty affairs, with a side branch of low end numeric key-driven devices, effectively for the feature phone market. It occurs to me that five of the very best form factors of the last decade, all of which debuted on Symbian, have been (sadly) forgotten, despite their proven advantages. A quirk of providence? Or negligence on behalf of the manufacturers? Here are the form factors which I'd like to see revived, with modern software and services on-board.
You know what it’s like, when there’s a problem that you’ve already solved, but you can't quite bring yourself to use the solution? I think that’s the situation that Nokia find themselves in now. With a wave of new games arriving, those offering multiplayer over the internet are hitting the same problems. Nokia could solve this with some legacy code, but will they?
Over on the Nokia Conversations blog, they’ve looked at the history of their “Snake” game. Right from the first bundled version on the Nokia 6110 handset through to Vanixon’s Snake game on the Ovi Store. It’s a nice article that I suspect gets to where the author wanted (i.e. let’s link to a game on the Store) but really does show just how much Nokia’s eye is no longer on the Snake. When you look closer, the winding path of the snake seems to follow Nokia's smartphone strategy.
