It's all very well me posting the odd snap onto Twitter and occasionally writing a generic 'how to' for All About Symbian. But I thought it might be instructive to take a few photos from my three current Symbian smartphones, taken in the last week, one from each, and put you inside my head, hearing my thought processes as I snapped the shot and looking at any important settings changes or physical setup that were required. At the very least, some of the same ideas might help you when you venture out into the real world, whichever camera-toting smartphone you own.
Large reference texts have long been something ideally suited to carrying around in electronic form and I've had several requests for a round up of ways to take the Bible with you. It has, in fact, been something I'd been meaning to research for ages, so here goes. It's true that Bible options on Symbian^3 are somewhat more limited than on other mobile platforms (even than on earlier Symbian versions, e.g. S60 3rd Edition), but that's no reason to lose faith in the idea....
I've recently got rather fed up with a part of modern smartphone life: every time I want to take a decent photo on any device, it's out with a clean tissue (or a corner of my t-shirt!), I breathe on the camera 'glass' (it's not really glass) and then wipe gently away, removing the inevitable finger smudges, face grease and dust. After all, not doing so means a blurry photo (and with sunlight flares, if the sun's out). But what's the alternative?
In a shockingly unscientific real world experiment, I took an hour out at a busy UK train station to scan what phones and smartphones people were using in summer 2011. Go on, admit it, you do this too when on the move. The biggest surprise was that the most popular mobile form factor didn't involve a fruit logo on the back, a large display or touch control.
Always having a number of smartphones to hand, usually of the Symbian powered persuasion, I'm used to stepping in with some mobile IT in one way or another in my extended family circle. But it's worth noting that you don't have to have the latest, all-singing all dancing touchscreen mega-phone to become a smartphone superhero, here are a number of brief anecdotes about my trusty 'backup smartphone', the Nokia N86, and how it has saved the day more than once. And, yes, I really do promise to shut up about this phone after this......!
I'm sure a lot of E71 and E72 owners are looking at the Nokia E6 as a possible upgrade, so it's worthwhile spending time highlighting the more important updates, as an addendum to our review series part 1 (hardware), part 2 (software), part 3 (enterprise) and part 4 (multimedia) on the device. What might you gain - and what might you lose - in upgrading to Nokia's latest qwerty slab smartphone?
A new version (7.3) of the Web application ships with Symbian Anna and is also available for selected older devices, via firmware updates. The UI updates are easy to see, but what about the performance improvements from the updated browser engine and other under-the-hood changes? In this feature article we look at how much faster Web 7.3 is compared to Web 7.2 by sharing the results of some comparative browsing tests between the Nokia C7 and the Nokia X7.
The Nokia N8 has ruled the roost for almost nine months of course - and I don't think anyone reading this is going to expect it to be toppled even by the best of the rest, tested here. But what I was interested in was how much other devices and systems have closed the gap, as at June 2011. Surely the current batch of 8 megapixel-toting smartphones have good enough cameras for most users these days? I wanted to gather some data points, looking right down at pixel level, at four photos in four different scenarios/light levels, for each device.
This is the biggest and most comprehensive - and last - in my series of "Pimping" features - for S60 3rd Edition smartphones. And as such, I've saved the best until last, as they say. The Nokia N86 featured here is one of my all time favourite phones and the ultimate incarnation of the original N95 dual slide concept. Just read the list of unique selling points below and you'll see what I mean. Can the N86 still 'cut it' in 2011? It depends what your smartphone needs are, to be sure. Certainly it's a great second hand bargain these days and hopefully this feature will show any new users some tricks and tips for setting it up.
Nokia Messaging (/'Email') as a server-side push system works very well when it works. But what happens when, as for me, it's completely and utterly broken? On recent devices, you can simply 'decline' the terms of service at set-up time and IMAP access to your mailbox is used instead - problem solved. On the S60 3rd Edition phones, there's no such question screen and things are less trivial. But there is a way forward. Read on...
