I think I shocked a few people when I declared, back in January, that the feature at the top of my shopping list when choosing a smartphone was a loud speaker. I did justify this, mind you, before quoting a few phones from all platforms in some sort of best-worst order. What I'd like to do here is go further, keeping the list to just the Symbian world, this being AAS. Which Symbian phone will be at the top of the tree?
The period 2001 to 2011 should be celebrated, it's the decade when the humble 'mobile phone' become more, so much more. And it's worth noting Nokia's part in this transformation, with five things listed here that the company absolutely nailed in the fight to give us more and more powerful phones. But I also can't let such a retrospective go by without a similar attempt to identify the five biggest mistakes that Nokia made, leading to its somewhat troubled existence in the smartphone world of 2012.
The 'my phone (or smartphone platform) is better than yours' debates across the tech world rage on, somewhat amusingly. Yes, I know that megabucks are involved, that sales of successful products now reach into the many tens of millions, that each launch is bigger and better funded than the last. But I also can't help notice that we've only been seeing gradual improvements for the last five years and that, in truth, I could happily use almost any top-end device from that entire period to accomplish all the things I need a smartphone to do.
I've done other top lists here, based on functionality and innovation, but never one based on pure cosmetics and elegance. And, with that in mind, we discover in my latest Top 10 a few unsung heroes of the Symbian world. You see, the raw power and functionality usually championed on this site often comes with something of a price in terms of compromises to appearance - the devices on offer here include some which are fairly unusable out in the world but which look a treat...!
Attending the launch of the 4.8"-screened Samsung Galaxy S III in London last Thursday, I was struck that the borders of the smartphone world have changed yet again. At some point though, surely, enough is enough? Yes, we get it that smartphones are now personal computers in our pockets, as opposed to simply being 'converged devices', but have we already passed the point where the mass populace will start to revolt against the 'march to large' and vote with their wallets?
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....
The smartphone world has been full of challenges recently, not least various campaigns from the Windows Phone community, trying to 'smoke' other user interfaces, pointing out how fast some things can be done with the new OS. However, I have a challenge of my own - being something of a fan of hardware shortcut keys and multitasking, I thought I'd invite anybody who fancied themselves (and their devices of choice) to try and beat my time for a common enough set of actions, set below.
Here we are again. A few years on from the N97 system disk fiasco, we find many Nokia N8 owners running into similar disk space problems on disk C:, i.e. the internal system disk. Admittedly, the problems are nowhere near as severe as on the N97, but it's still worth a few words and suggestions on how to remedy a gradually filling disk C...
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....
There's a certain class of mobile game that's often ignored. One that gets overlooked in favour of all-singing, all-dancing 3D-rendered RPG slash-em-ups and orgies of feathered destruction. It's not - quite - casual games. It's not - quite - sports games. It's not - quite - board games. Though many of those titles qualify. I'm talking about infinite games. By which I mean mobile games that you can happily play every day - forever - literally.
