All About Symbian - Feature Articles - S60 3rd Edition

Features - S60 3rd Edition - Comment

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The curse of continuous auto-focus?

How's that for a controversial title? What I examine below is that there's more than one way to arrange focussing when shooting video on your smartphone - the rightly popular system of having continuous auto-focus does a good job a lot of the time but also manages to infuriate occasionally too. How bad is the problem, what are the alternatives and can I offer any tips for Symbian or Windows Phone users?

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 7:16 UTC, Feb 6th || Comments

How would you improve the Nokia N8?

It's somewhat amazing that the Nokia N8 remains in the top tier of smartphones a full 16 months after release - it's fair to say that this is almost entirely due to its camera, with perhaps build quality and gadget-complement contributing too. But no phone can go on forever. If you were Nokia and wanted to produce an "N8 mark II", what would you add/tweak? What's practical? What's worthwhile?

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 10:46 UTC, Jan 30th || Comments

Why the humble phone loudspeaker needs to be just that: LOUD

As I sit at my desk looking at around a dozen smartphones of all shapes and sizes (hey, I'm a journalist, and privileged that way), running four different mobile OS platforms, I find my decision on which to use as my main phone based on a number of hardware factors (screen size, form factor, camera) that you'll probably empathise with, plus one that you might not expect. At the top of my list of characteristics for a perfect smartphone is a loud, high quality loudspeaker. Yes, really.

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 10:38 UTC, Jan 11th || Comments

Camera phone? Why not a standalone?

There's a very famous adage that addresses the question posed in the title ("Why not a standalone camera?") very adeptly and quickly: "Because it's the only camera that's with you". However, true though this is, the question and answer have provoked Tim Salmon and I to indulge in some friendly Christmas debate - comments welcome if you come down on one side of the argument or the other!

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 10:06 UTC, Dec 22nd || Comments

Choosing a smartphone platform: motorhome or plush hotel?

Holidays are a touchy subject in our household. But holiday plans got me thinking about smartphone platforms… Unlikely? Well, yes, but bear with me as I think I've hit upon a rather apt analogy. Do you prefer to cruise in a motorcaravan or to be pampered in a five star hotel - or something in between? And, having chosen, how would you cope living that way full-time? Your decision may affect your happiness with each platform!

# Posted by Steve in Comment at 7:12 UTC, Dec 14th || Comments

Matching devices today - to technology from the Last Classic S60 smartphone

Despite the torrent of device releases across the world this year, I was struck by a comment on one of my Phones Shows, pointing out that in some ways smartphone hardware has gone backwards in the last few years. This is something of an exageration, but I got the point. Moreover, I thought it well worth documenting the different aspects of yesterday's (and today's) smartphone technology - are there indeed tricks from the past that 2012 designs can learn from?

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 7:23 UTC, Dec 1st || Comments

Voice recognition and control on a budget - and all the things which can go wrong!

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.

# Posted by Steve in How To, Comment, Software at 6:37 UTC, Oct 19th || Comments

No pressure, but... (Xenon and the rise of the REAL camera phone)

More of an observation than a rant (though see below), but the rise and rise of the REAL camera phone puts quite a bit of pressure on us geeks, whatever mobile OS we currently favour. You see, the theory is that "the best camera is the one you have with you" but in practice all smartphones aren't created equal in the camera department and that has unforeseen social repercussions....

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 12:07 UTC, Oct 11th || Comments

The thorny question of screen resolution. Is Symbian now ultimately limited?

The last nine years has seen an increase, not only in the physical size of smartphone screens, but even more dramatically, in their resolution. We've gone from the original S60 smartphones (e.g. the 7650 and 6630) right up to the monster 'superphones' of 2011, with the highest resolution model offering a staggering twenty-five times as many pixels, all to (arguably) do a job that's not dissimilar. Which begs the question of how the various resolutions compare, of how many pixels you actually need, and whether Symbian as we currently know it is up to the job for competing in screen resolution with the smartphone class of 2012? Here are my (illustrated) thoughts.

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 7:44 UTC, Sep 28th || Comments

Bring back the SU-8W!

There's one Nokia product decision that has really, really puzzled me in the last few years - and that's the retirement of the SU-8W after only a couple of years on sale. First made in 2005, I reviewed it here and, amazingly, it still works perfectly - six years later, as demonstrated below with my N8. What is the SU-8W, why did Nokia stop making it and where can you still get it, all questions I try to answer below. And - I know Nokia reads All About Symbian - isn't it about time to kick off another production run? Pretty please?

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 12:14 UTC, Sep 21st || Comments

Play via Radio - a great name change... and a feature sorely missed elsewhere

You know, I'd got heartily fed up of explaining to all and sundry why the 'FM transmitter' in my Nokia smartphone was so insanely great. Not because my enthusiasm for the feature was waning - far from it. But because just about everyone heard the 'FM' bit and switched their brain off - surely it had to be a radio receiver, as featured in just about every phone since 2004? "No, no, no!" I would exclaim - "it's the exact opposite!" If you, too, are still confused then you might like to read on - it seems that Nokia has finally put an end to the confusion by renaming the feature. Thankfully!

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 6:17 UTC, Sep 13th || Comments

Touch Symbian vs D-pad and keypad: N8 vs N86

It's official. I'm a camera phone junkie. Well, actually, I'm a convergence junkie, but adding in camera and camcorder is such a huge slice of daily functionality that I just can't keep away. And, in this context, I find myself alternating between the two and a half year old Nokia N86 and the newer (around a year old) N8, the latter the undisputed camera phone king and the former still a contender with the very top units on other mobile OS. Unable to make my mind up, I thought a breakdown of the strengths and weaknesses of the touch-based device and the d-pad based phones might be useful. In what areas does the non-touch device still shine and can it match the class of 2011?

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 5:31 UTC, Aug 30th || Comments

Anatomy of a camera-phone photo

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.

# Posted by Steve in How To, Comment, Hardware at 11:20 UTC, Aug 21st || Comments

Carefree photos mean never having to wipe your phone's camera glass

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?

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 21:22 UTC, Aug 4th || Comments

The Qwerty candybar - the not so forgotten form factor

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.

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 11:31 UTC, Jul 29th || Comments

Five ways my 'backup' smartphone, the Nokia N86, came to our rescue!

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......!

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 13:55 UTC, Jul 18th || Comments

5 Top Smartphone Cameras pitched head to head

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.

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 8:25 UTC, Jun 22nd || Comments

N82 to N8 - tough enough to head out into the world

You may remember Nokia's rather thought-provoking video promo "Welcome to the Fourth Screen", embedded below? It was part of the launch of N-Gage 2.0 and devices like the N96 and, yes, it's now somewhat dated, in terms of specifics. But the central concept remains inspiring: that with a smartphone in our pocket we can go out into the world, rather than being cooped up in our homes and offices, plugged into broadband and desktop computers. Into the world, with its knocks and shocks, with rain, with extremes of sun and cold. Good thing that my smartphone tools of choice can take it. Here's some evidence...

# Posted by Steve in Comment, Hardware at 6:21 UTC, May 6th || Comments

The Ultimate EDoF Challenge

OK, I promise this will be my last piece on EDoF (Extended Depth of Field). Following on from my treatise on why Nokia has gone with EDoF for most phones in 2011, I had the idea of giving the technology an ultimate 'real world' challenge. I took an average standalone camera owner, armed in this case with a Olympus FE-5035 (14 megapixels, 5x optical zoom, cost just under £100) and shot some typical 'normob' scenes with him. Me on the EDoF-equipped E7, he with his dedicated camera (with which he was very familiar). Could Nokia's EDoF hardware get remotely close, in terms of results, to the Olympus?

# Posted by Steve in How To, Comment, Hardware at 6:29 UTC, May 2nd || Comments

How to: Six tips for getting started with Nokia Internet Radio

If you have a touchscreen Symbian phone then there's a good chance that you've never even tried Nokia Internet Radio, since it was omitted from device firmwares for S60 5th Edition onwards. However, first for these phones and then for Symbian^3, it has appeared in the Ovi Store and is a highly recommended (and completely free) install. But the sheer number of genres and stations (tens of thousand) is overwhelming. I reckon you might need a little help finding your way round.

# Posted by Steve in How To, Comment at 16:21 UTC, Apr 2nd || Comments

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