Accessibility and Nokia Screen Reader

In this guest feature, the 'almost blind' Nickus de Vos tackles an area that's often ignored: accessibility, looking at Nokia Screen Reader (NSR), enabling anybody with visual impairment to still use the main functions of a Symbian smartphone. If you have the right model, that is - NSR is currently only supported on the Nokia C5-00, Nokia C5 5MP, Nokia 700 and Nokia 701. What can NSR do, how well does it work and are there any caveats?

App and game selection: a cross section through my Nokia N8

It's one of the most loved geek games of all - peeking at someone else's smartphone to see how they've got it configured. Usually prompting either "What a newb!" or "Ooo, where did you get that?" With my Nokia N8 now equipped to the maximum just ahead of the imminent Belle update (which will change things around significantly), I thought this might be an opportune time for you to peek at the applications that I, personally, have installed on the N8 that has been with me through thick and thin for the last 15 months. 

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.

Gravity - the Facebook client you didn't know you had

We all know and love Gravity as a Twitter client par excellence - and most of us probably had an idea that it could 'do' Facebook too. But, following my look at the top standalone Facebook clients, I was curious as to how far Gravity went, in terms of covering the same functionality. Surprisingly far, as it turns out, though there are still Facebook core functions which you'll need a separate client for. Read on for my walkthrough and summary.

Pimping the Nokia X6 - taking it well into 2011

Here's how to get a Symbian smartphone that's useable and competitive, in terms of hardware and software, in 2011 for significantly under £100. Perhaps the last S60 5th Edition smartphone to receive the 'Pimping' treatment from me, the X6 still has lots to recommend it, with insanely good speakers, a capacitive touchscreen, bright display, long lived and replaceable battery and a decent 5 megapixel Carl Zeiss-lensed auto-focus camera, here with dual LED flash. You can now pick up the X6 second hand or in fire sales for less than £100, making it a real bargain. Here's how to pimp it for 2011.

Bible options on Symbian^3

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....

Summary of Symbian content sharing

Sharing content from a Symbian phone has never been a straightforward process. It was streamlined thanks to PixelPipe's Send and Share application, which integrated into Symbian's native Send menu. Pixelpipe can simultaneously post to a vast range of services. Unfortunately, that application is no longer available, even though the service is still available via email uploading. Therefore, here is a round up of the other options for Symbian sharing. Read on to see how the All About Symbian team push content from our phones.

How much faster is the Symbian Anna (Web 7.3) browser?

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.

A taste of Anna and 2011 Maps - on the N97

The Amazing, Compact, Symbian homescreen

Guest author Nick Anstee here. I'm on the crossroads of deciding whether to continue with Nokia devices or make the transition/leap to Android - I like the idea of using Google for Contacts and Calendar, etc. But before making the transition to Android I thought it prudent to take a few minutes to properly analyse and consider what I would need to replace in an Android world, at the same time it made me think just how amazingly efficient the Symbian homescreen really is. As my current device is a Nokia N97 (classic), there is only one homescreen, so it is important to extract maximum functionality out of every ounce of the screen real estate. I believe I've done this and hoped readers here might be interested in how I've set things up.

App for App: iOS versus Symbian and Nokia's Ovi Store

It's a commonly held 'fact' that the apps in the iPhone (iOS) App Store blow away the competition, especially the young upstart that is the Ovi Store, with the latter having something like 10 times less bona fide applications. In the light of my recent editorials (e.g. here), I was curious as to how true (or false) this 'fact' is. Looking at the top selling and top freeware applications (and the best games) in the Apple iPhone App Store, how many are also available for Symbian, either directly or via an equivalent? More than you might think...

Pimping the Nokia N97

You may remember a piece from me almost a year ago in which I gave six reasons why the Nokia N97 sucked and nine reasons why it still 'ruled'? In this followup piece, I extend, for the first time, my popular 'Pimping' tutorial series to a touchscreen Symbian phone - and not just any old smartphone, but the one that everyone loves to hate, the flawed flagship that for many people epitomises some of the decisions that sealed Symbian's fate. However, I'm a geek, you're a geek, and the N97, now available second-hand for under £100, is about to get 'pimped'...

In-app advertising and inneractive's right of reply

You'll remember my somewhat scathing appraisal of the current state of in-app advertising in Symbian applications last week? I focussed on both the aesthetics and overall user experience and found the implementation somewhat lack-lustre, to say the least. inneractive is the company behind the examples given and I was pleased to get a direct response from Hillel, inneractive's marketing manager, asking for right of reply, to explain the company's approach and plan. The full interview between myself and Hillel is below, for your interest.

House of cards syndrome and putting your faith in a company like Nokia

As writers who often seem to be taking Nokia's side, against the prevailing mood in the world tech press, I'd like to justify why our faith isn't misplaced. Specifically, in the context of updates and stability. It's at this point that I have to acknowledge the few who have bought specific network-branded, locked Nokia smartphones in some countries and been left high and dry, but on the whole Nokia's firmware and application update programme has been relatively impressive. Read on for my thoughts and a cautionary tale or three.

In-app ads currently a fiasco, (much) more imagination needed

The pendulum swings regularly in the software world, with different ways of making money from software being in 'vogue'. The latest fashion, somewhat predictably, with most applications and games needing a price of 'free' in order to get serious numbers of downloads, is to put adverts inside the app or game and rely on income from these to bring in a similar amount of money to that which you'd have expected if you'd tried to sell the item by more conventional means. The concept is indeed sound - but I'm finding the implementation often lacking. What's needed is more imagination.

The Search for Internet Radio on Symbian

One of the applications which arrived very late in the day for S60 5th Edition (i.e. Symbian^1) was Nokia Internet Radio - it seems that haste isn't the order of the day for Symbian^3 either, with no obvious multi-station Internet radio clients in the Ovi Store for the Nokia N8, C7 and C6 - yet. However, all is not lost, as I found out when embarking on a little end-November quest for working Internet radio for my N8...

How to change the default web browser on Symbian

In his recent mobile browser comparison article, Steve recommended that Symbian^3 (N8, C7, C6-01) users consider switching to the Opera Mobile 10.1 browser, for an improved mobile browsing experience. However, hyperlinks within other applications (e.g. in an email) will still open in the default Web application. But there is a setting that allows you to change this behaviour - effectively changing the default browser on Symbian. In this article we explain where to find the settings and note some of the caveats you should be aware of before using it. This can be used on all Symbian^3 devices and most Symbian^1 devices.

Mobile browser comparison, November 2010

It has become something of a cliche in the reviewing world that the web browser currently in S60 3rd, 5th Edition and Symbian^3 handsets isn't coping well with some of the big real world web sites that reviewers hit it with. To be fair, and I comment more on this below, some of this is a case of moving goalposts - 2009 and 2010 has seen some horrifically inefficient web sites appear - so a browser which worked well on 2008 sites is now struggling when hit by multi-megabyte monstrosities from 2010. In this feature I compare the three leading browsers for Symbian against Safari in the iPhone 4 and a cutting edge Android 2.2 browser installation - is the current Symbian browser as bad as it's made out and is Opera Mobile a better bet?

Ovi Store, the sweet spot in the life cycle of a content library, and a to-do list for Nokia

I've written before about most people only needing a handful of really good applications on their smartphone, but I've also cheerfully acknowledged that it's good to have a reasonable choice as well. Having watched Nokia's Download! get neglected and then Apple's iPhone App Store grow, with Nokia's new Ovi Store also now reasonable mature, it occurs to me that the latter is now at something of an optimal size and growth rate. Which is all the more reason why Nokia need to pay attention to some of the other expectations and gripes from their Ovi Store users...

The top ten software gaps for developers to exploit

With the upswing of developer interest in the new Symbian^3 platform, one of the questions that might be lingering in their minds is “what could I write for Symbian?” With all the promise of millions of devices and a perceived empty application store, what titles and areas should a developer concentrate on to make a big splash in the market?