We've featured the Nokia E6 quite a bit on All About Symbian since its release a year ago (most recently looking at the Belle upgrade) - despite a lack of love from the mainstream phone world, it remains something of a unique device and a form factor that's becoming increasingly rare in 2012. All the more reason to keep it in the public eye, at least here on AAS, with a look at solutions to one of the E6's biggest drawbacks: visibility of content on its 2.4" screen.
It's now coming up to 21 months since most of us got our Nokia N8s (and other Symbian^3 phones shortly after) - that's a long time in the smartphone world. And there's a good chance that your N8 has been from Symbian^3 to Anna to Belle and has also had all manner of demo software, patches and updates thrown at it. Unsurprisingly the result can be something of a software mess and there comes a point where you're fairly low on system disk space and strange hesitations in the OS become a regular occurrence. You may wish to do what I did and spend a happy hour or two rebuilding your N8 (or C7 or whatever) - in case you don't feel confident about getting everything back, you might like to take note of my workflow below and bookmark it for your own checklist?
Storing files online is finally approaching critical mass with all the big players in the tech world offering some sort of solution or another. The dedicated services, Dropbox and SugarSync, served to hook everybody on the idea of storing and sharing files online, but since then Microsoft and then Google have rolled out their own offerings. All the services offer free storage, with paid options for increased quotas. An obvious benefit of storing files online is being able to view and edit files on a mobile device while you're out and about. This list looks at the relative merits of the options available for Symbian users.
You'll remember guest writer Ow Kah Leong bringing us just about the first unboxing and first impressions of the Nokia 808 PureView, from Singapore, where the device went on sale first? I wanted to catch up with him again and find out how he was getting on with the 808 after almost a couple of weeks. Here are his notes.
OK, so not so much of a fight, since there can only be one winner, but I did think you'd be interested in some direct comparisons between shots grabbed in sometimes light-challenged conditions on the N8, still the best camera-toting smartphone in much of the world, and identically-taken shots from the 808 PureView, available for over a week now in parts of the world. The examples below, plus some of the anecdotal useage comments, come in conjunction with AAS guest writer Mark Wilkinson, working in China.
The Nokia N8 was the first Symbian device released as a sealed unit and with non-replaceable battery. This enabled the designers to create a striking design, but power users were out of luck if they wanted to get inside their device. Besides replacing the battery, another reason to open your N8 is to replace the antenna cap, for which there is a trend to break over time and come away from the screws securing it. Sure enough, that's just what happened to me. So, if you can't bear to be parted from your Nokia N8 while it's at a repair centre or your warranty has expired, here's my guide on how to replace the Nokia N8's antenna cap.
Almost a year ago, I compared the N8's camera to that of the Samsung Galaxy S II, but the newly arrived Galaxy S III is claimed to have a better camera, with more advanced image processing, and I couldn't help but wonder - does this new 'III" get closer to the 2010 N8 than its predecessor did? After all, two years of sensor and algorithm improvements - could they compensate for not having as large a sensor as the N8?
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?
You may remember that, exactly six months ago, I wrote 'Nokia C7 vs N8: Female vs Male: Madonna vs Kurt Cobain?', facing arguably the two top Symbian handsets against each other and pointing out that they had very different personalities. The same is true of the N8 versus the Nokia 701, arguably the C7's direct successor. We've covered the 701 before, in review part 1 and review part 2, but since then the device has received a big Feature Pack update, including a processor speed bump, so why not take a sideways look at the N8 and updated 701, blow by blow?
The subject of the future for current Symbian users has been debated a lot over the last year or so. "I've got to try living with the times", I thought, so I switched my main SIM into the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, 4.6" screen, dual core processor and full on Android 4. I'd dabbled with Android a lot in the past, of course, but this was an intensive week's test. I wasn't even allowed to pick up a Symbian phone, other than for review purposes. And you know what, my SIM card's now back in the N8 and I think I'm faster, lighter and more productive on my mobile feet as a result - here's my fairly personal list of things I missed after my week with Ice Cream Sandwich...
