Taking a photo of that family member, friend or scene is the obvious function of your smartphone camera. But a little lateral thinking sees quite a few extra uses for this equipment - your phone camera isn't just for Christmas (and holidays), you know. See if any of these examples ring true in your experience... Can anyone remember life before we all had cameras with us 24/7? Me neither!
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!
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?
It might not tell you what to eat, where to go, or the right way to power-walk, but your smartphone is a great tool to keep track of what you're up to if you're on a bit of a health and fitness kick... as I've been since July. How's the E7 helping? Let's find out.
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.
In a somewhat extreme experiment I went away for a long weekend. And only took one mobile device with me. One. No laptop, no tablet, just the Nokia E7. OK, it was going to be the E6, but my patience with that only lasted a few hours. The E7 though, famously flawed, hopefully still had enough star quality with that lovely screen and keyboard and promised to at least give me a stab at doing everything I wanted to do. And you know me, Mr Convergence. Here's my report on the lofty highs and the deep lows of owning a Nokia E7.
Thanks to Web Runtime Widgets (WRTs) and QtWebKit, presenting web apps as native apps has become a quick and efficient way of publishing to Symbian devices. The same applies on other mobile platforms with their equivalent development tools too. However, when anyone can sell an application in the Ovi Store which encapsulates any website, do we need to become cannier shoppers? Read on for a cautionary tale.
Eagle eyed observers may have noticed that Nokia has stopped including the N97 (classic) in some of its compatibility lists for various software releases. This is almost certainly because of problems with RAM or flash memory and it has prompted me to prepare a little obituary for this (not so) classic device, I think the time has come even for N97 die-hards to move on.... What were the mistakes Nokia made, how did they happen, is there anything that can still be done and what should N97 (R.I.P.) owners upgrade to?
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.
