Herewith a cautionary and hopefully interesting tale. I loved the possibilities of the Nokia N97 form factor, back in the day (2009). Huge swappable battery, FM transmitter, full QWERTY keyboard, transflective screen, camera lens cover, full-face touch, and so on. But the system disk and RAM size were problems, of course. Showstopping problems, as it turned out. So I've been experimenting with custom firmware for the N97 and it turns out that there's a big sting in the tail... followed by a real 'line in the sand' choice that, viewed askance, still ends moderately happily!
It's arguably one of the dirty little areas in the Nokia and Symbian world, something that you'll get burned by if you're not very careful. I've alluded to best practice several times in article comments but it's now time to spell things out loud and clear. I've ranted about the importance of having a replaceable battery before, but where on earth do you get a new battery from? There are so many charlatans wanting to sell you something cheap... here are a few pointers and rules.
It's a fair cop - that's one heck of a provocative headline. More accurately, this feature should be called 'How to use Google services with your Symbian smartphone', but that sounds a hundred times more boring! We all love our Nokia hardware and probably a fair number of great Symbian applications, but the lure of Android and the seamless Google integration becomes stronger and stronger each year. Yet there are things you can do to bring a lot of this Google goodness to Symbian - today.
As I mentioned briefly back in my review (part 2c) of the Nokia 808 PureView, the Camera interface has been completely rewritten - amidst the changes are a wider selection of Scene modes and for the casual user I really do think they bring the best out of the 808's camera hardware, giving access to a massive amount of flexibility with zero danger of messing anything up. Here's my guide to the options available.
You'll remember my review of custom firmware 'CFW Symbian Anna 7.9' a few days ago? It seems as though many of you want a little more detail on what's involved, so here's a 20-step walk through some of the tricks and steps needed. Do please read through, especially the caveats, before proceeding - we take no responsibility for any phones killed in response to this tutorial!
One of the very first things I did when getting the Nokia 808 PureView was to check availability of spare batteries. Nothing. And I still can't find a decent source for the BV-4D online, reducing the advantage of having a 'replaceable battery' to being able to pull it out if there's a problem. But a comment to yesterday's story about the N97 mini got me thinking. What existing Nokia batteries might fit - and work - in the 808? Might I already own a number of spare batteries for it?
Now well over two years old, the Nokia N97 mini is perhaps the 'forgotten' N97 variant. Everyone remembers the original, with the best specifications on the market apart from the two that mattered most - RAM and system disk space. This, plus the plastic build, earned the N97 classic something of an infamous place in Symbian history. The N97 mini though, that's a slightly different kettle of fish, in more ways than one. You can now pick up this touch/qwerty hybrid for £50 on eBay, making it something of an outright bargain, especially once it has been pimped(!)
Following our review series on the Nokia 808 PureView, here's the first in a series of brief tutorials, showing how to get the most out of the smartphone's stunning camera module. Here, I show how to shoot 'bokeh', photos enhanced through deliberate use of depth of field to ensure that part of the shot is out of focus, for artistic effect.
It's all very well having a high end autofocus camera in your Symbian-powered Nokia N8 or 808 PureView - but having a great camera doesn't necessarily mean that you'll automatically take great photos. My last 'photo tips' piece on All About Symbian was three years ago, making it high time I updated my thoughts on taking better shots for 2012.
Twitter and Facebook are a cinch on Symbian, thanks to a multitude of clients. Ditto Linked In. But Google+, a rising social star and Google pride and joy, doesn't have a public API, so there's no way to write a client to access it properly. Thankfully there's a (well hidden) HTML5 version of Google+ that works rather well in Symbian^3/Anna/Belle's web browser. Here's how to get to it and a walkthrough of the interface in use.
