Guest author Michael "Mivas Greece" brings us another interesting post! He writes: It’s been 10 years since Nokia released the legendary 808 PureView, the last Symbian device, and 8 years since the Nokia Store stopped accepting new apps until it finally closed. However, third party stores, such as SIStore and AppList, took over and they are still functional nowadays. The release of new Symbian apps has been on the decline over the years, yet some motivated Symbian developers continue releasing/updating apps, and now that Jtube's developers have struck again, we have a new Symbian app in 2022!
Guest writer Nico brings the site a little extra retro action via the QWERTY-equipped Nokia N97 and N97 mini, 13 year old hardware rescued from an attic and pimped for 2022!
Guest author Michael “Mivas Greece” contributes: "It’s been years since the Ovi Store for Symbian phones stopped accepting new apps and eventually shut down, however, thanks to the Symbian community, Symbian users have continued receiving new apps once in a while since. And now we have a new client for YouTube that works with not only most Symbian-based smartphones from 2006 onwards, but also a wide variety of generic phones - in fact, anything that supports Java.
No, not another site(!), but a genuine attempt to dig into Bluetooth music, i.e. hooking up your smartphone to Bluetooth headphones and the gradual increase in audio quality over the last decade. When did it get so good and what are the underlying protocols and numbers? Here's where you need to know your codecs from your acronyms and your kilobits per second from your profiles...
With Google stepping back from their original vision for Google Photos, year on year, changes are afoot in the phone photo storage world. So I thought a round up of your options in 2021 would be worthwhile. This being cross-posted to AAWP, it's highly appropriate to suggest that Microsoft's OneDrive, as used originally back in Symbian (as 'SkyDrive') and then Windows Phone days, is still perhaps the premium repository for all your photos and videos. But there are alternatives galore...
The arrival of genuine homescreen 'widgets' in iOS (see the screenshots below) has prompted more thought about the concept and about which mobile OS has mastered them, if any. Symbian and Android both had home screen widgets in 2009, while Windows Phone reimagined the idea completely for its 'live tiles' in 2010. And, a decade later, the iPhone joins the widgets party. But have any of these mobile OS really delivered? I say no. Or at least, not yet, with iOS 14's new implementation looking promising for the future.
The next time you look at your on-device application store, with a progress bar showing that an update to, say, Photos is taking an outrageous 30 seconds to apply, here's a cautionary data point from a decade ago...
Guest author Massis Sirapian takes mapping fans of a geeky nature through the process of getting Nokia Maps favourites on a Symbian smartphone to Microsoft Maps on a desktop (Windows 8.1 or 10) - and thence to Windows 10 Mobile potentially, of course. Note that I haven't tried any of this, so I'll refer you to Massis on Twitter if you get stuck!!
One of the elements of the Symbian 'experience' that broke recently was the email set-up process, with the shutting down of Nokia's email configuration server. Effectively, if a new user (or an existing Symbian user re-setting up an old device after a reset) tried to set up a new mailbox then only Exchange was offered - if your email host only offered IMAP4 or POP3 then you're now out of luck. It's disappointing that this was turned off before the original '2016' deadline for support, but hey, I've been pointed to a workaround that can be used without relying on external configurators.
In another guest article from Stuart Peters, he runs over some of the software and hardware accessories that keep his Nokia 808 a 'hero' device, even in 2015. What do you think of his picks? Dare you push the 808 this far as well?