Although games continue to appear for Symbian, as of late 2012, it's safe to say that most of the best ones have already now appeared - begging the question of which are/were the best, at least for the touchscreen generation? If you've just picked up a Nokia 808 then where should you start in your search for gaming? We're not talking thousands of top games, as on iOS, but there are still plenty of decent leisure titles that are well worth investigating. Here's a crowd-sourced top 20!
We've all thought it at one time or another. Faced with a Symbian smartphone which is coping, but not quite as lightning fast as when we first had it, faced with a system disk (C:) which is edging the wrong side of 50MB free, and feeling guilty for the dozens of freeware and trial applications you installed to try out (and then removed again), the temptation is to think "What would I gain in performance and resources if I were to factory reset and then sync my data back on?". Other valid questions are "Is it more efficient to completely re-lay the firmware rather than simply resetting?". And, most drastically, "if I were to perform (gulp) the emergency hard reset sequence to wipe C: completely, would I lose important modules and be up the proverbial creek without a paddle?" All of which I, hopefully, answer below, along with a healthy caveat or three!
Of course, the very title is somewhat contradictory - if you're a fan of something then why would you switch? But there's a question that's been on all our minds for a year or two now: "Given what we currently do with our Symbian-powered smartphones, if we had to jump mobile platform then which one would suit us best?" Now, there may well be hardware-focussed reasons for buying a phone on another platform (Nokia's cameras spring to mind), but - purely on the strength of the software itself - which of iOS 6, Android 4.1 and Windows Phone 8 is the best fit? In other words, which provides the most improvements and least number of omissions? I focus on ten key areas below.
Guest writer Mark Johnson has been deep in real world test territory, trying out the Symbian and Windows Phone versions of Nokia Drive, both in planning, execution and on the road over an identical 110 mile journey. Here's his report. Although the latter version ends up a little less mature than its predecessor, it's worth noting that Nokia Drive and Maps and set for a big overhaul for Windows Phone 8, due out in a month's time. It'll be interesting to see Mark revisit his article in the New Year, perhaps?
Yes, yes, I just used the 'C' word to describe the Nokia E6... In the latest in my 'pimping' series, here's how to get the very most from Nokia's only qwerty candybar of the modern Symbian generation, the quirky but rather unique Nokia E6. From full-screen browser to homescreen widgets to fonts and applications, now that it's running 'Belle Refresh', here's my summary of making the most of the form factor....
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!
I didn't have to think too hard about how to apostrophise the headline - after all, Nokia was using the term smartphone for its Symbian-powered devices a full five years before Apple and Android came along and the American tech press decided that the word needed reimagining. However, both approaches - which I've commented on before - are valid, and I thought it worth assessing where we've got to as we head towards the end of 2012. Was Nokia's definition right all along? Or is a modern 'smartphone' much smarter after all? I look at the two ultimate exponents of the two definitions, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy Nexus.
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.
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(!)
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.
