Now all the festivities are over, there are probably a lot of new Symbian OS owners coming to the site and trying to work out what their new phone can do. So we thought that between us we'd be able to give you a little bit of an introduction. The short answer is your phone is a computer and can do anything it's programmed to do. The slightly longer answer is that there is such a rich tapestry to Symbian OS that even this site is finding more and more to write about everyday - but you couldn't do worse than start with our Quick Guide to Symbian OS. You've joined probably one of the quickest growing technological areas for 2005. Have a look round our site (and don't forget the Forums) and welcome to All About Symbian.
Nokia 9500 Communicator
Leaving aside the obvious, including consummating your love affair with the Communicator in an orgy of opening and closing the unit and generally admiring it, and syncing over your PIM bits and pieces, the first things to do are those that you couldn't on your old smartphone or handheld, be it an ancient Psion, a clunky old 9210, a cool-but-limited P900 or a common-or-garden Series 60 device.
Multitasking may be a geeky computer term that you've logged but never really got your brain around, but with the 9500 it's time to sit up and take notice. Owning a handheld that multitasks properly means almost never having to wait. It also means that you can switch between different instances of the same program, for example three Documents, cycling between them with a single press of the appropriate hardware button. The trick to achieving all this is to only 'exit' a program when you're absolutely sure you're not going to need it again for a while. The rest of the time, simply launch applications from Desk (or documents from File Manager), leaving them open in memory for quick access later on. You'll find a quick list of things currently in memory (RAM) on the left hand side of the main menu in every app, ready for browsing and switching. Or you can simply use the usual Desk shortcuts, whichever happens to be faster.
Next up is impressing the heck out of yourself by getting online at true broadband speeds. If you've got broadband on your desktop, of course, this won't be very novel, but for the rest of us, why not excuse yourself from Strictly Come Dancing and go 'war driving'? Essentially you cruise round your neighbourhood, looking at your 'Control panel | Connections | Wireless LAN | Networks' display. When you spot a 'Good' signal, look at its details. There's a good chance that it's marked as 'Open', which means that you're in luck. Switch back to Web and choose 'Easy WLAN' as your access point, picking the network name you just found. Surf away, at speeds up to ten times those of your desktop dial-up link. Of course, the 9500's processor's not up to rendering really huge pages, but you'll still be impressed how quickly things come up or download. And all for free, too.
Proper multimedia support is also something you may not be used to. Nor will you on the 9500 unless you dip into your pocket again. Run, don't walk, to your nearest (or online) accessory stockist and get the HDS-3 stereo headset. Being able to play crystal clear stereo MP3 music files in the background while you're working in Messaging or Documents or Sheet -wherever you are - is just so incredibly cool.
Finally, wander round your home or office, muttering 'It's a phone... [open it] No, it's a laptop... [close it] No, it's a phone...' ad infinitum. Guaranteed to really impress (and annoy) everyone in sight....
N-Gage and N-Gage QD
The N-Gage Arena is probably your first port of call (after visiting All About N-Gage!). Get yourself a sign-in name and don’t forget this is going to be your screen name in all the online games you play, so make it something you can be proud of. There are two areas in the Arena you should visit straight away.
The first is the Demo Games area, where you can download and install single level versions of Pathway to Glory (a wartime strategy game), Asphalt: Urban GT (an arcade driving game) and Colin McRae Rally for free. Unless you got those games for Christmas. All of them are great adverts for the N-Gage and straight away you’ve got three really high quality games to play – all the time thinking, "this is on my phone…"
Check out the Fan Packs as well – these allow you to customise the look and feel of your device, with themed wallpapers, sounds, ringtones and MMS animations.
Of course, the main thing you need to realise is that your N-Gage or N-Gage QD is a Series 60 device, which means you can read up on the Series 60 section once you’ve finished the demo games and fan packs from the N-Gage website. And if you’re browsing the web and see Series 60, that means you.
Series 60
If Series 60 ran on computers rather than phones then it’d be massive, with over 18 million units out there. The surprising thing is the number of people who have no idea what Series 60 (on top of Symbian OS, of course) can do, and that you can add a huge number of extra applications to the phone.
Of course with all these applications going on, you’ll find navigating the Menu screen of icons can get a bit awkward. So rather than tap the button to take you there (technically this is the System button), hold it down. You’ll get a little pop-up strip of icons that show all the applications currently running. Scroll through and click on one and you’ll be taken straight to it. Of course this assumes that when you’re finished with an application you’ve just tapped the Menu key to go somewhere else. Try not to actually 'Exit' applications if you can help it, to make getting back to them much quicker.
A number of Series 60 phones ship with the Opera Web Broswer (mainly the newest ones) but if you’ve not got it on your device, then you’ll want to pop along to Opera and grab one of the best mobile web browsers on the planet. But no matter the browser you have, don’t forget that you can get All About Symbian on your phone by going to http://mobile.allaboutsymbian.com/.
It’s always worthwhile browsing the All About Symbian Software Store to see what’s new and interesting. I’ll point out two apps you might like to look at. Like any computer, your Series 60 phone has a system of folders and files that make it run. And like any modern computer interface, Series 60 tries to hide this from you as much as possible (which is most of the time). Domi Hugo’s Fexplorer is a freeware File Explorer that allows you to browse your phone, launch files, cut, copy and paste them, and generally feel a little bit more in control.
Agile Messenger is worth a look as well. While Series 60 devices have email, they don’t have anything that allows you to connect to MSN Messenger or any of the other instant messanging systems (such as Yahoo, AOL and ICQ). It’s free, and only uses a small amount of bandwidth while you’re chatting.
UIQ
While Series 60 grabs the limelight and the headlines, it’s often the UIQ devices that show what Symbian OS can do. There are only a handful of phones at the moment: The Sony Ericsson P800, P900 and P910 and the Motorola A925 and A1000 are the only commercially available models right now.
But there are a lot more third party applications available for UIQ than Series 60. Maybe that’s because UIQ is much closer to a ‘proper’ computer than the 'aimed at the mass market' interface of Series 60. In any case your first port of call should be to grab a copy of SMan. This is an invaluable system tool, showing you running processes, applications, free memory and more details on your phone than you can shake a stick at. We’ve reviewed it as well.
Just like Series 60, Opera is well worth a download. Sony Ericsson has an arrangement with Opera so any Px00 owners can install the web browser for free from the Opera UIQ Page. The touchscreen interface of UIQ coupled with the ability of Opera to reshape a web page to fit the 208 pixel width screen gives you an almost PC-like browsing ability.
There’s a huge range of add on software, and we’ve already looked at some of the best freeware apps for UIQ (which includes SMan) in this article.
The only real fault of the UIQ devices is endemic in modern pdas and smartphones – the stylus is way too short to be comfortable. If you’re an old Psion Series 5 or 5mx user, the best thing you can do is dig the pointer out from that device and slip it inside the carry case. Alternatively a quick search on Proporta’s Stylii Page should find you our recommended pointers.
Other articles of interest on All About Symbian
External Articles
- Steve Litchfields Top Tips for the Nokia 9500, N-Gage and UIQ Smartphones.