Following on from part one of our look at monetising applications, it's time to look at the most prevalent method. The direct sale of the application, be it from a shareware model or the dual nature of lite/full applications in an App Store, to time limited apps and in-app purchasing, there are a number of choices to get the money straight out of the user's wallet.
Sharing content from a Symbian phone has never been a straightforward process. It was streamlined thanks to PixelPipe's Send and Share application, which integrated into Symbian's native Send menu. Pixelpipe can simultaneously post to a vast range of services. Unfortunately, that application is no longer available, even though the service is still available via email uploading. Therefore, here is a round up of the other options for Symbian sharing. Read on to see how the All About Symbian team push content from our phones.
A new version (7.3) of the Web application ships with Symbian Anna and is also available for selected older devices, via firmware updates. The UI updates are easy to see, but what about the performance improvements from the updated browser engine and other under-the-hood changes? In this feature article we look at how much faster Web 7.3 is compared to Web 7.2 by sharing the results of some comparative browsing tests between the Nokia C7 and the Nokia X7.
You'll remember that back in February I wrote a detailed article on Pimping the Nokia N97, in which I went right through the hardware and software steps needed to bring this flawed but classic device up to date and useable in 2011. Just as a data point for other fans of this form factor and hardware package, here's a small addendum to the feature. With the E7's fixed battery, fixed storage and EDoF camera, maybe the N97 is still more capable for you?
Guest author Nick Anstee here. I'm on the crossroads of deciding whether to continue with Nokia devices or make the transition/leap to Android - I like the idea of using Google for Contacts and Calendar, etc. But before making the transition to Android I thought it prudent to take a few minutes to properly analyse and consider what I would need to replace in an Android world, at the same time it made me think just how amazingly efficient the Symbian homescreen really is. As my current device is a Nokia N97 (classic), there is only one homescreen, so it is important to extract maximum functionality out of every ounce of the screen real estate. I believe I've done this and hoped readers here might be interested in how I've set things up.
Unless you've (literally) had your head under a rock for the last 3 years, you'll have noticed that 'thin' is 'in' in the phone world. The thinner the better and the lighter the better - the aim seems to be to create a phone that's nearly all screen and never mind its other attributes. Playing devil's advocate, I present five reasons why thinner is not necessarily better.
With the news that Nokia is closing the door on its Ovi Adventure, reported yesterday here on AAS by Rafe, this is a good time to look at Nokia's marketing message for the rest of the year, into 2012 and beyond. With the Microsoft partnership in the wings, it'll need to make sure that the Nokia message stays in the minds of the consumers. All it needs to do now is work out what that message is - and communicate it effectively.
Nokia Beta Labs produces some of the most creative mobile apps we've seen, but they are called 'Beta' for a reason! Yes, even though we all might like to roll with the latest cutting edge software, the projects on Beta Labs are, by definition, incomplete products. Therefore, things can go wrong. With current Symbian devices, the Qt libraries are the most likely point of failiure. This type of misadventure is exactly what happened to me and my C7 recently. Here's my story, and how I fixed the problem without resorting to the dreaded three finger salute!
Following on from comments in this week's Insight podcast, I thought it might be useful to work through some of the most common 'mistakes' beginners make when snapping away with a camera phone. These apply specifically here to Nokia's devices, which tend to have cameras of reasonable (and sometimes excellent) quality, but also more generically to those from other manufacturers to greater or lesser degrees. If you're a beginner with camera phones then read on to see what you can do to improve your casual snaps.
If you have a touchscreen Symbian phone then there's a good chance that you've never even tried Nokia Internet Radio, since it was omitted from device firmwares for S60 5th Edition onwards. However, first for these phones and then for Symbian^3, it has appeared in the Ovi Store and is a highly recommended (and completely free) install. But the sheer number of genres and stations (tens of thousand) is overwhelming. I reckon you might need a little help finding your way round.
