Go on, admit it, how often have you looked at Nokia's Windows Phones, e.g. the Lumia 800, and admired the way you can press and hold the camera shutter button to unlock and launch the camera all in one go, even while pulling the phone from your pocket? With QuickCam, now in beta for Symbian, you can do exactly the same on your N8, C7, 701 or similar.

The (currently free) QuickCam's description in the Nokia Store isn't that inspiring:

"QuickCam lets you easily and quickly launch the Camera from the lock screen"

But start it up and you'll find to your delight that it ties right into the camera button, responding either to a long press (my preferred setting) or to a double press. As long as the utility doesn't get booted out of RAM because you've loaded up so much else, the functionality will auto-start automatically with your phone and then stay running.

It's too early yet for an assessment of impact on battery life, but QuickCam looks promising so far. Comments welcome (and feedback to the developer here) once you've given it a try. I did notice that going back into the app's settings screen could be quite slow.

Very cool, though, and I do wish the same functionality could be built into the OS.