Jithin Jinachandran has penned another great 'how to' article here - though Sym*Insight is no longer hosted ON his Nokia 808 smartphone - for 24/7 access by the world ("I told you, Jithin, you were being a bit ambitious there!"), it's now hosted more traditionally. The subject here is media streaming, wireless file transfer, etc, all through 'Ad hoc Wi-Fi' on Symbian - everything you wanted to know about throwing your media around from a Nokia 808 or 701, for example.

From the article's intro:

Ad hoc Wi-Fi support is one of the most useful and unique features of the Symbian OS and its devices. It is unique because, even at the dawn of 2014, Symbian and iOS are the only Mobile Phone Operating Systems that support Ad hoc Wi-Fi. Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry OS do not support this feature yet. Ad hoc Wi-Fi does not depend on pre-existing infrastructure such as routers or access points and is hence easy to setup. It powers several applications and features of Symbian like Wi-Fi Hotspot, Wireless File Transfer, DLNA Media Streaming etc. Here we look at some of these features and applications that use Ad hoc Wi-Fi in detail.

Media Streaming - DLNA Play

DLNA protocol is a widely accepted standard for showing images, video and audio stored in a mobile device on a big screen. All mobile OSs except iOS uses DLNA for this purpose. Apple's iOS uses the Airplay protocol instead of DLNA. DLNA can work both on Infrastructure and Ad hoc Wi-Fi. Symbian Belle FP2 brings DLNA functionality through the DLNA Play app. Smart TVs normally use infrastructure Wi-Fi. But where these expensive Smart TVs are not available, Ad hoc Wi-Fi can be used with DLNA to display your media in your PC or Laptop screen. Windows Media Player that comes pre-installed in Windows 7 or later supports DLNA and can function as a DLNA client. Below method explains how to do this with your Symbian device and a Windows 7 powered laptop.

There's then a well illustrated, multi thousand word article - quite literally everything you wanted to know about using Wi-fi for casual media and file transfer, including the reason why Symbian's hotspot feature (through Joikuspot) can't be seen by Android or Windows Phones. There's something of a focus on using Symbian with Windows, the author's speciality - I do wonder how much can be done with a Mac!

Watching a 720p video from a Symbian phone ON Media Player in Windows on a desktop....

In a nicely personal closing paragraph, Jithin writes:

One of those features that makes leaving Symbian difficult

Symbian has lots of features that make it difficult for long time users to move on to another platform and Ad hoc Wi-Fi is one of them. There are several other features that, some or all of those 4 other mordern competing platforms lack in them, which Symbian has had for years. A few to mention are Full multitasking, Proper file manager, USB OTG Support, External physical keyboard and mouse support, Always ON clock, FM transmitter, Superior power management etc. Even at the start of 2014 there is no mobile phone platform that satisfy all these conditions. Let us hope that some of those emerging and new platforms like Sailfish does at least come close to Symbian.

You can read the full article here.