An at-a-glance readout of the amount of free RAM in your Symbian smartphone has always been a bit of a 'faff' to get, usually involving a dedicated full-screen utility. Free Memory Bars, released today in the Ovi Store, solves the problem by putting a Symbian homescreen widget panel to good use, showing RAM, C: disk and E: disk status, in terms of proportion free and figures in Megabytes.
It’s nice to see that Nokia’s strategy is slowly becoming clear to the mainstream media, as this article in the Wall Street Journal shows. While it does (eventually) get to the point, it starts as many articles do, from a false statement, magnified by Stephen Elop’s new role as CEO. Namely “his first decision was to go it alone and not adopt Android.” A statement that makes for a headline but has no basis in commercial reality.
You'll remember Skyfire, the proxy-based (i.e. like Opera Mini) browser that also managed to somehow transcode flash video as well? Released originally for Windows Mobile and Symbian, it is now being officially phased out, with the proxy servers stopping working at the end of 2010. In something of a tunraround, Skyfire's new 'vision' is based around a local browser on iOS and Android, with a cloud 'booster engine' for handling video and social networking. See below for a surprisingly personal and heartfelt quote from the developers.
Sports Tracker, the popular GPS and activity utility that was spun out of Nokia Beta Labs and which is now its own entity, has just had a big upgrade to v4.0, available over the air by simply running an older version on your Symbian-powered phone. The main change is the addition of social sharing functions, to friends or 'everyone' on Sports-Tracker.com and/or to your friends on Facebook, but there are other enhancements, including a new night mode. Some screenshots and more details below.
Asri al-Baker, from i-symbian.com, and friend of All About Symbian, has just released a Web Runtime widget for all Symbian devices which will load up the iPhone version of the GMail website. This version of the website offers the richest functionality for any mobile platform. Asri reports that this work was actually inspired by a tweet made by myself(!) Thanks for the contribution, Asri! Read on for more ...
Symbian Podcatcher, the Open Source project to provide podcast collection and playback (and especially useful on many Eseries phones and the new Symbian^3 devices that lack Nokia Podcasting), has received updates across the board. The Symbian^3 build has received a minor update to 1.0.9, while the Symbian^1 (a.k.a. S60 5th Edition) and S60 3rd Edition builds have received more major updates, to v1.0.32 and 1.0.1 respectively. Read on for the download link and a brief comment.
Have you ever jealously eyed up the battery usage stats in a friend's Android-powered phone? Now available in Ovi Store for all S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3 models is 'Nokia Battery Monitor', a joint development between Nokia and VTT Technical Research Centre in Finland. It runs in the background, gathers information on exactly where your battery power is going and predicts how long you've got to go before the dreaded 'power saving mode' kicks in. See below for links, screens and more details.
Nokia Beta Labs have released their Wellness Diary application, which they announced in September. Available for all touch-screen enabled Symbian phones, the application runs in the background monitoring the user's activity. For example, it uses the accelerometer as a pedometer to measure your physical activity, and a schedule can even be set for the application to periodically ask you how many snacks you've eaten! Users can set personal targets and share their progress with social networks. To find out more, read on.
Symbian's SEE show (Symbian Exchange and Exposition) takes place over the 9th and 10th of November in Amsterdam. Over the next two days we'll be bringing you the key news, views and information. This news story contains our live coverage, where you can see the latest photos and text updates; you can also interact with the team, asking questions and adding your own thoughts. Alternatively you can keep up to date by following our @aas account on Twitter, where we will be posting text updates and photos.
The well known WiFi tethering application, JoikuSpot, has expanded its range of supported Symbian devices. In addition to S60 3rd Edition and Symbian^1 devices from Nokia; JoikuSpot now supports recent Sony Ericsson devices (Satio, Vivaz and Vivaz Pro). Further expanding its compatibility with Nokia devices, the JoikuSpot have also released a Premium edition for Symbian^3 devices. Prices are currently reduced from 15 Euros to 9 Euros.
Just when you thought that HX-V8-32 firmware was the last 'hurrah' of the Samsung i8910 HD, along comes HyperX and his team to push the venerable smartphone to one final chapter. HX-V11-5 includes full Qt integration and extensive customisation options, some of which are listed below. There are still ways in which the i8910 remains the top dog in the Symbian world (besting the N8 with stereo speakers, larger display, etc.) so this new release is particularly interesting.
Just released in the Ovi Store is Auto Trader Mobile for all S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3 handsets. Auto Trader, as the name suggests, is a huge online second hand car buying and selling system and this new solution works well, if quirkily, giving full information on search matches, looking up your location and allowing you to store server-side notes. See below for screenshots and comments.
Now getting seriously mature is Symbian Podcatcher, an open source replacement for Nokia Podcasting and of serious use to all the owners of Symbian-powered smartphones without any automatic way of gathering in audio and video podcasts. Today sees the release of v1.0.8 for Symbian^3 devices, screenshotted below. Versions for vanilla S60 5th Edition and 3rd Edition phones are a little behind, but hopefully the developer can back port as many of the bug fixes as are practical. Next stop for Symbian Podcatcher? The Nokia Ovi Store, hopefully! In the meantime, get it here.
Sometimes you need to get to your music player fast on your touchscreen Symbian phone. You could use the multi-task bar or homescreen widget, but Fone Arena have had a look at Music Bar, which will 'temporarily ‘re-program’ one of the physical buttons on smartphones like the N8 to pop up the basic music controls on screen. It’s rough and ready, but if you must, it’ll do the job.
An update for Swype for Symbian^1 devices has been released by Nokia Beta Labs. The update improves overall performance; the core Swype functionality has been configured to make the UI and output more responsive (tapping and word prediction changes, improved haptic feedback and improved landscape mode). A number of UI fixes mean there are fewer on screen artifacts, notably the word choice window has been reword. The update also adds support for downloadable dictionaries and fixes a number of bugs.
