It's all very well having 'Voice recorder' built into every Symbian smartphone, but there's not exactly a lot of choice in terms of settings (quality can be 'MMS', 'standard' or 'high') and there's a one hour limit hard coded in. What if you want to record in higher quality? Or for longer? Or using a different codec or sample rate? That's where Audio Recorder Pro comes in, offering all of the above. Here's my assessment, complete with audio samples to check out.
Transparent, waterproof pouches that enable us to use our tech in the pouring rain, down the beach or even, in extreme cases, underwater, have been around for a while, of course, I looked at Proporta's Beach Buoy last year. And now we have E-Case's eSeries 9, with smaller overall form factor and higher window-to-bezel ratio. Here's the eSeries 9 submersible case in action with a couple of likely candidate handsets. Summary? We have a winner...
Symbian's Music Player is now pretty good for most people, it has to be said, producing decent playback with very little hassle, and with an intuitive tabbed interface. However, real music afficionados might want to go further. Fancy gapless playback? Fancy playing back Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files as well? Fancy integrated, fully working cover art, lyrics, and artist bio downloading? Fancy a full 10 band parametric EQ with additional bass and treble customisations? Fancy comprehensive genre-based playlist construction? You'll be wanting QuasarMX then. Read on...
You know me, I'll jump at a special offer or, in this case, an out and out bargain. What would you say to a robust, well designed and well made 'tough' case for the Nokia 808 for an all-in price that other accessory providers would charge merely for 'shipping'? In this case the (white or) red Cellapod TPU Gel case for our favourite PureView phone - it fits beautifully, feels great in the hand, protects wonderfully and costs (£2.95 including shipping) less than a large coffee at your local restaurant. What's not to like?
It's a fair cop, Nokia Car Mode has been available for a while, and has been gradually introduced to more and more Symbian-powered handsets via the Store. But it's something that I'd never really used for more than a few seconds, it's something that AAS has never covered in depth, and when I came across a comment on the site wondering where our review was, I thought that revisiting this much-underused Symbian application was definitely in order. If, like me, you spend a fair amount of time in your car then you might find that Nokia Car Mode simplifies your interactions with your phone for the better...
Credit to 10tons for releasing their new smash (geddit?!) title on both iOS, Android and Symbian (still the three biggest mobile platforms by far in terms of active users, mind you) at more or less the same time. Whoever said Symbian never got the best games? The quirkily (but aptly) named Tennis in the Face sees you helping a disgraced tennis ace smashing balls around to try and knock over various opponents, all seemingly in the pay of the evil Explodz corporation. It's a physics-based game and has a number of similarities with the wildly successful Angry Birds, yet is at the same time completely different. See below for my illustrated walkthrough and verdict.
File this review well and truly under 'Really? This app is still going?' - ChessGenius has been around the Symbian world for many years, we even looked at it in 2006 briefly, on S60 3rd Edition. Wow. Seven years ago. Making it all the more remarkable that ChessGenius has not only survived well into the era of nHD screens and Symbian^3, it's fully compatible with the latest Belle FP2 phones and had even had updates in the fairly recent past. And, with that seven year gap in mind, here's a 2013 review of ChessGenius on the Nokia 808, powered by the fastest processor in the Symbian world. Taking on the game's chess engine under these circumstances was more than a little daunting...
Everybody loves a good mash up scenario. Take Nokia's classic 'Snake' game from the earliest mono-screened feature phones. Take a modern multi-level, multi-scenario game framework. Mash the two together with lashings of timers, powerups, customisation options, cut scenes, high score tables and help pop-ups. The end result is Snake Deluxe 2, a major Symbian title that has been around for ages but which we haven't covered for at least five years, and certainly not in this latest touchscreen, nHD resolution, Belle FP2-compatibility-fixed version, updated recently, here tested on the Nokia E7.
This is 2013, a full two years after Symbian was given its marching orders, yet we still see some major games being released for the hundreds of millions of existing Symbian users. Thankfully. The latest is Contre Jour, an original iOS classic that made a high profile entrance on Windows Phone recently. And now on Symbian, here in its full stereo-accompanied glory.
Tower Defence, it's a genre of game that everyone in the All About Symbian office seems happy for me to take care of; I don't know why, but I'm not complaining. Just when I thought I'd seen everything in the genre on Symbian, Fantasy Kingdom Defence popped up on our radar. This is your standard tower defence fare, but wraps it up in a cutesy medieval style.
