If you're old school enough, just old enough, you may guess this game from the title. Being close, but not quite the same as 'Galaxian', the breakout arcade classic that followed on from Space Invaders back in the mists of time. At the time, a whole raft of arcade copies sprung up, all with slightly different names and slightly different gameplay, but the heritage was obvious. As it is here, with plenty of swooping alien spaceships to blast out of the sky in a blaze of colour and sound. And - what do you know - it runs on every Symbian device from the last four years and in fact plays better on the E71/E72/E6 than on the larger screened Symbian devices - who'd have thought it?
Getting a useable copyright-free version of The Bible onto a Symbian smartphone has always been a tiny bit of a struggle, with no clear winner in terms of content, presentation and usability. MeeBible is a new entrant in this field and is perhaps the best attempt so far, with an almost perfect interface and with numerous options, languages and translations.
When it comes to mobile-accessible cloud-synced file backup, Dropbox is usually the name that springs to people’s mind; but it’s by no means the only option. Over the years, SugarSync has earned a loyal following in the Symbian world, thanks to its official application for our so-called dead platform. It supports everything you would want from a SugarSync mobile client, but are the pros and cons of the platform compared to other backup services right for you?
With stunningly clear animated graphics, Traintiles is an increasingly frantic 'arcade puzzler', seeing you rotating track segments in order to keep various trains running smoothly and headed towards their destinations. It's immaculately (and cutely) presented and just about the only negative I can throw at it is that the levels get very hard very quickly - if you have a quick enough mind and quicker fingers then Traintiles is a must-buy.
As games go, they don't come much simpler than this - Copter It 2! - part of the 'one button' genre where it's all in the timing of a single tap (or, at least, a tap and hold). As you might guess from the title and from the screenshots below, it's all about keeping a helicopter flying through a never-ending sequence of caverns and general obstacles. With average game time being around a minute, Copter It 2! is definitely in casual game territory, but there's something charming about a game that's this simple and yet this hard...
Symbian users have had something of a rough time when it comes to enjoying YouTube. Fortunately, cuteTube is at hand to save the day, offering a comprehensive range of features, including uploading and downloading videos. Since the official YouTube client was affected by login issues and low quality video streams, and since other third party clients have taken the form of mere downloaders, cuteTube is a refreshing change and something of a must-buy in the Symbian world. This is a review of the latest v1.1.1, a big update from the early days when this was freeware [1.1.1 adds higher quality streaming, sharing options and support for multiple Google accounts].
When you think about it, using a geeky smartphone and astronomy go together. They both require an enquiring mind, exploration, and deep thought about how things work together. It’s no surprise then that there are quite a few astronomical applications on Symbian. Some are 'all singing and dancing' augmented reality applications; others are simpler, just letting you identify the basics. SkyMap is one of the latter, and in our review we look at whether it’s best for a beginner or whether pro-amateur astronomers might be able to make use of it too.
Smartphones and e-book readers are one of those technological matches made in heaven. You can carry a vast library around in your pocket, and read as much or as little as you like when you have a few spare minutes. This is why the Kindle has been so popular on Android, iPhone, iPad, and Windows Phone 7. Unfortunately, Amazon didn’t include Symbian in that list, but all is not lost because Ionic is the latest e-book reader for Symbian, taking advantage of the open ePub format, and without a hint of DRM in sight.
Pipe Mania was all the rage when I was young, with the player assembling randomly presented pieces of pipe into a plumbing layout through which water/goo can flow, all against the clock. The time pressure, and the way you never seemed to be given the corner piece you actually needed, combined to make Pipe Mania addictive and frustrating in equal measures. BR Pipes Qt Free is the latest implementation of the idea for Symbian and it's nicely done. And very, very hard. We're talking blood vessel popping hard.
Whether you’re a wordsmith or bookworm, you’ve probably played Scrabble or one of its online alternatives. Symbian has not been supported by the likes of “Words with Friends” and WordFeud – until now. Thanks to Word Tiles Multiplayer, you can put your vocabulary and spelling to the test against your friends and anonymous Internet players. So if you know your triple word score from your double letter score then this is a game for you.