'Magic' photo retouchers aren't unknown, even on Symbian, but this is a fairly slick new implementation. The idea is to fade your photo to greyscale (or, in this case, innovatively, sketch format or a total blur) and then manually bring out the original colour/detail in just the subject highlights, for special effect. MagicPhotos has a very workable interface and produces good results at Facebook resolution, but is ultimately limited and in need of further development.
Another month, another photographic application from the hardware whizz kid, Harald Meyer, this time offering ShaderFX Photo, which "can be extended with your own OpenGL ES 2 shaders with multi-texturing, time and mouse input". I'm not entirely convinced that the general cameraphone-owning public might want to use, or know how to program "OpenGL ES 2 shaders", but the application does seem to work, despite a few serious resource caveats.
Now here's a category of application which shouldn't really exist. Downloading (for offline use) rather than streaming YouTube content is, I'm sure, somewhat frowned upon in Google/YouTube circles, yet we've all done it using one tool or another. And here we have another Symbian application to offer the raw MP4 video streams - very handy for squirrelling away videos for watching on a journey, for example, when data connectivity is likely to be scarce or expensive.
Sometimes it helps to go back to basics. There are a lot of streaming radio applications out there, websites with audio to pass to your devices, and brand new ways to listen to media. While the ultimate back to basics would be to rely on the built-in FM Radio on your handset, let's move up one notch and look at Internet radio. It's fertile ground for developers (including Nokia itself), but today I want to listen to the effort from Intersect World.
If you’re an eager explorer, a budding builder, have a penchant for politics, or fancy yourself as a swinging swordsman, then you might just be interested in Revival 2. This is a Civilisation clone, all running within your Symbian phone. It’s a complex game genre, being something of a simulator for early human settlements. It’s an old genre too, with its roots definitely in the DOS era of gaming. Read on to find out how well it translates into the mobile space.
A good game never dies, it just gets remade, over and over. That’s the case with the original Bubble Shooter genre, which has many imitators, including Bubble Birds. Possibly riding on the meme of Angry Birds, your challenge is to launch chicks from the nest, matching colours to eliminate the rows and rows of other chicks descending on your brood. Are you up to the challenge? Read on to see more.
One of the most addictive games I've ever played was on Palm OS. SF Cave was a one button game, where you had to guide a ribbon through a cave with ever increasing complexity. I loved it so much, I coded it for Symbian back in the days of the Nokia 9210 (here it is, scoring a glorious 70). It would be fair to say that HellCopter is from the same mould as SF Cave. Will it soar in my heart, or crash to the ground?
I'm a sucker for a good webcam portal. Partly it's because I hate travelling and, this way, I get to see loads of places round the world without leaving my desk, partly it's because I'm as nosey as the rest of the human race when it comes to seeing what other people are doing, especially when they're doing it on the other side of the world, often without knowing they're being watched! Which is why I made a beeline for Live Cams, available for Qt-compatible touchscreen devices in the Ovi Store.
Draw Slasher got my attention the second I saw the help screen. Any game that is explained by stating "your village is under attack from Zombie Monkey Pirates" will get a huge thumbs up in my book. Throw in some stylish graphics, a kicking guitar riff, and a control system that has quite a bit of subtlety, and you have a winner. How strong a winner? Stick Don't Stop Me Now on the jukebox and let's find out.
Time for another social media client in the shape of 4squick. Focused on Foursquare, and making sure you can get into the app, check-in and get on with your life as quickly as possible, this Qt-based application has a small but growing cadre of supporters. Will AAS join the troops? Read on...
