Remember the old kids game of patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time? And how frustrated you were that you couldn’t do it while your best friend could? I think that’s how Steve felt when he passed me Moto X Mayhem to review and I promptly labelled it as a fun, challenging but fundamentally a great game. “Too hard for me” said Steve, and he went back to taking pin-sharp pictures of shiny hardware while I started reviewing this great game title.
And now for something completely different. From the All About Symbian Friday Review Cupboard comes this, the Jelly Lens "Close up", claimed to help fixed focus-lensed camera phones shoot macro photos. It's ultra cheap and ultra low tech, but is it any good and will it help budding nature and still life photographers who own the EDoF-lensed Nokia C6-01, C7 and E7? I take one for the team and settle down to look at the infamous 'Jelly Lens'.
Nokia's C6-01 never seemed to catch the popular mood in the same way the E7 or the N8 has, but it has its dedicated fans. I'm one of them, and it's time to look back on the rise (and fall) of the C6 in my pocket, How did it get there, why did it stay there so long, and ultimately what pushed it out and into the “spare” pocket of my rucksack?
How to create the illusion of 3D without 3D (red/green or polarised) glasses? The Nintendo 3DS tries by using a 'lenticular' screen. Photo 3D on Symbian applies optical tricks, with a lot of help from you, to intelligently slice up your photos such that turning your display gives a slight '3D' effect. It does actually work, but the list of caveats and limitations is, it has to be said, pretty long.
Different Tack is a Twitter client with a twist, literally. If you’re longing for something more than linear menus, sick of scrolling, wishing things were more rotary? If so, you just might like this one. Different Tack is a new Qt app which has the most creative user interface I’ve seen. That’s all well and good, but how well does it work in practice? Read on to find out.
Need more Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and FourSquare from your phone? Nokia's Social Networking application not doing enough for you? Then have a look at Socially, a social network application that covers the main networks in a consistent interface on your Symbian smartphone. Having spent some time with it, it might be a touch idiosyncratic, but the interface is consistent, it gets the job done and it has a number of deep integration features which are innovative on Symbian.
Where to start with Treemaker, the brand new puzzle/platformer from Mikrotie? How about one word: “Difficult". For me, though, that’s a good thing. This is a platform game you’ll need to work at to complete, and thanks to the great UI, wonderful controls and smooth gameplay, I think everyone else will appreciate it as much as I do.
Adding to its range of services, Nokia’s multi-platform Instant Messaging (IM) client has now been officially released on the Ovi Store; we reported on its beta release last year. The client is available for all touch screen Nokia phones (i.e. Symbian^3 and S60 5th Edition), and supports Ovi Chat, Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and Myspace IM. The client also integrates with Contacts, indicating contacts’ online presence. Read on for our review, and plenty of screenshots.
Driving games show off the 3D skills of the developer, push a platform to the limit, and are great fun to play (if everything works). Fish Labs have a strong catalogue of 3D titles, and their latest release – Burning Tires 3D – lets them attack the motor sport genre. Have they passed the test, or are they still in the pits? Let’s find out.
