It's fair to say that ViewRanger has come a long way in seven years, since my initial 2006 review on a sub-QVGA device and I can only apologise to all concerned that we haven't updated our coverage of it on All About Symbian since then. The first versions concentrated more on the unique 'panorama' and photo sharing functions, but it's fair to say that ViewRanger is much more of a general GPS and off-road navigation tool now. Best of all, it's now much more Internet aware in terms of getting new maps as and when needed.
Reading e-books on Symbian is still something that is not well catered for. We’d love to see a Kindle application be released, but as time goes on that looks less and less likely. Therefore, we need an alternative for getting e-books onto our Symbian handsets. The current standard format for e-books is ePub. Fortunately, we have BuBue Book Reader for Symbian, a free ePub viewer. Read on to find out whether BuBue is smarter than the average book reader!
While Symbian users are STILL waiting for a Kindle application, we are not completely without a source of literary entertainment. Project Gutenberg is at the rescue with its vast library of public domain e-books. If you have a taste for the late and great classics, then you will mostly likely find what you want there. The mobile site of Project Gutenberg is brought to us as a web runtime (WRT) widget, just called “Gutenberg”, from Pointlabs.
With pervasive Internet something that we've all become accustomed to, i.e. every device having access to the Internet, it's not surprising that Wi-fi tethering has seen a resurgence in interest. One of the first solutions to allow laptops (etc.) access to your phone's mobile Internet over wi-fi was that from Joiku (see our review in early 2008, and as covered in my interview) and, four years later, the solution is still as relevant as ever - in fact, it's had a major facelift, making it a clear candidate for a full review here.
Contact images are taken for granted these days, but it wasn’t that long ago that they were something of a luxury. Without automation, they can be a pain to set up, even Nokia Social doesn’t do that for us. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was something that would scan our social networks and match up images with our contacts? Well, we now have two applications to do just that. Read on to see how well Facebook Sync and Contact Photo Sync work.
Smartphone apps aren't just for grown-ups, as Genera Mobile have set out to prove. Their range of interactive books in the Ovi Store could be just what the younger generation need. So it's time to go all Jackanory here on AAS and look at one of their books... "I want to be a Pirate."
Parental control software has been around for years on the desktop, it's even built into many OS these days. But what about the mobile? These days your kids spend more time on their phones than on a desktop OS. And, if you want to make sure your kids stay safe on their mobile, the new cross-platform Mobiflock system seems a very comprehensive way to go. What's involved and how well does it work? Read on for my walkthrough and review.
Here's a tricky sell. Creating a file manager utility for an OS that has included a File Manager application for the last six years. Yet this is exactly what Lonely Cat Games and Kenvast Software have done, aiming their applications at a more technical, more fussy audience than the general Symbian populace. The users who, when something goes wrong, are happy to dive under the hood, even into 'system' folders and the device's firmware, rather than give up. These then are apps for geeks - and why not?
In the age of smartphone applications, it's easy to understate the value of the humble SMS, but text messages account for the majority usage of mobile phones. Even though most tariffs have a reasonable allowance for SMS, the limits are still within sight for heavy users. What's more, on a per-byte basis, SMS is very expensive. This is where Whatsapp steps in, offering an Internet-based SMS/MMS alternative, which doesn't limit the amount of messages you can send or even which part of the world you're sending them to. Read on to find out more.
quickNet is a simple application designed to help you switch between the various radio modes available in your Symbian device. The premise is that it’s easier to launch an app, rather than dig through the menus and submenus of the Settings application. There aren’t any other applications like this around for Symbian, so read on to see how well it works in practice!
