Viewing photos on a phone is something that we all take for granted. The Photos application on Symbian does a fine job, especially on touch enabled devices. However, if you don’t want to swipe through everything on the device, you’ll have to create albums. This can take some time, and there’s no way to view photos in relation to where they are saved. Fortunately, that’s where Folder Gallery steps in, generating galleries based on directories in your mass storage drives. Read on to find out how well it works.
Mobile data is an expensive resource unless you have an unlimited tariff. Oh wait, ‘unlimited’ doesn’t mean unlimited! While Symbian OS can tell you how much data you’ve used during a given connection session, that count is gone once you disconnect. It would be useful if we could have a third party app running in the background, keeping a running total of your data usage. SPB Wireless Monitor is one such application, but how well does it work in practice? Read on to find out.
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.
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.
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...
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.
Learning to spell is something we all have to do. Despite having spell checkers, many editors [hey, that's me, almost a name check! - Ed] will tell you that many of us still need to learn! If you’re the kind of parent that likes to install games for the kids on your smartphone, then one to add to the library might be AppCRAFT’s eLiteracy. It is designed to help kids spell common words, numbers, colours and more.
Gedda Headz starts with an interesting premise, take a bundle of two player mini games on a smartphone, and pit the whole world against each other in a massive multiplayer game where people can earn reputation, improve the strength of their character (which is, naturally, a head) and buy new accessories and heads to help in the game. Give it all some balance, so new players can have a fair crack at the whip if challenged by an old-timer, and then roll it out as a huge social network/game hybrid. And it almost works.
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