For the scholarly amongst us, one genre of mobile applications that never seems to get old is that of reference applications. Most of which are scientific in nature, and you can’t get more so than the periodic table of elephants, pardon me, elements. I’m glad to say that Offscreen Technology has trumpeted the cause for scientific reference by producing a periodic table of elements application for Symbian touch screen phones. Read on to find out more.
Applications which dynamically pull live data from the real world around you are, of course, one of the benefits of the 'modern' definition of "smartphone". Such utilities have been less numerous that on other newer platforms, but it's good to see numbers still rising on Symbian, with TrainTimes being a pretty good example of the breed. It's not perfect, but I'd still give it my recommendation - with a huge caveat, of which more below.
What could be more simple than touching the screen of your smartphone? That, in essence, is what most games make you do, and Fruit Ninja is no exception. But what it asks you to do with the touchscreen, and how it presents it, that's where the skill of a game design team comes in. Read on for my review.
Colorising photos for dramatic effect is an idea that's been around a while, even before the computer age, so there's nothing dramatically new in ColorizIt, created in Qt for all Symbian touchscreen smartphones. However, it's available, it's very cheap and it's just about perfectly implemented - what more could you want? Perfect for whiling away a boring train journey, jazzing up your favourite photos...
Are you getting tired of pulling the slider on the side of your Symbian phone? Are you locking and unlocking so often that your thumb is getting sore? Well, you should seek medical attention! After you've done that, you also need to check out Pocket Lock from SBSH, available from the Ovi Store. This is a free application, which uses the phone's proximity sensor to detect when it has been put in, or taken out, of a pocket or bag. Read on for our special video review.
The Nokia N8 is surely enough camera for anyone in the phone world? Well, yes, but the problem is that keen photographers want to go even further. To twiddle and tweak and experiment. Trying to facilitate this is CameraPro N8, from Tequnique, with 'raw' image capture and more settings than you could go through even if trying a different set for every day of the year. It also allows - wait for it - both pre-focus and continuous autofocus in video capture, the one arguable achilles heel of the current N8 camcorder set up. With a radical interface and ambitious features, CameraPro N8 is very much a swiss army knife for the N8 fan.
Do you like to play Ping-Pong, whack away at Wiff-Waff, tinker with Table-Tennis? Whatever you call it, the sport that went from the garage to the Olympics is now available to play on Symbian in the form of Virtual Table Tennis 3D. As the name implies, this is a 3D rendered version of the perennial sports simulation, available on Symbian^3 through the Ovi Store.
The good thing about Google services is that you can get them just about anywhere these days. The folks from Pixelpipe have now created an app that utilises “native WebKit capabilities that are available with Qt”. This app provides Google’s Gmail, Tasks, Calendar and Buzz all in one application. Utilizing Qt technology is a step forward from the pioneering Web RunTime Widgets made by Asri Al Baker. Read on to see how well Pixelpipe have captured the Google experience on Symbian devices.
FootFeed is an application for Symbian^3 phones that answers a problem that the modern geo-location ecosystem has – how to check in to more than one service with as little fussing around as possible. It works, just about, but it’s just that it feels like a 'bait and switch' on the user to build FootFeed's own network. Here's my review...
Pano Wallpaper is a new Qt application which will slice and dice large images into individual wallpapers for your Symbian^3 home screens. It has several recipes, depending whether your taste is for landscape, portrait, or something in between. It's still a different flavour from Android’s single large wallpaper which you can spread yourself across, though. Read on to see how creative you can get when decorating your phone!
