When it comes to obtaining podcasts (podcatching), the options for Symbian users are surprisingly limited. Many old-time users still lament Nokia's decision to abandon the built-in Nokia Podcasting client. Fortunately, another third party podcatcher was recently released, in addition to Sebastian Brannstrom's Podcatcher. Poddi Podcatcher fully embraces the Nokia Belle style user interface. Read on to see what it has to offer.
Good news for Twitter fans – a new Symbian client has arrived, and it goes by the name of Neatly. With Twitter clients being so plentiful, it's crucial that new entrants to the market have some unique feature to separate them from the rest. With that in mind, Neatly is appropriately named, as its selling point is that it attempts to automatically organise your tweets for you. Read on to see how well it works in practice!
Are you in the mood for some good old fashioned block dropping puzzle action? If so then we have a review for you. DownFall is a retro-looking Columns clone that adds a few novel twists to the tried and tested genre. On first impressions DownFall appears to be just another Columns clone, in some ways it is, in some ways it is more limited, and in other ways it is a lot more.
Look away touchscreen-only users, Shortcuts is designed for Symbian smartphones with physical keyboards, so we're talking N97, N97 mini, C6-00, E6 and E7. What it promises though, is a wonderland of keyboard shortcuts that let you fly around the applications running on your fully multitasking smartphone. It's slick, it works, but it's currently in need of extra development and I was also puzzled that some potential shortcuts seem blocked for some reason.
Regardless of my own feelings on these social utilities mangling and downsampling your photos, I realised that Sophie Cam (which at least preserves a modicum of resolution for locally saved images) had never even been mentioned before on AAS. Updated in the last month to v1.6.1, there are now more filters, a new tilt shift effect and more, which means that it's time for my full review of this rather slick social photo tool.
As successive versions of Symbian touch interfaces have emerged from Nokia, there have been power users out there waiting for better widgets to be released. This wish hasn't always been fulfilled by Nokia but third party developers can step in and save the day, and that's exactly what QooApps have been doing lately. We recently reviewed QooBattery, and now followed up with both QooCalendar and QooClock widgets. Find out if they complement or complicate the Symbian homescreen.
Stoppola isn't the only time lapse tool on Symbian, but it's the newest and slickest one on the block and the most video-focussed. In fact, it's so new that it's only currently available for Belle FP1 devices like the Nokia 808 PureView, which makes it fairly exclusive. Here's my review, together with a sample of its output. Summary: works as advertised, but you have to pay for high resolution video output and - yes, it really does need wider device compatibility.
We all know Symbian has the best the power management of the smartphone platforms, but that doesn't mean we should take it for granted! If you're a power user who likes to know everything about your device, then having some sort of battery monitor is a good idea. We've already seen Nokia's Battery Monitor, but there's an alternative in the shape of qooBattery.
Choice is never a bad thing and that's why we're glad to see another YouTube client for Symbian. FastTube is free of charge and provides Hi-Definition streams (where available) and downloads from YouTube to your Symbian device. Here we put FastTube under the microscope and see what else it offers and how it compares to the competition.
To be honest, I thought I'd seen the last of the big name game ports from other mobile platforms - yet Saving Private Sheep, a big hit on the iPhone and on Android, is now available for Symbian, (almost) immaculately converted and working impeccably. Its structure is almost identical to Angry Birds, it's just as physics-based and the addiction factor is just as high - but don't think that this is a rip-off title, once you get 'into' Saving Private Sheep, you'll find that there's greater variety and a higher degree of hand-eye coordination needed than in Angry Birds. Oh yes, and it's about sheep, not err..... birds!
