In my last review, I looked at an application that tried to bring the multitasking view from MeeGo Harmattan to Symbian. In yet another attempt at bringing MeeGo to Symbian, we have Thumbnail Folders, which replicates a feature brought in with PR1.2 of the Nokia N9's firmware. Here, application folders icons are decorated with miniature versions of the application icons within. Perhaps all this MeeGo replication hints at how Symbian users really feel about Nokia's transition to Windows Phone 7?
I'm not a lover of cute and cuddly image filters, Instagram-style, as many of you know - why bring the mighty cameras of today's smartphones down to 2003 levels of quality and resolution? However, PhotoFunia promises to work and act differently - the idea here is to take a photographed face and do 'interesting' composites with it, with the heavyweight processing working server-side. Nice idea, with fun results, but don't go looking for anything of useable quality.
The unique Swipe UI of the MeeGo Harmattan-powered Nokia N9 has inspired many Maemo and Symbian developers. One aspect of its UI is the multitasking view which gave live previews of applications and could be zoomed from, say, a three by three grid, to a two by two grid; and to close applications. Whenever one tries to graft the user interface of one mobile operating system onto another, though, things are never going to fit perfectly, but compliments to the developer of Tasks Widget, who has given it his/her best shot.
It feels as if all the games I review lately are variations on established genres, so I was happy to find IronWorm, which seems to defy classification. In IronWorm (a remake of SwingWorm), you play a worm with a vendetta, and in his quest to chase down his nemesis, he has to climb and swing his way through increasingly complicated environments, with a gymnastic grace that deserves to be in the Olympics! His only weapon, and protection, is a mace-tipped tail, plus YOUR coordination and cunning.
iBomber Defence is the latest tower defence game for Symbian, and being my favourite genre of game, I jumped at the chance to review it. This is a title that has been ported from the iPhone, and Electronic Arts have done a great job. The problem is that tower defence games are a dime a dozen, and so to be great you have to introduce some new features to differentiate from the rest. In this review I investigate what new twists have been added to this title.
Predating NFC in mainstream use by a year or two, and with some definite areas of overlap, QR codes still haven't taken off fully, I'd argue. You don't see them on every shop window, on every publication, even though they're easy to generate and free to present to the world. Regardless of take-up, there will be times when you want your Symbian smartphone to read both QR codes and the older, linear barcodes - so what software is currently available to read these and how well do all the titles work?
Blaving is an "audio social network", and according to the developer's website it's the "leading audio social network". Whether that's true or not, it is the only competitor to Audioboo that I've heard of; plus they have comprehensive support for smartphone platforms, including Symbian. Let's put Blaving through its paces and see if deserves a place on your Symbian handset.
On the face of it, Pool Rebel should be just about the most mature pool game on Symbian - it's certainly the title with the longest heritage, starting life back in the days of Windows Mobile (most recently in 2008). However, though I was impressed by the options all round and by the physics, Pool Rebel just isn't ported as well as it could be to Symbian, with too much wasted space on screen and with on-screen action that's, at times, eye-strainingly small.
Ah, it's the weekly "What do you get if you cross....?" section here on AAS. In this case, what do you get if you cross pool with Angry Birds and Cut The Rope? FantasyPool is the answer - it's pool, but not as you've ever played it before. Balls that fall asleep and then get woken up again, glass barriers to shatter, whirling sticks, a table made of marble, they're all part of the charm of FantasyPool.
The balance between an application simply being an on-device advert and being genuinely useful is often a hard one to strike, but AA Breakdown & Traffic has got it slap, bang on right. Holding your details, providing an obvious action to take in the event of a breakdown and advising on incidents are all part and parcel of this useful little applet... even if you're not actually an AA member.
