Symbian Belle - sorry, 'Nokia Belle', Feature Pack 2 has been available now for a few weeks and it's time to take stock. How many steps forward did this take the OS? And how many steps back? What's in Belle FP2 and how does it compare to other smartphone user interfaces in 2012?
If you want to know what's going on in the world then taking advantage of the wonder of RSS is an absolute must. Further to that, using a mobile platform that uses real widgets, like Symbian, just cries out for a widget to show the day's news ticking by. We've looked at the armada of widgets from QooApps before and now we now take a look at its RSS offering.
Sooner or later we all need to keep an eye on our finances, and doing so requires a dependable tool. Expense tracking apps have been on mobile devices for as long as, well, for as long as there have been mobile devices! The problem is that they've been data silos that are tricky to get your data in and out of. In this age of cloud computing, we need an expense tracking app that's backed up by a cloud service so we can easily access our data from anywhere and any device. That's exactly what Toshl is, so let's take a look.
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!
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.
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