This podcast was recorded on Tuesday 18th June 2013.

Topics covered in this podcast include:

• Nokia Music update starting to roll out to Belle Refresh smartphones
    
• Major update to cuteTube, adds Vimeo and cross-service searching
    
• More on the Q10 - a natural Nokia E6 upgrade?
    
• iOS 7 looks to catch up to Symbian circa 2010
    
• 10 Reasons why I'm still on the Nokia 808 and Symbian in June 2013
    
• The Nokia 808 to get a PureView cousin on July 11th?
      

You can listen to earlier episodes of the AAS Insight Podcast in our media section.

From the product's packaging:

Crystalusion Liquid Glass Features

• Nano thin Silicon Dioxide (SiO2) protective layer
• Invisible to the naked eye
• Quick and easy to apply
• Bubble free
• Provides antimicrobial protection
• Resistant to water and oil based substances (hydrophobic & oleophobic)
• Visibly improves existing minor scuffs and scratches
• Reduces finger marks, dust and provides an easy to clean wipe down surface
• Resistant to acid and alkaline
• Average 12 month lifespan (dependant upon usage)

I had to put this all to the test, of course, picking a couple of older smartphone that I knew didn't already have a fancy coating: the Symbian-powered Nokia 500 and the Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia 710:

Inside the box are a couple of sachets, one with a typical alcohol-based cleaning wipe, and one with an impregnated wipe that adds the 'coating', plus some detailed instructions:

The instructions do describe cleaning and coating the phones all over, but a) I don't see how this is possible, given that you've got to pick up and hold the devices in order to accomplish this, and b) these two devices both had rubberised rears and I wanted to leave this with their original finish. In the event, I only applied the process to the 'shiny' plastic and glass screen.

Cleaning and drying went well, but applying the 'liquid glass' wipe for the prescribed 90 seconds left each phone's screen with some nasty looking smear marks. I hoped these would then evaporate as the coating dried:

The notes do say that the coating will be dry after five minutes but that you should leave it twelve hours for best effect. In the event, I left one for the full duration and the other for just ten minutes, so as to see if there was any difference.

The smearing didn't evaporate, so the next thing to do was use a clean tissue of my own to polish up the surfaces of each phone:

The screens did indeed come up quite shiny and splashing some water on revealed a degree of hydrophobic action:

Which is all well and good, but I wasn't convinced that the procedure had made that much difference. My gut feel was that my removing of the 'smearing' had also removed much of the chemical coating. I tried splashing water on an untreated phone's screen and got much the same effect (i.e. water drops on glass). Plus, using the Nokia 500 and Lumia 710, my fingers and thumbs could tell no difference whatsoever in terms of friction on the displays.

The instructions make no reference to the horrible smearing effect you get in real life and how to avoid it - I suspect that a degree of practice is needed, so as to apply the second wipe in a way that leaves no trace. Back in the real world, most users (like me) will end up with little or no visible benefit.

By all means grab yourself a pack, but don't expect miracles. 

[Or, if you fancy saving the £6 or so, just grab a wet wipe from your bathroom and clean the phone with that, then dry/polish it with a cotton hankerchief. Rinse and repeat every few months.]

Some of the things I wanted to try and mimic from Android included:

1. the weather forecast for the next few days
2. upcoming appointments
3. new emails waiting to be read
4. new social direct messages waiting to be read
5. latest stock changes for popular stocks of my choice
6. events coming near me that I might not be aware of
7. information on my 'journey home' from wherever I am

I had no issues with the first three, and these form the homescreen I ended up with, shown on the right (widgets are 'Weather, forecast', 'Calendar, next event' and 'Mail'). The last four turned out to be problematic and I'd welcome input if anyone else can suggest an app or technique:

There are a few applications which push social updates to the Symbian homescreen - Gravity has a very plain, bare bones offering showing just a few characters of the last three tweets in your timeline but, unless I'm missing something, there's no way to get its widget to show mentions, let alone DMs. Ditto Facebook widgets like that of 'facinate'. 

• I even tried Nokia Social's widgets, but again these cover only the basic timeline/newsfeed and not the tweets/updates I was really interested in, those that might have a degree of urgency or timeliness. Am I missing something? Surely there's a way to put up @mentions or DMs, for example, on a Symbian homescreen?
• Stocks are also a problem, there are several stocks and shares applications (e.g. here), but I couldn't find one with a homescreen widget. Any ideas?
• Location-specific events also turned out to be hard. There's a 'My location' widget as part of Nokia Maps, but this (literally) only reports on where you are and lets you save it as a favourite. Surely there's a gap in the market here? Anyone know of an events guide which can present info on a Symbian homescreen?
• The 'time to home' is something of a Google Now speciality and there's always a shortcut to Nokia Drive and then tap on 'Drive home', etc. So perhaps this one will never make it to a homescreen here.

Note that the homescreen shown on the right, which I think of as my 'Now' screen, isn't my main homescreen. Instead, I have it off to the side, i.e. one swipe away (similar to how Google Now/notifications might work), with my main homescreen full of app and contact shortcuts,  plus some toggle widgets. (Ignore the other two homescreens hinted by the bar at the bottom of the screen, they're just for playing with while researching this short piece!)

Opening things up to the AAS community then, any suggestions for my questions and frustrations above? Cheers!

I guess I should define 'production' fairly carefully - the Nokia 808 PureView made it into production in that up to half a million were made, but the device wasn't pushed on carriers anywhere in the world and there was almost zero marketing - you had to be a hard core Symbian geek to seek the 808 out and purchase it.

But head back through time to Autumn 2011 and crunch time must have come to the PureView imaging team within Nokia - "when will the new camera be ready?" The answer must have come back along the lines of "Well, we can deliver it on the existing Symbian prototype in under six months. Or you can wait another 18 months (or more) if you want it working properly on a Windows Phone 8 device." 

Testing the PureView camera unit in Nokia's labs...

I can imagine that response might not have gone down too well with the top layers of current Nokia management, but the extra delay before the technology could be shown off to the world swung it and the Nokia 808 PureView got a green light for public launch at Mobile World Congress 2012 - and the rest is history, of course.

But what if the management decision had been to forego the 808 and wait until Windows Phone integration was finished? My suggestion to Myriam (tnkgrl) was that the most active 1% of the Symbian community (that includes you, gentle AAS reader) might not have stuck with Symbian this long. Does this ring true with you?

Take the Nokia 808 out of the Symbian device line-up and the next flagship is probably the ever-hard-to-find Nokia 701, with similar core internals to the 808, but with compromised EDoF camera, smaller speaker, less internal storage and smaller, LCD display. It's a great device - or at least it was, the 701 seems rather pale, spec-wise, compared to the rest of the 2013 smartphone world.

Then there are the budget 603 and the diminutive 700 (lovely hardware apart from the terrible camera) - move on, nothing to see.

The X7, with its four Star Trek-like nacelles, two of which were dummies and two of which did their best to muffle the sound from the poorly mounted internal speakers, was unspectacular and unnecessarily sealed in every way. The QWERTY-based E6, launched with it, mid 2011, still has fans (me included) for the keyboard and form factor, but with the focus these days on larger and larger screens it's not surprising that the E6 merely has a 'cult' following in 2013.

What about the 2010 batch of Symbian^3 phones? Upgraded relentlessly (for which much thanks, Nokia), these are still serviceable, but arguably no more than this. The E7 has the stunning keyboard but is disappointing in every other way, while the N8 is still the pick of the bunch and still arguably with the second best real world camera of any phone in the world (if there's call for indoor flash shots, at least), plus there's the aluminium unibody, something which is very much coming back into 'fashion' in the smartphone world. However, even with Belle Refresh, these 2010 devices are showing their age in terms of performance and (in the N8's case) internal storage.

Which just leaves S60 5th Edition devices like the X6 (with its superb stereo speakers and capacitive touch), the N97 mini (in theory a masterstroke of design, in practice let down by terrible battery life) and (perhaps) the venerable 5800, the very first Symbian touchscreen phone from Nokia (other than the abortive 7710 from many years before). All still performing as they were designed to, but all limited in 2013 by RAM and by the very fact that expectations for smartphones have moved on.

[There's also the little matter of the hundreds of millions of non-touch S60 phones out there, but they belong to a very different category of device these days, and I'm going to return to this generation in a future article.]

So, today, in a hypothetical 808-less world, what would you and I be using? I'd bet on:

• 60% having switched to Android, which has many Symbian similarities, yet with more modern (albeit not always perfect) hardware
• 10% might have opted for an easier, less troublesome life and moved to iOS and the iPhone
• 20% might have followed Nokia and its hardware prowess and headed for Windows Phone too
• 10% might have stayed with Symbianm using one of the devices just mentioned

If that last 10% figure seems low, remember that I'm only considering the top 1% of the Symbian community here. The enthusiasts, the ones who seek out articles like this, the people who bother to get involved in comments, in emailing developers, in giving feedback, etc. 

Two Nokia 808s, from launch week, in bright outdoor conditions, showing off their screen clarity...

Of course, this is all pointless speculation. Nokia did release the 808 PureView, jokingly referred to by me as 'designed for Steve' (i.e. me) in that everything I'd ever asked for in a Symbian device (aside from QWERTY keyboard, of course!) had been shoehorned into the (sleeker than you might think) form factor. And, significantly, the Nokia 808 soars above the rest of the Symbian world in terms of specs and I'd argue that (all things being considered) it's still competitive with the rest of the smartphone world, mid 2013. 

With the 808's release on Symbian, Nokia prolonged the OS's life in many people's eyes by at least a year, if not more. The early adopters, the Symbian enthusiasts, people like you or I, can still rightfully claim "I know exactly what's available in the wider market and the Nokia 808 still does more for me than anything else on sale".

The camera and use of Xenon flash still shocks me with its capability, even to this day. Yes, I matched the 808 with the new Galaxy S4 and pulled off a shock 'tie', but that article didn't really play as much to the 808's strengths as it might have done. Add in a few test shots of people indoors, or of low light landscapes, or of long exposure arty beach scenes, or of super-zoomed sports shots (etc.), and the Galaxy S4 wouldn't, ultimately, have been able to keep up. 

The no-holds-barred multitasking, the FM transmitter support, the battery life, the screen clarity, are all without peer - and important to me. I've gone over the full reasons why I've stayed with the 808 PureView before, of course. The simple answer to Myriam and anyone else in the tech world who remains mystified as to why you or I still use Symbian, on the Nokia 808 at least, is that nothing else has come along, on any platform, that can provide equivalent functionality. So why would we (effectively) 'downgrade'?

Yes, an Android flagship (for example) would provide a wonderful selection of cloud-centric applications, mind numbingly good games, intelligent life prediction (Google Now) and a super speedy web browser. But that all has to be set against a battery life of less than a full day, blurry indoor photos, applications which are supposed to stay running and don't, UI fragmentation across the platform, etc.

Comments welcome, as usual...

If you don't give Galaxy War enough RAM to work in, the game just closes - so if this happens to you then you know what to do. As a last resort, restart your phone, etc. And, it should be noted, I was trying the game on a Nokia 808, one of the Belle FP2 phones with extra RAM. So you might want give this  a miss anyway if you have an N8, E7, etc.

Here's Galaxy War in action:

The spaceship flies smoothly from the foreground to the background, Star Wars-style. Oh, very impressive....

The bare bones help screen (complete with typo) set the scene that this is a game from a graphical wizard with perhaps more limited typographical and coding skills?

The idea here is that your targetting crosshair is fixed in your windscreen and you have to drag your gunner's cockpit around to fix the oncoming asteroid in the 'sight' and then release your finger to fire. All asteroids head straight for you in the game, so, once targetted, they don't drift out of the sight.

Between each level is a different cut-scene graphic, clearly a showcase for the developer's graphical chops...

As each asteroid comes into view, an alarm sounds and a red indicator highlights it on your HUD, alerting you...

And as the game and levels progress the asteroids start coming faster and thicker until....

Curiously, there's no scoring, or high score table, or indeed any extra of any kind. This is simply outer space blasting for the sake of it. Not that there's anthing wrong with a simple goal, it's just.... unusual!

The interstitial screens are something special though. If these graphics are all original then the developer is wasted making trivial Symbian games!

Even ending the game isn't easy. There's no 'Exit' function and you can't press the red (hangup) button as usual. In fact, you have to terminate the game from the Symbian multitasking carousel. So, perhaps not a game for novice or faint of heart!

You can buy Galaxy War for £1 in the Nokia Store.

Here's Active Yoga in action:

Somewhat bare bones, but attractively coloured and don't worry, you won't need to balance on one leg like that in the application (I think)! The Migital thing is part of the publisher's ecosystem - just hit 'Remind later' for now....

Note the ads (no, I'm not feeling 'flirty'!) - you can buy an ad-free version in the Store, etc. There's really not that much to the app: a brief introduction and then sets of exercises and stretches to try in three basic scenarios....

Before work: well, this one looks easy enough. Each yoga pose is shown with its name, a sequence of illustrations, and a scrollable set of instructions to help you get into it, and get the most out of it....

During work: ah yes, most of us do this all the time at work! When we've made a sale, or finished an article (in my case)?

After work: Err.... maybe I won't try the plough. Or at least not until I've had a few beers to really loosen up!!

Active Yoga is slow to start up, somewhat basic in operation and littered with distractions, but at its heart there's a cheap little yoga trainer for complete novices and it can be appreciated as such.

You can buy Active Yoga for £1.50 in the Nokia Store or grab the ad-supported free version here.

As usual, maximise the playback window and quality to match your bandwidth:

The biggest problem I've had (as an E6 owner) is that I can't find equivalents on Blackberry OS 10 for all the software I depend on in Symbian. The biggest two are the lack of a good podcatcher and the absence of either SafeWallet or Handy Safe Pro. Until both are sorted, despite the faster device and superior hardware in almost all regards, I don't think I could switch my SIM card.... yet.

What about you?

In addition to the abandonment of development of the Mac version of Handy Safe Desktop and lack of official support for the Nokia E6 (though it can be sideloaded - ahem!), Epocware has publicly said that "all developments for Handy Safe (for all platforms) have been temporary stopped".

Given how critical this personal database of super-secret information is to most users, the possible lack of a future for the product is a little worrying, which is why it's good to keep one's options open.

Staying with Symbian

Staying with Symbian does have the advantage of familiarity and inertia, though the smartphone world moves on and you can expect some online services and applications to become more remote. Still, this being AAS, I have to admit that it's a valid option, at least!

It goes without saying that if you're planning on staying with Symbian until you drop then you'll have no issues in terms of Handy Safe Pro - with no major firmware changes planned by Nokia, the current versions of the application will carry on working happily. Even if it should disappear from the Nokia Store, there's always the Epocware shop, should you need to re-download or re-buy for a replacement device, etc. In fact, it's almost worth buying again from there anyway (it's only £1.50), so that you have a valid activation code for your particular Symbian device, just in case Epocware's shop disappears as well?

Moving to Android

Android is, of course, the dominant smartphone OS these days, with as high a market share as Symbian had in its heyday. The OS shares a lot of similarities to Symbian too, in that it's very customisable, extensible, has a proper file system and supports full multitasking.

Although Handy Safe exists in the Android Play Store, it's only a half baked application and doesn't support (on modern devices) syncing to Handy Safe Desktop at all. You may remember my own one-way bodge? With Epocware claiming to have halted development of the Android version of Handy Safe some time ago, it's time to look for an alternative.

Which means somehow getting data out of Handy Safe Pro without requiring massive amounts of copying and pasting - some of us have hundreds, even thousands of entries to handle. Happily, there is one competing cross-platform product which claims to import Handy Safe Pro data - SBSH SafeWallet. This is not only a full 'cloud' product, it also has a full blown client for Android.

With a Windows desktop too, this is the way in for Handy Safe Pro-dependent Symbian users:

Seeing HandySafe listed is reassuring, but it's not a direct import. After all, if an external app could read Handy Safe's encrypted data store directly (even with a password) then Handy Safe's inner workings would be exposed to the world. The import process is actually  a two stage process, but rest assured that it's worth going through since SBSH SafeWallet does know a lot about how Handy Safe Pro structures its data and thus your information will end up in the right place without any extra fiddling needed.

SafeWallet leads you through the steps:

Auto-deleting the wallet file is a nice touch, to save you forgetting to do this manually and thus leaving confidential information lying around in plain text format on your PC. As SafeWallet imports all your Handy Safe Pro items (which takes a while, allow a good five minutes), note that you may see a few error dialogs like this one:

Just 'continue', it seems that these are due to overlong or malformed entries - I only encountered two errors in my 500 item database, so this probably isn't a showstopper. Though it would have been nice if SafeWallet had told us which items were affected, for manual checking later.....

Once imported though, your entire Handy Safe Pro 'vault' of data will exist in SafeWallet for Windows (and thence to an encrypted store on SBSH's servers - don't worry, they can't read it at their end):

With your data now in SafeWallet, it's trivial to install the (free) Android client on any modern (e.g. Jelly Bean) smartphone, enter your email address and password and your data will then be in full two-way sync to the cloud and to your Windows desktop. Job done!

All my Handy Safe Pro data, happily exported/imported and synced to Android 4.2 on the Galaxy Nexus...

Moving to Apple iPhone

iOS is another option for Symbian users, of course, though the OS is now six years old and the oldest of the current migration options. iOS has also been diammetrically opposite to Symbian in terms of its philosophies on multitasking, file systems and general use, so it's not a particularly good 'fit'.

If you do want to experiment with the iPhone then note that Handy Safe does exist for iOS and syncs to the existing Windows-hosted Handy Safe Desktop through both iTunes and Wi-fi (you have to tell it the IP of your Windows box each time - if the latter is a laptop then the chances are that it'll be slightly different to the last time you synced!). Plus, as mentioned above, SafeWallet is a good option, once your data is in that system then there's a fully supported iOS client.

Moving to Windows Phone 8

You'll already have a passing familiarity with Windows Phone from our sister site, of course. It's a very future proof mobile platform, though with some limitations and restrictions that may or may not annoy you. At the very least, I'd suggest getting a budget Windows Phone like the Lumia 620 and having a play with the interface and applications.

Happily, 'Handy Safe' exists for Windows Phone 7 and 8 - it's a little bare bones, but it works well after some fiddly setup and syncs to the existing Windows-hosted Handy Safe Desktop through Wi-fi (again, as with the iPhone, you may have to tell it the IP of your Windows box each time). It's not clear how much development time Epocware will put into this Windows Phone application, but it works for now.

Curiously, SafeWallet both does and doesn't exist for Windows Phone. There is a client, but it's based on sharing your encrypted store through Dropbox, something the Windows desktop and Android clients used to do a year ago. Hopefully, a full, up to date version of SafeWallet will appear for Windows Phone in the coming months and you can then confidently access your data through this method too.

Moving to Blackberry OS 10

I've already covered the new Q10 (favourably) in comparison to the Symbian-based E6, with similar QWERTY candybar form factor, it's a very valid 'next device'. The only thing is that the Blackberry OS 10 ecosystem is still immature, without versions of SafeWallet or Handy Safe Pro (and no 'coming soon' from the developers), so you're stuck in this regard. 

__________________________

Considering how to take encrypted data forwards is a very real concern to many of us, even more important than taking our contact store with us when switching devices or platforms. Handy Safe Pro has been a star performer for years (and may still be for some) but at least there are a few more viable options opening up for those with twitchy feet, as documented above.

Availability of such a device, given the technical complexity, might be expected to be early September 2013. It's not clear yet whether Nokia has refined the 808's camera hardware and image processor significantly, but since the Symbian-powered 808 is still top of the cameraphone heap, even an equivalent on Windows Phone would be welcomed, I suspect. And Nokia has certainly now had time to tweak its Windows Phone drivers to suit the 808 PureView's image processor.

From the AAWP news article on the launch:

Nokia is set to hold a press event in New York on July 11th with a tag line of "zoom reinvented", suggesting that it may be about to unveil a new camera flagship to follow in the footsteps of the Nokia 808 PureView. A teaser image shows a magnifying glass with a message of "see more from Nokia", together with date, time, and location of the event.

The Nokia 808 PureView used its 41 megapixel sensor to enable a lossless 3x zoom (5 megapixel image capture), something that would seem to qualify as zoom reinvented. Nokia has repeatedly said that this first implementation of PureView would be used in future products and it seems the Finnish company is now going to deliver on that promise by introducing a Windows Phone 8 version of the world's most advanced camera phone.

It's worth remembering that zoom was only part of the Nokia 808 PureView story. There was also a capability to capture images atresolutions up to 38 megapixels, but arguably the most significant was the pixel oversampling technique used by the camera that produced 5 megapixel images from the 41 megapixel sensor by combining up to seven pixels into one super-pixel. This oversampling technique resulted in images with very low levels of digital noise, and unparalleled detail and colour accuracy, and has become the benchmark by which all camera phones are judged.

 

Sensibly, although the full app/game of Build Blocks is priced at £3, there's also a restricted free version too, Build Blocks Lite. You're limited to just the lowest 'resolution' landscape and there are no save facilities, but you (or rather your child) will get the idea quickly. Here's the title in action:

The developer's banner, showing err.... the sort of thing you can make(!)

The checkerboard grid revolves in three dimensions behind the menu, which is a fairly neat trick to pull off, if only at just under 6fps! ; (Right) there are five save slots for your blocky creations...

Should you have an older S60 5th Edition device, you can toggle off some of the 3D elements, to increase the fluidity; (right) starting to construct a first masterpiece...

The interface is super, spin it in all three dimensions with your finger, then tap to select a building point (the red cube frame cursor) and tap again to confirm the position....

After selecting an existing block, tapping and holding will vaporise it; (right) the full spectrum of block colours available....

Implemented in Java, you can buy the full app/game of Build Blocks here, with the free version here. Comments welcome - I'm really not too sure what to make of this!

As if there wasn't enough confusion over the names of the various YouTube clients for Symbian, this one has a long enough name that it has to be shortened in-app and in other places, just to get it to fit - can I urge developers to think of a unique name for their app or game that will display everywhere it needs to? Oh, and not including a special character like "+" would help too....

Name aside, YouTube Downloader HD+ largely does what it claims to do, albeit with little style in some places and garish colour in others. And, for a pound, is decent enough value. I suppose I should point out, right at the start, that downloading YouTube videos is frowned upon by Google, but hey, everyone does it these days - it's the modern equivalent of cassette taping from the radio, perhaps?

The application has been receiving regular updates, at least some of which will be to maintain compatibility with changes at Google's (YouTube's) end, though others have given it something of a facelift - the initial interface is at least simple and striking, with vivid colours and a spacey background.

Settings is the obvious place to start, with the choice to download videos in 360p and 720p only - although if a video is only available in 240p (i.e. lower resolution) then you'll get that instead. And it should be emphasised that, just as much as with CuteTube, YouTube Downloader HD+ can be used to browse (i.e. stream) videos too - you don't have to download them every time!

As shown above, right, there's a decent choice of backdrops for the main menu, though it's a slightly trivial setting in that it's only used for this one screen and not behind any other panes in the application.

Browsing for videos through the main populated lists is straightforward and I liked the way so much information was packed into each listing element - all that was missing was an indication as to the quality/resolution of each. You can also browse by drilling down into the various YouTube categories, with some bright coloration again from the application.

Or, of course, you can search for stuff, with handy check boxes to determine the type of search (CuteTube confuses here by forcing you into Settings to change this) - again I missed indications of quality though - the second match here turned out to be in 240p, i.e. QVGA!

The details page for each YouTube video is (again) colourful, but well designed. You can add it to your favourites (if signed in), give it the thumbs up (or down), switch to the comments view and participate in the discussion, and so on. Or just tap to watch (stream) the video. The icon bottom right is the critical one if you're interested in downloading the video for offline watching later.

The heavy use of white in the listings rankles a little in these days of dark themed apps to save power on AMOLED screens, but in fairness you'll not be on the white screens for long. The primary colours behind the various detail views are quirky but do grow on you.

The sharing buttons work to share the YouTube URL directly via SMS or email, or via the mobile Twitter and Facebook web sites - there's no direct handling of these social services.

You can keep an eye on downloads, of course. Though, once complete, they simply disappear and there's no record of what you've just downloaded or how to play it. You have to switch out to the Symbian Videos application and track down the file in its listings, which can be laborious if you have lots of downloaded content. Note in the above download that I successfully managed to grab the 720p version, so all is well on that front.

Wonderfully quirkily, the FAQ about having trouble streaming video on Symbian (not something I've experienced for a while, but hey) is presented in attractive graphical fashion. Very skeumorphic, very unfashionable, but I like it! Just swipe to advance to the next 'step', etc.

Signing into YouTube to access our own channel was a little worrying, with the above message from YouTube - 'an anonymous application' etc. The developer needs to improve this aspect by registering the app with Google if he wants to allay user fears about privacy and permissions - after all, a user's Google/Gmail account is usually key to discovering just about everything about their life these days!

New videos from your YouTube subscriptions are presented in the usual form, shown above right, sorted by upload date, or you can drill down into your subscribed channels if you prefer.

Given the existence of CuteTube, would I recommend YouTube Downloader HD+? Only if the extra couple of pounds (or Euros, etc.) was critical. CuteTube is simply more polished at every single turn. With attention to detail in terms of permissions and playback of downloaded videos, this could yet make a good budget alternative - it's certainly a colourful one!

You can buy YouTube Downloader HD+ for £1 here in the Nokia Store.

Here's part of the official press release:

Part of the GALAXY S4 family, the GALAXY S4 zoom is the realization of Samsung's mission to create a single device that can fulfill the role of both an industry leading smartphone and a high-end compact camera. Combining 10x Optical Zoom, 16 Mega Pixel CMOS Sensor, OIS and Xenon Flash with the very latest Samsung GALAXY S4 technology, the GALAXY S4 zoom sets new standards for perfect mobile photography. It is the ultimate smartphone and camera experience in one, and the only device you'll ever need.

The Zoom Ring also revolutionizes conventional camera zoom controls. Optical zoom control replaces traditional dials and buttons with smooth, easy-to-operate digital controls. Professional-quality accuracy and unprecedented ease of use are just a twist away, making it easy to compose a scene and capture wide-angle shots or tight close-ups.

When it comes to high quality photography, bigger isn't always better. The compact GALAXY S4 zoom's best-in-class 10x Optical Zoom and 16MP BSI CMOS Sensor lets you capture beautiful images from far away or up close and personal, in all light conditions, without having to carry heavy camera gear around with you. Furthermore, the built-in Optical Image Stabilizer (OIS) helps keep the camera perfectly still even when you're not, reducing blur and stabilizing the image while zoomed in for high-quality photos and video.

Interesting stuff - the size of the sensor in the S4 zoom isn't mentioned, but I suspect it's 1/2.3" and a lot smaller than the 1/1.2" unit in the Nokia 808 PureView and rumoured to be in the Nokia EOS. (1/2.3" was the size of the sensor in Nokia's 2009 S60 3rd Edition-running N86.) The combination of true optical zoom and optical image stabilisation is welcome, of course, the two technologies do rather go together. Though note that Nokia's software zoom system from the 41 megapixel sensor in their flagship PureView devices does have the advantage that it's less bulky and doesn't restrict light ingress, unlike optical zoom systems, which only really work well in good light conditions.

The most debate will centre around the physical form though. Here's the Galaxy S4 zoom in side profile:

...and here's the S4 zoom with the camera activated and the zoom in use:

Samsung is clearly aiming for the Galaxy S4 zoom being considered more of a camera than a phone, whereas Nokia's 808 PureView and (again, rumoured) EOS are clearly just as much a smartphone, at least in form factor and feel in the hand.

I'm torn with this device. On the one hand I'm glad to see Xenon flash and optical zoom back in phones, on the other hand I do rather think that the camera here sticks out like a sore thumb - almost literally.

Just for comparison, here are the sculpted and massively more gentle camera humps of the Nokia 808 PureView (from 2012) and N8 (from 2010):

Although we've only seen this so far on the editorial Nokia E7, it's likely to also appear for the N8, C7 and X7. Compatibility with the E6 isn't guaranteed (screen size), but who knows....? Comments welcome if you're seeing this fresh new version of Nokia Music on other devices.

All our previous Symbian^3-class phones are/were still showing the old Web-based version of Nokia Music, so this standalone client is something rather fresh and welcome.

The content is the same, though, a typical modern music store, serving up DRM-free MP3 at 256kbps - you'll need to sign in with your Nokia account, of course, in order to buy music.

A restart of your phone is needed after installation and this is because Nokia Music installs at quite a low level, it's a system component and effectively replaces the old version in the firmware image. As a result, it's also not listed in Settings/Installations, so can't be easily uninstalled. Not that you'd want to, but worth mentioning, in case you're tempted to install an SIS for another device - wait for it to appear officially!

Comments welcome - I'd love more data points here. Also comments on attributes of the music files served up, should you fancy a little (ahem) Rod Stewart...

From the FT.com article:

Nokia will finally stop shipments of its once-mighty Symbian smartphones this summer... The Finnish group will bring to an end deliveries of its last homegrown smartphone platform, which had looked unassailable as the world’s leading operating system before the launch of Apple’s iPhone...

...Nokia developed the last new Symbian device in 2012 – the 808 Pureview – although it has continued to ship handsets using the operating system given its enduring popularity in some countries.

Nokia said: “It took 22 months to get a Symbian phone out of the door. With Windows Phone, it is less than a year. We spend less time having to tinker with deep-lying code and more time on crafting elements of the experience that make a big difference, such as around photography, maps, music and apps in general.”

Nokia is not expected to announce (that) it has stopped shipments, in part because there will still be stocks of the devices that need be sold in parts of the world....

You can read the full article (subject to paywalls and trials/licensing) here.

It does sound as though FT.com spoke to someone on the inside at Nokia and the numbers and dates sound about right. Interesting to see phrases like "enduring popularity" crop up though - I'd argue that the AAS community itself encompasses a similar enthusiasm and that there are still plenty of things we can do with Symbian-powered hardware which are unmatched by any iOS or Android (or, indeed, Windows Phone) handsets.

With Nokia publicly disavowing Symbian in February 2011, stopping the development of new hardware (the cameraphone flagship 808 PureView excepted) and winding down network deals, the huge marketshare drops are understandable, of course, though as ever I'd point towards Symbian's still huge installed base, certainly still a six figure number.

More worrying than shipments of handsets finally stopping (with the last in Asian countries, such as China) are service and compatibility gaps developing, with applications for popular Internet services either absent or failing (witness the current failure of Facebook clients) and with Nokia's own Store and other server-based services getting progressively more problematic.

One thing should be noted before we dive too deeply into ViewRanger GPS - it's a mature product in terms of functionality, but it bears the scars of multiple UI changes (most forced by Symbian itself, to be fair) - as a result, there are oddities in terms of menus and look and feel. I'll return to this topic below, but forgive it for now, since ViewRanger is still something of a unique product.

Traditional smartphone mapping products are all geared around road navigation - perhaps with some cycle track and public transport support if you're lucky. By keeping a road focus, these products can snap your position to known lines and minimise positioning uncertainties. In addition, there's ample opportunity to minimise data use by implementing vector maps rather than bitmaps, plus they can provide the 'sexy' bit of computer mapping: voice guided navigation.

However, go off-road and you're usually in a large blank area - or a patch of green. ViewRanger, quite literally, takes 'the road less travelled', being optimised for off-road use, the idea is to appeal to hikers and mountain bikers. Which is a larger niche than you might think and ViewRanger is the best known product in this field by far. It started on Symbian, but is now available for other platforms, of course.

As shown above, armed with your current GPS position, digitised versions of official Ordnance Survey maps can be overlaid, giving you accurate information on gradients, footpaths, streams and much more. You can zoom in as much as you like, but you're ultimately limited by the bit resolution of the source maps (the 1:25,000 version is sampled above).

ViewRanger GPS, as the name implies, functions pretty well as a generic GPS utility too, the 'Phone' menu section lets you fire off your exact position via email or text. Although UK OS grid coordinates are shown above, you can switch this to be any of a dozen alternatives in the settings, including no less than three lat/long variations. There's a useful GPS satellite view too, something you don't often see in mapping apps these days, which can be very helpful in diagnosing a poor position fix.

You can set up waypoints on the map and then home in on them (in straight lines, of course, this is off-road, remember!). ViewRanger GPS's UI elements largely disappear when you're not using them, which is smart, with one tap on the lower part of the screen enough to bring the tools back. Although zoom icons are shown, you can also use multi-touch to magnify the maps if needed.

In addition to the 'premium' Ordnance Survey maps (in the UK), all countries all get basic mapping via a variety of OpenStreetMap variants, Bing Aerial imagery and (shown below) the useful OpenCycleMap:

You can switch between all these different map data sets at will, plus I noted (but didn't try) a number of multimedia 'extras', shown below. What I really wanted to test though is how ViewRanger GPS now manages its core maps. Back in the day (2006), everything revolved around buying maps on CD and then sideloading the areas or countries needed, but happily things have moved on a lot.

In the screenshot below, right, I show my sideloaded 1:25,000 maps of Berkshire, UK, zoomed right out, set within the UK National Grid - around 120MB of map imagery, these were taken from a CD I acquired in 2010 but the maps work just fine here. Although you can't buy on CD anymore, you can still purchase large areas and then sideload if you like, though the usual buying system for ViewRanger customers is now to purchase a number of credits from the company's web shop and then use them in-app, as needed, to grab the specific map tiles for where you are (or where you want to walk).

To illustrate this, let's pick a spot outside my original sideloaded map area. Note the red and black squares, corresponding to map tiles and 'areas' respectively. On the 'Downloads' menu, we see:

Downloading an 'area' grabs the maps for the larger black square, obviously, and typically requires around 500 credits. If you needed lots of map tiles (for example, for a cycle ride) then this would save a lot of fiddling tile downloading though. For the illustration here, we'll just download a single map tile:

Ah, looks like my walk will take me off the 'bottom' of this tile, so I'd better download the next tile down too. There goes another 60p or so (it's roughly 1.5p per tile for the 1:25,000 OS maps)!

Great. In fact, I also need two more neighbouring maps, so I'll grab those too. I now have four map tiles covering the area I'm going to be walking around. Every map tile that gets downloaded is stored in a folder on your memory card (or mass memory) and will thus always be available when you come back to this area later on. If you switch phones then you can just copy the files over (or move the physical card), though note that there are some (geographical) restrictions to re-downloading tiles that you've previous bought - see ViewRanger's FAQ for more on this.

There's more to ViewRanger GPS that I haven't got room to go into here - setting up buddies (with either ViewRanger or Globatsat or Retrieva loaded) so that you can find them on the map, or filtering the map to add POIs (e.g. AA places to eat or stay), plus, as shown above, plenty of import and export options to and from GPX, LOC and VRZ file formats.

However, as the two screenshots above show and as you might have gathered from the moderate score for ViewRanger GPS, the application is complex to use. Partly, in fairness, because of the huge feature set, but also because of the cruft from versions from days gone by. In the screenshot above, left, we've gone to the 'Options' menu and selected 'Organizer', to bring up the secondary, nested full page menu (shown in white), from which I've tapped on 'Options' again, to overlay (effectively) a third level of menu functionality. Arggh!

I do sympathise with the developers and the UI decisions they've had to take at each stage in the last seven years, but I can't help but feel that the interface needs to be drastically simplified. Maybe it's time to start the interface design from scratch while still re-using the core navigation and map handling code, rather than trying to tack functions onto an older, existing design?

However, don't be too put off - it's likely (as I did) that you'll only use a fraction of ViewRanger's functions, in which case you'll learn how to get into those parts of the app and can get on with your outdoor activity very happily. And if an Android or iOS user tries to evangelise ViewRanger to you on their phone, why not respectfully point out that your Symbian handsets have had the application for the best part of a decade?(!)

PS. The best starting points for you to get going with ViewRanger GPS are to download the app for free from the Nokia Store and then to buy some credits so that you can grab some really detailed premium maps for your own home countryside.

PPS. You may wonder why detailed off-road maps are usually 'premium', i.e. why do you have to pay for them, when the likes of Google Maps, Apple Maps, Nokia Maps (etc. ) are all free? The answer is that the aforementioned are all only really detailed around the road network, which is relatively cheap to map out and digitise. Think about trying to construct an accurate map of a local hill or quarry, in terms of every contour change, every footpath, every stream and you can see that this sort of mapping is at least an order of magnitude harder - and no, you can't do it using satellite maps, though these do help the map makers, I suspect. As a result, off-road maps are expensive to make and thus have to be licensed in some way in order to recoup the cost.

Ah yes, a whole new version of iOS, let's take a few aspects that leapt out at those familiar with Symbian....

Multitasking? Really? With a great battery life? Got to be Symbian in 2002, surely? And every one of the 500 million Symbian devices shipped in the following decade?

Ah, so not full multitasking after all (maybe that will come in 2014?) In fairness to Apple, their 'the OS knows best' limited multitasking will work quite well for most people, but hard core Symbian geeks and developers know full well that this isn't free-for-all multitasking where an app can do what it wants, when it wants, in the background....

The multitasking carousel, I can't think where I've seen that before... Hmm.... Anyone help me out here? Ah, got it. Am sure I've been using this on Symbian for several years...

Ah yes, the garish theme with childish icons, ripped straight from a thousand amateur Symbian themes over the last decade. Look, I'm as much of an Apple fan as the next guy, owning several Macs, iPads and iPhones, but these icons would have made Steve Jobs turn in his grave. Hey, maybe they were licensed from a bedroom Symbian theme maker, after all?

Talking of themes, iOS 7 catches up to Symbian circa 2003 - changing the cosmetics of your phone with one easy change? Innovative, eh? Well... it was ten years ago....

Themes they are... even if Apple isn't calling them by this label.., (you trigger them by changing your wallpaper, it seems)

What's this now.... a toolbar that...

...auto-hides when it's not needed? OK, it's a fair cop, Symbian's browser is pretty terrible in this regard (in that the toolbar is sadly permanent), but Opera Mobile, Opera Mini and Gravity have all been auto-hiding their toolbars on Symbian for years.

Talking of Gravity, iOS 7 introduces transparency, with content from a background layer appearing blurred out behind foreground content. Darn it, I'm sure Gravity has been doing this for years on Symbian... 

A note to Apple and iOS trolls, I'm quoting all this with tongue firmly in cheek. Though iOS's evolution and its appropriation of elements and ideas in Symbian, Android, Meego and WebOS does rather reflect the way that all mobile operating systems copy from each other these days. Is that a problem? Probably only to patent lawyers - as a user, we're all the winners at the end of the day.

You can see the full Apple keynote here, note that the iOS 7 coverage doesn't start until roughly 75% the way through.

^{(high res image from Engadget)}

From the original TI press release:

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) today introduced two power management chipsets with TI's patented new MaxLife™ fast-charge technology, which allows consumers to charge single-cell Li-Ion batteries faster and experience longer battery life. The bq27530 and bq27531 fuel gauge circuits, coupled with TI's bq2416x and bq2419x chargers, optimize battery performance using the highest possible charge rates with minimal battery degradation. For samples and evaluation module, visit www.ti.com/maxlife-pr.

Mobile phone users are frustrated when their batteries' charge doesn't last as long after months of daily charging and discharging. TI's MaxLife technology leverages an innovative degradation modeling system to minimize charge time while extending battery service life – as much as 30 percent according to lab tests. Based on TI's popular Impedance Track™ battery capacity measurement technology, the MaxLife algorithm accurately predicts and avoids charge conditions that could degrade the battery.

In retrospect, it's perhaps not surprising that clever software and electronics can do a lot to alleviate this common problem with sealed batteries. After all, many users of Apple iPhones, Nokia N8s (etc. - see here for my list of heroes and villians) report excellent capacity after a year or two of use, despite my dire warnings, due to a careful top up/charging regime and avoidance of blatant misuse. So if this canniness in users could be taken, codified and implemented in hardware and software, then why shouldn't every smartphone with a sealed battery see improved longevity in the future?

Here's the guide in action:

A simple enough main menu, though arguably everything the focussed football fan needs? ; (right) the news section pulls in headlines from official football news sites...

...and, impressively, offers these in five different languages (tapping through opens up the appropriate web site in the Symbian browser, i.e. an external app is launched); (right) once a match has started, a timeline of major incidents is maintained and updated - almost like being there, eh? Well, maybe not....

As you'd expect, the timetable for the tournament (to be updated for the latter stages, of course) and brief venue rundown are included.

A decent online guide, though note that this isn't freeware, as you perhaps might expect, it's £1 in the Nokia Store. Hardly likely to break the bank, mind you.

Thanks to others for their suggestions here, by the way, the list here is not just down to my own preferences! Of the thirty or so which were proffered, many didn't work well enough with the d-pad and/or form factor to my satisfaction (e.g. Dropian, FastTube), had become buggy (Quickoffice), or simply didn't work at all anymore (cough: fMobi). But, with the dust settled, here are my top 10 third party apps you can install and enjoy on the Nokia E6.

10. X-plore

This popular file manager was recently made freeware and its normal quirk, that of having a very fiddly touch interface, gets reversed here because the strict up/down/left/right file list navigation is a perfect fit for the Nokia E6's d-pad. You only need to touch the screen for the usual options menus plus the occasional context-sensitive action.

9. Gravity

Perhaps Symbian's über-app, the popular combined Twitter/Facebook/YouTube client is also somewhat d-pad-friendly, with nudges switching panes and navigating lists of tweets. It's not perfect, you'll still need to use the touchscreen a lot of the time and there are slight delays when switching from touchscreen to d-pad, but it's workable. Plus Gravity makes it into the top 10 here by virtue of the clever full-screen mode, with auto-hiding toolbars, etc., absolutely essential on the small-screened E6.

8. Notekeeper

The best (ok, ok, the only) Evernote client for Symbian, this is at least aware of landscape orientations, gets in the top 10 because of its usefulness and because the opening panorama of notes changes from a list to a side by side grid. However, progress within the application is then touch-only, which is a bit of a shame.

7. Best Converter

For some obscure reason this doesn't show up for other Symbian phones in the Nokia Store anymore, but it's there and proud of it for the Nokia E6, so featured here. The dialog-based interface is easily navigated with the d-pad, categories are so numerous that the keyboard search really helps, and the limited amount of information needed on-screen is well suited to a 2.4" display.

6. Slick

Possibly the clunkiest interface of any app in this roundup, Slick gets its place because, like X-plore above, it has its origins in the days before touchscreens and so is incredibly d-pad friendly. Plus, after writing a message, pressing in the d-pad or pressing the Enter key sends the message - no messing around looking for a 'Send' button or option. A wide variety of chat systems are supported.

5. OneNote

The 'MS Apps' update offered by Nokia for all Symbian phones is a bit of a sluggish and quirky beast, but the OneNote implementation is perhaps the highlight. Syncing directly to your OneNote 'document' in the cloud (in your Microsoft SkyDrive), it's very much an alternative to Notekeeper (above) and it's surprisingly easy to navigate with the E6's d-pad and keyboard, filing away random jottings and even interesting photos, all over the air and immediate.

4. Podcatcher

Podcatcher and Poddi are the two great rivals in the podcast world on Symbian, of course. Poddi scores by having proper memory of where you got up to in each podcast in terms of playback, but it's very limited in terms of hardware button support, whereas Podcatcher can be driven almost completely using the d-pad, moving up and down lists, between tabs, pausing, playing and fast forwarding. Terrific stuff - and more impressive when you consider that the developer probably didn't have the E6 (or E7) in mind when he wrote the application, Podcatcher was simply written to handle all device 'events' properly. It's certainly an excellent fit on the E6.

3. Handy Safe

Those Symbian code wizards at Epocware know a thing or two about making their apps conform to the various methods of input and navigation in the Symbian world and it's no surprise that this application works faultlessly with the d-pad. Even the 'Login' panel on the front screen responds to a d-pad press, revealing the password field. You hardly need to touch the screen at all. You'll know the application, of course, it's a secure database, containing all my PINs, passwords, and information, and is syncable between Symbian, Windows and Windows Phone, plus a few others with a little hackery.

The only slight catch is that the Nokia Store doesn't seem to stock it anymore for the E6, so you'll have to buy it from Epocware directly.

2. Opera Mini

Opera Mini was borne out of the concept of bringing full desktop web sites down to small-screened smartphones, so it's not surprising that it's something of a star here. In addition to the usual proxy-based data compression and low bandwidth usability, you can turn off the 'navigation' bar in its settings, giving full-screen browsing in a way that Symbian Web... doesn't. The d-pad is handled intelligently too, for moving between sections or links and then following them.

1. CuteTube

And it's at this point that I'm going to cheat ever so slightly, by referring to a version of the application which isn't actually available yet. Shown here from beta testing and coming soon to the Nokia Store (hopefully) is CuteTube 1.7.4. The popular YouTube client already worked pretty well on the E6, as you might expect from a video-centric application on a phone with landscape aspect ratio screen - yes, playback is a small compromise, in that you have to choose between a letterboxed, squished or zoomed view, but it worked on the whole. There was no d-pad control at all though... until now. The latest beta with full d-pad and keyboard control makes CuteTube a pleasure to use on the E6. Buy it now, if you haven't already, and await the 1.7.4 update eagerly.

So there we have it, 10 quality applications that you make the most of your Nokia E6. Note also my tutorial on how to speed around the E6 generally in terms of keypresses and shortcuts, my 'Pimping the Nokia E6' feature for a full discussion of what makes the E6 unique, even today in 2013, and my feature on ideas for optimising your E6 homescreens.

Comments welcome, of course, if you have a favourite application for the Nokia E6 that I haven't mentioned and that works stonkingly well on the little Communicator. Talking of which....

PS. 'Communicator'?

Ah yes, just in the same way that the large clamshell Nokia 9210, 9500, E90 and 9300 were 'Communicators' in that they centred on getting things done, communications and organisation, along with very flexible hardware, good build quality and great battery life, and I'd argue that this largely sums up the E6 as well. It doesn't pretend to be a large screened media consumption device (despite my number 1 and 2 apps above!), it gets on with what it was designed for and to hell with current fashions. 

The article is written by Andy Hagon over in New York. Here are some extracts from the full article:

I’ve written stuff on Symbian before. Probably bored everyone to death. But after two weeks using Symbian almost exclusively, I have to say this old, aging, decrepit and useless OS is… anything but.

Symbian Belle, (Nokia Belle as Nokia would force you to call it) is in its final forms with ‘Feature Pack 2’ if you own a Nokia 808 PureView, 603, 700 or 701, and ‘Refresh’ on the E7, N8 gang from 2010 ish. However, with a flurry of little but important updates recently, and with way more stability than its initial launch S^3 version, I really do have to scratch my head as to why it is such a bemoaned and belittled smartphone OS. What, exactly, is wrong with it?

Not very much, is the best answer I can give you. Or to put it another way, Symbian is like the Rolling Stones, a classic but aging rock band. Not exactly trendy and what the cool kids are listening to right now, but still tremendous when you blast ‘Street Fighting Man’ at full volume. Compared with this we have the OSes of today, your iOS, your Android, your Jelly Bean with Key Lime Pie on the side. (What’s after that, Lollipop? Lemon Meringue?)  To me, these oh-so-popular OSes are like Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Sure their music is bang up-to-date, but, oh please. It’s feisty, and it’s poppy and it’s fun, but has it stood the test of time? And no one is going switch on BBC Radio 1 or Z100 and hear The Who or the Stones instead of Bieber or Gaga, right? What are the cool kids listening to these days? Yeah, exactly. Nothing wrong with them, just not for me thanks very much...

...So why Symbian in June 2013? Well, why do I prefer the David Bowie over One Direction? I love the mature quality of the system, the fact that it comes with real bells and whistles that I actually use and find useful, such as an FM transmitter, a file browser, an internet radio, an amazing camera, superb battery life and most important of all, beautiful and top-dog build quality. A Nokia phone feels… premium. In ways even that those who look at Symbian with disdain could agree with. Even those guys have to admit (albeit secretly) that Nokia sure know how to make a decent phone in terms of hardware. I’m not an enormous fan of Windows Phone, but despite that, I can still see quality almost literally oozing out of the ports and speaker grilles of the Lumia 920, 925 and 928....

...Symbian may not be the most prevalent or leading-edge operating system, and it has received its fair share of negative press in the past. But I really enjoy using my 808 PureView, and also my E6 and E7 the past two weeks; maybe Symbian is just overtly familiar at this point, like going back to your favourite pub. You know exactly where the toilets are located, you know the barman by name, and you know he only stocks ready salted crisps so don’t even bother asking for Doritos. Going with Android or iOS for me at this point would be like reluctantly going into the hottest nightclub in town, while wearing my brown cords and M&S jacket and trying really hard to enjoy and dance to the indecipherable din, while having absolutely no idea where I’d go to spend a penny, or even realise that it’s way too trendy to even have toilets.....

You can read on in the full piece here.

Wonderful analogies, Andy, I wish I'd come up with them [FX: voice over the Interwebs "you will, Steve, you will...."] The pub scenario is especially apt - sometimes what we all want is comfort, familiarity and a lack of surprises. Admittedly that sort of attitude would never have got the human race very far, but at this point in Symbian's evolution I think we can excuse a little bit of relaxation and chill out time?

Comments welcome, either here (Andy reads AAS) or on Nokia Innovation, etc.