The update pops up in 'Sw update' on your phone - there's no need to go looking in the Nokia Store again. In theory! Here are screens of the Social update for my E7. If the update doesn't show for your Belle phone yet, be patient - it's 'rolling out'....

Being able to share images quickly from your phone, to both Facebook and Twitter, using the Nokia supplied tools, is a handy feature and surprisingly well implemented. Of course, a few more options and a few more networks would be nice... but then I'm never satisfied!

In the meantime, go grab the update as soon as it appears for you...

It's an optional, rather than compulsory, download, but it also seems to have better performance, so go for it if you have an older device. 

To get the new version, just start the Nokia/Ovi Store client and you'll be offered the download. Note that this is effected through Web (briefly).

Screenshots from the install on my Nokia X6:

E6 with Anna - Belle awaits, but should I update or not? Read on...

The odd one out

Symbian's standard screen resolution ever since the 5800 launched at the end of 2008 has been nHD, 360 by 640 pixels. We've seen one variation, the E7, with full physical keyboard and operating mainly in landscape mode, 640 by 360 pixels, but this only involved minor changes to the code. The E6's arrival, with higher resolution (640 by 480 pixels) in a much smaller (2.4") physical screen, presented a real challenge to the programming teams.

For starters, text throughout the interface had to be increased in size, so as to still be readable on the small screen. This then meant that less information could be presented for any given screen in any given application. On the whole, the UI tweakers pulled it off, I think, with most applications working out to be quite useable, or at least good enough considering you then had the benefit of the full always-available qwerty keyboard and killer battery life.

E6 background reading

Along the way, we've seen reviews here on the E6's hardware design, its software bundle and its enterprise credentials, plus a look at multimedia and its camera. We've also looked at the challenges of developing games for the Nokia E6 and its VGA screen, along with a breakdown of the various ways in which the difference might be tackled? Finally, I also looked at the top 10 games for the E6.

That's around 16,000 words of editorial on this diminutive device. And it warrants it, for it's a classic smartphone form factor brought more or less up to date under the hood. The E6, like the E71 and E72 before it, is a phone that shouldn't let you down, running for days on a single battery charge.

Enter Belle

But along comes Symbian Belle, or Nokia Belle as the marketeers would now have us call it. I've gone over the details of what's new in Belle before, but in super-shortened summary:

• A whole new paged memory management scheme.
• The latest Qt runtimes are baked in from day one.
• Slimmer top status bar.
• Homescreen widgets now come in five different sizes and, Android-style, you can now drag widgets from one homescreen to another. 
• Pull-down status/notifications pane.
• The application launcher is now 'flat', like stock Android, i.e. no folders for new users to get lost in, though thankfully you can stil create these if you need to, e.g. Games, Rubbish I Don’t Need, etc.
• The Web browser has been sped up and there’s now one touch access to multiple browsing windows, and text selection and copying.
• Assorted updates to many apps, including Music player, Calendar and Camera.

Plus a lot more under the hood, in terms of (video) codecs and libraries and so on. On the face of it, what's not to like? It's been somewhat frustrating seeing every other E6 product code except mine (SIM-free, UK country variant) receive the Belle update via Nokia Suite. 

Yet at the same time, I'm seeing a veritable tide of unhappy E6 owners who have been able to upgrade to Belle, complaining about a barrage of issues and, in some cases, demanding to be downgraded to Symbian Anna (something which isn't possible by end users).

Hopefully it will be instructive for all concerned for me to take the reported issues and classify them appropriately. Note that I'm not being a Nokia apologist here, there are clearly things for Nokia/Accenture to fix or add in future 'SW_updates'. But at the same time there's also a little exaggeration going on and I do think a bit of perspective is required.

Reported issues with Belle

In no particular order:

No character counter displayed when composing a SMS

[Common to the E7 as well] A blatant oversight/bug and one which will have to wait for an over-the-air patch to be released.

Flash videos won't play

[Common to all other Belle-equipped devices] I notified Nokia about this (videos of over a certain bitrate crash the Adobe Flash Player engine) a few weeks ago and a fix is currently being approved, for release (hopefully) through SW_update.

No email notifications via the status pane, lock screen or the breathing light

[Common to all other Belle-equipped devices] This is trickier for Nokia to fix because of the way Nokia Email isn't fully integrated into the OS. But it needs doing, possibly for Belle PR 1.1

Wi-fi drops out from time to time

[Common to all Symbian^3 and upwards devices] This is a longstanding instability in Symbian's Wi-fi stack, I've seen symptoms of this on all Symbian^3 phones, though curiously many routers are fine and the problems only manifest on other makes. Nokia definitely needs to knock this bug on the head quickly though - it's been a showstopper for me on the E7 ever since launch and Belle hasn't addressed it.

No date on the status bar

Regular readers will remember that the E72, running S60 3rd Edition, had the date in the top status bar and the time in the bottom Options bar, but since then we've just had the time, in various forms. However, since the E6 appeared, we still have the time in the toolbar or status bar in most applications, plus three 'Clock' widgets, on all three of which either the date or at least the day number is displayed.

Screen real estate lower?

This one's somewhat contentious. I knew that the status bar in Belle was slimmer than that in Anna and so assumed that we'd all have more usable screen real estate. It is slimmer, but unfortunately the bottom of screen toolbar grew (for the E6) more than the status bar shrank! Presumably to make it easier for fingers to hit icons on the small E6 screen. Ah well, it was a nice hope while it lasted!

In practice, as shown in the composite below (Belle on the left, Anna on the right), although there's slightly less vertical space available, the number of (in this case email) list items isn't that different in practice and I wouldn't lose sleep over a few pixels.

No d-pad support on the homescreen

As an essentially one-handed device, it's somewhat awkward having a touch-centric update land. Certainly the big homescreen refresh for Belle heavily favours the larger-screened devices, where fingers are the default control. Under Anna, the E6's d-pad would move between panels and widgets, with a press 'in' acting the same as a tap. Under Belle, very much aimed at the nHD larger-screened devices, it's finger touch only, sadly. Right and left on the d-pad does move through homescreens, but there's no support for individually nudging a highlight along left and right, up and down, for d-pad selection.

Elsewhere in the interface, d-pad support is still very much in evidence. For example, being able to bring up the applications menu by pressing the Home key or the apps icon bottom-left on the homescreen, and then using the d-pad to move between (and select) application icons. So it's not all bad news.

Not having full d-pad support on the E6 with Belle is a slight inconvenience, but not a showstopper, I believe. After all, more and more of Symbian is now optimised for touch, so we're all holding our portrait qwerty phones in a slightly different way anyway (so that the thumb can roam over the screen if needed). 

Over-size widgets mean that you can fit less on each homescreen

Widgets under Belle were 'set free' from the fixed 4x1 format used in everything from S60 5th Edition (on the N97) onwards. In some cases (Profiles, Contacts, NFC, etc) this meant smaller widgets, in some cases it meant larger widgets. So we've ended up with over-sized Email, Calendar and Music widgets. Yes, they do more, in terms of displaying information and allowing interaction (e.g. swiping through entries), but their size on the E6 does mean that you can't fit two of the 4x4 widgets on the same homescreen.

So, for example, you have to have the Calendar widget on a separate homescreen to Email, destroying the 'everything at one glance' capability from the E6 running Anna, with its 4x1 widgets. I can absolutely understand why some users are unhappy about this downgrade in 'glanceability'. There's no easy solution, either - perhaps the email widget could be reduced in size to 4x3 or 4x2 (losing the swipe functionality?), leaving room for a slimmer Calendar widget below? I can see Nokia's problem here - and that of the users complaining - and I sympathise with both!

Along the same lines, if you're set on putting as many application shortcuts on the homescreen as possible (a little strange, since the Apps menu is where you'd typically arrange your most used 20 or so apps) then Belle on the E6 restricts you to 8 shortcuts, rather than the 12 that could be achieved under Anna.

To my eyes, there's quite a bit of wasted space, mind you, I really don't see why Nokia can't adjust the widget grid layout to allow at least another two shortcuts horizontally - so you'd be up to 10 per homescreen.

But again, filling homescreens with app shortcuts isn't really using the UI properly. Homescreens should be for your most needed widgets and your handful of most used apps. You then press the apps menu icon to bring up the full list in the normal way. And, again, if this list is too long, then shorten it by moving lesser-used apps into a folder.

Always-on toolbar in Web means less usable browsing area

One of the usability 'improvements' in Web for Belle is the always-on toolbar - perhaps users weren't savvy enough to know to tap the bottom-right arrow icon in Symbian Anna? The always-on toolbar is OK for nHD screens in portrait mode, it's just about liveable with for nHD in landscape mode (e.g. on the E7 or with the N8 rotated), but it's a right royal pain on the E6, which loses well over 10% of its browsing real estate, compared to Anna.

How could it be fixed in seamless and sensible fashion? Perhaps have an option to go back to Anna's 'full screen' mode, or perhaps to have an option for the toolbar to auto-hide, popping up when you tap the very bottom of the screen? Or even, just for the E6, when you tapped d-pad 'up'? Over to you, Nokia.

Glitches

Finally, I've seen reports of the E6 freezing up for 20 seconds at a time, of the 'answer' key not picking up calls, of the phone needing to be restarted between theme changes, and more. Let me say that these don't happen on any virgin Belle E6s that I've seen, which means that it's either buggy behaviour for firmwares for particular product codes or, more likely, user data, settings or applications left over from the previous Anna installation, causing trouble and general incompatibility.

If you suffer from any glitches of this kind, the most foolproof test is to remove your memory card, back up any unsaved content on your mass memory, sync your personal data, and so on, and then:

1. in 'Files', long press your mass memory and 'Format' it.
2. in the dialler, type *#7370# to restore the internal disk to (Belle) virgin settings.
3. connect your Wi-fi again, check mobile data's on, in the usual way and set up your email again.
4. if you still have glitches, then there's something wrong with your E6 - go tell a Nokia Care Point.
5. if the glitches are gone then it's definitely something held over from the old Anna installation or from interaction with incompatible S60 5th Edition, Symbian^3 or Anna third party software. Insert your microSD card and try the phone again. Still ok? Resync your data and install your core apps one by one, or at least in batches, starting with the most trustworthy. Chances are that the glitches will either be gone by virtue of having done the reset, or it'll be fairly clear which installation is initiating the problems.

Wrap-up

After all of which, I'm still left with a desire for my E6 to be deemed worthy by Nokia of receiving the Belle update. In particular, I want the better RAM management, the baked-in Qt runtimes and the better codecs and player integration - my E6 with v21 firmware (June last year, amazingly, nothing newer has been offered...!) runs CuteTube like a dog and I'm hoping everything will be silky smooth under Belle.

So I'll update to Belle when I can - and then I'll be bugging Nokia to patch the things above which need fixing. For the E6 and for all the other Belle devices, where appropriate. Despite proclamations of Symbian's doom a year ago, the OS as a whole seems set for other major and minor updates through 2012 - and I just hope the E6 receives a little specialist attention, too!

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 21 Feb 2012

The video shows off a number of stills (or possibly video) of snowy scenes, including two macro shots in which individual snow crystals can be seen.

Nokia has a long history of innovating in the camera phone space, from the pioneering 7650, through the N90, N93, N95, N82 and N86 to the illustrious (and still top of the heap) N8. In six days time, on Monday 27th, when Nokia holds its MWC press conference, we may be hearing about the next chapter in that story.

Video description:

Stay tuned for the latest news from Nokia at Mobile World Congress, February 27th to March 1st 2012. For real time updates from the event, follow us on Twitter at http://nokia.ly/ezHlNQ

No, it's not your eyes going funny, some of the graphics here are clearly resampled from a similar game on another mobile platform. Not a huge problem, but it will annoy those who like their pixels super-sharp. Sheep Mania - Barnyard Dash (hereafter referred to as just the last two words) is well implemented on Symbian generally, with proper pausing when put into the background and the way your career is automatically saved as you go along. So play the game for the first time for a month and there's your existing 'career' ready to run. Or at least your chosen sheep is!

There's a somewhat annoying country bumpkin character popping up intros and tips - I could live with him if these prompts were one-time occurrences, but even when going to play one of the sheep 'leagues' for the umpteenth time, I still have to put up with the 'newcomer' prompts - very annoying.

The races in Barnyard Dash are split into Sprints, Hurdles and 'Chicken' (of which more below) - as a one-button game, one tap on your sheep starts him accelerating and another starts him braking (to a standstill). 

The idea is to time your first tap as close to the starting beep as possible (without preceding it - you get penalised for a 'false start'!) and then time the second so that your sheep slides to a halt just past the finish line. Leave braking too late and there's a nasty collision with the straw bales at the end of each lane. Too much collision 'damage' and you're out of the league for good - time for a visit to the sheep hospital, presumably?

You'll never guess what gets introduced in a 'Hurdles' race.... that's right, rocket launchers. Only kidding. It's hurdles - or at least bales of straw (again). One tap on the sheep at the right time and he jumps the bale proficiently. Then it's on to the end of the lane and a tap-to-brake, as usual.

The final type of race is 'Chicken', in which you have to time your braking so as to end up as close to the bale as possible without hitting it (i.e 'playing chicken'). In practice, this is the hardest of the three race types.

In all there are ten leagues to progress through, with ever faster sheep competition, various different surfaces to accelerate and brake on, different weather conditions (e.g. rain - shown in the above screenshot - and slippery grass) and increasing numbers of races in each league. Every win or placing in a league wins you coins, which you'll need to pay your sheep entry fee into the next league up the ladder. Crash heavily into a bale or perform badly and you'll be down your entry fee, meaning that you may have to step down a league and build up your coins again.

Another use for your coins is 'upgrading' your sheep in the farm shop, increasing its top speed, acceleration or braking - in this virtual world, there seems to be instant genetic engineering! 

You'll need the upgrades though, if you're to win in the higher Barnyard Dash leagues. A (rather chunkily low res) ticker tape animated cut scene awaits you if your sheep does triumph, mind you.

The idea of each league as a collection of races means that you can mess up your timing in one, come last, and still pick up good points (and thus coins) by winning all the other races. A summary of the current standings in your league is shown after each race.

At each stage, you have to put up with the ever-more-inane mutterings of the aforementioned bumpkin. These get wearisome and it would be helpful to have a setting to turn these off - something for a future version?

Sheep Mania - Barnyard Dash is a casual game, it's true, yet there's more gameplay here than meets the eye. Casual games often have a difficulty factor that's infuriatingly addictive and this is true here. Just as you get up to league 6, you'll mistime a chicken race, end up as a flattened ball of wool on a bale and you'll be back to league 8 or 9, building up coins again. Rinse and repeat. Trust me, the timing and judgement needed to win races on later/higher leagues is distinctly tricky.

As a lover of casual games, this was perhaps right up my street, too, but the pixellated and sometimes fuzzy graphics, plus the annoying bumpkin character, mean that Barnyard Dash ends up with a mediocre score.

Worth grabbing for uncovering on a boring train or plane journey, perhaps?

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 21 Feb 2012

From the Beta Labs blog post:

New in Nokia Drop (version 1.4) are:

• automatic update of the client software

• silent installation of apps from the Nokia Store
    
• an informative first-time-use tutorial, which will be shown after Nokia Drop installation and after that can be shown again via Options > Help.
    
• store & forward. Items get stored for you if your client is not online. You'll receive them when you next go online.
   
• a new version for Nokia Belle, more integrated into the OS, with all activities being shown in status panel and pop-ups.

Why not try it and give feedback via the Nokia Beta Labs forum?

And comments welcome on the whole 'push to your phone' software genre. Has it been worthwhile to you?

Favourite Apps for Belle

Nokia Store ­– £1.00

This application has been available since before the release of Symbian Anna, and it has been recently updated for Nokia Belle.

Rafe reviewed the original version and had this to say:

Favourite Apps, essentially a power user version of the standard Shortcuts widget, goes some way to solving this compromise.  It extends the number of shortcuts available by adding a drop down element to the widget. When not in use, it looks like a standard Shortcuts widget; the first three icons are standard shortcuts, but the fourth provides access to a drop down box containing an additional twelve shortcuts.

For the true app power user, the Favourite Apps widget can be used multiple times; with each instance having a different set of shortcuts.

Using this widget (see screenshot below) removes the tap and drop convenience introduced in Nokia Belle though. Applications are added to this widget via menus and lists, just as in Symbian Anna. This is a much less user friendly way of setting up favourites, but shouldn’t faze power users.

BizCalendar Widgets

Nokia Store: Widget 1/3 (Free), Widget 2/3 (Free), Widget 3/3 (£1.00).

I reviewed BizCalendar last year, and rated it as a credible replacement to the built-in Calendar. Since then, not only has the core application come a long way, but the three accompanying widgets can be downloaded from the Nokia Store, for extending the range of events displayed on your homescreen. While BizCalendar itself is not yet available for Belle, its widgets are fully compatible.

If you depended on the Calendar widget of Symbian Anna to show your next few appointments, you’ll have been disappointed by the new Belle calendar widget that only shows one line of text. Each BizCalendar widget can show up to five lines of text (see screenshot below), which gives a maximum of fifteen appointments and To-Do’s – which is more than enough for anyone!

Battery Monitor 2.2

Nokia Store – Free.

Battery Monitor isn’t new, but did receive a significant update last year – being written in Qt has made sure that it’s compatible with Nokia Belle. The battery indicator of Nokia Belle doesn’t update as often as it should, and so Battery Monitor is a better way to accurately track your remaining battery life.

The widget constantly alternates between a set of remaining time estimates for various types of use, such as web browsing, call time, and stand-by time.

As described in our news story:

Functional improvements for Nokia Battery Monitor 2.0

• Estimates for any application. Several estimates can now be selected to be scrolled in the home screen widget. Estimates can in fact be shown for any application installed on the device, even for the Battery Monitor itself. You can customise the application used for each estimate via a long press.
• A rough estimate of the standby usage time (no active usage, only background apps and services) has been included. The difference between 3G and 2G talk time is also shown, in percentages, based on real measurements from the device.
• Time elapsed from the last charging is shown.
• Battery health analysis. The maximum capacity of batteries will degrade over their lifetime. As this happens gradually over hundreds of charging/discharging cycles, it is not easy for the end user to notice this degradation, but Battery Monitor will now analyse the battery capacity during charging cycles and notify the user when a replacement is recommended.
• Power saving features. There's a new page, currently providing a quick and easy access to the Power Saving Mode and power critical display settings (display brightness and display timeout). Power saving mode can be set to activate automatically on battery level specified by the user.
• Battery saving tips. There's a useful scrollable panel providing tips on how the end user can save power and improve battery life with their own actions. Many of these are common sense (turning down display brightness, reducing email check frequency, disabling WLAN scanning, etc - there's an All About Symbian tutorial on all this coming up shortly), but it's nice to have them all collected in one place.
• Application level energy monitoring. The Statistics page has been completely redesigned - you can now see the energy consumption history per application. Daily, weekly and all time top 8 lists of the most energy hungry applications are shown. Importantly, background energy consumption is also shown in the list. This includes all consumption when the device screen saver is active, for example cellular modem, Bluetooth and WLAN standby, always online email and social networking services.

 
Left: Favourite Apps for Belle closed at the bottom.
Right: Favourite Apps for Belle opened.
Both: BizCalendar widget and Battery Monitor.

Lock Screen

Nokia Store – £1.50

Lock Screen is a highly configurable screen saver replacement. It can present all sorts of notifications with just a press of the menu key, without unlocking the phone. If you were disappointed with the lack of email notifications on the Belle lock screen, you’ll still be disappointed here. Even though email is an option, notifications do not appear – implying a gap or incompatibility in the Belle API.

Lock Screen (screenshot below, right) also adds a large battery indicator, and a slide to unlock gesture. The best part is that it shows the next five calendar entries – that alone makes it worthwhile to install if you wanted more from the Nokia Belle Calendar widget.

Bookmark Widgets

Nokia Store­ ­– £1.00

This application automatically scans your Web bookmarks and adds them to your widget list. They come in two sizes: 4x3 and 8x6. The 4x3 widgets takes up an eighth of a homescreen each, and the 8x6 takes a full half. The widgets’ appearance is a thumbnail preview of the page they link to. If you read Steve’s article on “There’s a bookmark for that”, you’ll know how many apps are missing from Symbian which can be substituted by mobile websites; e.g. eBay. Therefore, Bookmark Widgets make an excellent way to add web-apps to your homescreen.

 
Left: Bookmarks Widget
Right: Lock Screen

Homescreen Note

Nokia Store – Free.

This is another Anna style widget which serves as a simple Post-It note (screenshot below). Tapping it gives you a plain text box in which to enter notes to yourself that will be shown in the widget. Homescreen Note only shows three lines of text, but that should be enough for quick and ephemeral reminders.

Dual Homescreens Widget

Nokia Store – £1.00

This widget is ideal for those who cannot have too many homescreens, because it doubles whatever you’re using. Nokia Belle is limited to six homescreens, but Dual Homescreens creates a parallel set. You have to use the application’s widget as a gateway into your extra set of homescreens, rather than swiping through both sets in a continuous row.

Note that Dual Homescreens breaks older widgets like BizCalendar and HS Note. They’ll need to reload, and in some cases a reboot of the device is required to force them to load.

 
Left: Homescreen Note and Dual Homescreens Widget (See "Primary").
Right: Nokia Belle contacts widgets

Don’t forget Belle’s widgets

Nokia Belle comes with a great set of widgets in its own right. In addition to the old favourite contacts carousel, larger widgets can be added for individual contacts. They make for a much more personal experience, and almost feels like (dare I say) adding a Live Tile for a contact in Windows Phone 7. Also, the Music player widget has received a makeover, making it more attractive than any of the Android music widgets I’ve used. Mail is far more functional than before, with a half-screen scrolling widget.

One more thing

There is a lot you can do with Nokia Belle, with both the built-in and third party widgets. However, don’t feel pressured into using every homescreen and every widget. Try to make the simplest configuration that works for you without anything superfluous to clutter your device and drain battery power!

David Gilson, 20^th February 2012.

This podcast was recorded on Wednesday 15th February 2012.

In this podcast we cover:       

• Nokia Belle update for first generation Symbian^3 devices
    
• Nokia Belle initial observations and problems (see also official FAQ)
    
• How to overcome or work around some common Belle update issues
    
• TinTin Symbian, TinTin Java
    
• Nokia Maps Suite 2.0
    
• Nokia 500 Review

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

The DC-20's charging unit, housed inside a hard plastic shell, is very solidly constructed, with excellent build quality. The unit is compact too, once plugged in there's only about an inch (2 cm) sticking out. Pushing the charging unit into the connector does require a firm shove because the metal connectors on the side are quite stiff, but that's a good thing as it guarantees a reliable power connection and holds the unit very firmly in place. 

For most people, the most important feature of the DC-20 will be its twin USB charging outputs. Two devices can be charged at the same time from a single power source. It's ideal if you carry multiple devices, have accessories that you want to charge at the same time as the phone (e.g. Bluetooth headset), or have power hungry passengers. 

The second most important feature of the DC-20 is that both its USB ports have an output of 1000mA. This is higher than many third party car chargers, which often only provide around 500mA. Moreover, from our basic tests, the unit really is delivering 1000 mA, something that's not always true of lower quality units that do claim to deliver this.

The 1000mA output results in quicker recharge times (though still not as fast as a wall charger). It also means you'll be able to recharge a phone even if you're also using it for something that's power hungry (e.g. GPS navigation). Perhaps just as importantly, it also means a greater range of devices can be used with the DC-20. That's because some devices require higher output levels in order to successfully charge via USB.  

The sales package comes with the Dual USB Charger unit (DC-20), a Nokia USB to microUSB charging and connectivity cable (CA-19C) and a Nokia USB to Nokia 2mm charging cable (CA-192C). The inclusion of these cables means that you'll be able to recharge any Nokia phone or accessory from the last few years. And with microUSB becoming more and more common, you'll be able to charge a lot of other devices too. You can also plug in other USB cables and these should work fine.

Both of the supplied cables are 190cm long when fully stretched out and about 25cm long in their compact form. The quality of the cables is also very good; they're built to last and should have no trouble standing up to the inevitable wear and tear of in-car usage (I've already shut one in a car door with no ill effects).

Ultimately what stands out about the DC-20 is its high overall quality. In a market flooded with cheap, low quality car chargers, it really is a breath of fresh air. If you need to charge your Nokia device or accessories in the car then this is our recommended solution.

You can pick up the DC-20 from most mobile accessory retailers. The price does vary, so it is worth shopping around. The best price we found, at the time of writing, was Amazon UK for £9.99. That's in line with Nokia's recommended retail price (€15) and is very reasonable, given the high overall quality and the presence of dual USB ports. However, if you're looking for a budget option, try the Nokia DC-6 (microUSB) or the Nokia DC-4 (Nokia 2mm), which are both available from £4.
   

Video Review

This short video shows you the Nokia DC-20's box and content and offers a quick overview of the key features.

For those who don’t know, there is a craze over in the USA where people buy cars with very low ground clearance, “lowriders”, and customise their suspension. That enables the cars to jump, bounce, and almost dance around. It’s become a part of Urban/Rap music iconography too; hence, the Vimto ad-campaign where the fruit characters use their bouncy lowrider as a blender to impress onlooking ladies.

JuiceRider.

This game is another part of that ad-campaign, where you have to perform tricks in your lowrider to earn points. The points can be used to purchase upgrades for your car – so you have a reason to keep striving for higher scores.

Shake and bounce!

JuiceRider is one of the few mobile games that takes advantage of a device’s sensors and requires more physicality than most. To play, shake your phone to get the car bouncing, and eventually it will take-off on a super high jump. While in the air, you trace your finger over arrows on the screen to spin the car on a particular axis. As the car starts its descent, you have to be ready to shake again to repeat the bounce – but shaking too early or late will spell game over for you!

Performing mid-air tricks.

Gameplay is actually harder than it sounds. Timing the shake to rebound the car can be tricky – I often found myself shaking it too early. The game is also quite finicky about where you swipe your finger for the circular arrows (which spin the car on the axis perpendicular to the screen).

It’s not as easy as it sounds!

As you accomplish each mid-air trick, you earn a point, and a score multiplier increases, to a maximum of six. The multiplier goes back to one whenever you fail a trick. This adds extra pressure to get all the tricks right, and makes it all the more frustrating when you fall foul of gesture sensitivity.

JuiceRider will be fun to pass around a group of friends, and the advertising association is not at all intrusive – it’s just like a movie tie-in. You can get it for free in the Nokia Store.

David Gilson, 16th February 2012.

When you load Alt Reader for the first time, you’ll find that it’s locked into landscape mode. Don’t worry though; the user guide that is opened by default informs you that this can be changed via the Options menu. The user guide itself takes a while to load, even though there are few images.

Browsing the user guide.

The user interface couldn’t be simpler – documents are navigated and scaled via swipe and pinch gestures, and there’s just one menu for opening files and setting zoom levels, etc. However, there is no bookmark facility – which is the norm for PDF applications. Having bookmarks would make it much more practical for reading PDF e-books.

Selecting zoom levels.

Performance wise, Alt Reader is noticeably smoother than the often-bundled Quickoffice PDF reader – but the two are quite similar in their feature sets. Alt Reader has several zoom settings that the free version of Quickoffice Adobe Reader lacks; e.g. Zoom To, Fit Width, Fit Text Width, etc. I was hoping to see more that would differentiate the two. For instance, Quickoffice’s PDF reader requires an exorbitant fee to enable text wrapping. Had Alt Reader had the same functionality, it would have been an automatic choice, given that it’s half the price.

Reading a hefty legal document.

Viewing images at minimum zoom.

Settling down for an epic.

I put together a particularly fiendish set of difficult-to-render PDF files, and Alt Reader performed quite respectably. Dostoevsky’s 608 page epic, “The Idiot”, loaded quickly and my N8 test device made no bones about rendering. Next up was Facebook’s 201-page SEC filing, mostly text, but has a few large images early on, as well as tabulated text. Alt Reader loaded the images fairly quickly, but I noted its ability to scroll outpaced its ability to render – blank pages often scrolled by and I had to wait for their contents to appear. Last was a CPU-grinding 63MB file full of nothing put scanned images. Predictably, it was unusably slow, but that’s what I expected to see on a Symbian device.

Alt Reader in action.

Alt Reader is also let down by less than ideal stability. The author has built in an error screen requesting that users email in reports of errant behaviour. It’s still early days for Alt Reader – it’s at version 1.0.9. I wanted to give it a recommendation, but there’s currently not enough (yet) to separate it from the PDF reader bundled with Symbian^3. You can get a free five-day trial or buy for £4 on the Nokia Store.

David Gilson, 15^th February 2012.

To get the new Nokia Store client, just start that on your phone and you'll be prompted to upgrade:

By 'alignment' with the 'back end', Nokia means that the functionality at the client end better matches that available in its custom Store server software and databases. With in-app purchases, smoother downloading of purchased apps, better notification of updates and more, it really is best to have the latest and greatest version of the official Store client.

What's interesting is that the Store client for S60 5th Edition and 3rd Edition phones is unchanged. We've already (long ago) hit the divide where functionality diverges (e.g. showing updates, managed downloading), so it does seem as though the old (non-QML) Store client is getting left further and further behind. Don't panic though, I would expect that support for it will remain at the server end for many years to come.

Entitled Nokia Belle on Nokia 500 from today, the official piece says:

Nokia Belle will start to be rolled out to Nokia 500 owners today in most countries. It will be released in phases, country by country, as soon as each relevant variant of the latest Symbian software is available... The majority of Belle enhancements will be available for the Nokia 500 including:

• new features such as HD video recording at 30 frames per second (the 500's video capture was previously limited to VGA)
• a visually improved browser enabling high-quality Web video viewing

This version of Belle has been specifically tailored to match Nokia 500’s hardware performance. You can personalize your Nokia 500 with up to four home screens leaving all your favourite applications and services only a few taps away.

As with other Belle updates, you will also get Nokia Maps version 3.06. Check the availability for your Nokia 500 in your country at our support pages.

It'll be interesting to see how Belle's improved RAM management improves the slightly shackled 500 under Symbian Anna. And I'm dying to see if the claim about improved video capture is true - I'd previously believed The article's writer has now removed the erroneous info about video recording - it seems I was right about the VGA/15fps being a hardware limitation.

Steve, AAS.

Other highlights in Nokia's calendar are:

Monday 27th, 1130-1800: Nokia Developer Day.
We'll be showing developers how to take the next steps with the Nokia Lumia and Asha device ranges; designing and developing apps for widest reach and monetizing the unique dual opportunity.

Tuesday 28th, 1600-1730: Keynote by Thom Brenner (VP Applications).
This session will ask how the combination of presence and social context that mobile offers can be used for brand advertising. It will ask whether audience targeting and relevance is more assured via the mobile channel, and how the mobile social media approach can fit with a wider advertising campaign.

Wednesday 29th, 0900-1030: Keynote by Stephen Elop (CEO).
In this session, CEOs from across the mobile ecosystem will take the stage to share their thoughts on these industry-changing issues.

As well as these presentations, Nokia's trade stand can be found in the App Planet section of Hall 7, where the latest smartphones, feature phones, accessories, and developer tools will be on show, with Nokia staff close by to talk you through them.

There's plenty of background information on the site and it's sure to be updated as MWC gets closer. Rafe is going to be in Barcelona to cover MWC for the All About sites, so be sure to check in regularly for all the news.

I do accept that Sony's new 12mp phone camera produces great results in these bright conditions, and that the writer of the dial-a-phone blog post, Dan Nixon, does seem to have kept a leveller head than some other sensationalist tech journos in the last year. And I welcome the way the camera shutter button can simply be mashed down on the 'S' even when locked, in order to launch the Camera quickly - that's something that I was rather hoping Nokia would add to Belle for the N8. Ah well.

Having said that, and rather making a few other points in the process, I'd argue that back in the real world, both my ageing Nokia N86 (from early 2009) and ancient N82 (from 2007!) would take better photos than this 2012 Android superphone. And no, that's not heresy, and no, that's not to say that these two old smartphone would take better photos in the linked snow scene settings - they wouldn't. 

Launching and protection

But both of these oldsters have an even faster and even more camera-like way of launching it - simply sliding open the lens protector is enough. 'Protector'? Oh yes, unlike every modern camera phone, the N82 and N86 knew the benefits of keeping the camera glass free of dust, finger smudges and general daily grime.

Small and nimble

Secondly, both of these oldies are far smaller, far more nimble and far more 'camera'-like in their feel. Go on, you try taking photos on holiday for a week with a 4.3" thin touchscreen slab - then take just a few photos with the N82 or N86 and it will feel ten times more secure in your hands and ten times more comfortable as a 'camera'. Even the linked article's writer acknowledged that the N8's 'more compact size' had benefits.

Huge sensor needed. Or Xenon. Or both [cough, N8]

Thirdly, and bringing the N8 in with the ancient N82 here, and returning (of course) to my oldest and most famous rant, back in the real world, the subjects of your photos will often not be inanimate objects but will be living, breathing, moving people. Kids, friends, family, and so on. Moreover, they'll not only be moving, they'll usually be (most inconveniently for you, the photographer) be huddled in the warm, indoors, lit only by artificial light or in shadow or (worst of all) in dimmed 'atmospheric' lighting. 

Under these circumstances, the new Xperia S will be as hamstrung as every other poor excuse for a 'proper camera' phone over the years. LED flash will mean that anyone moving so much as a body hair will be blurred, while the scene will be poorly lit and digitally 'noisy' because there's simply not enough light. 

There are two solutions to capturing better low light photos - and the N8 embraces both wholeheartedly.

One is to have a larger sensor - the N82 went to a 1/2.5" sensor, the N86 to a 1/2.3" unit and the N8 to a whopping 1/1.83" sensor. Meanwhile the Galaxy S II, the iPhone 4S and, yes, I suspect, the Xperia S, are all stuck at 1/3.2". Tech advances have meant that the latter's sensor is more light efficient, to be sure, with back side illumination, but it's arguably not enough to compensate with the size difference to the N8, at least.

The second solution is the best one though, especially when your subjects are people - put in a proper flash. The N82 knew this back in 2007 and I still know of people who carried this phone in 2010 simply because it would capture the shots that no other phone camera could. Xenon flash is up to a hundred times brighter and (crucially) a thousand times shorter than LED flash. So it both lights and freezes a moment, even in pitch darkness. N82 fans moved, of course, to the N8 when it was available and haven't budged an inch since then. I know, I'm one of that number. 

A typical indoors 'moment' shot at a recent event. Your phone camera has precisely a millisecond or so to freeze the moment. Small sensors and LED flashes need not apply.... N8 to the rescue here, the five year old N82 would have done just as well, though.

_____________

So yes, it's great to compare phone camerasm it's fun to explore their sample images in gory detail - hey, I've done it many times over the years. But let's have a proper comparison, a proper methodology. For example, as a bare minimum:

Test shot 1: Outdoors, bright light conditions (e.g. sunny, or snowy, or both!)

Test shot 2: Macro, bright light conditions

Test shot 3: Low light, flash off (e.g. a sunset, an evening scene)

Test shot 4: Indoors, human subjects, semi-posed, artificial light, flash allowed

Test shot 5: Party, a social occasion, movement, coloured lights, flash allowed

Simply taking photos in conditions that suits the phone you're trying to talk 'up' or sell just isn't good enough. After all, if you want to take super photos of landscapes, statues and lakes, then you'd have taken a standalone camera - and probably a tripod. It's the other use cases - people, pets, ad-hoc special moments, where phone cameras come into their own - and far too many phone camera comparisons fail to acknowledge these.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 15th Feb 2012

Here's the set-up. You're inside the eponymous crystal mountain, where you encounter a maze of passages and have to find your way to the exit. Initially the exit is blocked with ice bars, but after you've collected all the crystals on each level the bars disappear and you can escape. Well, escape that level anyway, and on to the next!

Making your way clear is an always available 'Map', showing the maze layout, crystals, and so on:

All trivially easy so far, right? Well, not quite. You see the orange furball in the map above? That's an ice monster and it's after you, able to move at the same pace as you (though the game is turn-by-turn, so you can take thinking time - the monster will only move when you do, etc. - like I say, this is, first and foremost, a puzzle title).

Moving your character/viewpoint is done either on the viewport itself or on the side of screen virtual joystick, with Crystal Mountain helpfully reminding you of the control mapping when you start it up each time:

It's not entirely clear what 'Strafe' means in this context - I guess it's possible that there's some firing action later on in the game (I only got a dozen levels into the supplied 42 - this is not an easy title!), but the joystick idea works well in practice. The 'Wait' possibility is for you to pass a turn and let a monster advance - perhaps you're luring it into a trap?

So you've got the idea? Mazes, crystals and monsters? Nope. That's only a fraction of Crystal Mountain, in terms of gameplay and subtleties. The next major ingredient is giant rabbits (I kid you not), which are very flighty and run away whenever they see you - yet your job is to corral them into a corner and then take them with you out of each level, i.e. 'save' them from the monsters.

So we've got the ice monsters chasing you and chasing the rabbits, the latter running away from both and you trying to do your ecological best to save the rabbits while staying alive yourself.

Now add in different kinds of monsters, with different personalities. Laid back, aggressive, dizzy, hot-tempered, each of which approaches with different strategies and speed. Add in piles of boulders to slow monsters down, roof-mounted icicles for them to bang their head on (they lie down, stunned, stupid things....), add in ever more complex mazes to remember and navigate, add in giant ice cubes to push around to block the path of monsters and/or rabbits, Sokoban-style, and you've got the makings of an atmospheric puzzle classic.

And all of this is just from the first dozen levels, I'm sure there's plenty more to find out once you get five or ten hours into the game. Arctica cleverly introduces each new gameplay or strategic element one at a time, with on-screen tips and explanations, so you're always kept just as informed as you need to be.

With no real time element, Crystal Mountain has a very different feel to other Arctica games like Speedfest, but it's just as polished. There's a digital soundtrack, a comprehensive menu and help structure, you can re-play any particular level (that you've previously cleared) at any time, and there's clearly dozens of hours of puzzle gameplay on offer.

And like other titles in the series, there's both a commercial and free (ad-laden, full-page ads appear between each level and have a three second delay built-in) version, so simply pick the one you want. I've included links to both at the top of this review.

Arctica are very definitely now one of my favourite Symbian game developers and this is another title I can wholeheartedly recommend.

Steve Litchfield, AAS, 14 Feb 2012

The Adventures of Tintin HD.

Note that this game is only compatible with newer devices like the Nokia 700 and requires an initial download that takes several hours.

From the outset, The Adventures of Tintin dazzles with a lively soundtrack and high-quality intro movie. The game menu is just the same with its sweeping 3D views of Tintin’s office, giving you access to various parts of the game.

Main menu.

Unlike its predecessor, there are mini games to play too. The “Extras” section has a gallery of characters from the game where each picture has been split into polygons for you to rotate and piece together. Completing each one rewards you with a 3D model of the character which you can pan and zoom around. They also serve as an achievement system, as all but the first have to be unlocked via progress in the game. Other characters can be bought in the shop view, via the in-game currency of gold coins that you will collect on your travels.

Tintin Jigsaws

Jigsaw reward

As you start the main game, you are treated to long animated sequences to take you through the plot of the story – which mirrors the story arc of the movie. The animations switch between a comic book with animated plans that eventually zoom into a full screen animation, with all the familiar characters from the world of Tintin . The quality of these scenes really gives you the feel of a classic title. However, I felt that they went on a little too long.

Inter-chapter animations rendered in real-time.

Once you get into the action, you have a virtual thumb stick with which to control Tintin, and as you progress, buttons on the opposite side of the screen will appear for running and stealthily tip-toeing around. You will be led by the hand through every new element though.

Controlling Tintin.

The other main user interface element you’ll find are the gold dots – these indicate that you can interact with a part of the environment; e.g. opening doors or pushing boxes. Parts of the game are fast action sequences in which you have to get perform a number of moves quickly, and here the gold dots will be time limited. If don’t react to them quickly enough, the sequence ends and Tintin will be caught, or worse!

Preparing for an action sequence!

As you explore, both coins and jigsaw pieces can be collected. These go towards unlocking content via the extras section mentioned above. An indicator at the top-right corner of the screen tells you how many coins there are to discover (and how many you have) for each chapter of the game. Some of the coins have to be collected during the cut-scene animations that help the story along. I have learned that tapping the screen during such sequences will cause them to be skipped. Therefore, it took me a while to figure out that some of the coins could only be seen during Tintin’s cut-scenes and that they had to be collected right then and that the sequence would not be skipped by tapping on the screen. Again though, some of these in-chapter animated sequences go on for a while, and it almost feels as if you’re being bribed to sit through them.

Sometimes you get to control Snowy, and follow his excellent sense of smell!

During gameplay, there’s no open ended exploration, there is a set path to follow, and all the clever tricks and climbing exploits that Tintin has to perform are clearly marked out for you. Even moving Tintin isn’t that fluid, it feels like you just have to push the d-pad in the right direction to let the game make Tintin perform the next preset action. Also, if you decided to replay a section of the game, you can’t take a shortcut to the next puzzle; you have to play through every single cut-scene – again!

Tintin’s climbing antics along preset paths.

The Adventures of Tintin HD is a visual treat and the John Williams soundtrack ensures that you will not be turning off the game sound. I do fear that it lacks long term appeal though, because everything takes so long. The story scenes are long and drawn out (but most can be skipped), and the game takes forever to load.

Plenty of puzzles to solve along the way.

I faced a major issue in setting up the game too. When launched the first time, a message was posted that the game had to perform a one-time download. The download goes so slowly that I had to leave it all afternoon and evening (on Wi-fi), downloading at what must be an excruciatingly slow rate.

Everything comes together to make this feel less like a game, and more like a slightly interactive movie. You do spend a lot of time just watching and not playing. The original version of this movie tie-in was a 2D platform game, and I have to say that I found it far more engaging than this 3D upgrade.

The Adventures of Tintin HD is available in the Nokia Store for £3.00.

David Gilson, 12^th February 2012.

Key hardware features

• 111.3 x 53.8 x 14.1mm, 93g, 73cc
  
• Changeable back covers, three are included with each Nokia 500, and additional covers will be available as accessories
  
• 3.2 inch capacitive TFT touchscreen; 640x 360 pixels resolution (nHD)  
  
• 5 megapixel full focus (EDoF) camera (no LED flash); video capture at 640 x 480 (VGA and 15 frames per second) 
  
• Integrated GPS
  
• Compass (magnetometer), accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensors.
  
• 3.5 mm audio jack
  
• FM Radio with RDS
  
• microUSB (USB 2.0) for file transfers and charging (2mm charger also available)
  
• BL-4U (1100mAh) removeable battery
  
• Pentaband 3G, quad band GSM
  
• WiFi: WLAN IEEE802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.1
  
• Processor: ARM 11 at 1GHz, RAM: 256MB
  
• 2GB mass memory and microSD card slot (supports sizes up to 32GB)
  
• In box contents: Nokia 500, Nokia Battery BL-4U, Nokia Connectivity Cable CA-101D, Nokia Headset WH-102, Nokia High Efficiency Charger AC-15 and 2 additional battery covers.
  

More original specifications are available in our Nokia 500 launch story.

Nokia 500 hardware

With the headline takeaway being that this is Nokia's cheapest Symbian^3-onwards smartphone, at around £140 SIM-free in the UK, it's somewhat staggering to look at the specifications and match them up to Nokia's most expensive smartphones of 2008 and 2009. With digital compass, dual charging, capacitive touchscreen, pentaband and a 1GHz processor, it's still somewhat remarkable to find such goodies in something that's very firmly the bottom of Nokia's modern Symbian range.

Yet bottom of the range it ultimately is, in the context of 2012. The two dominating limitations in the Nokia 500 are its memory and its screen:

• By 'memory', I mean RAM, in this case. Although it starts with the same 256MB as the Nokia N8 (et al), because there's no GPU (i.e. a graphics chip, with its own RAM and capabilities), around 64MB of the Nokia 500's RAM is allocated to handling graphics duties (a unique situation in the modern Symbian world, thankfully), leaving the smartphone with just 66MB or so free RAM after boot-up. 
   
  To put it into context, this is less free RAM than many S60 3rd Edition phones (e.g. Nokia N82, N95 8GB, E90) had back in 2008. The end result, somewhat predictably, is that even moderate use of the phone (Web, Camera, Social, Store, and so on, all left running) sees the user slamming into RAM problems, occasional error messages and applications that you thought were still running getting shut down.
   
  Whether this will be a huge issue to the target market is another matter. It's fair to say that noone's going to be blown away by the 500's performance, but for many simple tasks it's up with most of the competition. Yes, as an AAS reader and power user, you're horrified by that statement, but then you're absolutely, 100% not the target audience for this phone. 
   
    
  RAM diagnostics within X-plore on the Nokia 500. 66MB free after booting, down to 7MB free with just four core applications open. Power users stay away!
   
• The screen's seemingly identical to the sidelit TFT 3.2" display on the Nokia X6 (which was Nokia's first capacitive display, you may remember?), meaning that it's not strikingly clear outdoors (no CBD layers, for example) and not strikingly colourful (no AMOLED here!) The screen is one of the most expensive components in a phone, mind you, so it's not surprising that compromises had to be made here, to get the cost down further. I would have liked to have seen CBD, but hey....
   
  The outer layer of the 500's screen is, sadly, plastic, albeit fairly tough, another economising measure (compared to the plain glass on the X6 and the Gorilla Glass on the N8, C6-01, etc.) This is something of a shame as the target market is not known for taking obsessive (geeky) care of their handsets, and the 500's display is liable to get scratched as easily as any other plastic device.
   
  A 3.2" display has always been a bit cramped for text entry using the qwerty keyboard in landscape mode on Symbian (as on the original 5800), it's still cramped here, but the text prediction alleviates this somewhat. In portrait mode, I just about managed to type reliably, but anyone with big hands and fingers will struggle. The option to use a T9-style 'alphanumeric' keypad is still there, and works rather better, in my opinion - and will hopefully be familiar to those coming to the 500 from a fairly dumb feature phone.

Beneath the screen are the call/menu/hangup buttons, mounted on a single strip of flexible black plastic, matching the screen glass, again in similar manner to the X6. It's pleasant in 2012 to have physical telephony buttons, though the fairly stuff 'feel' is a bit out of place for the central menu button, contrasting with the featherlight touch needed for the capacitive screen.

On the 500's top are microUSB data and charging, 3.5mm out and 2mm charging - so yes, dual charging options, with the 2mm mains adapter supplied in our review box. The overall profile of the Nokia 500 is somewhat unfashionably thick and rounded, but I liked it, as did others I showed it to - the profile shown here is a great fit for the average hand.

Down the right hand edge are a fairly solid volume up/down rocker and a keylock button. This latter is disappointing, since the whole point of a physical keylock switch (as used on most Nokia phones since the N96) is that the device can be unlocked and ready to go with one flick. Here, you have to press the button and then tap the 'Unlock' prompt on the screen - so you might as well have pressed any of the main three front buttons - the effect is identical. The only saving grace of this separate keylock control is that it provides a quick way to lock the device again, ready for putting back in a pocket.

Significantly, there's no camera shutter button, not even a cheap affair, possibly signalling a lessening of expectations for what the 5mp EDoF camera will produce (interestingly, later proven wrong, as we shall see).

The rear of the Nokia 500 is where the consumer fun begins, with three alternative coloured rear shells provided in every box (and five in some network variants, I'm told). Each rear shell also slides over the bottom of the phone, giving a great colour clue as to what's on the rear. Getting the covers off and on takes a little practice but is soon second nature.

The shells are plastic (of course), but are surprisingly robust and solid. Moreover there's a really grippy rubberised coating on each that makes the Nokia 500 almost impossible to drop. Very, very nicely done, Nokia.

The Nokia logo is tastefully embossed into each over in silver and there's an aperture for the camera and a drilled grille for the 500's mono speaker. Yes, the concept of switching phone colours is a little gimmicky, but it is fun and I can absolutely see the consumer appeal.

I made comparison to the Nokia X6 above - despite the latter's generally higher specifications (processor and software version aside), the two phones are surprisingly similar, here showing the 500 with blue cover in place (left) next to the blue/white X6 (right):

Nokia 500 Software

There's no power button on the 500, the hangup key (which lights in red when pressed) doubles this function and you're then into a standard Symbian Anna experience, complete with swipeable homescreens, split-screen qwerty keyboard (or keypad) where needed and a generally mature set of software. Nokia Belle is coming, apparently, though I can imagine that there are serious RAM optimisations having to be attempted - and this will take a few weeks or months...

Much of this will be very familiar to readers here, but the highlights for new Nokia 500 users, coming from feature phones, will be:

• Nokia Maps (a full world sat-nav in your pocket, etc - Maps 3.6 is included)
• Nokia Social (v1.3 is included, and its Facebook and Twitter capabilities will be fine for the target market, with the benefit of integration with the camera and Photos).
• Nokia Internet Radio (given prominence by being on the second home screen out of the box)
• Nokia Store ("hey, this Nokia has got an app store just like the iPhone's")

Heading for the web browser, as a power user might, is possibly fraught with performance problems, depending on the site being visited. Most other applications load quickly enough, though graphical effects (such as scrolling around in the Nokia Store) are jerkier than on the 500's more powerful sister devices, thanks to the lack of a GPU.

Familiar software all round, some of which is distinct overkill for the buyer of a £100 pay-as-you-go smartphone - or tremendous value, depending on which way you look at it! Of note is that there's a Nokia Store update as soon as you enter the client, followed by a number of updates to built-in third party applications.

Games in particular are also affected. I tried Mobile Darts (which ran fine) and Air Strike (which was noticeably jerkier than on my N8), and wanted to try Angry Birds, but it seems that this won't run at all without a GPU and (probably) with so little RAM. All the other heavyweight 'HD' games from the Symbian^3 scene are also incompatible with this budget smartphone. Although it's tempting to get a 500 for the kids because of the low cost, don't - their focus will be on gaming and they'll end up disappointed.

Where the Nokia 500 will find its niche is for those who want some of the characteristics of a smartphone (capacitive touchscreen, apps, connectivity) but aren't games or media-centric. Quite telling on the 500 is the prominent placing of a 'Chat' icon. This takes the user directly to the relevant section of the Nokia Store, where Nimbuzz, eBuddy, fMobi, IM for Nokia, WhatsApp and fring are all readily available (and all but one for free).

Media and camera

One thing a GPU is used for, of course, is hardware decoding of compressed video files - which is why the N8, E7 (et al) are all so excellent at playing back video, even up to 720p resolution at high bitrate - it's all handled in hardware. Take away the graphics chip and what do you get? You get a video experience that's very 2009.

Of my test video collection, almost all of them played to some degree - the codecs are there in Symbian Anna, after all. But anything at 720p resolution (or even greater than VGA) and with appropriate bitrate showed lots of artefacts, where the decoding was having to be done in software by the 1GHz main processor. Having said that, many videos were watchable and, again, I doubt the target market for the Nokia 500 is going to be sideloading 720p video clips like I was!

The other two common ways of experiencing video on phones (for normal users!) are via YouTube and via video captured on the phone itself. YouTube isn't a pleasant experience, as implemented here. Mind you, Nokia is stuck between a rock and a hard place in terms of support for this and other Google services - the old Symbian YouTube client is reliable but only uses low-res QVGA video streams, while the solution here - to link to the YouTube mobile site - produces ultimately better video quality but relies on the novice user somehow figuring out how it works (start a video playing, then double-tap to bring it full-screen). 

Typical video quality through the YouTube mobile site

Curious as to how far I could push the Nokia 500 hardware, I installed the excellent CuteTube and found video watching painless and trouble free. Fast moving sequences juddered a bit, but the 1GHz processor was up to the job of keeping most video material watchable. Maybe Nokia could license CuteTube, as a counterpoint to the official YouTube client in the rival low cost Android smartphones?

Frame grab, watching a higher quality stream (of Rafe's video review) through CuteTube...

Playback of video clips shot on the 500 is surprisingly good and clear, though the user will have to work out for themselves to tap the screen for each video, pick the appropriate icon and change the 4:3 aspect ratio to fill the 500's screen, if needed. Such (apparently high quality) material is somewhat illusory though, since the absolute video quality is fairly low, at VGA resolution and only 15 frames per second. Here's a very short clip:

But then again we're not really expecting top notch 720p video in a device of this class, so there's no real complaint from me.

The Nokia 500's camera is EDoF, also known as "full focus", meaning that everything (in both video and photo modes) from 40cm to the horizon is crisp, provided that there's enough light. Here's a selection of sample stills, the first three in weak winter sun. As usual, in each case, click an image to open it in a new window full-size, or to download:

For such an unashamedly budget smartphone, I was very impressed by the photos from the Nokia 500, they're far better than the results I got from the more expensive Nokia 700. Enlarge a couple of these and see if you agree with me. The second one above shows that reasonable close-ups can be achieved, provided you don't get too close.

Another beautiful EDoF photo in the sun, though download the original and zoom right in and you can see the artifacts, as you'd expect. In the right hand shot above, I show what happens if you get too close to a subject, here with a TV remote at about 20cm - the EDoF algorithms can't cope and you get a blurred subject.

All in all though, for an ultra-cheap smartphone, the Nokia 500's camera impressed. Yes, results deteriorate when you get to indoor, low light shots, not least because there's not even an LED flash, but then results disappoint here for just about any non-Xenon-flashed smartphone, so the 500's in good company.

Here's the Nokia 500's camera unmasked, along with a mysterious spacer where, presumably, there was once the possibility of an LED flash in the device's specification. On the left is the fairly large speaker grille. This pumps out a fair old volume, equivalent to one of the 5800/X6's speakers, with reasonable tone and good, crisp top end. Yet again keeping to the audio pseudo-rule that the cheaper the phone, the more likely it is to have a loud speaker - bizarre!

Also shown, in part, above is the BL-4U 1110mAh battery - this may not seem capacious by superphone standards, but with the use case of the Nokia 500, it provides stunning battery life. My review period for the 500 spanned a week and I only needed to charge the phone once. Impressive.

Head to head

It's interesting to compare the Nokia 500 with a competitor from another smartphone ecosystem. In this case, the closest match from the Android world, selling at the same price on pay-as-you-go and on contract, is the Samsung Galaxy Y. This smaller, ultra-budget entry in Samsung's all-conquering Galaxy range, looks good as it runs Android but is actually significantly outgunned by the Nokia 500:

• dual band 3G (the 500 is pentaband)
• display is 3", 240 by 320 pixels, (the 500 is 3.2" and 360 by 640 pixels)
• no mass memory (2GB on the 500m plus the same expansion capability)
• 2mp camera, QVGA resolution video capture, 15fps (the 500 is 5 megapixels, VGA video capture)
• 830MHz processor (1GHz on the 500, though we all know that processor speeds rarely tell the full story)

So, one thing I'd say to the Nokia 500 nay-sayers is: find me a competing smartphone of similar specification at similar price....

Wrap up

On the one hand, we have here a fully fledged Symbian Anna smartphone with specifications that match what was top of the range just a few years ago, that is robust and feels great in the hand - all for £100 or so on pay-as-you-go, or free on the smallest phone contracts. Just stunning, if you think about it that way. And it has a surprising amount to recommend it to a feature phone user who's upgrading. After all, they won't be expecting being able to multitask a dozen applications or a super-slick iPhone experience - the buyer knew what was available for four or five times the cost and the Nokia 500 was largely a cost-based decision.

This is All About Symbian though, and although we cover the whole ecosystem, there's a natural leaning in our readership to explore the best, fastest and most gadget-packed devices available. These things the Nokia 500 isn't. As a self-confessed power user, the low RAM, the lack of a GPU, the plastic screen and the low-spec video capture are all showstoppers. Turn the 500 over to my wife though and "this is nice, it fits really well in my hand" - for her needs the Nokia 500 is arguably just about the perfect device, won't cost a lot and is eminently replaceable if/when it gets lost or damaged. 

The tech media has dismissed Symbian smartphones (utterly wrongly) for three years as 'no better than feature phones', and in the Nokia 500 they might have a point. However, I'd argue that it sits squarely at the intersection between the two markets and, as such, perhaps has a niche all of its own.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 12th February 2012

This podcast was recorded on Thursday 9th February 2012.

In this podcast we cover:       

• Nokia 500 initial thoughts
    
• Nokia Belle update for first generation Symbian^3 devices
    
• Nokia Belle initial observations and problems (see also official FAQ)
    
• Nokia Belle highlights  

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

(It should be noted that in writing about these workarounds, I'm in no way excusing the existence of the issues in the first place. Note also that the issues I faced on my N8 may be personal and may not reflect what you're seeing on your device!)

Email

I had two problems with Email under Belle. Firstly, aside from the alert sound, there's no visual way of seeing if you have any new email. Adding an alert to the lock screen, status bar or notifications pane surely has to be of the utmost importance to the Symbian development team. Given the absence of this, it's therefore necessary to have the Email widget front and centre on your first homescreen, so that at least new messages will be listed here.

Secondly, and following on from the first point, Email under Belle doesn't, on the default settings, seem to update properly. I was using the standard settings for 'Gmail' and the mailbox seemed forever stuck unless I went in manually and refreshed it. Going into Email's Settings(/Auto-retrieval), I saw that 'Retrieval frequency' was set to 'Soonest'. As I understand it, this means that Email tries to stay connected to the mail server using IMAP all the time and can therefore get emails 'pushed' over. It doesn't work though - at least, not for me. Maybe the problem's with Google's implementation of IMAP?

The workaround for me was to explicitly set a time schedule. Changing the setting to 'Every 15 minutes' (the smallest number in that list) meant that every quarter hour, Email went off and remade the connection to the mail server, refreshing its contents. This now works fine and I the email widget on my homescreen is now up to date - at least, to the nearest fifteen minutes. Which is good enough for me.

Yes, there are still not visual notifications if I'm not on the homescreen, but with the auto-retrieval going on in the background, I do still now get the audio 'dings' reliably when email is available.

Back and Menu taps missed

[updated, jury's still out on ultimate culprit!]

Possibly the biggest issue I had with Symbian Belle on my N8 after updating was that the UI became erratic. I'd tap several times on the 'back' icon and nothing would happen. Or I'd tap on the 'app menu' icon from the homescreen and, again, nothing. I put it down initially to lots of processes running in the background and gave it a day to shake down. If anything, the erratic responses to these icons became worse though and so I started to think.

"Surely", I reasoned, "if this was really a bug in Belle, something so huge and debilitating would have been picked up in the testing over the last six months? Therefore, most people can't be seeing it, which means it's not there. So why was I having the issue?".

The obvious factor that was different was that I let Belle update 'in place', i.e. with Nokia Suite restoring my user settings and with my mass memory intact, complete with a year's detritus. Time to take one for the team. Step 1 in the diagnostic was to try *#7370#-ing the N8 and start with fresh OS settings and data. Ten minutes later, even setting up the basic applications I needed, I noticed the 'Back' icon problem was still present. Step 2 was to (take a deep breath and) wipe the mass memory. From 'Files',  I reformatted the disk (long press the disk name). And then carried on setting things up - and.... the 'Back' problem seemed to be gone.

Having to completely wipe and then rebuild your smartphone sounds more drastic than it actually is, with user data coming in via your usual sync solution and with apps coming in from the Nokia Store. Having then built up my mass memory and got back to my usual load of installed applications and running services (Mail, etc), I'm now starting to see some loss of 'Back' taps when something's happening in the background - Email is a prime culprit, I think - perhaps part of the problem is simply processor loading? Your comments and experiences welcome here - I need more data points! My guess is that Nokia/Accenture still have some touch event optimisation to do here. Watch out for performance patches, etc. in the future!

Over-size apps list

I've gone through Belle optimisation before, but it's worth stating that I've ended up making two folders in the applications list: 'Rarely used' and 'Games'. I then moved roughly 20 icons into 'Rarely used' (by tapping and holding each) and then moved my dozen or so games into their own folder too. The end result is that my main apps screen is now very quick to scroll through, to find the app I need.

Social widget error

One thing I noticed when I installed Nokia's 'Social Networking Client' (v1.5) update from the Nokia Store, immediately after the Belle update, was that when it came to 'installing the Social widget', I got an error message. It flashed up briefly and then was gone. And no Social widget, indeed. Being (normally, though in this case I'm taking 'one for the team') something of a Gravity fan, I didn't let this bother me, but the very existence of the error should have alerted me. Having had the UI issues above and having done a full wipe of C: and E:, I found that Social 1.5 installed completely cleanly, including its widget. So take this as another vote for a complete wipe after the Belle update if you hit issues!

One huge note: After installation, Social 1.5 does all sorts of contact entry linking and updating behind the scenes. Allow a good 15 minutes for this. You can still use the phone, but bear in mind that some operations may be slower than usual. All seemed OK in the end, and the Social widget works just fine, as you'll see below.

Homescreens

Tempting though it is to set up a full six homescreens, packed with widgets, I'm a firm believer in keeping things simple and clean. I've ended up with two homescreens under Belle, shown for your interest above. I tried, I really did, to keep it to just the one screen, but in the end the need to have my favourite contacts readily available meant that I'd already overflowed to screen number two. So that became my 'social' screen, as you can see. Comments welcome if you have a different approach!

Gallery share 'Feature not supported'

I can only think that sharing via Nokia Social worked fine with Belle while the former was at v1.3, but that the significant rewrite for Nokia Social for v1.4 and v1.5 in the last couple of months has seen something slip out of line, because trying to share photos straight from Gallery when Nokia Social 1.5 is loaded produces the above error. No doubt either a new version of Social or a patch to Gallery will fix the issue in time, but for now it's easy enough to tap on the camera icon in the Nokia Social widget or in any of its status update screens and pick 'Photo from Gallery'.

Latest Store

Many people were puzzled when, after launching the Store client after the Belle update, to see that an update was more or less forced immediately, to a new Store client version. This again reflects that Belle was more or less finalised at the end of last year, while the last two months has seen quite a few new versions of Store, written in QML, and while it's not compulsory to update to this, it does offer a faster experience. In fact, there's a new version out today, as I write this, claiming bug fixes and better 'alignment with the Nokia Store back end'. Go grab it and move on, like I did!

Flash videos not playing

Actually, a slight clarification: most of my .flv videos played just fine, those grabbed from YouTube (shhhh) back in 2010 at 240p (i.e. 240 pixel vertical resolution, QVGA etc). But those downloaded more recently at 360p (which you would have thought perfect for the Symbian nHD screen resolution) grind to a halt immediately. I'm sure that Nokia and Adobe can sort out a fix, but in the meantime, use MP4 if possible for downloading videos - there are a wealth of utilities to grab in this format these days.

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I do hope some of this has helped you - do please comment away to share how you've overcome some of the issues, differences and caveats in Nokia Belle....

Steve Litchfield, AAS, 10 Feb 2012