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...

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.

 

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):

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.

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?

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.

The PureView Club was my original source for the links, so I'll quote from his piece here:

It looks like the first shots of the ”Nokia EOS” are now leaked through a Chinese website, WPDang. There’s not much else I can do but to copy and the shots that appear to have been made somewhere down the assembly line.

And I’ll advise you to check the link and translate the Chinese into English – or whatever language you prefer. You will see shots of what looks like to be the Nokia EOS alone and next to a grey Nokia Lumia 920. You’ll see there is a lot of space for the sensor...

...Another shot surfaces! And i have to admit this is getting me really excited! Remarkable it says XX MP, where we would expect 41, right? And it looks like @evleaks has a new competitor in@ViziLeaks… I feel quite sure Nokia is disgusted by leaks like these. Still don’t get it why there is XX on the lens: could this be a planned leak?

The photos do look authentic and the last, crisp shot from a different source matches up perfectly. It's still not clear whether the camera unit will be identical to that in the Nokia 808 PureView, but it's likely to be comparable. The 'XX' labelling for the camera is standard practice for Nokia in its prototype, both for model numbers/names and camera specifications - I've owned several Nokia NXX devices, for example(!)

As expected, and just as on the 808 PureView (running Symbian), there's a Xenon flash and LED auto-focus assist and video light. So, in a sense, no real surprises, though it's good to see the leaks confirming the suspicions that Rafe and I have had for six months.

The size of the 'hump' on the back of the (alleged) EOS looks about the same size as that on the 808 PureView. Yes, it sticks out, but then it reminds you that the device you're holding is special, every single time you pick it up. The 808 feels great in the hand and I'm sure this will too.

Update: GSMArena has more photos, i.e. from a third source, adding extra authenticity to the design/existence.

From the article:

Requirements

• A wished result, an idea, a scene, a specific landscape

It can be anything : the sky, a city view, a park, your garden, your apartment view, …

• Moving subjects and/or objects in the scene

Something HAS TO move in your scene. Otherwise, your timelapse won’t have any interest. The point is to see the evolution of a subject or object. A uniform gray sky, for instance, won’t offer a great animation because we won’t see anything moving.

• Tripod or a way to place the device

The best way is of course using a tripod but one doesn’t always have one. You can place your device on something or between something to set it. Just make sure that it won’t move at all.

• A way to secure the device

You don’t want your device to fall on the ground because of the wind or a pet (my cats love to snoop around when there’s something unusual). What I do is attach the device with a twine to what I find around the capture spot, even when I use a tripod.

• A power adapter

I can’t guarantee in any situation that the device battery will not drain so be sure to have a power adapter or charger with you : electrical outlet if you’re near a house (with extension cord if necessary), the Nokia DC-16 USB charger, …

• Time (interval and number of pictures)

To have a great animation, you’ll need hundreds of shots ! It really depends on how much real time you want to capture and how much free time you have because it can take hours. For instance, I tend to always choose a 5 seconds interval and 1000 pictures. It of course will take 5000 seconds (around 1h23) to shot the 1000 pictures. Thus, you can so start it and go doing whatever you want. You have time to work, watch a movie, several episodes of a series, read, …

You can read the whole piece here. Olivier includes loads of timelapse examples (I've embedded one below), each well chosen to illustrate various points, and I can't recommend this tutorial enough.

Great stuff. I'm something of an impatient guy and the incredible care and patience needed to set up and create good time lapse videos has usually eluded me, so I'll leave you in Olivier's capable hands.

All of the above refers to the Nokia 808 PureView, making full use of the device's detailed image controls, plus its oversampling and image quality. It's possible to create time lapse images on other camera-toting smartphones, of course, but you'll usually need a third party camera application and you may have to accept inferior photo quality.

Here's Biorhythms Pro in action:

The developer claims that this is the oldest biorhythm calculator on Symbian and he could well be right - there are certainly others in the Nokia Store; (right) setting up a birth date, back in the mists of time....

A neat presentation of the calculated biorhythms, swiping the bottom graph along lets you predict levels on any specific date. Looks like June 19th is a day for me to spend in bed(!)

The 'Interpretation' function provides a plain English expansion of the basic calculations; (right) there's a detailed Help pane, with the background 'theory' of biorhythms and more explanation of what the app attempts to do.

Whether or not you put any faith at all in biorhythms, you can't help but give this app the nod for being nicely presented. And all AMOLED-friendly, too. You can buy the app for £1.50 here in the Nokia Store.

(Being built on Qt, Biorhythms Pro is also available for the Meego-powered Nokia N9, by the way.)

It's true, Symbian hasn't been in my twice-yearly Phones Show 'top 5' recommendations for a year now, but what I recommend to the 'great unwashed' isn't necessarily an accurate reflection of my innermost thoughts in terms of my own smartphone use. My SIM card bounces between over twenty smartphones each year, yet it keeps coming back to the Nokia 808 PureView (and, occasionally, the E6), at which point I have enormous fun trying to analyse my own motives for doing so.

So, almost off the top of my head, here are ten reasons 'Why Symbian?' and 'Why the 808?', in June 2013:

1. As featured last week, the always on AMOLED clock and Nokia Sleeping Screen are insanely useful and fun - and very rarely matched in the wider smartphone world, even with AMOLED screens now quite common. I can only surmise that it's Symbian's efficiency as an OS that makes this viable day to day.

2. Yes, this is a personal pick, but the support for an FM transmitter is a real boon for me. Whether in my own car or someone else's, being able to take control of the audio and broadcast music or podcasts, with no prior set-up or hardware needed, is just supremely cool. Of course, in a dense urban environment the system falls flat because of interference from local stations as you drive around, but for long motorway trips the system is invaluable.

3. Battery life is superior. Cynics will say that Symbian handsets can't do web browsing very well or run many 2013 cloud services and as a result won't be used as much as, say, Android devices, so the battery is bound to last longer, but there's more to it than this. I've used every review device with more or less the same real world usage pattern and I've yet to experience a regular Android devices that lasts much more than one day on a charge. Whereas my Nokia 808 regularly does me for two days at a time. It seems that the 'standby' battery drain on Symbian is relatively low - in comparison, you can almost watch the battery meter drop on an Android handset in real time, even when not actually using it... 

4. Expandability. I love that, when I ran out of storage on my 16GB microSD card in my 808, I just had to buy a (£20) 32GB card and I was back in business, but with twice the card space. And I love that, when I forget to charge my phone, I can simply pop in another cell, fully charged, from my 'emergency' pocket. And that when the main BV-4D is worn out, I can use any number of new replacements. There are even alternatives with double the capacity and a replacement back.

5. The 808's camera and Xenon flash. I've tried to live with the Galaxy S4, Lumia 920 and Blackberry Q10 recently, all having very decent cameras in bright light, but nothing (apart from its predecessors!) gets close to the 808's low light performance for snapping people/kids. The combination of that Xenon flash with the PureView sensor and lossless zoom is simply sumptuous. And I have the photos to prove it, even if their personal nature means I can't share them with the world.

6. Full multitasking. Yes, Android pretends to have full multitasking, but why is it that, half the time I go back to apps which were running only an hour ago, they take a few seconds to reload? In contrast, the multitasking on Symbian is so complete that I've lost count of the number of times I've left an app running by accident in the background, started a couple of weeks ago, discovering it in the multitasking carousel and tapping on it, to find it comes up instantly and is still in the exact same screen/state as when I last used it. iOS and Windows Phone try to mimic this sort of multitasking with a system of freezing apps and reawakening them later, but Symbian still rules here, and by some way.

7. Audio control. Once you've got used to a full set of control buttons on your headphone lead, it's very hard to go back to a single button kludge. Pausing, fast forwarding, skipping tracks, changing volume, answering calls, and more, all in a small pod clipped to your lapel, and no need to keep taking your smartphone out of your pocket. That's what I call control, and it's done best on Symbian. Even if your smartphone didn't come with the full control headphones, they're an easy buy on Amazon etc. Or raid the box for an older Nseries device?

8. The Nokia 808 is still getting updates, so it's not officially 'dead' yet. Ditto devices like the N8 and E7. Nokia has promised support, in terms of patches, online support and hardware repairability until at least 2016, so I feel like there's a year or two of decent life left in the platform yet.

9. High quality music output and a decent speaker. Great audio through headphones isn't just limited to Symbian these days, but I've never found a device that can match the output from the N8 or 808. And it's only recently, with the launch of the HTC One, that we have a competing device with superior sound from its external speakers. For music, for podcast listening and Internet radio, I use my phone's headphone output and its speaker a lot, and the N8 and 808 sit very near the top of the heap here.

10. This is going to sound rather perverse, but I relish the challenge of keeping everything working in an age which is becoming increasingly unfriendly to Symbian. If everything just worked all the time, my smartphone would be as exciting as my TV, i.e. not at all. Is it just me that finds a certain satisfaction about keeping an 'old' OS ticking along smoothly, in much the same way as an enthusiast would lavish love and attention on a classic car?

____

Does all this mean that I intend to stay with the Nokia 808 and Symbian forever? Of course not, I'm not blind to the number of options and services which are right on their limit and which may become unavailable to Symbian at some point. I'm not blind to the incredible frustrations of a Nokia Store which is becoming increasingly flaky and a 'Smart Installer' that's slow and unreliable. But, at June 2013, stop me in the street (as @ratkat did last weekend) and, more often than not, my SIM will be in the Nokia 808 PureView. Yes, nHD screen and fifteen year old OS and all!

Even writing that feels a bit odd. Was the Nokia E6 really announced two years ago? Of course, all our Symbian devices have had so many firmware updates since then and it's almost like getting a new phone when each hits, so it's perhaps not so surprising after all.

The Q10 is, of course, brand spanking new, and part of Blackberry's (ne RIM's) renaissance with OS 10. Watch out for a full review of the devices in Phones Show 202.

As usual, I've approached the detailed head to head comparison by breaking each device's attributes and functionality down and, as usual, I've tinted with green the cells in each row that indicate an obvious 'winner' for that attribute, for purely academic interest, and if appropriate. Some rows also have no clear winner, as you will hopefully agree.

Adding up the green 'wins' gives a score of 8-3 to the Blackberry Q10 - and I'd remind you that this is All About Symbian, which means I'm something of an E6 fan, making the scoreline all the more shocking. In the E6's defense, the difference between the two handsets essentially comes down to the two years of smartphone development between them. The industry moves at such a pace now that two years can double or quadruple performance in all areas. Plus it has to be acknowledged that the Q10 is arguably almost three times the price (now).

What's needed, of course, from the E6's (and Symbian's) point of view, would be something similar on this platform with the same form factor and internals. That we'll never see get the chance to see this is down to Nokia's post-February 2011 stated direction - and I can't see there being a keyboarded Windows Phone any time soon.

Would the Blackberry Q10 make a good upgrade for an E6 owner, perhaps worrying over Symbian's future? I've only been playing with the Q10 for a short while, but I'd have to go with 'yes'. It's the single best implementation of the QWERTY candybar form factor yet, has a big removeable battery, a very respectable camera, a terrific speaker and internals which hold up well in 2013.

Comments welcome if you've tried both devices too!

From Andrew's article (which is lengthy, you may wish to grab a coffee or similar!):

Last year Nokia released to the world a mobile phone that is still unique. It's a smartphone with a 41-megapixel camera sensor, scooping up more detail than some professional DSLRs: it's the PureView 808.

When I say "released", that’s a little misleading. This showpiece won the Best New Phone gong at last year’s Mobile World Congress, but it was hard to buy. Since the phone ran Symbian OS, it was considered toxic by carriers, and it was not distributed in the UK.

So for the past year the 808 has had a crepuscular presence. It’s lived on, in a spooky afterlife: Nokia wanted you to know about it, and prominently placed the thing on the front page of its main website – but it did not want you to actually buy it. Nokia had already transferred some 3,000 Symbian engineers to Accenture, and last February cancelled all Symbian devices on its phone road map bar the 808.

Yet, something unexpected has happened. The 808 as been quietly receiving lots of loving care and attention. Regular updates and tweaks have continued from the Other Side, including a major overhaul of the OS late last year. Every update is expected to be the last. But still they keep coming, and if anything, the pace is accelerating.

Over the past few weeks I’ve attempted to live with a PureView 808. And it’s been an interesting and surprising experience. This is the first Symbian phone I’ve used regularly in four years and it isn’t quite how I remembered Symbian.

Which strikes a chord with me, I suspect that a great many journalists had written Symbian off after trying the Nokia 5800 and then N97. The 808 (and 701 and 700, to be fair) with Belle Feature Pack 2, offers a dramatically different experience in terms of speed and slickness.

Andrew elaborates further:

The old warhorse, updated

Many of the old complaints against Symbian, such as its reliance on an archaic menu-driven interface, are no longer valid. The Belle update, when it finally and belatedly emerged last year, removed many of these gripes. The 808 was equipped with a decent processor and memory – rather than the constrained resources and cheap CPUs that were depressing features of many late-period Symbian devices.

The basics of communicating, and general housekeeping, are now handled very slickly. Calling and texting is as good, or better, than any of the more modern phone interfaces - although previewing an SMS requires a third-party app.

One single addition alone - instant Spotlight-style search available from the home screen - goes a huge way to making the device very usable. Finding the settings in Symbian had become a nightmare, but now finding a contact or a setting is fairly instant.

Andrew then goes into detail on the 808's imaging, plus the back history of the OS, before starting to conclude with his thoughts on the 808 in every day use:

The main draw has to be the call quality and battery life, which comfortably lasts into a second day. Just as designed, this is a deterministic system with no surprises. Overnight it will drain one or two per cent of the battery. Even with push email switched on I get well into a second day of use; if I throttle back email I often get a third day – all on a now modest 1350mAh battery. The phone will keep dozens of applications open at any one time, and if they need to run in the background – for example, syncing with Evernote - they’ll do so without draining the battery.

The phone stack is a very well debugged – as it should be after a decade of running 3G. And it’s now bang up to date with HD voice. As a bonus, the version of Skype is probably the most parsimonious out there, in terms of power consumption.

He summarises the device like this, putting it into context and very much valuing the 'converged' aspect of the 808:

I found myself using the 808 at weekends and in ‘downtime’ when I don’t need to check email or social media feeds, and was positively surprised by the ease of use.

So what’s the value proposition for the 808? Good, dedicated cameras can be found for under £200, and good, modern phones for under £99. You’ll pay a little more for a new 808 or less if you take a risk on eBay. You have to really value not carrying two devices around, and charging two at night, and having the integrated communications available (Facebook, Flickr, MMS, email). But as the cliché goes, the best camera in the world is the one at your fingertips – and I did take terrific pictures I wouldn’t have otherwise taken – because I simply wouldn’t have had a dedicated camera with me, merely an ordinary smartphone. The PureView is no ordinary smartphone.

If this whets the appetite for the original PureView tech coming to a modern phone, then hopefully we don’t have too long to wait. This discussion of camera shortcomings in Windows Phone 8 show how far ahead the 808 is today.

Alas, I found the 808 couldn’t hack it for me as the sole "work phone", largely because of the slow browsing and lack of calendar sync. But then I have a work BlackBerry and can call on a tablet for the fancy stuff. The market looks very different now to 2007 when the iPhone was launched, and affordable small tablets do this "fancy stuff" (email, browsing, social media) better than a phone – that could be a justification alone for choosing a device that specialises in one or two things, and is a very dependable everyday companion.

Apart from a few small items of errata, a very decent summary of the Nokia 808 PureView in today's world. It's clear that web browsing performance, email restrictions (only one Mail for Exchange mailbox) and cloud syncing generally are something of a weak point and, one day, may force even die hard Symbian users off the platform. But, as Andrew proves to himself, that day is not - quite - upon us yet. And in the meantime, there's a lot of media to capture on the 808, 'the smartphone that refuses to die'....

You can read the whole Nokia 808 piece here.

This podcast was recorded on Monday 27th May 2013.

Topics covered in this podcast include:

• Inspiration: Homescreen galleries across the AAS community!
    
• Nokia E6 homescreens, across the community
    
• Symbian Belle platform variants all get Email, Calendar and Music updates
    
• Nokia announces entry level Asha 501 "smartphone"
     
• Smartphone camera super-test: Nokia 808 vs Samsung GS4 vs Lumia 920
    
• Making jaws drop with the Nokia 808: Anatomy of a smartphone photo (take 3)
    
• EOS, the mysterious Nokia camera flagship that's yet to come?
    
• AAWP Insight #64: Eurovision, Xbox, and more
    
• Facebook client extraordinaire fMobi fixes login issues, available again
        

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

The idea, first seen on the Nokia N86, running S60 3rd Edition FP2, in 2009, was that since AMOLED screens light up by virtue of their pixels 'glowing' for themselves (i.e. and not requiring a battery-draining backlight plane), and given an OS that's supremely good at power management, why not run a lightweight task permanently that drives just a few pixels on the screen to display the time and date? The battery hit turned out to be quite small, of the order of a couple of percent, and the benefits of always displaying the time are obvious.

Now, the N86's always on clock just had a small font and basic information, but the idea got developed for the next generation of AMOLED-screened Symbian phones, the 2010 Nokia N8, C7, C6-01 and E7, and persisted into the 2012 Nokia 808, shown in the photos below. At first, the font was just made bigger, so that even those with poor eyesight (and, for example, in the middle of the night with bleary eyes) could see the time without difficulty. 

Nokia's engineers went one step further though and, in a sequence of events that surely had its origins in something similar to the infamous Google '20% time' policy, came up with 'Sleeping Screen', offered initially through Nokia Beta Labs and then pushed to all phones through the Nokia Store since 2011. The idea here was to take on a few more 'always on' pixels, to display more creative and attractive clocks, plus pretty graphics to.... well.... look pretty. And make you smile every time you look at your phone.

Here are a few examples of the sort of thing thrown up, here prettily modelled by my Nokia 808:

Aww.... Sleeping Screen includes various modes, one of which cycles between wildlife scenes. And, thanks to AMOLED's efficiency, this pixel picture consumes very little power, so one of the images, along with the time, is shown permanently:

The always-on display is used intelligently, too, here showing a new text message that has come in... (The white notifications, bottom right, aren't part of Sleeping Screen, they're added by the Gravity app I have installed)

...and at night (you can specify the hours), the display automatically changes to something even simpler and in an eye-friendly red (my late evening shot here turned to orange by the photo being taken on the night-vision-obsessed Lumia 920!)

An always-on clock is utterly addictive. Even if you discount the Sleeping Screen cute graphics, just having the time on the screen at all times, with no need to press a button or tap a screen, is insanely useful many times a day. And especially at night, with your phone doubling as a rather good bedside clock. 

You'll notice that the examples above were modelled on a Symbian smartphone, but the basic functionality isn't limited to this OS. Nokia also put an always-on clock into its Meego smartphone, the N9, along with extra functionality, showing notification icons for Twitter, Facebook and other built-in services:

The only real requirement, apart from a fairly power efficient operating system, for always-on display is the use of an AMOLED screen. Making it fascinating to note that Nokia's latest two Windows Phone flagships, the Lumia 928 and 925, both use AMOLED displays. Rumours have it that (along with 'double-tap-to-wake', something else introduced in the Nokia N9), an always-on clock is also coming to AMOLED-screened Windows Phones in the upcoming Nokia 'Amber' firmware update, i.e. including the Lumia 820 as well. 

Note that this is a Nokia update, i.e. not from Microsoft, though it will need core OS support to work at all, specifically the Windows Phone GDR2 update coming in summer 2013. At which point I'd like to request Nokia's software team look at implementing not only a bare bones clock, but also either or both of the fun graphics from Sleeping Screen on Symbian or/and the extra notifications from the always-on clock in Meego and the N9.

It's somewhat telling (new OS from a third party, etc.) that it's taken this long to get one of Nokia's core UI ambitions into Windows Phone, but let's hope it's done well and done right. Staring at my Lumia's blank screen for hour after hour does rather pale compared to my N9 pulsing with time and notifications and my 808 regaling me with landmarks, wildlife and more...

Comments welcome. Have you installed Sleeping Screen in the past on your Symbian device(s)? How badly are you wanting an always-on clock on Windows Phone? And how far do you think Nokia can go on Windows Phone to match its previous efforts on Symbian and Meego?

From their page, which aggregates ratings from a number of stills and video tests:

Achieving a DxOMark score of 75 overall puts the rear-facing camera module of the Samsung Galaxy S4 comfortably ahead of the pack. That’s no mean feat as the bunch  includes the handset maker’s own Galaxy Note II and S III as well as Apple’s iPhone 4s and latest iPhone 5, all achieving a very respectable 72 in our DxOMark scores.

However, it can’t quite topple the 41-Mpix Nokia 808 PureView. Sitting in the top position in our ratings that model achieved a DxOMark score of 77 points. While that model uses a larger sensor with much higher pixel count to achieve its excellent low-light scores, the Samsung Galaxy S4 can’t match that with noise reduction only.

In bright light, it’s a different story. The S4 makes good use of its fast efficient AF and robust and reliable auto-exposure systems to maximize image detail from the 13-Mpix sensor and deliver images with fully saturated color.

You can read the full report here.

From my own conclusions after the seven-scene test:

It's very impressive what Samsung has eked out of the tiny 1/3.2" sensor in the Galaxy S4 and shows what modern BSI tech and superlative image processing algorithms can do...

Of course, saying the Galaxy S4 has as good a camera as the Nokia 808 PureView is a little misleading. Ultimately, the latter is more flexible and powerful, especially in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing with the Creative settings, but the point is that casual, every day users will probably find that the Galaxy S4 exceeds their expectations in terms of imaging at every turn*.

It's good to have another respected body backing me up here, saying that the S4 is impressive, even if, overall, the 808 does still retain its champion status. The Nokia 808 is, ultimately, much more flexible and - phew - physics (1/1.2" sensor and Xenon flash) still trumps software algorithms. Unless you count the 808's PureView processing as the latter in which case we'll end up going round in circles here....(!)

Of course, with the Nokia Lumia 928 now out and the EOS rumoured for the Autumn, both with Xenon flash, large apertures and advanced processing, I'll be interested to see where these end up on the DxOMark scale!

(via PureView Club)

One initial premise is that many of us have built up a healthy number of interesting RSS feeds in Google Reader and, ideally, there would be a way to take this set of feeds to another client or system. Actually getting feeds from Google Reader is easy, with 'Google Take out' providing a .XML file of URLs and settings. This can then be put on any device, converted to various other formats (including .OPML) or even uploaded to a cloud service, as needed.

The problem on Symbian is that there isn't a single client application which can cope. There are 'RSS readers', of course. NaReeder is the slickest, but has no import facility, so you'd have to sit there pasting in feed URLs for hours. Horus is the prettiest but is incredibly RAM intensive and was perennially crashing, even on the limited set of seven feeds I signed up to. qooRSS offered to import my OPML file, put the feed addresses up on screen and then went into a deep sulk, presumably because it couldn't cope with the number of feeds I had (around 200, not too excessive, I think).

naReeder comes populated with a number of world and tech favourites, plus a swish swipe interface, but there's no import facility and any new feeds have to be manually researched and/or named and URL-pasted in.

Horus doing its best, but there's no direct import, so adding feeds is a manual process, gathering stories is slow and the graphical rendering quickly leads to RAM issues.

qooRSS about to import my Google Reader takeout file - the feeds come in OK, but (presumably due to RAM issues within Qt) only the first handful here ever appear fleshed out and updated. So close though - maybe an app update can improve things?

Web itself has a 'Feeds' module, and happily imports my OPML file, but there's no concept of curating new feed items other than by adding every feed's widget to your homescreens and then manually scanning the headlines by eye. Workable for a handful of RSS feeds, but presentation is lack lustre and there's also no way to restrict connection to just Wi-fi (other than turning mobile data off altogether). In short, for a real world set of feeds, Web is a bit of a pain.

Having imported my OPML into Web/Feeds, you have to go into each feed manually and enable automatic updating. And even then there's no way to get an overview of what's new, other than by eye from a mass of individual widgets like this one....

Going into Feeds in the browser again otherwise forces you to drill down manually to see what each feed 'contains', and when you get there the presentation is barebones, incomplete and uninspiring....

Which meant thinking laterally. Google Reader, of course, is essentially a cloud service, liasing with the web sites and their feeds and then presenting you with a summary of what's new. So perhaps it's best to leave RSS gathering to the cloud still, i.e. find a replacement for Google Reader.

Feedly is one high profile service, but on mobile revolves around iOS and Android, which set me looking further afield, finding 'The Old Reader'. As the name implies, it's based on the classic Google Reader function and look and feel, even using the same keyboard shortcuts in a desktop browser. You can sign in using Google details and your Reader subscriptions are then a one-click import. As I didn't yet trust the service, I opted to log in with Facebook (I save this for all miscellaneous cloud services) and import my .XML feed file directly - the import process takes around thirty minutes on their server, so I then went and made a cup of tea...

Importantly, The Old Reader also has a first class mobile-friendly version. It's a little Javascript-heavy and so isn't lightning fast in Opera Mobile or Web, but happily the magic of Opera Mini (and server-side optimisation) brings The Old Reader to Symbian in a surprisingly sprightly form.

Opening up The Old Reader in Symbian Web and using Facebook to sign in (it seemed quicker, though several other methods are available)...

The Old Reader flies in Opera Mini though, helped by all the server side compression, no doubt. Tap on 'All items' and you then have a fast scrolling and perfectly optimised page of all new feed items in full and in strict 'newest first' order....

Reading through my feed item timeline, tap on a headline and you get the full benefit of Opera Mini's terrific content compression to load up the full story (i.e. all the text and images which weren't already in the RSS feed - different sites have different policies as to how much they 'give away for free'!)....

As usual, you can get Opera Mini for free by downloading it in Symbian Web at m.opera.com.

I'm sure there are other cloud RSS aggregators that work well on Symbian, so I'd love some feedback here. What have you found so far? And did I miss a native Symbian that works better than the ones I name checked?

Unlike previous seagull photos, Martin was snapping the birds in murky weather and with evening approaching fast. Happily he had the Nokia 808 PureView as his smartphone, plus the wits about him to think about what he wanted to capture.

With the birds flying fast, framing them was going to be a problem, so he opted for full 38MP Creative mode, so relying on a little judicious cropping later on. He also wanted to try and freeze their flight, so even though the seagulls were several metres away he turned the 808's big Xenon flash on.

Here's the overall 38MP photo/scene, downsized for this web page:

And here's the crop he's shared with the world over on his Flickr page:

But let's look closer at the detail captured by the Nokia 808 (and its Xenon flash). Let's crop in again and be prepared to have your mind blown:

Look at the tag. "J3840" on the gull's leg, clear as day.

Considering the distance away, the light and the gull's motion, it's fair to say that no other phone camera on earth could have got remotely close to this. And I'd bet against most standalone compact cameras failing, too.

Martin himself notes, of this shot:

At first I tried with Hyperfocal mode, with the Sports Scene, and the other recommended options for shooting moving objects, but they didn't do quite right.
 
But in Creative mode at full resolution, with the flash turned on and using the camera button for focus, it worked much better.

As a bonus, he also captured this image with the 808, should you want a little more seagull action(!):

Thanks, Martin, great images!

The URL to visit (and bookmark/favourite) on your smartphone is plus.google.com - easy to remember, too.

Here's a walkthrough of the new layout in Symbian's default web browser:

Google+ on Symbian? Piece of cake! The basics of circles, posts and notifications work largely as advertised - it's probable that there will still be some tweaking as time goes on - some functions seem to reload code unnecessarily.

As usual, you can browse away, with full width post images, tapping anywhere in a post to bring it up in its own page; (right) commenting on a post...

Browsing my photo galleries...

... and bringing a photo up full-width; (right) switching between Google+ sections - and yes, this too could use more work by Google!

Obviously, some of the slicker aspects of Google+ can't be represented using just a web browser - there's no auto-uploading of all your photos, plus notifications remain as red flags in the page rather than appearing in your smartphone interface.

The only downside of the new design is the rendering speed of Web on most Symbian devices, leading to four or five second delays while everything downloads and gets displayed. As with other browsing conundrums on Symbian, the answer is to use Opera Mobile instead, which renders both javascript and images a lot more quickly. Shown below, plus.google.com in Opera Mobile works just as well but is quite a lot faster and much more usable day to day:

Appearance is largely identical in Opera Mobile, but everything appears a lot faster, I found plus.google.com a lot more usable; (right) adding it to my Opera Mobile bookmarks!

This isn't the first time I've evangelised the efficacy of the mobile web when a dedicated application isn't available. Yes, Google+ on a modern Android handset is faster and slicker (I've tried several), but this is a very good second option.