All About Symbian - UIQ News

How much CO2 is a typical Nokia phone responsible for in its life time?

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:57:18 GMT

Ever wondered how much energy a Nokia phone consumes during its lifetime? What about the amount of CO₂ emissions? Nokia's recently released sustainability report provides an answer for "a typical mobile device". The answer? 210 megajoules (MJs) of energy and 12kg of CO₂ emissions. Given the components and energy profile of a typical smartphone, and the proportion of mobile phones in Nokia's shipment breakdowns, we would expect the company's smartphone products to be a little above that typical average.

Nokia says that the CO₂ emissions are equivalent to driving 71km in an average family car. To put this further in context the average plane passenger, flying from London to New York, is reponsible for around 580kg CO₂ emissions. Do note that these figures are estimates and the results depend on the calculation method, scope and assumptions used.

Nokia publishes corporate social responsibility and sustainability report for 2012

Fri, 17 May 2013 15:17:42 GMT

This week Nokia published its annual corporate social responsibility and sustainability report ("Nokia People & Planet Report 2012"). Covering a wide range of issues it offers an insight into the broad range of initiatives that makes Nokia a leader in the technology sector for ethical and environmental issues. The report also discusses the impact of Nokia's 2011 and 2012 strategy changes on its employees and the communities in which it operates.

MeeBible adds new translations, plus social and direct sharing options

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:45:58 GMT

Updated in the Nokia Store is the open source (free) MeeBible front end to numerous Bible translations, along with the facility to download any for offline reading. You may remember my original review of MeeBible? This new version 3.0 (3.05[4], to be precise) adds new translations (The Message, New King James, Basic English, Amplified), plus social sharing functions and hooks.

RubiBox (Box.com client) gets a major v2.0 update, multiple account support

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:50:00 GMT

Box.com (née Box.net) rarely gets the same press that DropBox or Google Drive get, but it's arguably just as useful. And you may not have remembered that there's a fairly fully featured Symbian client for this cloud storage service in the free (well, donation-ware) client RubiBox. There's now a big v2.0 update available in the Nokia Store, bringing multiple account support and more advanced file uploading and downloading.

Shooting for the stars with the Nokia 808

Thu, 16 May 2013 18:16:51 GMT

Fresh from my (and others) attempts to capture the moon with the Nokia 808 PureView, I was interested to see that 808 photographer extraordinaire Richard Dorman has been going one step further and trying to capture the stars. See below for the proof. Essentially the trick is to take lots of photos (with the 808 on a tripod, of course) and stack them together for a final render. Yes, this can be done more easily on a standalone camera perhaps, but isn't it still cool that it's being done on a Symbian-powered phone?

PhotProc brings professional image processing, but patience needed

Thu, 16 May 2013 13:26:14 GMT

Jaw-droppingly impressive. And jaw-droppingly impractical at the same time. But that's what you get for doing some incredibly maths-intensive work on a smartphone, even the 1.3GHz Nokia 808 PureView. The somewhat unimaginatively named PhotProc (I imagine the developer would jump at a decent alternative, if suggested) is brand new and brings de-noising, sharpening and many other operations to your 5 and 8 megapixel images, all handled on the phone. But, as the headline suggests, patience is needed, since PhotProc needs to do a lot of work to accomplish all this. So much so, that it implements its own 'job queue', reminding me of setting off batch processes on my mainframe overnight in the 1980s. See below for more.

Symbian and Windows Phone-powered Nokias in Phones Show 200

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:14:00 GMT

We haven't plugged my cross-platform Phones Show for ages here on the All About... sites, but I couldn't resist the video below. Not only is it my 200th Phones Show (FX: pops champagne cork!), there are plenty of relevant appearances of Symbian and Windows Phone-powered devices, listed below, with relevant links. And hey, there's also a big review of the Samsung Galaxy S4, which is, in some ways, the benchmark for all of 2013's new releases - it's certainly going to be the biggest selling smartphone - so hopefully worth watching too. If you want to skip straight to the Nokia bits, move to around the 11 minute mark.

Symbian Belle platform variants all get Email, Calendar and Music updates

Wed, 15 May 2013 19:37:46 GMT

The OS that just won't die? Two years and three months after Symbian was publicly put on life support, the platform updates keep coming, with the rollout today for all Belle Refresh and Feature Pack 2 smartphones of a 6MB Email and Calendar update, incorporating better attachment and event handling, plus a new compatibility update for Nokia Music for Belle Feature Pack 2 devices. Whatever modern Symbian device you own, head for SW Update on the device, or plug into Nokia Suite.

By popular demand... the 808 rematched with the SGS4, with no holds barred

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:26:32 GMT

My 5-camera 7-scene test, earlier this week, provoked a lot of comment along the lines of "ah, but you left the Nokia 808 on default settings for almost all of that, if you'd have used Creative mode properly, the 808 would have fared a lot better!" Maybe. In the two examples below, I just show the two main contenders tackling a distant detail and an extreme macro. Seems I was right about the Galaxy S4, you know. And I was right about the Nokia 808 PureView (if the critics had read through all my text)...

Nokia Suite gets another big new stable release, v3.8 is a 'go'

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:26:36 GMT

Available now is a new release on the 'non-beta' track of Nokia Suite, v3.8.30, following the release of a 3.8 beta a month or two ago, with the main changes over the previous stable release, 3.7.22, being better SkyDrive migration and a mountain of 'reliability' fixes. Screenshot proof below - v3.8.30 installed fine in place over my previous stable version on my Windows 7 laptop.

SkyDrive uploader rolls out for the Nokia 808 and other Belle FP2 devices

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:34:05 GMT

You may remember that Nokia issued a rather primitive SkyDrive uploader for Symbian to Belle Refresh devices last year, followed up by a more polished version two months ago? The idea was to ease the uploading of contacts and photos to Microsoft's live.com, with a view to users one day making a move to Windows Phone. Although many, including me, had sourced the .SIS file and had this installed on Belle Feature Pack 1 & 2 phones, I'm not sure there was a big formal rollout. This changed today with the SkyDrive tool now available through SW Update for all Belle FP1/2 devices, including the Nokia 808 PureView.

Smartphone camera super-test: Nokia 808 vs Samsung GS4 vs Lumia 920

Mon, 13 May 2013 15:04:00 GMT

In fact, ignore the title, because I've included no less than five top camera-toting smartphones in this group test. In addition to the big three, the Nokia 808 PureView (still reckoned to be champion by most people), the Nokia Lumia 920 (the flagship Windows Phone until tomorrow!) and the Samsung Galaxy S4 (brand new and top-rated), I also wanted to include the 2010 Nokia N8, since its sensor's megapixel count and performance should be a close match for the SGS4, plus last year's Galaxy S III, so we can see how much of a difference Samsung have made in terms of their camera tech. Let the fight rage!

How to: watch live TV on your Symbian smartphone

Sun, 12 May 2013 08:06:00 GMT

Now I know what you're going to ask: "What's the point? If you're at home then you can use a real TV or a desktop/laptop, and if you're mobile then you probably don't want hours of mobile TV swallowing up your cellular bandwidth!" All very true, but say you're mobile, some breaking news is happening and you're frustrated that all you can see are headlines and textual reports. Wouldn't it be nice to see what's going on by tapping into a live TV stream? With, admittedly, a UK focus, I investigate a few options. I'm sure readers from around the world can chip in with links to solutions for Symbian that work in other areas?

BBC iPlayer licenses no longer being served? (Update: WMDRM patch needed again)

Sat, 11 May 2013 12:31:27 GMT

You may remember that, a few months ago, the BBC's iPlayer team had a bit of an early spring clean, removing official support for all Symbian smartphones? Happily, in that story, I was able to share the small trick that still let users 'download' programmes (as opposed to 'streaming' them). I did note at the time that the situation was likely only temporary, until the BBC got round to removing the DRM support for Symbian handsets. Now it seems that this is indeed on the way out and that the BBC's time-shifted output may soon become a stranger to Symbian. Update: it seems that the needed DRM handler on the devices is the casualty here, one of Nokia's many platform updates has disabled or overwritten it.

F1uptodate is true to its word, comprehensive and free

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:09:41 GMT

The thing about Formula 1 is that it engenders passion. For the cars, the drivers, the sport. So much so that we have here a developer called 'schumi1331' (hmm....), but not to fear because his labour of love is this freeware application that rounds up most of the essential stuff you need to know if you're an F1 fan. And yes, if you saw this title last year and dismissed it, don't worry, because this is a swanky new version of the idea, implemented in Qt. Screens and link below, just in time for you to get up to speed for the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend.

Belle Extra Buttons gets Swipe, Status Pane Button flexibility and Tactile feedback

Fri, 10 May 2013 12:12:04 GMT

You may remember that I posted about the huge update to Belle Extra Buttons, to v2.1, a couple of months ago? Well, now we apparently have v2.2 and it's also a biggie, with 'Swipe Feature, Status Pane Buttons, Tactile feedback and more'. Full changelog below, see what you think of this interface-changing utility.

Power up with the Nokia DC-18 Universal Portable USB Charger

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:56:29 GMT

At the same time as announcing the new Asha 501 handset, Nokia quietly unveiled the latest addition to its accessory line up, the Nokia DC-18Universal Portable USB Charger. The accessory, which can be used to recharge any device with a microUSB charging port, comes in a variety of colours (cyan, white, red, and yellow), and has a capacity of 1720 mAh.

The DC-18 is really intended to be matched with the Nokia Asha 501, just as the Nokia DC-16, with it higher capacity battery (2200mAh), is intended to be paired with Nokia's Lumia devices, but everyone will have their own preferred styling and combination. The square form factor and relatively svelte size (57 x 57 x 14.9mm) of the DC-16 makes it an ideal candidate to live in a bag or coat pocket, ready for those inevitable recharging emergencies.

4K time lapse footage shot on the Nokia 808 PureView

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:11:03 GMT

You may remember I featured a couple of interesting tutorial videos a week ago, on the subject of the Nokia 808 PureView and time lapse and lossless zoom? Included in that clip was footage from a high resolution time lapse - embedded below is the full 4K resolution, ultra high definition version of the original two minutes of time lapse footage. Quite stunning - show it to someone today and casually mention that it was shot on a 'phone' - they won't believe you!...

2013 could be the year of Xenon

Thu, 09 May 2013 08:06:00 GMT

Now, I've been eulogising about 'proper' flashes in smartphone cameras since the Nokia N82, back in 2007. And by 'proper', I mean a Xenon flash, just as you'd find in a standalone camera. The Sony Ericsson Satio and Nokia N8 and then 808, all running Symbian, kept the rant alive, but elsewhere Xenon flash has been almost non-existent. Yet now we have rumours of new Nokia Lumias, running Windows Phone 8 and (allegedly) having Xenon bulbs, along with (also rumoured) Sony's upcoming 'Honami' handset and Samsung's Galaxy S4 'Zoom'. In short, 2013 is (probably) about to become the year that Xenon flash finally makes the journey from Symbian into Windows Phone 8 and mainstream Android.

Adventures in custom firmware: Nokia E6 'Belle Refresh Enhanced'

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:35:00 GMT

The E6 may look a bit diminutive in today's world of monster screens, but it's still a popular concept in some circles. Not least chez Litchfield, which is why, when my E6 started playing up (after one app install too many!), I decided on a change and went looking for custom firmwares. Here's my report on the appallingly lengthily named 'Nokia E6-00 v3 - 111.140.58 -Belle Refresh Enhanced by Luna Updated' - what does it offer, over and above the final official Nokia firmware, how did the flashing go and how well does it work in practice?