(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.

_______________

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

When you visit the Nokia Developer API Mapping page, you’ll find tabs for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 7. On each page, there is a list of parent-level API calls, which can each be expanded to find sub-calls, and so on.

Each API call has a page which links to the equivalent Qt API and its documentation on the Qt developer network. However, many API calls also have extra documentation on the mapping page itself, to educate developers about the call.

As stated on the website:

Browse the APIs by clicking the desired platform version in the tree on the left side of the page and then select the desired framework, class, and method from the tree. To search for a specific API or class type, enter the API or class name in the search box and press Enter or click on the search button.

Nokia also state:

If you are familiar with [iOS/Android] development, this tool assists with porting iPhone or iPad apps to the latest version of the Qt platform delivered in Symbian phones and the Nokia N9 smartphone. Using this tool, you can browse a list of [iOS/Android] API calls and find the equivalent classes and methods offered by Qt. You can also search for a specific [iOS/Android] API call and find the equivalent Qt API call, along with example code and links to the API documentation for both platforms.

In addition to competing platforms, Nokia encourages developers to target their applications at both Qt and Windows Phone 7:

We encourage you to target both Windows Phone and Qt (for Symbian and Nokia N9) to make sure you don't miss business opportunities. Using this tool, you can browse a list of Windows Phone API calls and find the equivalent classes and methods offered by Qt. You can also search for a specific Windows API call and find the equivalent Qt API call, along with example code and links to the API documentation for both platforms.

This veritable Rosetta stone of mobile programming is a smart move from Nokia. One thing that the last five years have shown us is that developers will chose the easiest platform to develop for – regardless of the market share of the platform. Correspondingly, Symbian was regarded as difficult to develop for and so didn’t enjoy as much support as iOS did. This tool should reduce the inertia for developers to port their application across to Qt, or even Windows Phone 7 via Qt.

Source: MyNokiaBlog, via SymbianTweet.

In addition, there are a number of bug fixes in the new version and overall performance has been improved. For example, the Maps Suite applications open more quickly, and map scrolling and zooming are both fast and smoother.

The key updates and additions for each of the Nokia Maps Suite applications are summarised below.
  

Maps and Drive

An extra layer, 'Your Photos', is now available in the Maps application. This will overlay photos that you have taken on the map. In order for this to work the photos must be geo-tagged (in most cases this is the default behaviour). 

In the Drive application, the landscape view has been improved so that a greater proportion of the screen is used to display the map (the dashboard has been narrowed), making it easier to see the map while driving.

Nokia Maps Suite 2.0 also sees a return of the standalone route planning functionality to the Maps module. This allows you to plan (and save) a route in advance of taking a journey. A location can be added to a route, either directly from the map (via a long-press) or via a search result. Once a route has been calculated, it is shown in its overview form, from where the route can be saved or you can activate Drive mode. Saved routes are accessible from the favourites list in the search view.

The ability to search for a location or place by voice has been added to the search functionality. This is accessed by tapping on the microphone next to the search box. It takes a few seconds to process and return a search result. This allows for easier hands free navigation, which may be useful when driving a car.

During our testing we found a good level of accuracy, with most local place names and local business being correctly identified and found on the first try. The accuracy was significantly better than Symbian's built in voice recognition software. Currently, voice search is only available to users with UK SIM cards.

Homescreen Widgets

Included in the beta release are two new homescreen widgets: My Location and Place (in addition to the existing Maps Apps homescreen widgets). Both the new widgets are triple height in size.

The My Location widget shows your current location and provides shortcuts to quickly save the location to your favourites (star icon) and to share the location by SMS (message icon). A single tap on the widget launches the full Nokia Maps application.

The Place widget allows you to explore and interact with places close to your current location. It shows a small map and a scrollable list of nearby places. From the widget, it is possible to view more information about a place (information icon), save the place as a favourite or share a place (share icon). Tapping on a place opens the detailed information page for it, showing reviews and pictures and giving the option to navigate to that place.

Public Transport

The Public Transport module is now better integrated into other Maps Suite applications. A long-tap on a map will pop-up a menu listing public transport routing options automatically. In addition, it is possible to see public transport options near a specific area (e.g. Kings Cross in the screenshot below).

The routing instructions provided by Public Transport have also been improved, with detailed step-by-step walking instructions making it easier to find the transport station/stop from your current location.

In addition, Public Transport's coverage area has been increased to more than 200 cities and the application is now localised into 40+ languages.

Weather

In Maps Suite's Weather module, a landscape view, as shown in the screenshot below, has been added. In addition, it is now possible to easily see the weather in more than one city. The application allows you to add up to 100 cities to your 'My Cities' list. From the main screen you can switch between cities by swiping up or down on the screen.

Summary

Taken as a whole, Nokia Maps Suite 2.0 is a significant upgrade, cementing Nokia Maps and its companion applications' position as a leading mobile mapping product. For us, the highlights of the new release are the addition of voice search and the new homescreen widgets.

As with all beta releases, be aware that the application is still being tested, may be unstable and is subject to change. The beta release of Nokia Maps Suite 2.0 can be downloaded from Nokia Beta Labs. It is available for devices running Nokia Belle: potentially the Nokia 603, 700, 701, N8, C7, C6-01, E7, X7, and E6. It is not compatible with devices running Symbian Anna.

Rafe Blandford, All About Symbian, 9th Feb 2012

Here's the front page of the FAQ. Note that it's also dated, implying that it's going to be kept up to date with new answers as they are needed. Good stuff.

What the FAQ doesn't cover are Nokia's responses to some of the bugs, glitches and oddities that we've found since the update:

• 'bottom left' taps, on the back icon or on the application grid icon, aren't always recognised - if the OS is busy in the background, taps can get missed.
• playing back FLV video files is broken, most files play erratically, if at all.
• trying to share a photo or video from Gallery results in 'Feature not supported'
• character counts not shown when composing SMS on the E7 in opened mode
• random Wi-fi disconnects on some models (e.g. the E7) are still present
• no email notifications in lock screen, via LED or via pull-down pane

Let's hope that small Over The Air patches are even now being compiled, for release through SW_update on the phone? Will some Belle firmwares be held back for bug fixing?

Does the official FAQ answer your own questions? And how are you finding Belle, two days on (if you got the update)? 

As mentioned above, LiveJournal goes back a long way – 1999 in fact. Though first intended as a blogging platform, it quickly became the equivalent of contemporary social networks, thanks to user friendships, privacy settings, and community groups. LiveJournal even encompassed the follower model by allowing asymmetric friendships.

 
Logging in to LiveJournal.

LiveJournal is still alive and well, and offers both free and paid levels of membership. It is also an open source software project, giving rise to niche versions such as the gothic DeadJournal. However, this app is specifically designed for LiveJournal.com, and no other variants.

After launching and logging in, you are presented with the feed of posts from everyone on your friends list and your communities. However, the start-up view can be changed via the main settings page. This stream of posts can be filtered by your friends groups – something you need to set up on the desktop website.

Each post is previewed with the usual LiveJournal data, such as avatar, mood, current music, and comment count. When you view a full post, placeholders are shown in place of images. This reduces data use and loading time. However, tapping the placeholder loads a scaled down copy of the embedded image.

 
Loading embedded images.

The only constant part of the user interface is a toolbar across the top of the screen which hosts the main menu icon. The menu is a grid of six icons for your journal posts, your friends’ posts, your private messages, the post creation screen, and the main settings.

The private messaging interface works nicely. The To: field has a drop down list of all your friends, allowing you to autocomplete the recipient’s name. Unfortunately, you can only reply to messages, there’s no option to delete or mark as read.

 
Writing a private message and using the main menu.

The “Post” screen allows you to create a new post or edit a draft, but there’s no way to edit published posts. Similar to the WordPress apps, there is a HTML toolbar, but this becomes fiddly to use because this app does not support Symbian’s split-screen keyboard.

 
Editing text is not easy.

All of the standard LiveJournal fields are supported, such as mood, current music, and location. The privacy setting allows for public, friends-only, or private. However, you cannot restrict posts to a group (i.e. subset) of friends.

LiveJournal has several custom HTML tags, which are supported in this client. The LJ-USER tag is automatically inserted, allowing you to select from a floating list of your friends. The LJ-CUT tag is supported too – this is like WordPress’ “More” tag.

 
Inserting LiveJournal tags, and selecting usernames and post destination.

Images saved on your device can be embedded into posts. As you publish or save as a draft, they are uploaded to the LiveJournal Scrapbook service which is part of your account.

Overall, LiveJournal for Symbian is great for browsing accounts you’re subscribed to and for making very short posts. However, I feel that making long-form richly formatted posts will be too fiddly to bother with. It’s definitely worthwhile with little to complain about though, especially considering that LiveJournal is free in the Nokia Store.

Recommended.

David Gilson, 8^th February 2012.

"Smartphone product customisation" is a reference to the increasingly complex process of providing software variants for different countries and operators. Effectively this means a physical device will arrive, at one of these factories, from Nokia's Asian assembly lines as a blank slate. It will then be customised as appropriate. While the main focus will be on software, there may also be variations in the in box accessories, documentation and related material. In some cases a small amount of additional assembly may also be carried out (e.g. fitting a certain colour casing).

A typical Nokia device has several hundred different versions (product codes), with the main changes being made in the software. Building, testing and deploying these variants is a complex process. Being able to rapidly customise and deliver devices is a key competitive advantage and ties in with Nokia's stated aim of being operator friendly.

In its press release Nokia specifically mentions the benefit of reduced transport costs and reduced time to market by locating assembly lines closer to their component suppliers, but reduced labour costs will also be a major portion of the anticipated increased efficiency in smartphone production. 

Moving the core manufacturing operations to Asia is not a surprise; Nokia has been something of an odd man out by maintaining global manufacturing facilities. However, it will still be seen as a blow to the pride of Nokia, and continues a pattern of painful adjustments as the company continues its strategy transition.

Most of the manufacturing will move to Nokia's plants in Beijing (China) and Masan (South Korea), but some may also be relocated to Dongguan (China), Chennai (India), Manaus (Brazil) and Hanoi (Vietnam).

The severity of the 4,000 job losses is made clear by their impact on each plant - Komarom (2,300 out of 4,400 jobs), Salo (1,000 our 1,700) and Reynosa (700 out of 1,000). Employees who lose their job will be supported a locally-tailored program that will include financial support and assistance withe local re-employment.

From the press release:

"Shifting device assembly to Asia is targeted at improving our time to market. By working more closely with our suppliers, we believe that we will be able to introduce innovations into the market more quickly and ultimately be more competitive," said Savander. "We recognize the planned changes are difficult for our employees and we are committed to supporting our personnel and their local communities during the transition."

As a consequence of the plans, the number of steps in manufacturing and the amount of work carried out at the sites in Komarom, Reynosa and Salo are expected to decrease substantially. The changes are anticipated to impact approximately 4,000 employees in total.

Personnel reductions are planned to be phased through the end of 2012. Nokia will offer a comprehensive locally-tailored support program, including financial support and assistance with local re-employment.

In fact, production values look quite good at Air Strike's start, with a super glossy splash screen, plus a promising couple of animated intro pages:

So you've got a carrier-based fighter bomber (which means the action all takes place out at sea) and are despatched to find and blow up as many enemy fighters and warships as possible. The missiles at your disposal are seemingly both infinite and equally effective on planes and boats - one hit and both are goners. Not terribly realistic, but this simplification keeps the gameplay manageable, as you'll see.

In further simplifications, your plane flies at constant height and constant speed and you just have two controls, rotate anti-clockwise (the down icon) and rotate clockwise (the up icon). In between is a large, somewhat satisfying 'FIRE' button, each tap on this launches a pair of missiles. Having both directional and fire controls right next to each other means that your right thumb has to operate both - a system which works acceptably in practice but isn't quite as fluid when the game hots up as if controls had been split across both thumbs. I suspect the reason for the 'one thumb only' controls is because the developer hadn't mastered (or was unable to optimise performance for) full multi-touch.

Around the screen we have various score readouts, a 'radar' display showing roughly (from a strictly 'screen up' perspective, thankfully) where planes and boats are in your vicinity, readouts of health and fuel, and controls to get back to the main menu (sound off/on, Help, etc.) and to adjust the game's animation speed. This last control is a bit redundant, though I guess could be useful if you're playing on an older, slower phone.

Come to think of it, the radar's also somewhat redundant, in that enemy planes will seek you out mercilessly - you don't normally need to go looking for them. At least the radar gives you an idea of which direction they're coming in from, ready to launch a few salvoes to ambush them.

In practice, gameplay involves wheeling in circles and figure of eights, breaking the arc to loose off missiles when needed. The enemy fighters try to lock on, especially when you travel in a straight line for too long (so best not do that then!) and generally swoop around until you've managed to either shoot them all down or get shot down yourself.

The latter happens when your plane runs out of 'Health' - each missile hit knocks a bar or two off the reading and if it gets to zero then you crash into the sea. Rather nicely, the more you get hit, the more your little plan sprite shows damage, by way of glowing parts and then increasing amount of smoke. Happily, every 300 points you get a complete health and fuel top-up, so getting to multiples of 300 is your main objective when playing. In practice, I was getting well into the thousands after half an hour of practice.

Air Strike is well paced, in that there's rarely a dull moment - there's always something to shoot at, something to dodge. Other than the obvious limitations (a single 'sea' backdrop, no new 'bosses', weapons or power-ups to keep things exciting), my main complaint was that the aircraft depicted are too similar, all looking like F-16s to my eyes. At the very least, your airplane should be a different colour, surely? As it is, when you're surrounded by eight swooping, wheeling enemy planes, the centre of the screen gets ridiculously confusing because you can't often tell which is your aircraft amidst the mass of gleaming metallic silver.

I was also disappointed not to have at least a basic 'high score' table - you just get a top of screen 'hi score' reminder while playing. Having lasted for a good 15 minutes and got several thousand points before dying (thanks to a lapse in concentration), I expected at least a confirmation screen, a congratulations, or a place on a high score table somewhere.... anywhere. Instead, it was just back to the main menu and 'Start' all over again.

Limitations and minor complaints aside, Air Strike is well worth £1.50. It makes absolutely no pretense at flight simulator realism - it's an arcade game pure and simple and, as such, works surprisingly well. Great for a ten minute blast on your way into work?

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 7th Feb 2012

Nokia Suite, for Windows, is here, if you want to grab the latest version. Note that Nokia Software Updater for Mac can't (officially) be used to update to Belle, for technical reasons (it doesn't manage the backing up of all the necessary data properly).

Although your user data should all be preserved (Nokia Suite takes your device through a full backup/wipe/restore cycle and note to follow the instructions given on-screen exactly, you only need to enter your SIM PIN number, all other device prompts can be ignored), the usual precautions should be taken. i.e. sync your PIM data to another computer or phone or to the cloud. User settings, bookmarks, text messages, and predictive text dictionaries will also be preserved across the update, but applications installed to (or with components on) the system (C:) disk will be lost - you'll have to download them again from the Nokia Store (or wherever you sourced them). Note that a number of applications in the Nokia Store are known to currently be incompatible with Nokia Belle - see here for a list.

See below for a breakdown of the full update procedure and notes from us.

Post-update, on the editorial C6-01...

Your device will be notified in its normal regular check for updates over the air, but the instruction is clearly 'Use your PC to update'. If you're wondering where your update is, see Nokia's official Belle availability page.

Included in the 250MB plus update (some users have reported up to 390MB - it's variable according to device, variant and previous firmware version) is the new Nokia Belle on Symbian OS, with a large number of improvements:

• A major reworking of the user interface, with an emphasis on ease of use, updated design language and flatter navigation hierarchy. Specific items are detailed below.
    
• Better use [a new memory management scheme] of the 256MB of RAM in all Symbian^3/Anna devices. In practice this will mean no occasional 'Memory full' errors and (hopefully) foolproof execution of even the largest 'HD' games. Applications which are running will, on the whole, stay running, whatever else you start up. Overall performance is better, in terms of UI responsiveness and multitasking.
    
• Qt 4.7.4 is baked in from day one, meaning far fewer installation problems for Qt apps and faster (and more silent) installs in general.
   
• Full NFC functionality (on the Nokia C7, at least, which has the necessary chip!), including: tap and share (share images, videos and contacts), tap and pair (pair Bluetooth accessories through a simple tap), tap and access (read tags to find information) and tap to play (unlock new levels on NFC-enabled games).
    
• Improvements in screen real estate, with slimmer top status bar and optional (in some apps) bottom toolbar, meaning that all phones will have a larger useful display area. 
    
• Homescreen widgets will now come in up to five different sizes (1x1, 2x1, 4x1, 2x2, 4x4) and allow a greater degree of interactivity. In addition to dragging widgets around a homescreen in 'Edit' mode, you can now also drag from one homescreen to another. Widget re-positioning when moving from portrait to landscape mode remains intelligent, with some tweaks for the new variety in widget sizes.
    
• New drop-down menu, Android style, to access notifications, connectivity toggles (including a welcome one for 'Mobile data', which previously required an involved trip into 'Settings') and system status information from most places in the UI. 
    
• The Symbian homescreen system now supports up to six pages (previously the limit was three for most phones and five for the smaller-screened E6).
   
• A rewritten application launcher with default 'flat' structure, i.e. all applications are presented in one big scrolling grid of icons, though as I explained here, it's easy enough to make new folders, including one called 'trash' (or similar), somewhere to put all the apps you don't think you'll even need - this significantly reduces the amount of vertical scrolling needed. There's an option to switch the icons to alphabetic order, or to quick match/search the list, but happily your original order is also remembered so that you can switch back at any time. Newly installed applications are now marked with a red asterisk until they've been opened for the first time. 
    
• An application can be 'added to the homescreen' from the main app menu, by long pressing its icon.
    
• The bottom softkeys and (optional) bottom toolbar are replaced with a single toolbar comprising up to four icons (Back/Exit, Custom 1, Custom 2, and Menu). This, for most applications, in theory, gives the UI a flatter hierarchy, with less use of menus and with more direct interaction.
    
• Improvements to the lock screen, which will now have information about missed calls, messages and emails. The lock screen also now supports a transparency effect, showing the underlying homescreen wallpaper.
    
• Update to Web, with numerous optimisations and easy access to multiple windows through a permanent toolbar icon. Like desktop browsers, Web keeps track of your 'Most visited pages' and this can be set as your 'homepage' if needed. A long press and drag on web page text now pops up a 'Copy' option, for copying text to the system clipboard.
    
• Update to Music Player, with a 'floating track list' in the album art 'cover flow' view.
   
• Updates to several other Symbian stalwart applications. Calendar gets an overall facelift and Notes now brings up a white (and AMOLED-unfriendly...) editing screen.
   
• Update to Camera, showing the new, streamlined UI that featured in the Beta Labs N8 Camera update. Although functionality is the same, far fewer taps are needed to get to the majority of settings and functions. Note also that the 'Close-up' mode for the N8 video capture (i.e. with continuous auto-focus) is also included, so no need to install that as well.
  

Availability

The Nokia Belle update is available for the Nokia N8, C7 (and variants), C6-01, E7, X7, and E6. It is currently not available for the Nokia 500 for technical reasons (different hardware platform, unique device constraints). Like all of Nokia's software updates, it is rolled out in stages. This means that the update may not be available for your device immediately.

The update is now widely available in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Middle East for unbranded devices. The update is also available for about two thirds of operator branded devices, although this varies widely from market to market.

Nokia has provided a page detailing the product codes for which the device is available here. 

Procedure

1. If you have not already done so, update Nokia Suite to the latest version.
2. Make sure your smartphone is in 'PC Suite' mode (Settings>Connectivity>USB)
3. Plug your smartphone into Nokia Suite and wait while it's recognised, installed, as usual. 
4. If your PC is online, the software will check for update availability. You can go into the updater tab to force a refresh of this, if needed.
5. The update is downloaded. If you've previously installed Belle on another device and the version number is the same, the same update source is used, saving you (and Nokia) download time and bandwidth.
6. Follow the prompts on-screen. Nokia Suite does a full backup of all your PIM data, user settings, bookmarks, text messages, and predictive text dictionaries. Any miscellaneous documents/files/databases/whatever found on the internal disk will be copied to E:/Nokia_Belle, to make sure you don't lose them.
7. Nokia Suite then completely wipes the internal (C:) disk as part of laying down the Belle OS.
8. You may be asked by your phone for your SIM card PIN - this is the only thing you should respond to.
9. Nokia Suite then restores your data, backed up above.
10. Nokia Store will prompt for an immediate update to the latest QML version - accept this and wait while it installs. 
11. While you're there, look for Nokia Social 1.5 in the Store and download the update to this too, since the Belle firmware still contains the old v1.3 variant. Note that, once run and logged into Facebook, Nokia Social will take some background time updating your Contacts thumbnails. Please allow for this and accept that Contacts will appear to be constantly changing for a while.
    
12. Note that any applications that had been installed to the internal (C) disk will need re-installing from the Nokia Store or from your original SIS files etc. 
13. Go into SW_update at some point, on the device, and you should find a few extras, including an update for Search and (if in the UK and with a UK handset) an update for BBC iPlayer DRM.

Known issues

As with any major OS update, there are bound to be some minor glitches. So far, I've noticed:

• 'bottom left' taps, on the back icon or on the application grid icon, aren't always recognised - if the OS is busy in the background, taps can get missed.
• playing back FLV video files is broken, most files play erratically, if at all.
• some applications that had been installed to mass memory (E:), usually games, don't reappear in the main app menu after the Belle install. These titles seem to have to be re-installed/downloaded as needed.
• trying to share a photo or video from Gallery results in 'Feature not supported'
• character counts not shown when composing SMS on the E7 in opened mode
• random Wi-fi disconnects on some models (e.g. the E7) are still present - I was hoping the Wi-fi stack would have gotten a rewrite, but it seems not.

More as and when we discover it!

See also Nokia's official Belle update FAQ.

Steve Litchfield, Rafe Blandford and Ewan Spence for All About Symbian, 7th Feb 2012

When FlickrUp is launched for the first time, you’re invited to login. Web based authentication is used, allowing you to login either with your native account or through your Facebook or Google account.

Post-authentication, the primary screen of FlickrUp shows you four horizontally scrolling lists of thumbnails. These correspond to your Photostream, Photosets, Galleries, and Favourites. Touching these takes you to a vertical list of thumbnails accompanied by their title, description, upload date, and privacy status.

 
Main screen and Photostream.

While viewing a single image, details can be overlaid by tapping, and swiping sideways takes you to the next image in the current set. The triple dot icon on an image page brings up the comments for that image. This feature really helps FlickrUp shine as a social application rather than just an image browser.

 
Viewing image details and comments.

On the lower left corner there is a (tiny) icon for launching the main menu. Rather than rows of text, the menu is a table of labelled icons, which looks good. The first two options allow you to browse your contacts’ uploads and view recent “Interesting” picks from the Flickr editor. A simple search function is also available here.

 
Main menu and contacts photos.

The next icon takes you to the upload screen, which is resplendent with options. You can even select multiple files, set options for each of them, and then leave FlickrUp to perform a batch upload. In addition to setting title, description, and tags, you can select which resolution to upload, and the privacy and parental control content.

 
Upload options.

If you don’t want to diddle with options every time you upload, you can choose your defaults via the settings page. This page also lets you select which local folders you’ll choose uploads from. Those who are keen on optimising the battery life of their AMOLED smartphones will be glad to know they can choose between a light or dark theme.

 
Settings menu.

FlickrUp does have some limitations that surprised me though. I would have expected an image download capability – this would have been a great way to get new wallpapers for your phone. There’s no option to share images via your social networks either – even the Twitter and blogging options that you can set up on your Flickr account are not included.

Overall though, FlickrUp is a great product despite the limitations discussed above.  It’s designed completely within the Nokia Belle style guide, and is one of the quickest applications to switch between portrait and landscape that I’ve seen. I’d reasonably expect an app like this to cost as much as £3.00, but FlickrUp is free on the Nokia Store. Apart from the “About” page, there aren’t even any advertisements!

Highly Recommended.

David Gilson, 5^th February 2012.

We'll be a publishing a formal textual review of the Nokia 500 soon. If you have any questions that you would like answered please leave them in the comment thread , or send us an email, and we'll do our best to answer them.
   

Key hardware features

• 111.3 x 53.8 x 14.1 mm in dimensions, 93g in weight, 73cc in volume; monoblock touch form factor
    
• Changeable back covers, three are included with each Nokia 500, and additional covers will be available as accessories (similar to C5-03 and Nokia's earlier XpressOn covers).
    
• 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 with location support for GPS, A-GPS, WLAN and Cell-ID location techniques.
    
• Compass (magnetometer), accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensors.
    
• 3.5 mm Nokia audio connector for audio out
    
• FM Radio with RDS
    
• microUSB (USB 2.0) for file transfers and charging (2mm charger also available)
   
• BL-4U (1100mAh) battery with easy access battery cover (standby by time of 20 days and talk time of 7 hours (GSM) and 5 hours (WCDMA).
    
• WCDMA 850/900/1700/1900/2100 and GSM/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 (HSDPA Cat 10 - 14.4 MBps, HSUPA Cat 6 - 5.76 Mbps)
    
• WiFi: WLAN IEEE802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.1
   
• Processor: ARM 11 at 1 GHz, 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 details are available in our Nokia 500 launch story.

Having been something of a pioneer in phone-shot video over the years, it's fair to say that I lusted first after focus of any kind (the N93, shown above, was perhaps the first phone in the world to shoot usable video, back in 2006), then later after continuous auto-focus - after all, surely having the phone always working to keep the centre of frame in focus is a good thing, right? Well, not always...

Some of the various approaches to capturing video on phones over the years:

1. No focussing of any kind, lens is left focussed on the horizon. Examples include most phones and smartphones prior to about 2008.
     
2. No focussing, but the lens is left in a 'hyperfocal' position, i.e. ensuring maximum depth of field. Examples include the Nokia N86 and N8 (in its default scene mode), with subjects from about 70cm to the middle distance being very crisp at all times.
     
3. Pre-focus, the user half presses the shutter button (or taps the screen, as appropriate) at the start of the clip and whatever's in the centre of the viewfinder becomes the focus subject. If you pan around and change the subject later in the clip, the original focus is retained - meaning that the new subject may be out of the depth of field for that lens position and so will appear blurry.
     
4. Continuous auto-focus, as it sounds, the software monitors the sharpness of whatever's in the viewfinder and if not happy with what it finds, steps in to 'experiment' with different focus positions until high enough sharpness is found again. This 'hunting' for focus whenever the subject is changed produces two effects: one, a slightly unsettling zoom in and out again (because the different focus positions all have slightly different fields of view); and two, an unsightly blurriness that clears up after a second or two once focus is restored.
     
5. Extended Depth of Field, also known as 'Full Focus', pioneered by Nokia in the phone world and using optical and electronic tricks to mean that everything from 40cm to infinity is crisp. This approach works surprisingly well, with the main disadvantage being that you can't film anything up really close (so no arty shots of small animals and flowers!). 

Although I've hinted above as to some of the pros and cons of each approach, options 2, 4 and 5 offer the best results for typical user-with-phone video capture. Typical subjects include:

What's interesting in the table above is that mode 4, continuous auto-focus, which you would think is going to win out overall by virtue of being more sophisticated, doesn't sweep the use-case board. Instead, modes 2 and 5 also do extremely well, neither of which involves any dynamic re-focussing of the camera phone optics. This turns out to be the achilles heel of mode 4 - the need to continuously monitor sharpness and adjust focal length to maximise it means that 'hunting' (as described above) is a real issue.

To illustrate 'hunting' and general continuous auto-focus behaviour, here's a test video, shot on the Nokia Lumia 800 with continuous auto-focus turned on. The bulk of the video includes side-by-side comparison with video capture of the same subjects with an EDoF-equipped smartphone, in this case the Nokia E6, typical of the breed. I'm not saying that the optics and sensor in the likes of the E6 are better than that in the Lumia 800 (or other a-f-enabled devices) - they're not, but the absence of 'hunting' does make for a less flawed experience for the video viewer:

Aside from me hopefully having just dispelled the myth that 'continuous auto-focus' is necessarily the best way to go (I'd argue that, clip for clip for casual users, EDoF video is best, as almost everything will always be in focus, etc.), it's worth pointing out that one way of having the best of both worlds would be to have the option of enabling or disabling continuous auto-focus, depending on subject and need.

This can, thankfully, be achieved on most smartphones. For example, on the Nokia N8, using the new Camera application, hyperfocal (mode 2, above) is the default, but you can also turn on 'Close-up' mode, in which continuous auto-focus is used to great effect. (In case you're wondering about the 'Close-up' name, it's because continuous auto-focus is only ever really needed for things closer than a few metres - the default hyperfocal system is fine for everything else.)

To take another example, behaviour is much the same on most Windows Phone devices. For example, on the HTC HD7 (and similar), continuous auto-focus can be simply turned off in settings, with 'off' reverting back to typical hyperfocal depth of field. Things are slightly more complicated on the Nokia Lumia 800, since, although auto-focus can be turned off manually, the lens is left in the last position used - so film something close-up with auto-focus on and then switch the feature off, and everything at normal distances will then be very blurry. (You thus have to make allowances if you want to switch focus modes, remembering what you last filmed and picking a subject at more typical distance in auto-focus mode, before then switching the feature off again.)

In summary, if your smartphone does have continuous auto-focus when capturing video, recognise that the first few seconds after switching subject will be subject to 'hunting'. So, for example, you're shooting some kids playing and then you swivel round to talk to mum or dad on-cam. Having turned, wait a couple of seconds before asking them whatever you were going to say. Recognise that these 'hunting' sections of video may have to be snipped out later in a video editor.

In practice, it's quite easy to simply allow an extra few seconds at the start of each planned clip 'in your head' - you probably won't be able to see the focus 'hunting' on your small smartphone screen, but the effect will be there and much more visible on your big desktop monitor or TV later on. So just allow for it and move on.

And consider turning continuous auto-focus off altogether - yes, it means a bit more fiddling around (especially if you have a Nokia Lumia device), but the results may be more consistent.

(And if you have a Symbian-powered EDoF-shooting phone then you can basically ignore everything I've just said, apart from not shooting subjects closer than about 40cm, since your video will always be auto-magically in focus anyway!)

Steve Litchfield, 6th Feb 2012, for All About Symbian and All About Windows Phone

Symeo

Symeo opens up with a horizontally scrolling carousel of video categories. It has large thumbnails for each, and a white background which is not power efficient for AMOLED displays. User interface controls are presented as quarter circle icons in each corner of the screen – they’re non-standard but friendly looking. One of which is for search, allowing you to break out of Symeo’s curated content.

The categories on offer through Symeo are Music Videos, Movie Trailers, Upcoming Virals, Most Shared, and New Videos. It’s not clear to me how these channels are being compiled – YouTube does not have the same categories as these; simply searching for the above category names on the desktop yields different results than are listed in Symeo.

Symeo categories

When browsing categories, the thumbnail carousel has a 3D effect not present in the category list. On first impression it feels inconsistent, but it is a visual cue to let you know which kind of list you’re in. Frustratingly, video thumbnails are not accompanied by a title. Neither is there any extra information about the video when you tap through to view it.

Symeo category content

In a video list, there are two icons, one to play and one to share the currently selected video. You can share via Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. However, Facebook authentication couldn’t be completed as the confirmation page couldn’t fit on the screen, and for some reason Symeo wouldn’t let me scroll down to tap the accept icon. Because of there being no video information, sharing is the only way you can find out what you were watching!

Setting up social network sharing

Failing to show Facebook’s accept button

The video player is a custom solution, rather than sending the video stream to Symbian’s built-in player. There are controls for volume, timeline, pause, fullscreen, and back (to list) – unfortunately, it has a litany of issues. Firstly, it does not force the phone to stay awake during playback. Secondly, it ignores the volume keys, and so you can only adjust via the on-screen slider. Thirdly, when fullscreen mode is engaged, the player controls are removed. However, the fullscreen control icon area is so small that it’s very difficult to find when working blind.

Symeo’s custom video player

The next disappointing part of Symeo is that the streaming quality is exceptionally poor, and there are not any settings to change the quality of the stream that Symeo uses. Furthermore, there’s no download option either, so you cannot view videos offline.

Symeo is an interesting idea, and when content is curated in the right way it can add value. However, I’m afraid the pieces didn’t fit together for me with Symeo. It’s not obvious how the curation is achieved and so how good a source of information is it? The streaming quality is almost unwatchable, and the user interface is awkward. To be fair, I should note that this is only a version 1.0 product, and so things may yet improve in later versions.

Symeo is free in the Nokia Store, but if I were you I’d stick with the CuteTube - it's £3 but worth every single penny....

David Gilson, 3rd February 2012.

From the article:

I believe it is fairly safe to say that the Nokia N8 is still the king of image quality when compared to today’s best smartphones based on its superior dynamic range, low noise, and accurate color - not to mention higher resolution. All things considered, the iPhone 4s comes in a solid second in this test. Although its hardware may not be totally up to snuff, I could understand getting an iPhone in place of an N8 if editing and sharing are more important that the utmost image quality to the user due to the social platforms (think Path and Instagram) and image editing software available only for the iPhone. 

Here's one of the test images. Note, in the original article, that you can click through each blogged image to see the full photo in various sizes on Flickr. Nice job.

You may also remember my own original top camera phone comparison, though this was pre-iPhone 4S... I suspect the latter might have nipped into second place in that test too, but I reckon the N8's peerless standing is still intact a full year and a half from first availability.

(via)

In Corning's words:

Watch and share "A Day Made of Glass 2: Unpacked," to see how Corning's highly engineered glass, with companion technologies, will help shape our world. Take a journey with our narrator for details on these technologies, answers to your questions, and to learn about what's possible -- and what's not -- in the near future.

This podcast was recorded on Wednesday 1st February 2012.

In this podcast we cover:       

• Looking ahead to the Belle upgrade for existing Symbian^3 devices
    
• Nokia Q4 2011 results
    
• 1.5 billion Series 40 phones
    
• 360Cities comes to Nokia Maps
    
• Nokia Social 1.5
    
• Review: CNN App for Symbian
     

You can listen to all 200 editions of the AAS Insight Podcast in our media section.

I should say up front that Tune It is nowhere as ambitious as the commercial Tunerific, which I reviewed back in 2011. Rather than try and sample a guitar's audio output and produce interactive animations to show the pitch, Tune It goes altogether more old school, simply producing reference tones that you then use to tune your guitar by ear.

But don't switch off, thinking that the application is too trivial to be bothered with. For starters, Tune It is free (and no ads in sight), so you've got nothing whatsoever to lose by installing it and keeping it in a corner of your smartphone.

Secondly, and going a little philosophical, there's a distinct benefit to staying 'old school' and low-tech, in that the commercial sampling tuners reduce tuning each string to tweaking the tuning pegs and watching the fancy animations - you essentially stop fiddling when the display says so and never mind how the string sounds. Ultimately, as a player, you want to improve, but you also want to improve your musical ear, I'm often appalled by the numbed of players who carry on strumming something which is obviously out of tune because they just can't 'hear it'.

I should emphasise that I haven't got 'perfect pitch', but I can recognise when a note's not 'right'. In part this is because I've usually tuned my guitar by ear, playing a tuning fork to get a reference tone and then tuning by harmonics across the strings, or by playing the appropriate notes on a nearby electronic piano or organ and tuning to those.

Or, as here, by using a tool which can generate each of the string notes directly. The idea then is to train your ear to hear the differences between two plucked string tones and know not only which one is higher pitched (not that easy, especially when the difference is small) but how far the guitar string is 'out'. You'll end up being able to tune guitars quicker and quicker by ear and will feel a whole lot more musical than if you'd relied on pure electronic sampling tools.

In addition, every guitar has its own little, miniscule idiosyncrasies, i.e. no instrument is perfectly intoned. By tuning by ear, you'll eventually be able to make these little allowances as you go.

That's the theory then of why tuning using a simple app like Tune It can be 'better' then sampling utilities - but it does rely on you having a good musical ear and I accept it's not for everyone. Tune It does its best to help by producing genuine string tones, complete with harmonics and decay, rather than just 'pure' tones (as if from a 1980s keyboard). So you're not having to compare something weedy and pure with a live, messy, complicated, real world string. You effectively compare like with like, making the job much easier.

In terms of interface, you have to step through strings one at a time - each screen tap 'plucks' the string, as needed, then you move onto the next string with 'Next' and so on. This system does have the advantage that you don't have to tap accurately - after all, you've got a guitar in your hands, too, the phone is probably next to you on a table, so it's nice to just be able to tap anywhere on the virtual fretboard to hear the string sound again.

Three different tunings are supported, though in 20-odd years of playing I've never used anything other than 'standard' - I guess I'm not good, or experimental, enough! A nice tutorial walkthrough is also provided, albeit being slightly unnecessary for such a simple application and interface.

Obviously Tunerific is the most accomplished of the two applications, having both the sampling and string-sound functions, but if you just want something fast, free and effective then Tune It comes recommended. And will do its best to stop your tuning ears getting lazy!

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 3 Feb 2012

The diagram below is courtesy of Nokia Conversations:

The page explains:

There’s both a linear polariser and retardation layers between the surface of your phone and the display. When light hits your screen, this is what happens:

1. It hits the linear polariser, this vertically polarises the light. (Polarising means – roughly – aligning the wave vibration in a particular direction).
2. Then it hits the circular polariser retardation layer. This converts the light again, making it right-circularly polarised.
3. Then it hits the screen and bounces off it, switching the rotation of the light to leftist.
4. It goes back through the retardation layer. When this happens, the light becomes horizontally polarised.
5. Finally, it hits the linear polariser, since the light is horizontally polarised at this point it can be blocked entirely by this optical solution.

So why doesn’t the light from your phone’s display get blocked? Because it only goes through the second half of this journey so the light is unpolarised when it hits the final filter and goes through.

Good stuff, just the detail we needed.

It should also be noted that CBD isn't the only technology that aids outdoors visibility of smartphone screens - for example, a similar (though not as effective) goal was implemented on the Nokia X7 by closing up the various screen layers to eliminate any air gap - this technique is used by other manufacturers, including Sony Ericsson.

It should also be noted that CBD is effective on both AMOLED and traditional TFT/LCD screens (examples of the latter include the Nokia 701 and 603).

Skype for Nokia Belle (version 2.1.23 - 6.9MB) can be downloaded from the Nokia Store. Once you have downloaded and installed the application, you'll need to enter your Skype username and password. Contacts and current IM conversations will be automatically downloaded. You can optionally choose to import names and numbers from the Contacts application, so that you can call these numbers via Skype.

The screenshots here show the updates to the user interface. The selection bar/tabs at the top of the screen give access to the major sections of the app (Contacts, IM, Call, History and Skype Extras). The Belle style toolbar at the bottom of the screen is context sensitive, giving access to the most common commands for the current view.

Here's the description for Skype from the Nokia Store:

With all the benefits of Skype on your phone you can save money and stay in touch when you're on the move.

• Make free Skype-to-Skype calls and IM on 3G or WiFi.
• Save money on calls and texts (SMS) to phones abroad.
• Share pictures, videos and other files from your phone.

It's free to use Skype in a WiFi zone. If you use Skype with a mobile data connection, operator charges may apply, so we recommend an unlimited data plan.

Skype is also available for Symbian Anna (Symbian^3) handsets, of course. More details on Skype's Symbian page.

Thanks to Finnish First for the tip.

Rather than reproduce every last detail here, let me point you towards the press release of Strategy Analytics and that of IDC.

In summary, here's the picture for overall mobile sales, courtesy of IDC:

Top Five Mobile Phone Vendors, Shipments, and Market Share, Q4 2011 (Units in Millions) 

Although Nokia is still comfortably the top selling phone maker in the world, its lead has been halved by Samsung, while Apple is now firmly in third place with its much more profitable iPhone range. The whole market grew by 6%, year on year, less than in previous years but still heading upwards, in line with population and increased penetration in developing markets.

The table below shows the breakdown in terms of 'smartphones', though the very definition is something which is coming under increasing attack, not least from (what were previously considered) 'feature' phones, which increasingly have full Internet access, email and social clients, touch-based games, and more...

It's not entirely clear whether Samsung's Bada phones are included in the total above. Nokia's sales of 19.6 smartphones (around 95% Symbian) in Q4 would, a few years ago, have been dominant, but it's a sign of the times that smartphone market leaders, Samsung and Apple, both managed around 37 million sales in the same period. Over the course of the year there wasn't that big a difference between the top three and Samsung, Apple and Nokia are way ahead of the trailing pack, just as they are for wider mobile handset sales.

Significantly, the entire 'smartphone' market grew by 63% over the year, a big contrast to the 6% growth of the overall market. The 'smartphone' segment is now up to 36% and will be 50% by the end of 2012, surely a sign that we should soon drop the moniker altogether and just talk about 'phones'? If nothing else, it would make these news stories simpler to write and simpler to understand!

In short, the idea is to keep things really simple, really colourful and yet allow the creation of little pieces of art that can be proudly shown to the parent sitting nearby (or driving, perhaps - this app could be a good way of keeping a son or daughter quiet on a long car journey).

If the graphics below seem over-simplistic to you then think again - they're deliberately pitched at four and five year olds and might even be a nice diversion for six and seven year olds, too.

I was looking at the free sampler application, with five line drawings to endow with colour, but if the app is a hit with your small ones, then you'll want to grab either (or both of) Pack 1 Coloring Fun and Christmas Pack Coloring Fun, each of which has fifteen images for your £1 purchase price.

The interface (as you'd hope, given the target audience) is simple. Pick the drawing you want from an initial carousel and then you're off and colouring. The right hand side crayons are part of a vertical carousel - although it's not obvious at first that there are more colours available, the very first flick or drag gives the colourer an immediate grasp of how it works.

The drawing tools are kept similarly simple, with only two of note - one to perform the main 'filling' of enclosed sections with colour, as already eulogised, the other a brush to add extra strokes as needed, shown below:

The bottom tool (obviously) erases whatever the colourer rubs it over, while the dustbin tool reverts the image to black and white, ready for the child to start again.

The top 'back' icon returns the colourer to the image picking carousel, but the current image is saved, so no accidental returns followed by a "All my colours have gone!" cry. This also means that the child can be 'working' on more than one image at a time, which is a neat feature.

The (rather antiquated!) floppy disk icon is supposed to be for saving each masterpiece, not only internally, but also to a bitmap file that can be used elsewhere on the phone, such as emailing off to a proud grandparent:

At least, that's the theory - the quoted folder gets created but, on this free version of the application, no images actually appeared, no matter how hard I tried. Maybe this only works on the paid versions? The functionality's not a huge loss, but worth noting.

Although the limited (15 images each on the paid versions) 'canvases' may seem a problem, the very fact that a child can erase the colours from a drawing with one tap and have fun starting again with totally different colour scheme means that there's some extended value here - I'd even go so far as to suggest that you as a parent might like to go into each image and (ahem) accidentally wipe it of colour before a car journey: "Oh, dear, all the colours have gone, can you help colour all the pictures in again?", and so on!

We grabbed the free Coloring Fun because we were round at a relative's house, where there was a bored five year old (my own daughter is now way too old!) and it worked very well, installing in seconds and entertaining as needed. If my own kid(s) were at the right age, I'd have no problem paying a pound for each of the two paid image packs.

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 2nd Feb 2012