Planet Mobile

All About Symbian: Of love/hate relationships, Symbian and Windows Phone

Sun, 30 Jun 2013 08:23:43 +0000

There's a pointed piece over at Unleash The Phones by new writer Shibesh Mehrotra, looking at his first month or so with Windows Phone 8, as experienced on the Nokia Lumia 620, and with particular comparison to his previous smartphone expertise on Symbian, on the Nokia 808 PureView. As I've written many times, you have to work quite hard to keep Symbian productive in 2013 (though it can be done), but it's interesting to see Shibesh working almost as hard to use Windows Phone, dancing around the OS's 'helpful' interface and limitations. A good Sunday morning read for any smartphone fans.

Here are a few quotes from the article, firstly on the positive side:

2. Design/UI

Let’s face it. Tiles are awesome. The OS is beautiful in its design and in the fact that every application takes hints from the Metro interface and as a result you get a uniform experience, doesn’t matter what you’re doing and where you’re doing it. The Back button always works as you’d expect it to work in the context (And is on the left side of the device, where you’d expect it to naturally be, unlike some other popular *cough* Galaxy *cough* devices)
3. Lockscreen Customizability

I absolutely adore the way the lockscreen works as an alternative Notification Center. And that I can customize it ANY way I want. I can have pictures from Bing, Facebook, RSS going on in a slideshow. I can have the lockscreen responding to the weather of the place I am in, by showing me a forecast and a suitable wallpaper. The practical applications are endless and already in place!

And then on the negative side, with a few that rang very true for me:

1. No Multitasking

I cannot understand how a software company, who’s been one of the most dominant forces when it comes to PC operating systems, devalues the importance of true multitasking. Something which Symbian has had for YEARS. Yes, I understand that the target audience for this operating system is probably the masses, and not power users. But still. That choice of how I’m going to be using my phone should remain with me, and not with UX designers holed up somewhere sipping coffee.

On Symbian, I had no concept of the operating system ‘freezing’ tasks, while I went off to do something else. Gravity, Poddi, Opera Mini, WhatsApp, JoikuSpot; all of those applications would still be active, even if I opened them a week ago and forgot about them.

On WP, I have to check on every application I need to be working on, if it’s still doing what I want it to do or not. I have to manually check if the podcast I was downloading hasn’t stopped, if WhatsApp has any new messages it hasn’t ‘toast notified’ me about, if I have any new notifications under the ‘Me’ hub, if the picture I was uploading to Instagram hasn’t freezed, I could go on. What should be a butter smooth experience suddenly becomes me application-hopping frantically just to see if everything I want is happening the way I want it to happen. Which brings me to my next point:

2. App Switching

You know how I said above that I love WP’s UI, and smoothness? Here’s the thing: the smoothness is in the transitions. When I’m doing something important, and on-the-fly, I don’t give a damn about the transitions, which then promptly become a royal pain in the neck, taking for EVER to fly and swing into place and looking pretty, but never, I repeat, never fast. Also, if I see another ‘Resuming’ screen, I might just cry.

While on Symbian, I used to switch between tasks lightning fast. Flitting from Opera Mini, to share a link I found interesting to Gravity, to replying to a WhatsApp message that just came in, to the Camera because my dog just did something very funny, and so on and so forth.Also, don’t even get me started on the useless ‘you were in these apps before but they might be working or they might not, depending on your luck and my mood’ screen, aka, the ‘multitasking’ screen.

Absolutely. I get that Windows Phone is designed for the man in the street and is selling comparatively well to smartphone newbies, but it's frustrating that it can't also be used by geeks - I have exactly the same experience as that quoted above - plus live tiles which don't update properly, podcasts that don't download properly... I could go on. It's as if there's an opaque glass wall between myself and what I want the smartphone to be doing for me [it's called a screen - Ed] and I'm constantly having to guess and check with regard to what's actually happening or, quite often, not happening.

Surprisingly, give the negatives he lists at length, Shibesh comes down overall on the side of Windows Phone in the end:

After all of that, would I still keep using the 620?

....Yes. You see, I come from Symbian, I’m no stranger to finding workarounds for stuff that doesn’t work. In that way, Symbian really toughened up my hide. As an OS, I can see a lot of potential in Windows Phone, considering everything I hate about WP is within arms’ length of Microsoft to fix. And I’m really counting on incremental updates to make it better.

I too am awaiting the major Windows Phone OS upgrade that signals to me that the operating system has grown up, that it's 'finished'. There are some very promising signs that the fabled 'GDR2' update is the one.... but then I've said this before about '8' itself, and GDR1, so.... Fingers crossed anyway!

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (June 29)

Erik C. Thauvin — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 07:00:02 +0000

I'm at @WalmartHub (Everett, WA) 4sq.com/18ncDew #
Dairy Queen Buys Treadmills for Workers thauv.in/115rKXC #
Cheat day! (@ Old Country Buffet) 4sq.com/15RsZ93 #

Erik Thauvin: Ribs!!!

Erik C. Thauvin — Sun, 30 Jun 2013 01:29:00 +0000

Rob's ribs are the best.

All About Symbian: Carl Zeiss becomes just 'ZEISS' on future smartphone lenses

Sat, 29 Jun 2013 07:25:46 +0000

File this very definitely under 'link of interest', but the world has now learned the full story behind the change from 'Carl Zeiss' to 'ZEISS' on the lenses of certain upcoming smartphones. Nokia has been using highly visible Carl Zeiss branding on its smartphones running Symbian and Windows Phone for years and the use of the company's optics has always been a significant factor in the cameras in Nokia flagships producing superior results to the competition. Some quotes from the name change article below.

From the ZEISS lenses blog:

ZEISS is well-known across the globe and the associations with the brand are positive in every respect. Carl Zeiss is the name of the company’s founder and part of the company name Carl Zeiss AG. However, the brand has been called ZEISS for a long time. In general language usage, “ZEISS” is already well established in many countries and languages when referring to both the logo and the company. ZEISS is now taking this development into account in its decision to create consistency across its brand communications. The goal is to create an even clearer and more consistent image of ZEISS in the perception of its customers. ZEISS will be used as much as possible in future to eliminate the lack of consistency in how Carl Zeiss and ZEISS are used...

...As a result, we have decided to use only the ZEISS logo on the front ring of lenses for all future product families and not, as has been the case up to now, the name of the company “Carl Zeiss.” “ZEISS has been a global brand for a long time and we can all be proud of that,” says Martin Dominicus, Head of Marketing of ZEISS Camera Lenses. “When you go on vacation or on a business trip anywhere in the world and mention you work for ZEISS, you are greeted with a smile.”

The changeover for the lenses will take place at the family level: existing lens families will not be changed after-the-fact, but future families will be labeled with ZEISS.

Having known Nokia's association with the full 'Carl Zeiss' brand for much of my career in the smartphone world, this feels a bit like the end of an era. However, it's obviously just a name change and the optics and partnerships will remain in place. Early leaks of the new Nokia 'EOS' (codename) have shown both the full 'Carl Zeiss' and 'ZEISS' names - the latter is much more likely to be on the final device that gets launched on July 11th.

Carl Zeiss branding on the Nokia Lumia 920 and 808 PureView

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (June 28)

Erik C. Thauvin — Sat, 29 Jun 2013 07:00:02 +0000

Git Cheat Sheet thauv.in/154w4Wn #
The Myth of Healthy Processed Food thauv.in/154v3gQ #
Just completed a 3.77 mi walk with @RunKeeper. Check it out! rnkpr.com/a3btfpf #RunKeeper #

All About Symbian: Picking up a genuine European white Nokia 808 for £342 all in?

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 16:49:00 +0000

One of the biggest frustrations about the Nokia 808 PureView has been not being able to still buy it anywhere. Sellers on Amazon UK have turned out to be importing stock from Malaysia, with obvious concerns over warranty. However, I did notice that Amazon Germany have a seller claiming to have full 'Euro' stock devices (which default to English, apparently) - going through the shopping basket system revealed an end price (including 20 Euros for shipping) of £342. Which, I contend, is still very decent for the last great Symbian smartphone. What do you think?

Here's the current listing on Amazon Germany (helpfully part translated by Google Chrome!):

The tricky bit, at least, is for someone else in another country, possibly using a different currency, to buy the device. However, it seems that Amazon handles that these days, first of all verifying that you want to use your credit card in your own currency:

...And then putting up some statements that make sense and that you have to agree with - essentially agreeing to their conversion rate:

Yikes, it seems as though you can't get many Euros for a pound now - I guess that means my own currency has become stronger! Ah well, it's still a good price for a new Nokia 808 PureView - and in white too!

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the 808s coming through Amazon Germany come up in English (but with other Euro languages built-in), though I'd welcome comment from anyone who's bought European hardware before and had to face a warranty situation in the UK - how did it work out?

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (June 27)

Erik C. Thauvin — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 07:00:03 +0000

Just completed a 3.34 mi walk - Walked back from the UPS Store rnkpr.com/a3blvzg #RunKeeper #
@Tullys_Shops What's the policy on free drip refills? Available everywhere? Not here: 4sq.com/19zCZuW #
Just completed a 1.19 mi walk - Walked to the UPS Store rnkpr.com/a3bldhn #RunKeeper #
Just completed a 1.42 mi walk with @RunKeeper. Check it out! rnkpr.com/a3bl3kr #RunKeeper #
Superman's battle with Zod cost $2 trillion, killed 129,000 people thauv.in/11KftX8 #
Study: Wealthy People More Likely to Lie, Cheat and Take Candy From Kids thauv.in/10mMiZ7 #
Cord-cutting catches on: 60 million Americans now rely on free over-the-air TV feedly.com/k/14vgAIj #

All About Symbian: Gallery Image Share update rolling out for Belle FP2

Fri, 28 Jun 2013 06:52:34 +0000

The updates keep on coming for Symbian - you may remember that a major fix to the Gallery application was rolled out to Belle FP2 smartphones (e.g. the Nokia 808) a few months ago? We now have a much more minor update being rolled out, taking Gallery to v12.0 and fixing Facebook photo sharing (I'm guessing changes at Facebook's end had scuppered things?), among other minor tweaks.

As ever, you can check your Nokia 808, 700 or 701 for this update by heading to 'SW Update' on the main applications menu. It's a small update and will install in seconds, but you will need to restart the phone for the fixes to take effect, since Gallery is such a core component.

The update presenting itself on my Nokia 808 this morning (many readers had apparently been offered it yesterday)...

Ah yes, how else am I going to share this found iPhone 5s prototype on Facebook unless I have the latest Gallery patch?(!) - which worked fine.

Comments welcome - did this fix Facebook sharing for you? As I've said before, my worry is around the point at which Nokia and Accenture stop working on these minor compatibility updates - online services are forever tweaking their APIs and assuming that manufacturers and developers are keeping step with them, so what happens when the gap gets too large?

All About Symbian: Nokia's Symbian multimedia headsets almost matched on WP?

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 17:08:13 +0000

One of the showstoppers for me when looking at moving away from Symbian to other platforms was always the thought of being separated from my beloved multimedia headsets - full media control without touching my phone at all. Experimenting with Windows Phone 8, I took the time to experiment with all the button combinations possible with that smartphone OS and third party three button headsets. OK, the results are a little artificial in that I'm adding an accessory that didn't come 'in the box', but at least most of the remote functionality I crave for my music and podcasts is now handled. If you're thinking of perhaps moving to one of Nokia's Windows Phones, then check out my article here.

From the article:

...here's the grid describing what happens when using each type of headset and pressing buttons with each type of content:

Content type >> Music tracks Nokia Mix Radio Podcasts

Single press of only/centre button Play/pause Play/pause Play/pause

Double press of only/centre button Next track Next track Skip ahead 30 seconds*

Triple press of only/centre button Previous track No effect Skip back 30 seconds*

Press of the top (nearest the earpiece) button+ Volume up one notch Volume up one notch Volume up one notch

Press of the bottom (nearest the main body of the lead) button+ Volume down one notch Volume down one notch Volume down one notch

* it doesn't appear that you can alter this period - unless someone knows differently?

+ long pressing the top and bottom keys on three button headsets takes the volume up and down much faster (kind of obvious, but...)

Does the functionality here get close to that which I mourned from the headsets from OMTP Symbian days? On the whole, yes, provided that a three button headset is used. Which is cheating slightly - but then if you're thinking of staying with Nokia's hardware for your next smartphone move then at least this gives fellow audio fans a way forward.

What do you think? Is this enough for you?

All About Symbian: Nokia updates here.com aerial imagery, HERE Maps to follow later this year

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 14:55:01 +0000

Following on from the recent maps data update, Nokia has announced that it is updating the aerial imagery used on its here.com mapping website. The company says it will soon have "better-resolution images" for 90% of global landmass, with an initial batch covering the United States, Western Europe, and South Africa live from today. The new imagery will also be made available on smartphones "later this year".

In a blog post on Nokia Conversations, Nokia says it is "providing clear, disruption free views on zoomed in levels with better resolution so that you can see more details and fresh maps with more recent images". This translate to cloud-free images and continuous coast-to-coast high resolution aerial coverage.

The new high definition image uses significantly more data that the previous imagery. As part of the update process, and in order to support sustainable future updates, Nokia has undertaken a major engineering effort to re-architect the back end systems supporting the aerial imagery (e.g. image formats and storage architecture). As a result Nokia has reduced storage and operating costs by a factor six. The new system is being tested first on here.com, in order to gain an understanding of real-world performance of the new system, before it is deployed into Nokia's other map channels in due course.

The updated aerial imagery is a major improvement over what was previously available, especially in rural areas. In urban areas, which generally already had reasonable coverage, the improvements are only really apparent when zoomed into to a relatively low level. Nokia believes that improved aerial mapping is important to both consumers (explore new places and orientate themselves) and corporate users (getting a better understanding of destinations for fleet logistics).

The updated aerial imagery should help Nokia's HERE offerings get more favourable reviews when compared to Google's map offerings. Google's aerial imagery has rightly been regarded as superior to Nokia's aerial imagery, but, in areas where the imagery has been updated, the difference is now much smaller. Google's advantage in Street View / Street Side image coverage remains an important differentiation point, but this may be diminished by the rise of AR-enhanced street level data and related imagery in the future.

Before and after example from rural France (imagery taken from HERE Maps app and here.com today).

Before and after example from West Wales (imagery taken from HERE Maps app and here.com today).

The updated aerial imagery is part of Nokia's on-going mission to build the world's "best digital map", something that is increasingly looks like becoming a two horse race between Google and Nokia.

Other companies and data providers may have a role to play, but are more likely to be sources of additional or special-use data, rather than full-service offerings in their own right. Open Street Map and Tom Tom are the closet to providing serious competition to the big two, but will find it difficult to match the scale, breadth, and resources of the big two.

Satellite imagery is, of course, only one element of this race, but it is one of the most visual, and along with map data quality and coverage, plays the biggest role in the consumer perception of how "good" a digital map is. It's for this reason that Google and Nokia are continuing to invest money into improving their aerial imagery, just as they are also investing in data collection technologies for street level augmented reality data.

All About Symbian: LightWallet is a serviceable money tracker, with Google export/import

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 09:09:26 +0000

Living up to the 'Light' bit in the name, LightWallet is a very lightweight application - it's implemented in J2ME (remember that), but don't hold that against it - it starts in a flash and no fills are allowed to get in the way of presentation of your raw financial transactions. Recently updated, I give LightWallet a run through below....

From the Nokia Store description:

LightWallet is a lightweight but effective user friendly solution for transaction tracking and personal finance management using your mobile phone. LightWallet supports multiple accounts, user-defined transaction categories, embedded calculator, transaction filtering, monthly reports, backup and restore using MS Excel (CSV) files and Google Docs spreadsheets.

Here's LightWallet in action:

A 'wallet' is effectively an account, of course - it doesn't have to be a physical wallet of any kind! You can have as many as you like, ditto categories; (right) the interface is heavily menu-based - you'll be needing 'Add' a lot - I can only think that the J2ME implementation restricted the developer from putting a shortcut to this function on the toolbar....

Long pressing on accounts or transactions does offer basic functionality, as shown here; (right) adding in a new expense.

As with other money management applications, you can transfer funds at any point between wallets (accounts) if needed; (right) pick lists are shown for wallets, categories and charge/income.

The import/export facilities are surprisingly effective for such a lightweight application - being able to poke (admittedly text only) information into a Google Spreadsheet, for example.

The J2ME, menu-centric interface takes some getting used to, especially when getting started and faced with almost blank screens and no wallets, categories or transactions. However, persevere and the application soon starts to make sense. Although lightweight in concept, there's the flexibility to clear months as you go (presumably reconciling with bank statements), plus import and export facilities.

In practice, every time I've ever started to record transactions and attempt a proper wallet 'book keeping' system, I've failed - the matching up of accounting month start/end times, the transactions which overflow, the failing to input some transactions which then throws everything off.... The exercise quickly becomes a lot of work and not worth it for most people - I just scan my online or paper statements each month and mentally recognise the names of transactions of any significant amount and I'm done.

However, there are people who loves to track every expense or income, plus this could be very easily used as an expense tracker for business 'claim back' purposes. Comments welcome if you've used it in the past.

One footnote: somewhat curiously, LightWallet is listed as 'open source', despite the £1.50 price tag in the Store, and indeed the code is all online here - which means that you could theoretically take the source and build it yourself. And, being J2ME, this is presumably fairly trivial, though it's still doubtful that anyone would go to the bother, to save such a small sum. And you can't blame the developer for wanting to make a little pocket money from pre-packaging the app in the Nokia Store - it just looks a little odd to see the 'open source' presence at the same time?

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (June 26)

Erik C. Thauvin — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 07:00:02 +0000

Just completed a 2.91 mi walk - Back from the Post Office rnkpr.com/a3bdgvp #RunKeeper #
Just completed a 1.91 mi walk with @RunKeeper. Check it out! rnkpr.com/a3bda0y #RunKeeper #
The Rise of the Minimalist Workout thauv.in/17DvIcW #
Here's How to Get the Windows 8.1 Preview for Free Right Now thauv.in/123F5ur #

All About Symbian: Truespeed is a Symbian in-car HUD

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 12:21:00 +0000

This was something I thought of a decade ago, but which was of such obviously niche interest and dubious legality that I never did anything with it: the idea of using a smartphone display, suitably vertically flipped such that its contents got reflected back from the (typically around 45 degrees) car windscreen, to form a kind of HUD (Head Up Display). And this is exactly what TrueSpeed does here - it's simple and focussed on just one function but the HUD part works very well. With more caveats than you can shake a stick at, but... it does work.

From the Nokia Store description:

Get TrueSpeed speedometer with HUD and enjoy the cool supercar effect on your windscreen while also driving safer.

An easy to read dial display with a numeric LCD value. HUD display helps you to concentrate on the road when driving in dark or in bad weather.

You can also use TrueSpeed to confirm the speedometer accuracy. Did you know that your speedometer could be up to 10% off?

Before I launch into some of the caveats, here's TrueSpeed reflecting off my car windscreen at night, with the information coming from my E7, mounted on a grip mat on the top of my dashboard:

Undeniably cool, and credit to the developers, but do note that:

The system only works properly if it's quite dark (obviously)
The HUD has a 'duplicate' effect, due to reflections off the two faces of the windscreen (this may be slightly different for you, depending on the glass coatings and angle)
There's the distraction of the phone's display too, albeit at a more extreme angle, plus the worry that it might slip off the grip mat, etc. during a corner
This is a one-display app, you get a visual indication of GPS speed and that's it
Speed is only shown in km/hour, there's no option to use imperial units (mph)
Having a HUD at all is going to be distracting, despite what the developers say, not least because the HUD image is, optically, only a few feet away, whereas your eyes should be focussed many tens of yards/metres away for driving - you won't want to be switching your focus backwards and forwards - especially at night, where driving is harder

You can buy TrueSpeed for £1.50 here in the Nokia Store. When first started, the app shows the dial the 'right way around', but a control, top-left, flips it for HUD use.

Comments welcome - would you be willing to use something like this? And do you think the local law enforcement would approve of a HUD, however simple?

NB. As readers have pointed out in the comments below, there are a few other similar applications in the Nokia Store, it seems. I'll do a proper round-up in the future.

All About Symbian: The social image browser you didn't know you already had

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 09:13:28 +0000

Being an AAS reader, there's a very good chance that you're a user of Gravity, the über Twitter client (and more) - in fact, more than that, you're probably on the beta track, which means you can almost certainly do what I demonstrate below. Did you know that Gravity contains within it a social image browsing mode? i.e. you can flick from socially shared images directly? Think of the mode as the lovechild of Flipboard and Gravity's usual presentation!

Here's the set-up. Normally, when browsing a Twitter timeline in Gravity, tapping on a tweet that includes an image link will bring up 'Preview' among the context-sensitive options - tap this and you're into an image preview mode, with the text of the tweet shown above. All very well and efficient and you haven't had to actually spawn out to a browser instance or (shudder) launch Web to see the picture.

This is all brought to you by virtue of Gravity having the intelligence to recognise image links and go off to scrape the picture for you and then render it for the 360 pixel width portrait nHD screen, the 480 pixel screen of the Nokia E6, or the 640 pixel width landscape nHD screen.

What you almost certainly didn't know was that this preview mode has a hidden treasure. Swipe it to the left or right and you'll find that Gravity slips smoothly into the next tweet in that time direction that includes an image link. In other words, you can browse through all socially shared photos in your entire timeline in one slick interface.

While previewing tweeted images in this way, you can still tap on the tweet text to see the usual context options, of course, including replying to the poster.

All very cool, and I can't believe I've used Gravity for years without knowing about this browsing feature. I wonder which version of the application introduced it? Comments welcome!

PS. In case you haven't already bought your copy (for life) of Gravity from Jan Ole Suhr, see here. It's the best £7 you'll ever spend. And make sure you then update to the latest beta.

Erik Thauvin: Twits du Jour (June 25)

Erik C. Thauvin — Wed, 26 Jun 2013 07:00:02 +0000

RT @LGRPodcast: Don't Even THINK of Using Encryption Software to Escape NSA Scrutiny dailykos.com/story/2013/06/… via @dailykos #
LooseJar: Remove Unnecessary Jars! thauv.in/14rs8MF #
CSPI Downgrades Splenda From "Safe" to "Caution" (Sucralose) thauv.in/14rr4sm #
Ice from Fast Food Restaurants Dirtier Than Toilet Water thauv.in/14rr0c6 #
Havok Releases Project Anarchy, A Free Mobile 3D Game Engine And Unity Competitor thauv.in/13558GF #
Get Your APKs In Order with APK Organize thauv.in/1354Qjh #
Guava math contributions to OpenJDK thauv.in/1351psJ #
Android Studio 0.1.7 Released thauv.in/12ivgMu #
Learn Git Branching thauv.in/12iuMG3 #
Just completed a 5.15 mi walk - Walked to the FHC... rnkpr.com/a3b035q #RunKeeper #
Paper is not dead. youtube.com/watch?v=V_gOZD… #
Starbucks To Increase Prices Tuesday thauv.in/17A8zs1 #

All About Symbian: How far towards phablet territory would Symbian have gone?

Wed, 26 Jun 2013 05:59:00 +0000

It has been fascinating watching the wider smartphone world - away from the Nokia 808, my smartphone core, we've seen phone screen sizes going up and up, with Sony announcing a smartphone with 6.4" screen in the last 24 hours, the Xperia Z Ultra. There's even been a new word, 'phablet' (phone/tablet hybrid) created - OK, noone likes the term, but until someone comes up with a better alternative... It got me thinking, though - how far would Symbian have gone down this direction if the OS hadn't been sidelined and EOLed back in February 2011? Would we now have a Symbian phablet?

Nokia 9500 Communicator, in action in my hands in the mid-2000s

The answer to that question depends on how you actually define 'Symbian' and which interface you're talking about. The 4" screened Series 80 (non-touch, QWERTY, e.g. Nokia 9500) and Series 90 (touchscreen, e.g. Nokia 7710) Communicators back in 2004(ish) could each have certainly been developed further, to use larger screens. But I think that's stretching my musings too far - after all, this branch of the Symbian world was axed by Nokia almost a decade ago.

Then there are the UIQ smartphones, also with touchscreens, of which the last was produced in 2007, so almost six years ago. Although based around a touch UI, these devices were also very much designed around the small portrait screens of the time and it's debatable whether UIQ would have scaled successfully up to larger devices.

The form of Symbian which prospered (at the expense of Series 80, in particular) was of course Series 60, later renamed 'S60' and then back to just 'Symbian', in 2010. The interface that was designed for 176x208 pixel, 2" screens was scaled up for QVGA, then 352x416 pixels (e.g. on the Nokia E70) and finally to 360x640 pixels for the S60 5th Edition generation (Nokia 5800, etc.) and most of the newer 'Symbian' devices (N8, 808, etc. - I'll ignore the oddball VGA screened E6 for a moment). Yes, the touch implementation has been tightened up a lot since the early days of S60 5th Edition, but it's still easy to pick up a Nokia 808, for example, and use it one-handed in a way that's not a million miles from how those early Series 60 devices worked.

At which point you have to consider how Symbian's UI, in its current hybrid state (part touch-optimised, part legacy), might have scaled up further. You can get a sense for how a Symbian 'phablet' might work by rotating your device and using it in landscape mode for a bit. Certainly, Symbian's been designed to cope with aspect ratio changes gracefully for years - far more so than other mobile platforms, e.g. iOS, Android, Windows Phone, all of which have patchy landscape support.

Symbian has always been adaptable in terms of screen resolution and aspect ratio, here showing Nokia Maps in landscape mode on the Nokia E7's 4" nHD screen. It's also easy to see how applications like Maps might have scaled nicely to larger, higher resolution displays...

Applications like Maps, Web and Gallery are trivial to adapt for larger screens, of course, they need as much space as they can get, though you'd have to start adding extra controls into the toolbars, to stop the existing controls looking rather 'lonely'. Standard data-centric applications like Contacts, Messaging and Log would be somewhat awkward, since there's not really enough information per screen to warrant filling a phablet display. Mail, Calendar and Store are interesting in that they would have lent themselves to adapting to a larger display, perhaps with side-by-side/tabular layouts.

In short, quite possible, though - can you imagine a 6"-screened Symbian smartphone with a 1080p display? It's certainly an intriguing 'what if' to mull over.

The new Sony Xperia Z Ultra - 6.4" screened smartphone. I mean 'phablet'.... I mean.... oh, whatever!

Of course, aside from the fact that none of this actually happened(!), there's also the huge question of whether Symbian's ecosystem was up to embracing and extending to a new set of screen sizes (we'd presumably have had 720p resolutions too). Since we're in the world of the hypothetical, let's assume that the Symbian developer community had remained at roughly the same level as it was at the start of 2011 - would it have been up to the challenge?

My gut feel says 'no', if only because we have the aforementioned Nokia E6 as evidence. Introduced in early summer 2011, the landscape-only VGA resolution format was enough that a good half of the existing top 500 or so applications wouldn't work on it, with a further 25% only working with some UI glitches. And that's just a slight tweaking of which UI elements go where - asking for a dramatic upscaling of resources, ideas and layouts to 720p and then 1080p would quite probably have been a step too far for all but the keenest developers.

Pixellation on the nHD 4" display of the Nokia 808 PureView. Looks bad at 1" away, but is fine at normal distances, I contend. Especially outdoors!

However, I dispute the current tech wisdom which says that bigger is best - yes, I'd love to have a few more pixels in my Nokia 808's 4" screen, and yes, I'd be interested in a 4.3" 720p version (not that it'll happen, as we've just discussed). But as a pocketable device which is comfortable to hold and use one handed, devices like the Nokia 808 and 701/N8 take a lot of beating. I simply wouldn't want to be carrying around (and babysitting) a Symbian phablet all day, every day, even if such a thing were to exist. The 808's curves and contours are just perfect for holding and manipulating - even the much maligned camera hump is something of a positive, in that it's a natural place for the index finger to nestle in behind and thus ensure a stable grip (see the profile photo below).

In short, I don't think we're missing much in not having a Symbian 'phablet'. Which at least saves us from having to debate whether to use the word in the first place!

Comments welcome, of course, I suspect a few of you will want your say on this topic!

The Nokia 808 from the side. Methinks complaints about the 'hump' are seriously exaggerated.... I've grown to love it!

All About Symbian: Comics Creator updated, still quirky

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 15:16:33 +0000

I noticed that one of the oldest Symbian touchscreen applications had recently had an update - and it's not an app that we'd ever mentioned on AAS in the past. So, in the interests of our readers, I decided to take Comics Creator for a spin on the editorial E7. The interface is decent enough and you soon get used to how things work, though the whole thing came to a crashing halt when it came time to share my creation with the world - sadly.

From the Nokia Store description:

Creating a comic story, a cartoon strip or a photo journal can never get this simple and easy. Nextwave's Mobile Comics Creator allows users to do all that and much more — even if they are not an artist! With this easy-to-use application, anyone can create their own comics/photo journals.

Here's Comics Creator in action - a walkthrough of my attempt to create a three scene AAS comic!

Implemented in Java, Comics Creator should be pretty compatible with most touchscreen Symbian phones, though interestingly not for the latest Nokia 808 etc...

There are comprehensive background and character browsers, though note that these take a while to load each time - patience is required if you want one of the later items...

There are a dozen collections of character sprites...

... with each available in multiple poses, so that you can appear to make them different from scene to scene.

Text bubbles and boxes are easy to do, once you've worked out that the 'T' to type is often hidden by the toolbar! The solution is to start the box higher up to start off with. Note that all objects can be moved or deleted later, there's a full object-orientated editing model here.

Happily, you can add a new page and retain the essentials of the current one, ready for small changes and new text for your next scene...

Saving my comic to disk, ready for (in theory) onward sharing. Note that the 'menu' button just brings up filtering options for the otherwise cumbersome long side-scrolling toolbar.

Yes, I do want to share. Unfortunately, this is where I came a cropper. Sharing via Facebook only shares the current comic 'frame', rather than the whole comic - it's not clear whether this limitation is due to changes at Facebook's end or simply a known issue in Comics Creator. Sending via 'Email' actually queues something up via MMS, so I can only think that the email function is actually broken. I wonder if the developers will get round to fixing this as well?

At any point, saved comics can be retrieved - there's a decent creative application here struggling to get out!

Despite the recent update, I still couldn't recommend Comics Creator as a tool for anyone to rely on - maybe it's useful as an ideas scratchpad instead? Comments welcome if you managed to get the application to share multi-frame comics - how did you do it?

You can download Comics Creator for free in the Nokia Store here. Do note that it's not listed for Belle FP2 phones, currently.

All About Symbian: Bicycle Computer keeps track as you pedal

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 10:05:50 +0000

Not quite as polished as MeeRun, but Bicycle Computer has similar ambitions, albeit more focussed on longer journeys, as accomplished by a cyclist (as opposed to a runner or walker). Highlights here are full Open Cycle Map integration, a dedicated screen saver mode and KML export to Google Earth (etc.) Screenshots and some comments below.

It goes without saying that you need to fix your phone onto your handlebars SECURELY!

As I say, not quite as polished as MeeRun, but still well worth a try. I was only jogging lightly here (intended users will be on a bike, testing this over many hours, of course!), but there's a good spread of trip and long term data collection; (right) there's a choice of online maps to pull down - sadly it seems as though third party apps like this will never be able to access offline Nokia Maps on your mass memory. Ah well...

Here's Open Cycle Map in action, showing the way maps appear in tiles as low resolution bitmaps and then get rendered rather beautifully once everything is downloaded. Even individual houses are mapped, which is impressive. Note that your GPS track isn't shown graphically - the blue line here merely denotes a main road(!)

The GPS can be set to only fire up every few minutes, in an attempt to save power (I'd also suggest dropping the network mode to GSM, as usual when travelling across cells and in the country), plus there's a dedicated screen saver that kicks in as an alternative for the main Symbian one, giving you just the basics - or you can opt for no screen saver at all, in which case Bicycle Computer stays in the foreground all the time.

You can specify where to save KML tracks of your cycling exploits, though nothing actually gets saved unless you've remembered to tick the option shown above, left. When in place, stopping tracking saves out the KML file, ready for sideloading over to a PC and Google Earth.

I did have one usability issue with Bicycle Computer - the toolbar icons are a little too easy to hit. So you'll either exit the app completely or stop tracking without meaning too - though, in fairness, the application remembers exactly where it got to and picks things up immediately. The top status bar is also a little ugly, in that it shows your theme elements, though admittedly many people may be using a plainer theme than me, here! I'd also have liked a way to customise the backdrop graphic for the main display.

Overall, recommended. And it's only £1 over in the Nokia Store.

All About Symbian: Interval Timer the perfect lightweight training/testing aid?

Tue, 25 Jun 2013 07:26:30 +0000

If you're training (e.g. at a gym) or testing something in a lab as part of your work then you'll be familiar with the concept of an interval timer, an application to keep track of the number of repeats of something and to audibly and visually let you know when the allotted time period for each repeat is up. Yes, it's something of a niche use case, but if this sounds like something you could make use of then this new Symbian application, Interval Timer, is well worth a look - it's slick and immaculately programmed.

Here's Interval Timer in action:

You start by picking an interval mode (which will depend on what you're doing, for example) and tapping in the appropriate parameter - in this case the number of times to repeat the interval.

Then the interval itself and whether you want to stay in the portrait, small-fonted view or whether (for example if you're exercising) you want to use the landscape, large-fonted view.

By default there's a visual and audible countdown and then you're into the intervals - note that you'd usually have the 'lock' function engaged, so that you couldn't tap the pause or stop icons by mistake and thus mess up the current interval. 'Slide to unlock' is only within Interval Timer, it doesn't lock the whole phone, which is actually a neat compromise...

The lock function also works in the landscape view, shown here. The large fonts work well when the phone is (for example) several metres from you.

There's a lengthy help/summary screen, though the app is intuitive to use, I doubt anyone would need to read most of it.

Impressively, all application functions are customisable, so you can tailor Interval Timer to be exactly what you need it to be.

Note the 'Preset' numbers at the top of the screen throughout - you can save up to five sets of intervals (e.g. for different exercises or tests) and then recall them at will. Note that you can also have multiple timers, i.e. several going at once, which may help in a 'lab' use case.

Implemented neatly in Qt, Interval Timer is programmed to use a dark theme, which is great for saving power. The only glitch was that the app took a while to exit after use, leaving the user with a blank screen - I'm sure the developer can do something about this, if only to put up a 'Saving...' message?

You can buy Interval Timer in the Nokia Store for £1 or grab a 'Lite' version (with less functions) for free.

All About Symbian: Pimping the Nokia N8: still relevant in 2013

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 10:29:00 +0000

Perhaps the most relevant 'pimping' piece I've ever done, this feature looks at the legendary Nokia N8, with some components that are still cutting edge in 2013 and with an OS that's been updated steadily since its launch in 2010. So - what can be done to ensure that a Nokia N8 is running as sweetly as possible today?

The 2010-launched Nokia N8 has quite a few special features of note, that make the device still worth considering, I contend:

the 12 megapixel camera with 1/1.83" sensor and Xenon flash - still rated up with the best of 2013 camera phones.
the FM transmitter (no, not an FM radio, please don't get the two confused!) - fabulously useful to me, with an older car that has no AUX port or Bluetooth support(!)
a terrific speaker (admittedly playing through a slot that's easily blocked if you're not careful), great for speakerphone use, for in-car sat-nav and for podcast listening around the house.
the unibody metal build. We're just starting to see competing smartphones introduce metal in similar fashion, but the N8 arguably started the trend.
the dual charging option. It's almost impossible to go anywhere in the world where there's not either a Nokia 2mm charging jack or microUSB solution of some kind.
the always-on time and date display, thanks to the power-efficient nature of OLED screens, just lighting up a few pixels 24 hours a day. In the middle of the night, you can just look at the N8, bleary-eyed, and instantly see the time, nicely dimmed to the right level for night vision.
you can now pick up N8s regularly, second hand, for well under £100

Grab the latest OS and application patches

I'm assuming, since this is now 2013, that you've already upgraded to Nokia Belle Refresh, but there are often small patches and updates made available through 'SW update', on the main applications menu, so get in the habit of checking it every week or two. Recently, we've had the new version of Nokia Music and the new homescreen widgets, for example:

The prognosis for further updates going forwards, isn't brilliant, of course, but I wouldn't rule out some other patches appearing before the end of 2013.

The other thing that's worth exploring is the world of custom firmwares, as these can bring extra disk space, extra performance and the lifting of a number of built-in restrictions. See my adventures on the Nokia C7 (with very similar internals to the N8) and watch for my similar escapades on the N8 in due course.

Sleeping screen

The N8, C7, etc. shipped with Nokia's 'Big Clock' screensaver enabled, i.e. an always on, AMOLED-powered clock, but you can take this concept and go further - much further, by installing the free Nokia Sleeping Screen, which takes the Big Clock idea and amplifies it to include striking 'dot matrix' graphics. Every single time you look at your N8 you'll think how cool the always on 'Sleeping Screen' clock is...

You can choose which Sleeping Screen theme you want in Settings>Themes>Screen saver>Sleeping Screen. Tap on this and wait a second or two while the graphic browser loads.

Optimising the internal (system) disk

Disk C: is one of the potential bottlenecks in the N8 today (the E7, C7 and other later devices all had up to an extra 256MB of internal flash memory), you should aim to have over 50MB free at all times - in my experience this is quite achievable. Quite a bit of the preinstalled software on the N8 can be zapped, should you want a little more system disk space and a lighter app menu structure.

For example, F-Secure's 'Mobile Security' isn't needed, so that's a candidate for removal. The easiest way to remove apps is to long press them in the application menu and tap on 'Remove', but you can also see the complete list in Settings>Applications>Installed.

Next, and this sounds obvious, but it's surprisingly easy to switch your Nokia Store installation preference to install to 'C:Phone Memory', for installing a theme or always-on background utility*, and then forget to switch it back to 'E:Mass memory' afterwards.

* Because your mass memory (E:) and microSD card (F:) get locked out whenever you plug your phone into a desktop or laptop computer, anything that simply has to be always available does actually need to be installed on C: It's why most Nokia core updates always go to C: directly, without asking you.

Check that your install preference is set up properly now by going into the Nokia Store and then tapping on the account icon. Scroll down and tap on 'Installation preferences'.
Go into Settings>Installations>Already installed and look down the list for any (obviously non-Nokia) items that don't have a little 'memory card'/disk icon besides them. Such applications may well have been installed onto disk C: by mistake - I found several in my case. Long press on each and 'Remove' them, then re-install from the Nokia Store now that your correct preference is in place.

You can get a surprising amount of space back by removing your email account(s) from the N8 and adding them back again. The problem is that Nokia Email keeps all sorts of old messages and miscellaneous files and attachments all squirrelled away in a tortuous system folder structure. And however much it tries to do so efficiently, there's an inevitable build up of 'cruft'. Luckily there's a painless way to clear all this out and reclaim, typically, between 10 and 25MB of space in one fell swoop:

Go into Email and then Settings. Long press on your email address/mailbox name and choose 'Delete mailbox'. Confirm the deletion.
Resist the temptation to add it back in again immediately. Wait 10 minutes. Go and have a cup of tea, etc. Background processes are even now clearing out the mailbox's files. If you keep an eye on disk C: in File manager, you'll see the free space gradually rising.
Choose 'New mailbox' and add your email account back in again. You'll lose a few MB from the initial sync and download, but you'll still be up to 20MB better off.

Finally, empty out your Web browser cache, though of course, it'll all gradually fill up in normal use again. Go into Web and tap on the menu icon and then on 'Settings>Privacy'. Tap on the 'Clear privacy' line and then on the 'Cache' bullet point - the UI's not too obvious at this point, but the browser cache does get immediately deleted.

Folder organisation

As mentioned in generic Belle tutorials, it pays dividends to re-introduce some of the app folder reorganisation that Belle took away. For example, you can create a 'Games' folder (as shown above) and move all your game icons into it, and/or a 'Rarely used' folder and move in all the odds and ends that you think you'll rarely launch (e.g. Big screen, About, Vlingo, Adobe Reader, My Nokia, etc., don't worry, you can pe in to start them if needed).

A better camera UI

The N8's camera is its biggest highlight, of course, but the user interface was never exactly stunning. The various firmware updates streamlined things a bit, but I'd recommend buying a copy of Harald Meyer's CameraPro Qt instead, which brings more options, more functions and even better quality photos, all from an interface which is thumb optimised and much faster to move around.

Power saving apps and themes

The N8's screen is essentially a big torch - that's how AMOLED works. Black pixels emit no light and consume no energy, white ones (i.e. RGB groups, if you want to get technical!) emit maximum liight and consume maximum energy - you may remember I featured this aspect of AMOLED a while ago?

The more applications you use which work with a mainly dark 'theme', the better. We're talking a factor of fifteen in terms of power drain between white-themed and black-themed displays - that's huge. You can't do much about Nokia Web (though I'm guessing you won't be using it that often, this being a 2010 Symbian device?), since web pages tend to be based on white, but you can do a lot about your general theme and choice of applications. Nokia Evolve is a great general theme but a bit boring, so you might also like my favourite, Belly Jean (download direct).

Nokia Social, although it works fairly well on the N8, has white backgrounds throughout (I've complained about this to Nokia since day one, to no effect...) and is a long term no-no on here, but there's also the free, (optionally) black-themed Tweetian for Twitter. Plus the ever-popular, (optionally) dark-themed Gravity, of course, handling Twitter, Facebook and other social networks.

Again - I can't emphasise this enough - choose your applications well and you can potentially double your N8's battery life.

Battery and display physics

Although it's tempting to suggest keeping the brightness dialled down, the N8's hardware predated Nokia's CBD screen tech, and so you may want to keep brightness set to maximum, in order to look as enticing as other modern smartphones.... I wouldn't blame you!

One of the N8's weak points is its 1200mAh fixed (i.e. sealed) battery and it's quite easy on a day of heavy camera snapping, especially if you've had email and social software running the whole time, plus satnav use to get to wherever you're taking the aforementioned photographs, to run a bit low on the battery front. The recommended solution is to top up the N8 battery when you can, whether from your car's 12V lighter or from a portable charger, many of which have been reviewed here, but with the N8, there's also my favoured emergency solution, shown below, a fully charged BL-4D battery and a Torx T4 screwdriver, rubber banded together and kept in a jacket pocket. I've only had the N8 actually die on me in the middle of an action packed day once in the last six months, but when it happened I was ready and I had the battery swapped out in around a minute. So it can be done. Phew!

As with other smartphones, fundamental to keeping the N8's battery happy is basic Li-Ion advice, summarised as:

charge as often as you can - Li-Ion batteries last much longer if you don't take them right down to zero% each time. In theory, you can extend the life of the N8's battery from a year (500 charge cycles) up to a decade (5000 cycles).
never, ever let the charge run down to ground zero (where the phone turns off) and leave it there for any length of time. Do this and the battery chemistry will start to go into irreversible decline.

Of course, both also work well in favour of keeping the N8 working for you - wherever you spot a charging opportunity via microUSB (in car, on an office desk, passing the kitchen counter, wherever....), grab a top-up. You won't harm the Li-Ion battery - in fact, it'll love it. And love you back.

Performance issues

Of course, the N8 is somewhat slower than most would like today - that's 2010 for you. However, I do have a number of performance tips that may help:

turn theme effects off (Settings>Themes>General>menu>Theme effects)
keep the number of homescreens down - I suggest three at most, and keep the number of 'online' widgets to a minimum
avoid Nokia Social completely
try to avoid Nokia Web completely, too - Opera Mini works an absolute treat, with Opera Mobile as my backup when direct site interactivity is needed
in Mail, pop into Settings and turn 'Download images' off - don't worry, you can always tap to grab them as needed, on an ad-hoc basis

SIM matters

There's one other factor which is worth mentioning, and that's the SIM card size used by the N8 and every other phone and smartphone prior to 2011: miniSIM. With the arrival of the iPhone 4, the phone world started to move towards the much smaller microSIM standard and, while most phones can live with microSIM cards in an adapter, inserted into a miniSIM slot, the N8 is particularly vulnerable to damage because of its slot/unibody design. See here for much more on this.

I'd recommend that anyone who has moved to microSIM and now wants to move back to an N8, get their network to swap the card format and then use the 'full size' miniSIM, etc.

_____

As pimped above, the Nokia N8 is a pretty capable modern smartphone - it won't win prizes for speed compared to the 2013 Android competition, but it'll give you a decent battery life and lots of the under-the-hood features that Symbian's so good at. Plus there's the award winning camera - who could forget that?

All About Symbian: KM Tuner tries to make sure you hit the right notes

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 07:50:00 +0000

Although musicians are often stereotypically in the iPhone demographic, there are Symbian-smartphone-owning musos too, which is why I'm always happy to welcome another musician's tool to the party. In this case KM Tuner, available in both free and paid-for versions. Yes, it's implemented in Java, but it's well done and provides real time tuning feedback, so worth a look!

Here's KM Tuner in action:

There are the usual Java permissions dialogs, though happily only on the very first 'run'; in action, you get real time analysis of a tone being played (check out the five decimal places), tuning indication and a pretty waveform.

If your note is within a fraction of a percent of a recognised open string for your instrument, you get a green indicator and line, otherwise it's red and you're out of tune!

KM Tuner works by doing successive short recordings and then analysing them. Yes, there will be short gaps of dead time between recordings, but I think this is acceptable for a typical tuning use case. As shown above, there are a few things you can fiddle with if the default doesnt work well for you; (right) a selection of instrument presets means that the notes will auto-snap to the right frequencies/strings, etc.

There's a simple, but graphical Help screen - very clear, and good to see.

I do have a number of small complaints about the applicaton:

some musicians might need more arcane tunings - for baroque instruments, for example
there's no manual string selection, so you're reliant on the software guessing which string you're tuning properly - in the case of a string which is some way out to start with, this can be a problem
there's no preset for a 12-string guitar (in my case)
there's no screen timeout override in place, so after a minute or so of tuning a problematic string you have to reach down and unlock the phone screen - yet again

You can buy KM Tuner here in the Nokia Store for £1.50 or download the ad-supported free version here.

All About Symbian: Media speculation on the future of Nokia

Sat, 22 Jun 2013 11:24:37 +0000

Following in the wake of acquisition rumours, a swirl of media speculation continues to surround Nokia. On Wednesday Helsingin Sanomat, Finland's leading newspaper, published an editorial saying that "changes were inevitable because the company can not indefinitely spend shareholders money" and that one possible solution was "splitting the comany into several parts".

Yesterday YLE, the Finnish public broadcaster, reported that a meeting of Nokia's Board of Directors was taking place, at which it suggested that key decisions about the future of the company would be made. YLE noted that Nokia Siemens Network was the most likely topic, but that other areas could not be ruled out.

A combination of these reports, the coincidental presence of Microsoft's Joe Belfiore in Finland, the non-reveal of a five year term limit to the Microsoft-Nokia deal, and a number of other factors seem to have kicked off a more general round of media speculation about the future of Nokia.

Nokia's financial performance has unquestionably been poor in the last few years, a consequence of both the strategy shift first announced in February 2011 and the factors that led to that decision, but the most recent quarterly results have shown signs of improvement, with reduced losses in the key Devices & Services division and an improved cash position. The depressed share price, and its impact on shareholder value, does continue to be an issue, and concerns remain around device volumes. However, while the overall situation remains delicate, it is arguably less serious than it was a year ago.

It's true to say that a meeting of Nokia's Board of Directors would be needed before signing off on any major strategic decision, but such meetings are not that uncommon. Nokia's own website indicates that the Board met 17 times during 2012, an average of once every three weeks.

The Board held 17 meetings during 2012, of which approximately half were regularly scheduled meetings held in person, complemented by meetings through video or conference calls and other means.

YLE's report does indicate that the meeting may have run into a second day, which would be more unusual, but certainly not unprecedented. As YLE suggests the most likely topic is Nokia Siemens Network, the data networking and telecoms equipment joint venture between Nokia and Siemens.

Recent reports have suggested that Siemens is seeking offers from private equity firms to buy its stake in the joint venture. There is some speculation that Nokia may be looking at buying its partner out, but that would almost certainly require outside funding, which would complicate any potential deal. Both Nokia and Siemens have, in the past, expressed an interest in exiting the venture either via a buy out, or via a public offering, and both of these options remain realistic possibilities today.

Any decision reached by the Nokia Board is likely to become apparent before, or as part of, Nokia's next set of financial results, which are due on July 18th.

All About Symbian: An 808 camera data point: Startling starlings

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 07:36:07 +0000

The whole point about having an insanely good camera in your phone is not that it can take photos which are obviously superior when viewed on the phone screen, or even on a laptop screen - it's that the detail is there to be able to do extra, creative things with the image later on. And this is borne out nicely by an image sent in to the AAS team this week. See below for what a great smartphone camera and great editing can achieve.

Reader Rimas Raguliūnas writes in:

I just wanted to share some of my recent amazement of the Nokia 808. Recently I took a nice photo of birds fooling around in a tree in the medium distance:

original image here

The problem with shooting was that they were quite distant and flying around very fast. I was aware of the full resolution and cropping capabilities, but opted to use 8MP Pureview mode instead. It gave me the ability to shoot faster. Later, at home, I decided to use Gimp to make slight color corrections and then crop, upscale and sharpen:

Original of this image here

I was impressed how much of a detail left in the photo! I don't think this kind of cropping and up-scaling is achievable with any other phone or most of the standalone cameras! I don't think it's the right way to do it all the time - there are cases when full 34MP resolution is a better option, but for fast-changing scenery, I guess, it might work for some people.

Nice work, look at the detail in those starling wings, plus a gloriously arty effect from what is effectively a silhouette shot...

I'm often doing something similar, taking a photo of a group of friends at 5MP or 8MP and deciding later that the group shot is a bust but that I love the expression on one or two faces. I then crop in and produce an immaculate 2MP image, perfectly framed and with impeccable quality, for passing onto other friends or family - who naturally think I'm a wizard for being able to produce such perfect shots time after time...

You can follow Rimas's other photos here in his Flickr stream.

All About Symbian: A communications wall of your nearest and dearest

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 07:02:00 +0000

File this under 'bright ideas I had while fiddling around', but with the arrival of a properly formatted Contact Communication widget for the Nokia E6 the other day, I had something of a revelation in terms of homescreen setup - why not have an entire screen of such widgets, essentially making up the people nearest and dearest to me? I'd see their faces every day and be able to contact them each in two ways with just one tap...

In fact, the idea seemed relatively obvious and I suspected that someone else must have done something similar in big (nay huge) gallery of real world user homescreens a few weeks ago? I looked back at Marko Tomic got very close to doing exactly this, though I've gone all the way and have also applied the idea to the VGA-screened Nokia E6.

As I say, this is only an idea, but one that I think many might like to file away or adapt. Nokia's Belle Contact Communication widget, now available to all, can be used as many times as is needed on homescreens. Which in my case can be six times on one E6 screen or eight times on a typical nHD portrait screen, as on the 808 or N8 etc:

NB. Faces obscured for obvious personal reasons, plus I've filled out the 8 in the first shot with a couple of likely candidates....

What do you think? The idea is similar to the 'people' full-screen widgets beloved of many Android smartphone skins, and I absolutely love the idea that I can fill a homescreen not only with the faces or avatars of people close to me, but with the functionality of calling or messaging them with one tap too.

___

Ref the comment below, here is the set-up dankoi submitted... 8-)

All About Symbian: Hardware QWERTY and long battery life have a place in mobile

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 19:22:17 +0000

File this under 'link of interest', most certainly, because the review subject isn't Symbian, but it's certainly refreshing to see positive review conclusions from the tech media (in this case, Matt Miller of ZDNet) about the idea of a QWERTY candybar device. This is a form factor that Blackberry and, to a certain extent, Nokia have made their own over the last decade and with the Symbian-powered Nokia E6 and the new Blackberry Q10 still flying the flag for QWERTY fans, it's great to see the benefits of the concept recognised again.

It's not, you see, all about screen real estate. Even in 2013. Yes, games and movies and web sites look vastly better on a 5" screen held in landscape mode, but for most other uses - the core messaging, email and social things that we do every day, the screen size is actually irrelevant most of the time, since a 5" device with virtual keyboard deployed gives you roughly the same (or even less) screen real estate free as you have on devices like the Nokia E6 and Blackberry Q10.

The other point that Matt makes is about battery life. In part the longer life of devices like the E6 and Q10 are down to the smaller screen, and in part the different use case, but the end result is that either device will give you a full day of hard use with no battery qualms.

Quoting from Matt's article:

Summary: The BlackBerry Q10 is the BlackBerry 10 device that the die-hard QWERTY fans have been waiting for and it doesn't disappoint. It's refreshing to use a hardware keyboard and enjoy long battery life on a phone again.

Long-time BlackBerry users were excited for the launch of the Q10 and reports indicate it is doing pretty well. I was pleased to see BB10 on the Z10 and didn't think there was really a place for a hardware QWERTY device in today's smartphone world. After more than two weeks of using the Q10 extensively, I am ready to swap my Z10 for a Q10 and bang away on a thumb keyboard.

The keyboard, long battery life, centralized communications system, and solid hardware make the BlackBerry Q10 an attractive product that stands out from the current crop of smartphones...

...I used to be a die-hard keyboard fan, enjoying both the portrait-oriented ones seen on BB devices and phones like the HTC Dash and Nokia E71, as well as the landscape-oriented ones found on devices that slid sideways to reveal even larger keyboards. I still have the T-Mobile Touch Pro 2 that has the ultimate landscape-oriented keyboard.

Software input keyboards have gotten to be pretty amazing with the native ones on the iPhone and Windows Phone platforms competing with innovative Android keyboards like SwiftKey and Swype. However, after using the Q10 and its QWERTY keyboard I have to say it is a breath of fresh air in the all-too familiar black slab market.

...I did feel a bit cramped with the display at times when browsing websites and trying to play games. However, for text entry you are going to consume a large portion of your display on a slab with the software keyboard so it isn't much different than what you experience on the Q10.

...If you need to be out and about all day, appreciate a new user interface, prefer a hardware QWERTY keyboard, are focused on communications, and like your smartphone to be efficient then you may want to consider the Q10.

I am personally a bit tired of all the large phones and truly enjoyed the smaller Q10. It was fun to use a hardware QWERTY keyboard again and I was able to bang out text quickly on the keyboard. I may be faster with SwiftKey or on WP8, but the ability to enter a couple letters and do more than just enter text is extremely efficient.

Some good observations in there and ones I echo. No matter what the wider tech industry thinks, I'm not convinced that hardware QWERTY is dead. Just try pumping out an email with lots of names, punctuation characters, passwords or URLs using a touch keyboard and it can get frustratingly slow....

Comments welcome on any of these reflections!

All About Symbian: Jewels provides a brightly coloured logic challenge

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 10:54:07 +0000

The idea behind Jewels is familiar, of course - switch pairs of jewels to create lines of three or more, at which point they disappear and more jewels drop in from the top of the grid. In the process, this effectively creates a whole new configuration to study - play the game well and you can line things up in the right order so that your possible future options are maximised.

Here's Jewels in action:

Written in Qt, Jewels is certainly colourful, though if I were picky, I'd point out that the toolbar button borders seem to vanish against the screen edges. OK, ok, so that's really, really picky...

I loved the way the backgrounds change every now and then, giving the game a subtly different feel. At some point the timer will run out (in normal mode) or you'll run out of possible moves (in relax mode), in which case it's time to save your high score.

One subtlety that's perhaps a little too subtle is the timer in 'normal' mode - a shade effect in the background starts advancing to the bottom of the screen - match 3 or more in a row and the shade relents, moving back up a notch; take too long and the shade continues downwards. Your time runs out when it hits the very bottom. Although you get used to watching for the shade, I'd suggest either starting it from the very top, to make the effect more obvious, or including a digital timer as well, down in the status bar.

As with most puzzles of this kind, there's more here than meets the eye. Casual players will just take easy matches, advanced players will plan the order in which they match jewels so as the maximise their chances later on, or to shift awkward jewels by arranging matches beneath them.

You can buy Jewels for £1 here in the Nokia Store.

Andrew Grill: Using a broadway show to explain the differences between social media and social business

Andrew Grill — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 13:58:29 +0000

Andrew Grill: London Calling gets a fresh new look

Andrew Grill — Sun, 17 Mar 2013 13:29:27 +0000

blogs

Back in May 2008, I updated the look and the name of my blog, moving from andrewgrill.com/blog to LondonCalling.co on WordPress and a new theme.

After 5 years I’ve decided it is time to give LondonCalling.co a fresh new look, and a responsive and mobile friendly theme.

After many auditions, I have chosen the very clean Slate WordPress theme from Okay Themes, written by Mike McAlister.

The theme is “responsive” in that it will adapt for any screen size, including mobile.

It also has a bunch of neat widgets that you will see on the right hand side which allow me to present other posts, comments, my social presence and also my tweets.

It is a very flexible theme and I highly recommend Okay Themes – they are well written and good value – Slate cost me just $45.

I’d welcome any comments on the new look below – what do you think?

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Andrew Grill: The evolution of social business report from Altimeter group – part 1

Andrew Grill — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:42:17 +0000

Andrew Grill: IBM CEO Ginni Rometty believes big data and social will change everything – how about other CEOs?

Andrew Grill — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 06:30:49 +0000

Andrew Grill: Using archive.org to see your first blog post

Andrew Grill — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:59:10 +0000

Andrew Grill: How to ensure I won’t blog your press release – case study

Andrew Grill — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 19:39:35 +0000

Andrew Grill: This disruptive decade – global CEO survey by PwC shows that social has a place at the top table

Andrew Grill — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 08:52:09 +0000

Andrew Grill: Simple customer feedback idea seen at Heathrow Airport

Andrew Grill — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:04:25 +0000

Andrew Grill: NFC business cards from Moo.com – first look

Andrew Grill — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 13:39:08 +0000

Andrew Grill: Business Leadership Exchange Dinner at the Royal Institute – review

Andrew Grill — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:53:31 +0000

digital,digital disruption,leadership

I was invited to a very interesting dinner on Thursday night at the Royal Institution by Nimbus Ninety as part of their Business Leadership Exchange program.

The event was held under Chatham House Rule (although none of us signed anything), so I am not sure how much I can say.

Here is a picture of some very eminent people around the table.

The BLE looks at the effect of digital disruption, and on this particular night brought together an amazing group of people – from companies as diverse as Harvey Nichols, The Bank of England, BP and Deutche Bank.

The main ideal of the group is to develop an intimate network of C-Level executives with a shared aim to “explore the opportunities and understand the impact of digital disruption.

The discussion was very lively, and drew on the amazing experience of the 16 or so of us around the table.

One of the first themes of our discussion was around the fact that many of today’s chief executives don’t even know what there are being asked to approve when it comes to digital marketing.

The group discussed how the role of the “Chief Digital Officer” was on the rise, to help both the CIO and CEO navigate these new disrupted times.

One of the group mentioned that they had been asked to sign off on a multi-million pound PPC campaign (and they thankfully know what a PPC campaign is), without the requestor being able to articulate how the campaign would be measured, or what the objectives were.

I would argue (as did the group) that there a great many CEOs that are being disrupted themselves as they aren’t able to clearly understand how digital disruption is affecting their business.

We also spent some time discussing how the current era would be remembered.

Our host for the night was Professor Frank James, who is the Professor of the History of Science and Head of Collections, and also took us on a guided tour of the extensive collection in the basement before dinner.

Professor James commented that the period from 1830 – 1860 in Great Britain would be remembered as one of incredible change. The group also looked at how fast technology has changed over just the last decade.

The question of innovation and risk was raised. One interesting comment was that both Google and Facebook both have a very aggressive approach to innovation, and in many ways Google still takes risks in the same way a start-up does even though it is a multi-billiondollar company.

It is these risks taken by just a few companies that is helping to drive other companies to develop new platforms and products.

It was fair to say that many around the table represented some very conservative companies, and in their industries taking the sorts of risks that Google does is not an option.

The discussion lasted well over 2 hours, during which a fabulous meal was served, and I know everyone left the dinner feeling that the first event had been very worthwhile.

I was delighted to have been invited, met some very smart people and participated in one of the most interesting debates for some time about digital disruption.

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Andrew Grill: Embedding photos in tweets with Twitter cards

Andrew Grill — Sun, 17 Feb 2013 17:21:20 +0000

Andrew Grill: One of the better reasons to join Twitter

Andrew Grill — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 14:12:48 +0000

Andrew Grill: Some SEO agencies are illiterate

Andrew Grill — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:16:16 +0000

Andrew Grill: Gamifying the enterprise – how to get your employees using social media

Andrew Grill — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 11:28:31 +0000

social business,social media

I see many companies that are trying to get on the social media bandwagon, so they can say they are “doing social”.

I’m not not talking about companies just setting up a Twitter feed, or a Facebook page – instead those companies that want to encourage their workforce to start to really use social media, and better engage with customers, an collaborate internally.

While you cannot mandate that people use social media, you can encourage them to use it so they can see the benefits first-hand.

In my experience, this is much easier to say than to do.

Short of putting it in your contract, a company cannot “force you to be social”.

Imagine if you worked for a sports marketing agency, but you didn’t do a lot of sports. It would be strange to tell you that you HAVE to play lots of sports. If it wasn’t your thing then it would just be seen as a chore, you might do it for a while, then leave the company.

Back in 2010, one of my clients in Australia was trying to set up an “eminence program” to make their consultants more “googleable” (their words not mine).

The intent was sound – have their star consultants be known and famous for the area the worked in, so that when you googled a particular topic, their name came up as someone knowledgable in this space.

What we did was to find articles and tweets for them to share (in effect working as specialised researchers for them). The onus was then on the consultants to share and tweet.

I can even remember meetings in Melbourne where I was literally getting them to sign up to twitter in the conference room, helping them write their bio and send their first tweet.

The program worked well for those already comfortable with social media – and those stars really stood out.

The other 98% of people we worked with were really not that comfortable with social, so it took a lot longer – and some didn’t do anything all with the information we provided them.

I am on record as saying that back in 2007 when I first signed up to Twiter, I thought that it was “the biggest waste of time”. I was proven wrong and now even my Wife pulls me up for always being on Twitter. You really have to use these platforms as a natural extension of what you do to truly understand the benefits.

In order to drive social media adoption (for the benefit of the company as well as an employee’s own brand), you need to make it fun, and then they will be encouraged to use it and adopt it at their own rate.

Here the saying “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink” is entirely appropriate.

One real world example of this is with the smart folks at Ogilvy in London.

Around 12 months ago, I spoke with Leo Ryan (@LeoTwit), head of social for Ogilvy London about how we could use our Kred leaderboards to get the Ogilvy staff more interested in social media.

What was important was giving them a reason to use social networks, make it fun and gamify the experience.

So what we did was build a leaderboard (it is live at london.kred.com and added the @names of Ogilvy staff to the board, ranking each of them by their Kred score.

What Leo did to gamify it was offer the person who was the most improved each month a Kindle.

The grand prize, at the end of 12 months, goes to the person with the most improved Kred score and they receive an all expenses paid trip to the South by Southwest event (SXSW) in March in Austin, Texas.

Leo spoke about the reasons behind the move back on his blog in March last year.

You can see below how the board looked in February 2013 and below February 2012.

As outlined on Leo’s blog post

The leader board uses Kred’s algorithm to assess the Influence and Outreach of the participating Ogilvy staffers relative to the rest of the participants. The person who improves their score the most over the year will attend SXSW Interactive 2013 as the social correspondent for Ogilvy London. Along the way we’ll be giving out monthly prizes for new entrants, high scores and epic acts of outreach.

At 61 participants as of Sunday March 4th we’re at about 5% penetration of the Ogilvy Group UK after only 2 weeks. My goal is to get it to 25% of the entire agency by the end of the year with an even spread across the operating companies and roles. I’ll post quarterly updates and let you know what strategies we’ve been using to drive involvement. I’d be delighted to hear of success you’ve had in your organisation, especially if I can share it here.

This is such a simple way of making it fun to go social, and I have seen much competition from the London Ogilvy folks as the competition progressed.

The upshot is now more of their staff are on twitter, and externally, Ogilvy can show the calibre of people in the agency listed by their Kred score.

We have provided this for a number of large agencies in the UK and the US and the reaction has been fantastic – it makes social fun!

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Andrew Grill: Dealing with negative feedback on social media – case study

Andrew Grill — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:20:27 +0000

Andrew Grill: Humans still crave recognition

Andrew Grill — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:11:43 +0000

influence,kred

A number of people woke to the news this morning that they were in the top 1% of Kred influencers either globally or in a particular community.

I know this because I was responsible for an email telling them so, as the CEO of Kred.

To calculate who is a top influencers, we went through our Kred database of registered users and looked at the distribution of scores to come up with those in the top 10%, 5% and 1% of Kred users. We have also looked at those in the top percentiles in particular communities.

You can read more about Kred on our Kred Rules page where you will find a distribution curve, and also a distribution of scores. Click on the charts for a better view.

Kred works on a double logarithmic scale, so to be in the top 1% of users is a great achievement.

To be in the top 0.1% of users (scores generally > 800) then this is remarkable and these people truly have online influence.

So what can you do with this new found fame as a top Kred influencer?

As far as how your top influencer score can be translated from the gold badge and used in the real world, Sally Falkow @sallyfalkow, the CEO of Meritus Media explains:

Having a good influence score makes it easier for Falkow and her team to interact with other influencers as bloggers respond to someone who they can see has a digital presence and has been active on social networks for some time. “We’re delighted with this recognition from Kred and we will display the Top 1% Influencer badge on our website, our blog and our Twitter feed,” says Falkow.

Top influencers can caim Kred Rewards

As a top Kred Influencer you are likely to be eligible for various Kred Rewards. Everything from free Pantene products to invites to our exclusive VIP New York Influencers Summit. At the NY Summit next Wednesday February 6, two Kred Stars will also be awarded a free trip to our London Summit on March 27, 2013.

Shortly we will be releasing code for a widget to have the badge appear on your website, and some Kred Stars such as @zacharyjeasns have already changed their Twitter avatar to show off their new status.

What was really interesting was the reaction to the email we sent.

I have had literally hundreds of replies to my email, with pretty much everyone saying thank you.

As a courtesy I have also personally replied to a good number of them.

What this shows me is that a little bit of recognition goes a long way on social.

Our email awarding people something as simple as a badge showing their ranking group on Kred has generated an amazing response – people want to feel appreciated.

Thanks for all the messages – I personally appreciate every one of them as does the team at Kred.

Update: I received a lovely email from Hollis Thomases this evening, as a result of the elite Kred influencer email – quoted with her permission below:

Hi Andrew,

Ironically, I read your LinkedIn article about “Humans still crave recognition” before even receiving this email from you. So now what to do? I feel like my response will be tainted either way I react! ;-)

That said, if I’m being honest with myself, I probably would not be emailing you this thank you had I not read your article, but I would likely click-thru, view my score and share it…so I guess I help make your case! (I do think it’s pretty cool that I have this influence because I’ve never bought, gamed or done anything but be authentic to earn it. I also feel way better about my Kred score than my Klout score, the latter of which I could give a darn-toot about.)

I was really touched by Hollis’ note, and I wrote back to tell her so. It makes the time I spend blogging in the wee-small hours and on the weekend worth it, to know that people are reading my blog and and making decisions about my brand (both Kred brand, and my personal brand), and taking action.

How are you going to share your new found Kred fame? Leave me a comment below or reply to the email I sent – I’d love to hear from you.

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Andrew Grill: Building Digital Maturity – your company’s Digital DNA

Andrew Grill — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 09:34:29 +0000

Andrew Grill: Finding influencers for your next event

Andrew Grill — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 12:33:41 +0000

Andrew Grill: Mobile operators are starting to respond to social feedback

Andrew Grill — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 11:31:02 +0000

Andrew Grill: Which industries are the most digital? How the digital leaders are already winning the digital race

Andrew Grill — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 09:52:34 +0000

Andrew Grill: The digital advantage: How digital leaders outperform their peers – Capgemini report

Andrew Grill — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:16:49 +0000

Andrew Grill: The ROI of social media – are we looking in the wrong place?

Andrew Grill — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:41:30 +0000

social business

I was on a very interesting briefing call last night with Frost and Sullivan. They are putting together some research around social media listening tools as part of an annual study on the industry.

What was refreshing during the 90+minute call, was that the Frost & Sullivan analysts asked some really interesting questions beyond the normal “so how are you different from Radian 6″?

One question that stuck out was “what percentage of companies are using social media for product feedback and improvement?”.

My response was probably that it was in single digit figures.

And here’s the thing. Social media is “the best piece of research you never commissioned”.

I use this line at conferences when speaking about social business and it remains my most tweeted quote of all time. The social signals you get from social media are amazing – if used properly.

The problem is that for many companies, they have been scared in the initial stages when they turn on a Twitter feed and set up a Facebook page and people realise they can complain on social media! What happens here is a company pays the “Twitter Tax” because all of the process that are fundamentally broken are exposed for all to see on social media.

What I see happen next is instead of actually looking at the great (sometime very raw) product and process feedback, they just throw more community managers at the problem (and in the process add more headcount and increase costs), meaning that the C-suite get very nervous about social and see the costs rising.

In a board meeting, someone then says “what is the ROI of our social media expenditure?”. This can be self-defeating, as the social team may be simply fire-fighting the issues caused by years of broken processes.

What is the alternative?

I think we may be looking in the wrong place for an ROI value on social media if we just focus on customer service and marketing campaigns and chasing likes and followers.

Instead, if we channel the feedback gleaned from people talking about our brand on social media into our product development and research teams, then perhaps companies will build better products, more tied to what their customers actually want.

At the moment though, I don’t even think that those charged with providing the social media listening function in organisations even know that the product teams would like this feedback, or how to present it in a meaningful way rather than lots of “your product really sucks”.

Years ago in Australia when I worked for number 2 telco Optus, I was in the product development team, and later lead a strategic review of the whole product creation process at the carrier in conjunction with Bain consulting. If I had access to the rich feedback available now via social, we would have built much better products.

When working with John Lewis when they were a client of mine in 2010, my regular interaction was with the small customer research team of 3. Back then, they were making good use of the social signals being provided, mixing them with their traditional research to make better informed business decisions.

The John Lewis team told me at the time that for them, social had become an “early warning tool” as what they saw on social played out in their traditional research weeks later. We also worked out that the social research we provided them actually meant that they had a research team of 6 – social listening technology doing the work of 3 researchers.

The bottom line is – instead of looking for an ROI on social media through simple customer service and campaign lead activity, feed the intelligence from social into your product teams, and measure how more profitable your business is as result of fixing broken processes, and making products that your customers want to buy.

That’s the real social ROI – of a social business, not just from social media.

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11 Comments - Read what others are saying about this post...

Andrew Grill: HMV and Jessops demise point to fundamental changes as #digitaldisruption takes hold

Andrew Grill — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 09:56:21 +0000

Andrew Grill: Digital Disruption hits AMEX – forced to cut 5,400 jobs

Andrew Grill — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 09:20:58 +0000

Andrew Grill: Great ad on the tube (Digital Escalator Panels) promoting their 150 years

Andrew Grill — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:47:07 +0000

advertising,digital,outdoor

I love this ad because it makes good use of the DEP (Digital Escalator Panel) format in that as you rise up the escalators (this was at Green Park coming up from the Victoria platforms), it shows a different person every few seconds.

The video does not do justice to how well it looks.

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5 Comments - Read what others are saying about this post...

Andrew Grill: Customer service in the age of social media

Andrew Grill — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:02:52 +0000

customer service,social business,social media

Many of you know that I no longer deal with organisations the old way – I don’t like waiting in a telephone queue because “my call is important”.

Instead, I tweet.

On Tuesday night, I was out walking and came across a fairly major water leak.

Not knowing which number to call, I remembered that back in 2010, I used the Thames Water Tweet-A-Leak service to report a water leak.

So I simply whipped out my phone, took a picture of the leak so that they could see it was bad, and uploaded it to my own picture sharing service at pic.gs (like instagram, just under my control).

@thameswater #tweetakeak corner oakwood court and addison road W14 big leak water everywhere pic.gs/4w

— Andrew Grill (@AndrewGrill) January 8, 2013

And @ThamesWater replied

@andrewgrill Hi Andrew, Thanks for the #tweetaleak, I’ve reported it. Sarah

— Thames Water(@thameswater) January 9, 2013

Just 24 hours later – it had been fixed.

So if “old school” companies such as Thames Water can rise to the challenge and integrate new media channels such as social media into their workflows, then your company should be able to do this as well.

Some advice for Thames Water: They could make their twitter handle (@thameswater) and #tweetaleak hashtag much more prominent though.

On this page there is no mention of how I report a leak via twitter even though their home page (shown below) says you can tweet them but does not tell you how. Please fix this Sarah..

I will be writing more comprehensively in 2013 about social business, and how it will fundamentally change the way companies deal with customers – for the better.

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21 Comments - Read what others are saying about this post...

Andrew Grill: Facebook has gone all “Joey” on us for no reason

Andrew Grill — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 23:04:26 +0000

Andrew Grill: Book Review: Brand Anarchy by @wadds and @mynameisearl

Andrew Grill — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:12:10 +0000

Andrew Grill: The top 12 apps, sites and gadgets I couldn’t live without

Andrew Grill — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 15:06:41 +0000

Andrew Grill: Telstra’s NYE app lets you pre-set NYE messages to send at midnight

Andrew Grill — Sun, 30 Dec 2012 10:15:40 +0000

Stuart Axon: Adding files to the django auto refresh

stu — Thu, 10 May 2012 09:34:52 +0000

Django runserver and the app django-autotest are both good as they’ll restart when modifcations are made to files in the app they will restart, however not *all* files will trigger a restart. Wanting to get some other files noticed, I added some in the __init__.py of my app, so it looked like this: try: [...]

Symbian Freak: Nokia And Carl Zeiss Extend Partnership To Continue Setting Standards In Smartphone Imaging

Wed, 02 May 2012 09:53:55 +0000

Nokia and Carl Zeiss today announced that the exclusive partnership between the two companies, which has resulted in some of the industry's best camera smartphones such as the Nokia N8 and the Nokia 808 PureView, has been extended.

The Nokia 808 PureView, which starts rolling out in May, combines high-performance Carl Zeiss optics with Nokia developed algorithms and a super-high resolution sensor to set a new standard in high-end smartphone imaging.

"Carl Zeiss was a crucial partner in the creation of the first PureView experience," said Jo Harlow, executive vice president of Nokia Smart Devices. "The benefits of our ongoing collaboration will be more PureView innovation and further advancements in smar... .. .

Symbian Freak: Nokia To Begin Rolling Out Award-Winning Nokia 808 Pureview In May

Wed, 02 May 2012 09:35:28 +0000

Nokia today confirmed that the Nokia 808 PureView will start rolling out in select markets in May. The Nokia 808 PureView is the first smartphone to feature Nokia's award-winning PureView technology.

PureView represents Nokia's highest level smartphone imaging experiences, bringing together high-performance sensors, exclusive Carl Zeiss optics, and Nokia developed imaging algorithms. The first markets to begin selling the Nokia 808 PureView include Russia and India.

Since its launch in February, the Nokia 808 PureView has received multiple awards, including Best Mobile Device at Mobile World Congress 2012, as well as an award for Best Imaging Innovation for 2012 from the Technical Image Press Assoc... .. .

Symbian Freak: fMobi Version 3.02 Is Now Available For Symbian Belle Devices At Nokia Store

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 13:20:59 +0000

As I have already said somewhere, Juuso Kosonen remains serious about keeping its Facebook client application up to date with constant improvements and continues with providing updates on a fairly frequent basis.

So if you find this feature rich app useful and you'd like to support the developer and encourage further development purchase this latest version (3.02) of fMobi app for Belle from OVI Store and make him able to get more coffee to stay up late and bring out more features or maybe even some new apps for Nokia devices ;)

This latest version has new widget UI with some fixes to it and now there's also more settings to the widget. Image cache is also moved to E: drive, so everyone should be happy no... .. .

Content type >>	Music tracks	Nokia Mix Radio	Podcasts
Single press of only/centre button	Play/pause	Play/pause	Play/pause
Double press of only/centre button	Next track	Next track	Skip ahead 30 seconds*
Triple press of only/centre button	Previous track	No effect	Skip back 30 seconds*
Press of the top (nearest the earpiece) button+	Volume up one notch	Volume up one notch	Volume up one notch
Press of the bottom (nearest the main body of the lead) button+	Volume down one notch	Volume down one notch	Volume down one notch

Planet Mobile

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All About Symbian: Pimping the Nokia N8: still relevant in 2013

Grab the latest OS and application patches

Sleeping screen

Optimising the internal (system) disk

Folder organisation

A better camera UI

Power saving apps and themes

Battery and display physics

Performance issues

SIM matters

All About Symbian: KM Tuner tries to make sure you hit the right notes

All About Symbian: Media speculation on the future of Nokia

All About Symbian: An 808 camera data point: Startling starlings

All About Symbian: A communications wall of your nearest and dearest

All About Symbian: Hardware QWERTY and long battery life have a place in mobile

All About Symbian: Jewels provides a brightly coloured logic challenge

Andrew Grill: Using a broadway show to explain the differences between social media and social business

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Symbian Freak: Nokia And Carl Zeiss Extend Partnership To Continue Setting Standards In Smartphone Imaging

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