As noted by the BBC today marks the 40th anniversary of the first mobile phone call. The first call was made by Martin Cooper, a Motorola engineer, to a rival, Dr Joel Engel, at Bell Labs on April 3rd 1973. The prototype phone used for the call, which had 30 minutes of talk time and took 10 hours to recharge, weighed 1.1 kg and was 22.86 x 12.7 x 4.4 cm in size.

Here's the story of the first call, courtesy of cellular.co.za:

While he was a project manager at Motorola in 1973, Cooper set up a base station in New York with the first working prototype of a cellular telephone, the Motorola Dyna-Tac. After some initial testing in Washington for the F.C.C., Mr. Cooper and Motorola took the phone technology to New York to show the public.

On April 3, 1973, standing on a street near the Manhattan Hilton, Mr. Cooper decided to attempt a private call before going to a press conference upstairs in the hotel. He picked up the 2-pound Motorola handset called the Dyna-Tac and pushed the "off hook" button. 

The phone came alive, connecting Mr. Cooper with the base station on the roof of the Burlington Consolidated Tower (now the Alliance Capital Building) and into the land-line system. To the bewilderment of some passers-by, he dialed the number and held the phone to his ear.

Best selling mobile phone?

According to a list compiled by The Telegraph the best selling mobile phone to date is the Nokia 1101, which was launched in 2005, and eventually sold more than 250 million units. Nokia devices occupy nine out of the top ten best selling mobile phones, with the Motorola RAZR V3 being the one non-Nokia device.

The best selling smartphone to date is the Symbian powered Nokia 5230, which was launched in 2010, with eventual sales of around 150 million units. The 5230 also number four on the the mobile phone list. You can read our original review of the Nokia 5230 here.

Theme maker Blade has built up an enviable reputation in the Symbian community, and JB Hybrid is his latest commercial effort. The 'JB' bit stands for Jelly Bean and there are plenty of Android 4.1 elements on show here, merged with colour and icon cues from both Meego and Symbian. Screens and link below - can you spot any other influences?

Here's JB Hybrid installed on my Nokia 808 PureView:

Gotta love the blues and purples, looking even more stunning on an AMOLED screen, of course. Here's the lockscreen and my main Symbian homescreen... [darn those sub-zero temperatures in the UK in April!]

A selection of the thousand icons supported by JB Hybrid. Very nicely done...

Some of the Jelly Bean elements on display, along with Blade's interpretation of how the Android Holo design language would work under Symbian. Here's a Calendar screen - notice the highlight colour and general appearance, plus the drop-down notifications pane, showing tweaked toggle switches.

No doubt you already have a selection of your own favourite Symbian themes, but if you're looking for something AMOLED-friendly and yet Android-ish then look no further than JB Hybrid.

You can buy JB Hybrid here for £1.50 in the Nokia Store.

Ah yes, Sudoku - revisited here by the prolific NokiMoki in a trio of coloured boards. You know the rules, you know the drill and you get to pick the colour. £1, even for such a simple (and, in places, crude) implementation is marginal - but you'd pay more than that for the paper version in a newsagents. Even if you can live with the limitations, you probably won't want to get all three colour variants though!

Here's Sudoku Blue Master in action:

There's nothing wrong with the basics of Sudoku here, though it's not clear whether the puzzles are pre-programmed or randomly generated. I did like the 'Please Help' button, which fills in a square at random from the solution - an excellent way of nudging you in the right direction.

On the downside, there's lots of screen real estate wasted with adverts for the developer's other titles - given that this is a commercial game, this seemed a bit much.... Plus entering numbers is fiddly at best. Get your taps wrong and you'll be entering notes rather than full entries - and all numbers have to be input via the standard Symbian keyboard, which comes up in QWERTY mode every time and has to be switched. Gah. Not pretty.

You do get two other colour schemes to pick at the time of purchase:

In the Nokia Store then, there's Sudoku Blue Master, Sudoku Green Master and Sudoku Red Master, all priced at £1.

Game or application? The jury's out on Astral 3D Effects, perhaps the visual equivalent of Brian Eno's famous ambient music apps on other platforms - the aim here is to mesmerise, inspire and entertain, with a dozen or so randomised graphical demos. If you ever sat spellbound by the stargate sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey then you'll love this.

Here's the main menu and furniture, followed by some of the effects, best viewed in landscape, in true 'stargate' fashion! Note, obviously, that the animated nature of the graphics don't come across that impressively here, in static form. Go grab it yourself and have a play....

I did experience a little flickering on some of the animations on the Nokia 808, it's not clear whether this is a Belle FP2 issue or not.... Comments welcome.

Obviously, the 'top' and 'bottom' references to animation speed become 'left' and 'right' when viewing the app in landscape mode, below 8-)

Rather curiously, this ad-free version promises that you can buy the full version from its menu. Tap this and you're taken into the Nokia Store... where the promised app is 'no longer available'. Very odd. Hopefully the developers will fix this in due course.

In the meantime, you can download Astral 3D Effects (free) here in the Nokia Store.

Transparent, waterproof pouches that enable us to use our tech in the pouring rain, down the beach or even, in extreme cases, underwater, have been around for a while, of course, I looked at Proporta's Beach Buoy last year. And now we have E-Case's eSeries 9, with smaller overall form factor and higher window-to-bezel ratio. Here's the eSeries 9 submersible case in action with a couple of likely candidate handsets. Summary? We have a winner...

Sent over for review were the grey/black and orange versions of the eSeries 9, both claimed to suit modern smartphone form factors. I instantly earmarked the red one for my red Nokia Lumia 920, with the black one perhaps perfect for my Nokia 808 PureView - except that was taking the photos, so I tried out the venerable Nokia E6 (itself an 'E Series'!) instead - it looked good in the case but did rather rattle around, so note that there's a separate eSeries 8 for this slightly smaller device size, though I didn't try it.

Of particular note is that the eSeries design has a 1cm vertical edge opposite the ziplock, meaning that the case naturally stays 'opened out' to a degree, i.e. the phone isn't pinched from both sides. This makes it easier to get phones in and out, and also allows for some flexibility in placement of each phone in the case, unlike the Beach Buoy design, where placement is more or less forced.

Shown above with the dummy Galaxy Nexus shapes in card....

The biggest issue I had with the eSeries 9 actually concerns the packaging - note the cable ties holding the cases to the cardboard back. These are very, very tight and I found it impossible to get scissors in to cut them. I ended up incising in with a very sharp craft knife, but it's a tricky procedure and the knife slipped, resulting in the top right lanyard hole on the grey/black case having a slice right through it (which you can see if you look very closely in the photo, to the right, bottom of the hole).

I'd suggest that Cascade Designs rethink this, lest more people end up with lanyard holes that aren't complete holes or, worse, lose a finger or two...

The eSeries design itself has a multiple ridged ziplock design. You line up the two edges and press together at one end, working your way along. It's the same principle as a freezer bag, but with much stronger materials and with several ridges rather than just the one. As you'll see later, this renders the case totally waterproof, capable of withstanding immersion 'for up to 30 minutes' at up to 1 metre depth.

The case frame material is 'PVC-free 600D polyurethane-coated polyester and clear urethane', it's grippy to hold, seems tough and is light. Getting the smartphones into the cases was easy enough, though the Lumia 920's grippy exterior did need a little wiggling to get it into position past the also grippy inner plastic. Getting the phones out again, after the water test below, was almost as easy, though with the possibility of a few drops of water in the ziplock grooves, you do have to be careful if you're paranoid about water getting onto your phone!

As you'll see below, there's a little space either side of the smaller Nokia E6 - again, the eSeries 8 case would probably be a better 'fit':

The Lumia 920 fits rather splendidly, with the phone's side keys available through the vertical right/end panel. You just lose a few pixels at the top right of the display - the E-Case logo is all very well, but I'd have thought they could reduce it slightly and give users more of the window that's usable. The alternative is to reverse the case and have the logo on the back, which might be what the designers intended but somehow feels 'wrong'. Your mileage will, as they say, vary here....

Of course, this being a submersible case, there was only one thing to try - sealing up the ziplocks, risking my precious hardware and plunging each case underwater. Not having The Gadget Show's budget (they'd have taken the cases canoeing in Bermuda for a week, lucky chaps), I made do with the bathroom sink, but the principle's the same.

I held each case under water for five minutes, during which time I was able to interact with the E6 to a large degree (physical keyboard and d-pad) and the Lumia to a limited degree (the capacitive screen is negated almost entirely by the conductivity of the water itself!)

I mentioned above an underwater use case - this is typically for using camcorder functionality. With the plastic relatively clean, it's possible to go into the Camera app and start video recording going, and then submerge the case, with video capture still going. After filming, you'd bring the case out of the water, wipe it clear of standing water and then stop the video capture. Neat, and perfect for documenting your next scuba dive?

Overall, I'd rate the E-Case eSeries design as excellent - tough and attractive, and not too bulky, unlike the Beach Buoy design, which had a bit too much bezel and material to fold away if you wanted to pocket or 'bag' the case (e.g. see the promo video below).

Other than the packaging's cable-tie 'snafu', your biggest issue with the eSeries 9 case will be where to actually buy one... E-Case's designs have limited distribution outside of the USA, though they do seem to be expanding. I found all the sizes and colours available for order here (hint: click on the drop down to see the colours and sizes), so at least you can get something organised for your next outdoor excursion, but I'll add to this paragraph as and when I find out more details of a larger supplier.

In the meantime, I'm well and truly sorted for the UK spring (you know, rain and wind), the UK summer (rain and drizzle) and for the various trips to the beach (again, rain, wind and drizzle, plus sand)! Recommended.

PS. E-Case do have a promo video for the eSeries, which may be of interest, embedded below:

I haven't featured any of these for a while, but the two Nokia 808-shot videos below give an excellent flavour of two very different live gigs, both featuring clear visuals and immaculate sound. The 808 PureView is the perfect tool for concerts, as I keep maintaining.

As usual with these videos, maximise the video window and then 'up' the quality by clicking on the gearwheel etc.

Firstly, CMX - Kultanaamio @ Club Teatria, Oulu, Finland, shot on the 15/03/2013 by Remedyer:

Simply amazing audio clarity under very high volume conditions. A bootleggers's dream - do bootleggers still exist?

Secondly, our very own Marc from the PureView Club, in the 4th row at something rather more mellow, shooting  Sandra van Nieuwland:

Marc makes the good point here about the Nokia 808 being classed as a 'phone' and thus allowed to take videos, where DSLRs and camcorders were being banned. I can see a time where word gets out, though, and we have the following exchange in a gig lobby:

Bouncer: "OK, iPhone 5, in you go. Samsung Galaxy S4? No problem.... You! You with the Nokia 808, you're not taking that in there!" 

It's only a matter of time, sadly. Though tempered with the fact that Nokia 808s are still so rare that bouncers may not recognise them. My suggestion: only show the face of the phone and pretend it's an old Nokia C7....!

I'm not sure the developer has angled 'Real Phone' right - it's pitched as a simple way to interact with contacts in-car, i.e. without too many fiddly finger taps needed, but I think he'd do much better pitching it for the elderly, for whom a touchscreen smartphone is complete overkill. Yet there are times when we have to lend our devices to such a demographic and then they get into a right state trying to achieve even a simple call. Which is where this might come in....

Here's Real Phone 2 in action:

The idea is to present the contacts on the phone in a large fonted (for elderly eyes, I contend), large buttoned (for elderly fingers) way. The only functions on offer here are looking at the log of who just called (etc), stepping through contacts and then calling them. There's a 'Messaging' option too, but that just switches to the standard tiny-fonted Symbian Messaging app, so that's a no-go area; (right) there's a very large fonted dial-pad, even bigger that the default Symbian one...

Real Phone likes to auto-start, which I guess would be appropriate if you were lending an elderly relative a smartphone to use for essential calls, etc. It comes to the foreground automatically when the lock screen is dismissed, so it's easy for someone not very technical to stay within the Real Phone environment; (right) tapping through a contact name gives some basic management options, which in the case of an older person, might be taken on by their offspring?

In addition to scrolling through contacts, there are big pop-up arrows to allow step by step 'nudging', which again would work well with the elderly. Plus the search box brings up this very S60 5th Edition-ish letter grid, which reduces down as the contacts are quick matched - I do worry that the elderly might be confused by this mind you - "all the letters keep moving around!", etc.

To be honest, to make the application better for occasional lending to a relative, without having to wipe the contacts, some way of putting in just favourite contacts is needed (i.e. "Mike", "Angie", "Hospital", "Breakdown", and that's it). I'm sure there's more potential here - the developer produces the same app under the name 'Easy Senior Phone', so the idea's definitely there - it just needs refinement.

You can buy Real Phone 2 here for £3, or download the 7 day trial version here.

One of the core activities on any Symbian phone in recent years has been podcatching, i.e. the fully automated gathering of podcasts, ready for your listening anytime, anywhere. First Nokia Podcasting, then Podcatcher, then Poddi, one of my core criteria for any new platform is whether it can match my podcatching capabilities on Symbian. With that in mind, note my eight-way podcatcher review for Windows Phone, out today on our sister site, All About Windows Phone. Do any of the solutions match the functionality on Symbian? 

From the summary of my article, published today:

Podcast Lounge and Podcatcher are the two standouts here (though WPodder might be in the mix if it had been updated since early 2012). If you're happy to either stream podcasts as needed or to strictly incorporate podcatching into your nightly charging routine then the very pretty Podcast Lounge may well suit - it's certainly got the biggest directory for finding new content. 

However, for podcast fans from other platforms (perhaps refugees from Symbian or Android), run, don't walk, and get Podcatcher. It's supremely flexible in terms of getting your feeds in, everything can be automated, your playback position in each programme is remembered and you can clean up your GB of podcasts when needed. Podcatcher isn't the prettiest solution here, but it's the one I keep coming back to and it's the one that most closely matches the best podcatchers on other platforms (e.g. Poddi and Podcatcher [no relation] on Symbian, or Doggcatcher on Android). Recommended.

You can read the full article here. You might want to grab a hot beverage first...

If podcatching functionality was one potential showstopper that has previously put you off trying Windows Phone, then I don't believe that this is still a barrier - there's certainly no shortage of software options to kit you out with listening!

It's a fair cop, this is in fact one of those novelty applications that I normally skip right over, except that a) I was in frivolous mood, b) it's very well done in terms of attention to detail, and c) I'm a big fan of solar charging for real, and if this concept gains even a little traction so that the developing tech that Rafe saw at MWC 2013 might come to pass then I'm a happy bunny... In the meantime, install this freebie and have fun fooling all around you!

Here's 'Solar Charger' in action:

Yes, yes, it's all fake, fake, fake, but hey.... There's attention to detail here, with a meter that integrates the amount of light being received by the brightness sensor in the phone, so it behaves as a real charger would, an animation showing charging 'taking place', a battery readout that reflects the actual amount of charge left in the phone battery, plus disabling of the usual screen timeout, so that the solar 'cells' stay displayed.

You can download Solar Charger for free here in the Nokia Store. And find out about how this could be done for real here.

You may remember that I featured the Top 10 Most Beautiful Symbian phones a while back? This is the exact opposite, a condemnation celebration of the very worst in cosmetics, practicality and pocketability... This is Symbian wierd, or at least as weird as phones linked by a common software platform can get. From the freak show below, see how many of the phones you owned - a prize (or at least major sympathies) if you owned the lot! 

NB. All of these designs run Symbian OS, though there are at least three different UI variants on 'top' - UIQ/Series 60/Series 90. Hopefully most will be familiar to you!

Warning: some of these designs (especially at the pointy end of the 10) may boggle your mind and cause bodily eruptions - I suggest you avoid drinking liquids that may stain as you read on...(!)

10. Nokia E55

Never mind my rant at the time about cosmetics (the silver/grey version had an impossible to see keypad in most light conditions), the weirdest thing about the Nokia E55 was its 'Compact QWERTY' keyboard, wherein you'd mash down the key for the letter you wanted, regardless of the 'other' letter assigned to the key, and the software would work out what you wanted to say. In use, it worked surprisingly well, with only occassional halts while you muttered "Now, how the heck do I enter that?", but you have to admit that it was odd. So odd, in fact, that the design was never used by Nokia again. Which is a shame, I think Compact QWERTY had more development in it, I'd have liked to have seen where it went....

9. Sony Ericsson P910

I've gone on record before about the P800 being the 'pure' design and the P900 something of a bastardised version, with a forced electronic keypad and coiled ribbon cable in the hinge. The P900 was higher spec though, so we all learned to live with this and the world was happy. Then Sony Ericsson, up a design creek without a clue paddle wondered what else they could do with their Symbian flagship and some bright spark suggested adding a QWERTY keyboard for the P910. Eh? Where on earth would you put it? On the back of the keypad. Well, duh, obvious really. And ugly. And impractical. And horrible.

And... yes, downright weird. After this, the whole line of Symbian UIQ smartphones got a big shake up. Thank goodness for that.

8. Nokia 7610

The 7610 was one in a string of smartphone designs with utterly weird keypad designs. One can only guess that manufacturers were trying the 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' approach. Certainly the 7610 design didn't, with a thoroughly disorientating skewed keypad. Admittedly it looked quite stylish and sexy in a quirky way, and if one had this phone from the start and had used nothing else, then that keypad would be all you knew and familiar. But, in the midst of a phone world which had standardised on a rectangular keypad, it was odd and painful to use. 

7. Nokia X5-01

As a piece of lateral thinking, I guess you could give the Nokia X5-01 a pass - there's a square simplicity when closed and a fully useable (think E71) keyboard when open. A win-win? Well, not really. It turns out that a square isn't a great shape for a phone - the human hand is used to something it can grip its fingers round, something taller than it is wide. Funky colours though!

6. Nokia 5700

This wasn't the very first twist-bottom Symbian smartphone, but it was the most dramatic, with keypad, music player controls, camera and speaker all housed in the bottom section. It's very Thunderbird 2 - you can almost hear the theme music playing in your head as the hardware turns to change its function... The labelling of the main control keys is also quirky, off to the side - I bet loads of new users pressed the labels and not the buttons...

5. Sony Ericsson P1i

Now, don't get me wrong, the Sony Ericsson P1i certainly wasn't ugly, and build quality was pretty good, but check out the lower third. This wasn't the only 'dual function' keyboarded device - the earlier M600i had had it too, but this is standing in for the breed. In theory, it's a great idea - have each key hinged in the middle so that it can rock left or right, depending on which letter the user needed. And, in practice, if you simply forgot about the mechanism and mashed away, you usually ended up the right results - but it never felt 'right'. The constant changing in key resistance vector as you aimed for different letters was disconcerting. Sony Ericsson abandoned this (weird) design after the P1i, I believe, which was probably just as well...

4. Nokia 7710

Maybe I'm doing the short lived Nokia 7710 a disservice by filing under weird, but it's certainly an odd data point in Nokia's smartphone history, not least because Nokia canned the project shortly after release (in favour of Series 60/S60). Today, used to large screened smartphones used in landscape mode a lot, the 7710 looks more conventional than it was at the time. I thought of the 7710 though, not just because of the oddball form factor and UI (Series 90) but because of those right hand side buttons, which still baffle me today. What are they each supposed to do? Talk about unintuitive....

3. Nokia N-Gage

Ask 10 die hard Nokians which smartphone was weirdest and I bet at least four of them would say the original N-Gage, Nokia's attempt to create a whole new game console-phone hybrid market. It was a brave attempt in every way and there were some lovely touches as a piece of hardware, not least having a line IN jack, for recording stereo audio (I'm not sure why, mind you!) and being able to record from the built-in FM radio. It was all designed around a landscape form factor, very different from the traditional phone. But oddest of all, and unnecessarily so, was the positioning of the earpiece on the top face, meaning that you had to hold the N-Gage up to your ear with the front pace pointing forwards to onlookers. Who would then point and laugh... Weird, certainly, but I still have a soft spot in my heart for this device.

2. Nokia 3650

Of the 10 people mentioned above, the six who didn't go for the N-Gage probably went for this, the 3650. "Now, own up, Nokia designers. Which one of you came up with the idea of ditching the conventional keypad and spreading the numbers and letters around a circle? Come on, own up. You! Yes, you at the back!" [FX: bang] I'm not really sure what I can say that the photo above doesn't already say. The 3650, despite being the 7650's successor and with numerous improvements (Nokia's second ever Series 60 smartphone), including a memory card slot, was a usability disaster. As I think 999 out of 1000 passers by with zero technical knowledge could have told the design team at the time if they'd bothered to check....

1. Siemens SX-1

(image credit)

There's worse than the Nokia 3650 though - ho yes. Let's imagine the number/letter keys not even in the bottom third. Let's imagine them separated and stuck either side of the main display, where they're totally unusable by anyone who wasn't stuck with this arrangement since they popped out of their mother's womb. In fact, imagine no longer, because you can pick up the Siemens SX-1, a Symbian Series 60 phone, on eBay for a song if you happen to spot it anytime. Or maybe they're pricier because Siemens never sold many - can't think why. Can you?

______________________

It's (perhaps thankfully) noticeable that all of these designs are quite old. Could it be that weird and wacky designs never caught on because they looked odd and were hard to use? Who knew?(!) 

Has the modern craze for touch slabs robbed us of the quirkiness of such designs as these? Or saved us? Comments welcome!

You may recall my news post about the increased city coverage across the world for Nokia Public Transport? The caveat in that piece was that you had to have installed the beta v2.5 release of the app from Nokia Beta Labs, something which, clearly, most non-geeks won't know about. Happily, it seems that someone's pulled the trigger at Nokia's end and finally (after many months in beta) approved the application, since it's now available as an official release in the Nokia Store. Screenshot proof below.

In terms of availability, just go into the Nokia Store and you'll see the update offered. The core Maps Suite includes Nokia Public Transport, so almost every modern Symbian owner should have the older v2.1 release at least, as did our test Nokia E7 shown here:

The update will pop up automatically in the on-device Store client; (right) 'this might take a while' indeed - over five minutes - go grab a cup of tea!

Finishing the install and starting the new v2.5 for the first time...

The build of v2.5 appears relatively unchanged from the beta, with an official 'build' number rather than a long 'coverage' string. With v2.5, you may remember, your local city will be automatically checked and reported on, even before you start using the application for real.

It's likely that this will be the final version of Nokia Public Transport for Symbian - if you have issues updating from the Store then note that v2.5 is also archived here as NokiaPt_S3_2_5_installer_92_412924.sis.

If coverage isn't yet perfect for your area, note again that the baseline data on the servers is being improved all the time and will continue to be so, due to its use by Nokia's new Windows Phones (where it's called 'HERE Transit' - go figure). So you won't need a new version of the application, you just need a little patience - the data will come to you, effectively!

I've lost count of the number of versions of Minesweeper for Symbian now, but I'm not going to let another decent incarnation slip by without comment because this one's both well programmed and totally free, without even any in-game ads to endure. Screenshots and link below, but this is definitely one to install to while away bored moments waiting in line....

Here's Mines in action:

Pleasant, if slightly minimalist, artwork - tap on the mine bottom left to change the difficulty level (the icon changes to reflect this), from Easy to Medium to Hard; (right) basic help, and a pointer to the commercial (themed) version

You know the layout, you know the game - tap to check a square, long tap to 'flag' up where you think a mine is - get it wrong and 'boom'! 

A game well in progress and... completed! On the right screen, you can just see the congratulatory message fading out. This was in 'Easy' mode, mind you!

Note that the playing field ('minefield') is much larger than the screen - you pan around by swiping with your finger. On the 'Hard' level, the playing area is massive, you'll be doing well to not make any mistakes in a minefield that size.

The added catch here is that there's a clock running (top left), meaning that you'll be tempted to hurry, trying to beat your best score - and, when hurrying, you'll make a logical error, bringing us back to... Boom! High scores (best times) are recorded and can be checked from the main menu.

You can download Mines for free here - all the developer asks is that you consider buying his Trap Finder variant as well, which adds themes to the basic gameplay.

Posting a quick social update to multiple networks with one tap is rarely trivial on any smartphone. Gravity gets close on Symbian, while Nokia Social has this as one of its (few) highlights. But what if you just want something tiny, quick and simple? Enter the freeware ShareBoard, screenshotted below, with download link. It works as advertised and is well worth grabbing, but the developer still has a few minor things to iron out, I can't help but observe.

Start up ShareBoard (currently at v1.0.3) and you'll see:

A lovely large window to fill with your update (though, of course, if you're including Twitter as well then you're limited to 140 characters, and the character counter is in a very faint grey font which is almost impossible to see on-screen). As a one-time thing at the start, you'll need to tap on each social network's logo to sign in - thereafter these credentials are remembered (through a standard auth token)...

One interesting option is that any hashtags can be auto-removed for the Facebook portion of the update, so you don't have to worry about littering your Facebook updates with hashtags that might confuse your friends; this option is in the Settings pane, accessed from the bottom left gearwheel icon, along with 'Auto exit on finish', ensuring that you can get into ShareBoard, write your status and get out all with minimal taps or work in the UI....

Tapping on the 'Image' button lets you attach an image, not surprisingly, with the end result being downsampled massively (as usual) at both Twitter and Facebook's end. I despair of both services, but that's not ShareBoard's fault, of course....

ShareBoard is not without a glitch or two, mind you. The settings referred to above are almost worthless since they're not currently remembered when you exit the application (at least, not on my Belle FP2 Nokia 808...). Plus, after adding an image, the Qt pane becomes longer than the screen and it's actually very fiddly to get from the top to the bottom and back again - slightly larger (draggable) black margins on either side might help here? There's a 'scroll bar' which becomes visible when you get it right, but it's too narrow for easy use at present.

Still, well worth a look if you're not already sorted for quick multi-service updates, especially once the Settings bug has been knocked on the head - this is, after all, many times faster than cranking up Nokia Social...! You can download ShareBoard for free here in the Nokia Store.

For the second time in a month, a major physics-based puzzler has hit Symbian (still, numerically, the 'third ecosystem') before other mobile platforms. In this case Save The Kitty, with you having to reconstruct elaborate combinations of trampolines, bubbles, conveyor belts and more, trying to help an 'acrobatic kitty' traverse both gravity and bombs, while eating as many fish as possible. Sound interesting? See the screenshots below, this game comes highly recommended, and at a bargain price.

We've seen plenty of physics-based puzzlers like this on all platforms, of course, but they remain perennially popular. On Symbian, we most recently saw the fairly similar Incredible Circus, and fans of that title will adore this one too.

Here's Save The Kitty in action:

Title and help/intro screens, all nicely animated and presented...

There are 54 levels in all, broken down into banks of nine (the first bank of which forms the trial version, see the link below), and following the traditional 'Angry Birds' stars model, with the number of stars depending on how many of the fish you collected en route to Kitty's collection basket.

Happily, as happens in all the best physics puzzlers, the first few levels double as tutorials, introducing the various elements and (here) showing you where to drag them before pressing the 'play' icon, top right. Dynamic elements such as the bubble here have to be interacted with in real time

As an example of Save The Kitty action, consider the level above - everything appears random at first and then your start to apply logic to work out what has to go where....

Look at my solution on the right: after pressing play, Kitty drops onto the conveyor, scrolls right to catch the first fish, then into the black hole, emerging out of the second one and dropping to catch the vertical coloumn of fish, before dropping into the bubble, which then starts both rising and being blown sideways by the (animated) electric fan - when the bubble is vertically over the basket, tap to pop and... another level's complete with three stars. Phew!

Very polished, perfectly pitched, immaculately drawn, with a choice of musical soundtrack, sound effects or both, I can't fault Save The Kitty.

You can download a free trial version (9 levels) of Save The Kitty here in the Nokia Store or buy the full version for just £1 here in the Nokia Store. Great value, run, don't walk, etc... a must-have game for Symbian users - trust me.

Two Top 10s in one week? Yep, I'm in that sort of mood. In this case, a pointer to what I consider are the very best games to show off what Symbian and your smartphone can do, perhaps challenged down the pub as to why you still use "that old N8"? It's true that the games here don't usually match counterparts on (for example) the iPhone, but at least they're in the same ballpark in terms of graphics, speed and playability. And, yes, this is very much my own opinion - leave your own suggestions in the comments, but do please check that each title still runs under the latest Belle Refresh or Belle FP2 OS versions...

Now it's true that the screen resolution of most modern Symbian phones, at nHD, 360 x 640 pixels, seems low in 2013, with devices starting to come with 1080p (1080 x 1920 pixels) displays, but nHD was very competitive in 2008 when the Nokia 5800 launched, so we can't blame Nokia for plumping for nHD for its new touch devices. The lack of increase since then is a moot point, of course, though the addition of fast hardware graphics acceleration in devices from the Nokia N8 onwards has at least meant that we can have games that impress visually in terms of speed and colours, if not in absolute resolution.

So, which games on Symbian get closest to the leisure scene in iOS and Android? Which ones should you be seen playing down the pub in order to appear credible to your games-obsessed iPhone-owning friends? Below is my personally chosen top 10.

Of course, Nokia's convention, to start using 'HD' in a game's title around the time of re-introducing GPUs to Symbian for the N8, C7 and C6-01, is somewhat misguided, since "High Definition" implies greater resolution, whereas the games were all still nHD, the same as titles written for the Nokia 5800 two years previously. 'HD', in this context, became a pseudonym for 'GPU-accelerated, every pixel properly painted (and not upscaled) and a game of decent depth'.

So yes, misleading, but hey, at least you get the idea.... At some point, developers stopped buying into the 'HD' naming kool-ade and the acronym was quietly dropped. Just FYI!

[NB. Where review links are given, click through to get the actual download or 'buy' links.]

10. Angry Birds Seasons

Angry Birds is, of course, the acid test of whether a platform can be taken seriously for games these days. It would be great to be mentioning the 'Space' and 'Star Wars' variants here, but sadly I don't think there's much chance of these making it to Symbian at this stage. However, Angry Birds Seasons did get a load of updates in the Nokia Store, finishing up with 'Mooncake Festival' in late 2011. What this means is that you get a bunch of Angry Birds 'themes' in one, just pick your season and go for it. And with the benefit that, if you get stuck on one level, just switch over to a different season and have a crack at that one instead. Still recommended. Reviewed here.

9. Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X HD

The only impressive attempt at a flight simulation game on Symbian, I dismissed this at first as too 'arcadey' for me, but I was wrong - having later put a few tens of hours into the game/career, I found it suitably frenetic, with action at every turn, new enemies incoming, and so on. Yes, it's true that staying in the air was a lot easier than it should have been ("Stall? What's a stall?"), but who cares, I was targetting and firing and swooping and plotting and having a blast... [side note: this doesn't always show up for Belle FP2 devices in the Nokia Store, but it works just fine - I sideloaded it!] Reviewed here.

8. SkyForce Reloaded

This might seem old school in terms of gaming, and you have to forgive the ugly black bar at the top of the screen, but start up Sky Force Reloaded on even a modern Symbian smartphone and it's action all the way. Three difficulty levels mean that, whatever your reflexes and finger agility, you'll get a challenging game here. The default 'touch to drag' control method works well, apart from when the action gets tough and your fingers start to get sweaty! With a million things to shoot up, a million more things to avoid and tough end of level bosses, this is still a classic. Here's Sky Force Reloaded in the Nokia Store.

7. Undroid

At first, the top-down, rectangular sci-fi landscapes look unremarkable, but once underway, as your plucky robot explores level after level of a gigantic invading spaceship, combating ever larger and more powerful enemy robots along the way, you'll quickly get hooked. The difficulty level is perfect, the graphics pixel-perfect, the scope of the game huge - in short, a modern Symbian Hit - with, yes, a capital 'h'. Reviewed here.

6. Cut the rope

The cross-platform arcade puzzler, like Angry Birds, even running this will gain you credibility in an increasingly iOS-centric mobile gaming world. Another physics-based title, here it's all about getting your head around strategy and split second timing, juggling objects, bands and the all important candy, in order to feed the monster... Reviewed here.

5. Sparkle

Arguably the most polished game I've ever played on Symbian, it's the well-known game of firing coloured balls into an ever-advancing line in order to match-3-or-greater. Sounds boring, actually is anything but, mainly thanks to the smoothness of the action and the abundance of power-ups, which do more and more outrageous (and helpful) things. Terrifically atmospheric, Sparkle will amaze (and addict) you in every way. Reviewed here.

4. Tennis In The Face

The oddestly named game on the platform, this is another 10tons special (they wrote Sparkle, above) and is physics-based with a huge slice of humour. And violence. Essentially, you play an embittered ex-tennis ace, firing off smashed at the heads and torsos of every set of characters who get in your way, all of them themed and controlled by an evil corporation. Naturally, there are puzzles to solve, things to blow up and budge and bounce off. Never a dull moment, recommended and, again unusually, first on Symbian before the other mobile platforms got a look in. Reviewed here.

3. Protoxide: Death Race

Take the concept of a racing game, then set it in the future, with low flying spaceships instead of cars. Give all the racers weapons and high tech heads-up displays, add a sci-fi plot and some futuristic cityscapes, then throw in blisteringly fast and smooth action, a pumping soundtrack and numerous powerups, and you've got yourself a Symbian-powered winner. There are even 'pit stops' - no, really! Stunning graphics and 3D action. Here's my review.

2. RealGolf 2011 HD

One of the very first of Nokia's 'HD' games, RealGolf 2011 HD still impresses - it's not quite as photorealistic as some iOS options, the animations very occasionally stutter, but it's all here, in terms of a decent golf simulation, with wind, spin, slopes, ball lie and much more. Add in the obligatory helicopter flybys, a good green elevation grid and some fake American commentary and you've got the complete package. It may seem easy at first but then you hit a bunker and get a double-bogie and you're then fighting all the way to the club house... Reviewed here. [Note that the Let's Golf series reused much of the same code and improved on some areas, but sadly also introduced many gimmicks, not least outrageous courses and animals hopping around on the green!]

1. GT Racing: Motor Academy

And the equivalent for circuits, GT Racing is the most out and out realistic sports car racing sim on the platform and the one I keep coming back to because it's just so... challenging. Never mind arcade driving games with power-ups and on-rails difficulty level - here you're doing well just to stay on the track much of the time, the cars here can be as hard to drive flat-out as the real thing. You can play through a complete career, needing placing in races to progress and gradually improving your car and your own driving skills. One nice touch is the variation in tracks, with gradients, scenery and a mix of road circuits, F1-style tracks and even parts of Indy-style banked tracks. Tip: for extra realism, plug in headphones, turn off the annoying music and crank up the engine noise. Reviewed here, by Ewan, who didn't like it as much as me.... Ah well, over to you!

Although I haven't tried this personally, for a Symbian^3 generation device, I did note the other day that there's a pretty attractive new custom firmware released for the Nokia N8 - "Delight 6.0 - Delight Resurrection". A very movie-esque title, with looks to match. Below, I muse on what's different, what's involved and whether you should now take the plunge into this mysterious world.

My ethos in terms of covering custom firmware here on All About Symbian has always been "don't touch it while the manufacturer is still issuing updates" - after all, it would be very galling to apply a custom firmware, risking bricking your phone, accepting that the device will be wiped and having to rebuild all your apps and data - and then find out that the manufacturer issues another official update, which you can't then apply.

With the Samsung i8910 HD, it became apparent fairly early on that Samsung's heart wasn't in the device and their last official firmware left the device with almost no system disk space, clearly untenable, so I went all-in on custom firmware, you may remember? With the Nokia X6 (and 5800), it became apparent that Nokia had stopped all further development for S60 5th Edition phones, so again I headed in and got an improved device as a result.

We're now on the cusp of cessation of updates for the Nokia N8 and the other 'Symbian^3' generation devices - I still think that Nokia and Accenture have a few minor application updates to push out, but (two and a half years since initial availability) it surely can't be long before a line is drawn under this hardware. At which point the gloves will be off and I'll start delving into custom firmware.

Which brings us to "Delight 6.0 - Delight Resurrection", announced here at Symbian Developers. [actual latest version is v6.099, according to the N8 Delight blog]

There aren't, in fact, many clues from this 'Delight' promo graphic to show that the firmware offers anything new - this could almost be yet another theme:

Happily, the CFW (Custom FirmWare) developer has posted the full list of what's different over and above the standard Symbian Belle OS and interface. There's a lot below, so look out for the lines I've highlighted in bold, with comments inline in italics:

- Integrated ROMPatcher 3.1 (incl. Domainsrv autostart)
- Integrated hacked installserver
- Modded autostart (removed system apps), added ROMPatcher
- Full close system apps
- Added useful ROMPatches
- ID3 and EQ editor mods
- added ported Anna and S^3 screensavers (Animation, Slideshow and Music Player)

These sound interesting - anyone remember which screensavers we had back in early 2011? Me neither!

- Anna soundparameters and more volume
- No keylock vibration (removable, check delight FAQ in Additional Files folder)
- Tactile feedback while calls (removable, check delight FAQ in Additional Files folder)
- Delight animation and sound in C:\data\Animations\, you can replace/remove it
Use startup.mif/.mp3 and shutdown.gif/.mp3 and enable warning sound in active profile.
- Unlocked menu (create subfolders and rename apps)

Ah, being able to create sub-folders will be very welcome to some (e.g. Games>Arcade, or Utilities>Online)

- Akncapserver mod
- No USB popups

Actually, I find these helpful, confirming which mode the phone thinks it's in. But each to his own....

- Fast theme switcher
- Reduced Qt popupfader
- No Ovi signup/SMS
- FP1/2 taskmanager

FP1/FP2 introduced a carousel with full height screenshot thumbnails, so this is definitely a good thing

- Symbols in powerbuttons
- Filemanager extender mod

I'm assuming this means allowing File manager to access parts of the file system that are hidden from the standard application

- Smilies across all applications
- Predic on E
- exclusive delight theme effects in e:\effects, big thanks to our team member Allstar12345
- Swipolicity mod (more rights)
- Heapsize and Closing delay mod
- Strategist camera mod (small size, high quality)
- No active diverts
- Music folder search in E:\music\ and F:\music\
- Skip e:\effects in Gallery
- Music Player Heapsize 30MB
- Infinite Browser cache on D:\

Wouldn't this slow Web down, having a larger and larger cache? The developer says not, which is good....

- Voice Recorder mod (5 hours max, 256kbit/s)

Aha - now THIS sounds as if it would be genuinely useful, for recording plays and seminars and church services, and so on....

- Sysap.exe 3.0 by CODeRUS (restart via power menu, disabled all popups)
- No lock/unlock vibration
- Unlimited SMS sending retries
- Send protected files

Useful, this would get round the having to rename certain file types just to Bluetooth them between devices...

- Java permissons mod
- ported FP1 keyboardskin
- extended maxiumum SMS length to maximum
- Nokia Pure font (we will integrate delight font in next update)

Aha - having the Pure font built-in has been something requested by many for a long, long time...

- added Slippery Scrolling mod (you can remove it via deleting C:\private\10202be9\persits\20021192.cre
- modified CPU and GPU config (for best batterie time)
- By default one empty homescreen with Delight wallpaper, max. 10

Config:
- Disabled product improvment

- Disabled screensaver
- Delight menu, A-Z order
- Disabled charging notes
- Light time-out 600 seconds max
- Screen/keylock time-out 10 minutes max
- Disabled FOTA cache

Well, if you're going CFW then you're not going to be able to use over the air updates anyway, so you might as well reclaim the disk space reserved for OTA update use...

- Dialer & FM landscape

Deleted apps:
- Nokia Social - just as well
- F-Secure - never needed, good riddance
- Youtube - ditto, this was only ever a shortcut or an old low quality client, anyway
- Nokia Music - does anyone use this on Symbian these days?
- Joikuspot - I suspect that anyone who has a use for this will have bought the full commercial version anyway?
- Microsoft Communicator 
- NFC tutorial
- Adobe Reader - 
- Quickoffice - a shame to lose this, since on the N8 it was the full editing version, but it's probably quite out of date now, in terms of file formats?

Of course, any of the above that are needed can be installed from the usual sources, i.e. added back in.

New apps:
- Updated Nokia Store to latest
- Modified backup & restore and resolver from original delight are included
- X-Plore (with custom settings and icon by BelleXDesigns)
- Connectivity Analyzer
- WebSearch Ultimate Lite
- Internet Radio
- SIP VOIP extended settings
- MIFEditor (hidden from menu)

Widgets added:
- Anna Notifications (incl. Belle Icons)
- Anna Notifications 2*2

These notification widgets were much missed by many in the move to Belle, so good to see these here again

- Calendar small
- Clocks: analogue – small, profile, small digital, text small
- Contacts: mini, comms
- Small: DLNA server, WIFI, FM-Transmitter
- Internet Radio
- Mail One Line and Two Line
- Music player, compact
- Search and Search Mini in ROFS
- Vertu Apps Launcher
Skins from:
- Xinox
- Kang Shao
- SelvaSathyam

Of note is that the Delight CFW is available with up to 57 different translations, including Hebrew, which wasn't even done by Nokia originally for the N8....(!)

________________

My plan is, around June/July, if there have been no more official app updates, to apply this (or a similar) CFW to my Nokia N8 and to report on the whole process - techniques, gotchas, the works. Watch this space.

Comments welcome on this CFW or if you've applied any other N8 CFW - was it worth it in the end? Any showstoppers? Any tales of woe?

There definitely aren't enough good educational games in the Nokia Store. My hopes weren't high when I spotted that Math Fun Premium is essentially a Flash application, but I was impressed by its operation and fluidity even on an old Nokia E7. This little app is perfect for helping 6 to 8 year olds with their basic numeracy (perhaps on a journey or while waiting at the doctor's, or similar. Oddly, the developer also throws in teaching the signs of the Zodiac - hmmmm.....

For a Flash game/app, Math Fun Premium is surprisingly comprehensive - the 'flashcards' section is just asking sub-6-year olds to count (stars) up to 10 and isn't that remarkable, so I've concentrated on the main body of the app, the slightly harder maths, here

Here's Math Fun Premium (which comes up on the phone as 'AstroMath', oddly) in action:

The introductory text, and (right) practising multiplication - the wizard shrugs if you get it wrong and rewards you with a wreath if you get it right. Swipe down, as the prompt says, or tap on 'Next' to proceed and keep going....

There's a mix of mental arithmetic (times tables) and calculator skills being taught here, since the 'hint' system brings up a virtual calculator, where the child can tap in the sum directly. Nicely done...

In both practice and 'quiz' areas, you can pick from the various types of maths calculation in 'Options'...

The slightly out-of-place star sign flash cards. I guess they're here because the developer's keen on them?(!) (right) Setting up a 'quiz', specifying the number of questions, their type and complexity...

Taking the quiz, your child's score is recorded and 'trophies' are awarded if they get everything right - great presentation and glossy rewards for your child to show you, too.

A credit to the Flash game genre, Math Fun Premium shows what can be done and is well worth the £1.50 here in the Nokia Store if you have under-8s who need a little numeracy testing now and then.

The Half-Life spinoff Counter-Strike is a big name in PC gaming, I know. And below is a video of it running on Symbian. Really. With 8 maps, 8 weapons and 4 skins. That's the good news. I'll save the bad news until after you watched it....

Here we go, then, and thanks to Symbian Developers for the heads-up:

The developer is TheDavo (link to his YouTube channel) and you can find the game's download link in the video description, he classes this version as beta, but it seems to run quite well, at 15fps on an N8, apparently, and faster on a 701 or 808...

The bad news is contained in the game's readme file:

Counter - Quake - Strike. How to install :

1/ Hack your phone -  http://forum.dailymobile.net/index.php?topic=69410.0    OR   http://www.n8fanclub.com/2011/09/norton-symbian-hack-by-coderus-symbian3.html

2/ Install All SIS packages  ( Counter-Strike install to E )

3/ Open Virtual keyboard and hide it with autofocus button

4/ then open "rotate screen" and choose widescreen mode

5/ Launch Counter-strike, then show "virtual keyboard" with autofocus button

6/ Single player

7/ Skirmish

PS: Before start counter-strike, is not necessary to set "rotate screen", but then, don't rotate your phone in game, because game can crash !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In other words, this isn't (yet) a regular Symbian game download, nor is it likely to be. Now, I know that some AAS readers have 'hacked' their phones, in order to install custom mods and/or firmware, so the above may not be an obstacle, but I've so far resisted doing this to any of my devices, nor would I recommend it to the uninitiated.

Plus, getting the keyboard running in the background and then popping it up seems a bit of a kludge. But what the heck, it apparently works and future updates are promised. So watch this space!

If you do download it, watch out for the usual download site 'tricks' of misleading 'Download me' style links. Only click on the link you can see downloads the file you want. You have been warned. This is no Nokia Store and you're way off the reservation here.

Comments welcome, either way! 8-)

It's a fair copy, this is a small update to a fairly geeky utility, but it got me musing (hey, it's Friday!)... PhoNetInfo, one of my favourite utilities (yes, it's commercial, but buy it anyway and stick it on all your Symbian phones), just added the stat 'Time since last reboot'. As you'll see, stats here aren't quite what they were in the days of Symbian's ancestry, but your own data points would still be interesting!

PhoNetInfo is one of my staples, it reports the hardest numbers possible about what's going on inside your Symbian smartphone - you'll see from the various tabs of information on offer. I've used it a lot to look at the reported battery voltage in milliVolts, for example.

This latest update, to v4.0, isn't quite as major a jump as you might think - the number's only now 4.0 because the previous one was v3.9...! Still, the changelog is quoted as: 

• added new HAL stat 'Time since last reboot'
• System tick period now in microseconds

(in my case, above, I'd powered the Nokia 808 off recently to change its battery!)

Now, back in the day (mid 1990s), I was using Psion's palmtop computers, running Symbian's ancestor OS, EPOC. These ran on two AA batteries, but also had a CR2032 backup battery, for keeping the OS alive while you changed main cells. What this meant was that some people never, EVER had to reboot their Psions. In other words, 'time since last reboot' for many users would be the time since they bought the device and first turned it on! 

This stability (especially in the days of SIBO, EPOC's predecessor, and the Series 3 range) was legendary. And you can see why the world's phone makers turned to Psion when they wanted to take this OS and create the first smartphone operating system, Symbian, back in 1998.

So, how long has your Symbian smartphone survived since its last reboot? I'll bet there are people reading this for whom the figure is in the region of months, though I'll grant that the hardware situation is very different these days. A smartphone has to be powered down to change its SIM card, for example. And certainly to change its battery. Plus the very fact that a smartphone is way more complex than a standalone palmtop means that there's more to go wrong - I've had reboot-worthy glitches on Symbian, Windows Phone, iOS and Android all in the last week, for example.

Anyway, excuse the Friday rambling... If you have the new PhoNetInfo installed, why not quote your uptime in the comments?

Here's another weather widget to add to your Symbian homescreen arsenal, though it stands out by having two sizes, several styles, plus shortcuts to Clock and Calendar (hence the 'Clock' bit in the name). The WeatherClock widget is demonstrated below, with the all important Nokia Store link...

Into a space that's getting slightly crowded now, with Nokia Weather (part of Maps Suite) and qooWeather the best known, we now have WeatherClock widget, from new developer d13:

Two new entries appear in your homescreen widget list, 8x3 and 8x6 variants; (right) with Nokia Weather at the top, here are both WeatherClock widgets in place on a homescreen - the forecasts themselves match up well, too, across the two sources

Tapping the forecast part of each widget takes you through to the underlying homegrown 'cWeather' application, which handles the actual forecast downloading and configuration. You get to pick your city (/cities), the units used, the language presented, the refresh frequency and, perhaps most importantly, the icon style used - I like the photorealistic style shown here.

Tapping the time in the WeatherClock widget takes you to Symbian Clock, while tapping the date takes you to Symbian Calendar, giving the widget extra, multi-purpose reasons for being on your main homescreen, I'd suggest. Recommended.

You can buy WeatherClock widget (currently at v1.1.0, even though the underlying cWeather application is at v1.0, confusingly) for £1.50 here in the Nokia Store.