In All About Symbian Insight number 236, Steve and Rafe start the podcast by discussing Steve's revolutionary device, before moving on to round up some recent app releases. We mention Nokia Public Transport, ultimate music player app QuasarMX, useful new widget WeatherClock, social status updater ShareBoard, and we finish the podcast with some talk on a delightful custom firmware for the N8.

This podcast was recorded on Friday 12th April 2013.

In this podcast we cover:

• Symbian continued to next-generation 'Revolution', runs 'Ellie'
   
• Nokia Public Transport 2.5 gets official release at last
   
• Review: QuasarMX
   
• WeatherClock, the all-purpose homescreen widget
   
• ShareBoard allows lightning status updates to Facebook and Twitter
   
• Turning the Nokia N8 into a Delight?
   
• Webview widget trial ended, 'next steps' being planned

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

As a huge fan of Nokia's photographic heroics through the last decade, starting with the 7650 and ending with the Lumia 920, I couldn't resist embedding this well done 'infographic' emphasising Nokia's leadership in this area. The graphic isn't an official one (oddly, though Nokia would do well to file it and use it), but is made by a fan. Well worth a quick scan over and a good reposte to anyone who claims that that cameras in smartphones were even partly HTC's idea....

The infographic is professionally done, by Faisal B Ahmed and shows both Nokia's firsts and an illustrative timeline of significant models (mainly Symbian, of course, with Windows Phone creeping in at the end):

________________________

What a wonderful rogue's gallery and I something of a confession to make, in that I think I've owned every single one of the devices listed above. I ditched my standalone Olympus camera around 2004, accepting that images weren't as good from my smartphone camera but that there was far more chance I'd have the device with me and thus I'd get more shots of interest. Even the quality argument went away with the N93, in the summer of 2006, which produced stunning 3 megapixel image that would be hard to tell apart from standalone camera-shot images.

My only disappointment is that the Nokia N82 never made the graphic. I guess it wasn't the very first phone to have Xenon flash, but it was darn close and was one of my Nokia favourites from the mid 2000s....

In the meantime, comments welcome, and kudos to the art skills of Mr. Ahmed.

So we now have a 'Facebook phone' in the wild, we have Android users testing out 'Facebook Home' as a replacement front end for their phones, and we have Windows Phone users jumping up and down saying that their smartphones have had Facebook baked in for years. Well, Facebook's pretty darned easy on Symbian too, and the most popular clients have had massive updates since I last did a round-up. Which is why I wanted to take the best of these and look at them afresh, in 2013, alongside Nokia Social, built into every Symbian phone, of course. 

NB. My original article had already been patched and updated four times, so i thought it was time for a fresh piece of HTML...(!) We've also had complaints about table formatting on smaller-screened devices, so with that in mind, I've broken down the content in more conventional linear format. Enjoy.

As before, I won't pretend that the Symbian contenders here are 100% definitive - Facebook has a very public API and all sorts of applications and services interact with it (any number of image and video uploaders, chat clients, contact thumbnail synchronisers, etc.) But the apps tested here are claimed to be actual Facebook clients, to varying degrees: facinate, fMobi, Nokia Social, Facial, plus Gravity (which now has plenty of dedicated Facebook functionality) - for the average user, how do they fare in speed, ease of use, stability and functionality?

I'd emphasise that I'm not a Facebook guru. And I'd also point out that mobile use of Facebook is likely very different to desktop use - after all, there are none of those time-wasting little games, no adverts and usually none of the 'advanced' features like photo tagging or page management. Mobile Facebook is, by definition, somewhat stripped down, but that doesn't mean you can't do quite a bit, share your life and generally stay in touch with your friends.

In no particular order:

fMobi

(v3.56), from JiiKoo. In Nokia Store. AAS Facebook rating:90%

Interface, speed, cosmetics, stability: Centred around a dark-themed, AMOLED-friendly grid of 12 icons with an optional background photo of your own choosing. Most things about fMobi are customisable, from status bars, fonts and alerts. I liked the big friendly 'home' icon when you're anywhere in the UI other than the homescreen. Very reassuring.

Status messages/news feed The contents of your main news feed can be drilled into to pick out just photos, just links, just a particular group, and so on. The occasional screen tap and swipe are missed, but otherwise fMobi is fast enough.

Facebook messages Full support, threaded neatly by friend.

Photo browsing Full browsing, liking and comment on friends' public albums. Photos load fast and can be swiped backwards and forwards. You can download any that you like.

Media sharing/upload Piece of cake to upload photos, one by one, with comments. Did you know that high resolution photos to Facebook don't get downsized as much as they used to? My 5mp images ended up (downloadable) at 2mp on Facebook after upload here.

Facebook Chat Full support, and there's some indication of whether each friend is 'online', though I don't see how this could be reliable (generally).

Other features of note Full support for Facebook groups, their wall and chats; Facebook events (coming up); searching for users, pages, groups or events; support for fan pages and logging in as a page owner.

The fMobi homescreen, nicely balanced/mature, showing optional custom background; the main news feed, here with the default dark theme applied.

Tapping through to a friend's profile and then photo albums/images...

Uploading a photo, with status message; full support for Facebook Chat

facinate

(v2.0.56), from Inova IT, In Nokia Store, AAS Facebook rating:76%

Interface, speed, cosmetics, stability: Again dark themed by default, the main control system here is eighteen icons, arranged into three side-swipeable pages. Each module is super-responsive to taps and gestures. Very annoyingly, the 'back' icon exits the application rather too easily, i.e. you step back through a chain of Facebook info browsing and bang, you're out of the app completely. Kept happening to me and it would be easy so solve with an 'Exit?' prompt. Cosmetically, I'd have preferred the dark-grey backgrounds to be a proper black, plus there's no way to change the font sizes used here.

Status messages/news feed Everything's here, inline, comments and all, and again super silky scrolling. Every few dozen or so posts, you have to tap on 'Load more' - this is done, as with other clients here, to keep the amount of RAM being used sensible, but it's easy enough to load up as much as you like, if you have the free RAM and patience for scrolling through it all!

Facebook messages Replying to Facebook messages seems to be handled via Facebook Chat - is this normal? The prompt to turn on chat confused me, at least!

Photo browsing Browsing a friend's album was painless and quick. Zooming is mainly done through a S60 5th Edition-like linear control, somewhat oddly, though multi-touch zoom also generally works.

Media sharing/upload Uploading a photo is very quick and there's the usual choice of albums to store it in. However, the end result on Facebook is only 0.4 megapixels, so I presume that facinate is doing the downsampling to this degree, which is very disappointing.

Facebook Chat Fully supported and, again, an attempt is made to tell you who's actually online and available for instant messaging.

Other features of note Birthdays and events are broken out separately; you can search people, pages and/or groups (in various combinations); fan 'Pages' and Groups are nicely separated and available for browsing and posting; a homescreen widget cycles through recent updates one by one (you can't hurry it along, you have to read at its pace!)

Two of the three panes of icons in facinate's main menu...

Dark grey used for the background to timelines and other panes; bringing up a timeline photo introduces a sliding zoom control, though multi-touch zoom also works

Browsing my friends list; each friend's banner image is shown, above their wall - swiping left and right gives extra options, such as their photo albums...

Browsing Ewan's albums - shocker, he has one marked 'iOS photos'...(!); again, bringing up a photo has the same zoom option

Uploading a photo from my 808 - you can choose where it ends up from the pick list

Facial 

(v5.30), from ftcn, In Nokia Store, AAS Facebook rating:69%

Interface, speed, cosmetics, stability: Facial is certainly fast enough generally, with a choice of themes and a top row of seven control icons that stays accessible wherever you are in the app. Cosmetics are spoilt by a strange mix of fonts - you can change the overall font character in settings, but the gap between the largest and smallest fonts (on the same screen) is still large. Stability is in question for this version too, tapping on 'More' to load more new feed updates hangs Facial ('Loading feed...') every time on my 808 - definitely a bug.

Status messages/news feed The mix of content is good here, though you can't override it and pick out just certain content types. I did like the way that notifications were shown with a red button, indicating that action is needed

Facebook messages You can't reply to direct messages directly in Facial, the software sidesteps this by loading the relevant part of the Facebook mobile web site in a frame, letting you reply using that service instead. Not exactly ideal.

Photo browsing No issues bringing up a friend's photo albums quickly, though swiping from one photo to another was a bit hit and miss in this version. There's no obvious way to zoom in on a photo, but I discovered by trial and error that double-tapping at least switched to the photo's native resolution, though there's still no way to actually download the image.

Media sharing/upload When posting an image to Facebook, there's a rather finnicky carousel to pick from (swipe fast and it gets confused), but it does work on the whole and the full resolution image is sent (which Facebook, again, drops to 2mp at its end).

Facebook Chat There's no support for Chat here.

Other features of note The search facility here handles Pages, People, Groups and Events (even though two of those content types aren't browsable from the main interface, oddly); an auto-refresh feature (with the period set by you) handles background updating; a fiddly but powerful homescreen widget wherein you can step through recent updates on the homescreen with just a few taps.

The main Facial view - app modules and controls across the top, context sensitive controls immediately beneath and then the usual timeline; the Settings dialog, note the auto-refresh setting and that this is where you'll find 'Exit' - the down-arrow control merely hides the application (which is fine....)

Browsing my friends - the alphabetic shortcuts help a lot here; oops, I tapped on 'More' on a timeline and am now stuck in an endless 'loading' loop - definitely buggy behaviour here...

When uploading an image, you can pick from the carousel shown here - except that this is a little buggy too and can get stuck for while showing blank thumbnails if you swipe too fast....; the excellent homescreen widget, under manual control (tap the bottom third to advance, etc.)

Gravity

(v2.80 Build 7269 beta), from Mobile Ways, AAS Facebook rating:74% [scored as a Facebook client only, note]

Interface, speed, cosmetics, stability: The original demo app for what could be achieved with kinetic scrolling and a responsive UI, Gravity excels here. Primarily a Twitter client, Facebook (and other) functionality does seem at times a bit of an afterthough. There's the usual choice of light or dark themes, plus two font options. Tapping any post brings up context sensitive action buttons, as needed.

Status messages/news feed Beautifully fast and fluid, plus extra content is loaded automatically when you get to the bottom of the loaded update stream. Comments are shown inline, as are photos (which you can download, but not zoom in on). Notifications are handled the Facebook top menu in the app.

Facebook messages Full support, and message threading seems to work well.

Photo browsing Browsing friend albums is quick and, again, you only get to see screen-width previews (hint: turn phone into landscape, to improve things!) but you can save anything to local disk for opening up properly afterwards.

Media sharing/upload Slightly clumsily, you have to back out of Gravity's Facebook panes and out to its main menu, where you'll find 'Images' and can then select a photo and post to both Twitter and Facebook at the same time, without having to pick the image again or re-type any of the text. Very convenient if you need to post to both at once, clunky if you only wanted Facebook anyway! Photos are uploaded at full resolution if you pick 'High' in the posting dialog (again, Facebook reduces this to 2mp).

Facebook Chat No chat support.

Other features of note You can browse fan 'Pages' and Groups in the usual fluid way; also handles Twitter, Google Reader, Foursquare, YouTube, App.net, StatusNet and Sina Weibo(!)

Gravity's Facebook module homescreen, everything's hierarchically arranged, which takes some getting used to, but is fast and effective once you get your head around the structure; browsing my Facebook newsfeed...

Looking at a friend's wall and browsing through one of their photo albums...

Although you can't zoom on the screen, you can save any picture to your local disk; uploading a photo, with status update, to both Facebook and Twitter at the same time...

Nokia Social

(v1.6.32), from Nokia, built into device firmwares, AAS Facebook rating: 55%

Interface, speed, cosmetics, stability: A web-like all-white timeline that scrolls smoothly if everything's loaded, but which stutters if there are inline images still being downloaded and rendered. For the same reason, the timeline also sometimes goes blank briefly and then re-renders on-screen. There are no font options, though the Nokia default is well chosen. Crying out for a dark theme still, for AMOLED-screened phones...

Status messages/news feed Everything you need is here, with notifications on the pop-up 8-icon pane and avatars and inline images aplenty. Feed filters let you pick out a particular group of people or Facebook group's posts.

Facebook messages Fully supported.

Photo browsing Viewing a friend's profile and then their 'Photos' seems simple enough but it's here again that Nokia Social's mix of HTML and Qt components struggle in terms of performance, with the sheer amount of photo thumbnails to grab and render. Sometimes going into albums and then trying to swipe through photos is like watching paint dry - very slow going indeed. You also can't zoom photos or download them to your phone, which is also disappointing.

Media sharing/upload Uploading a photo or video from Gallery, or a photo from the Camera (live), or (as here) direct from Nokia Social is a doddle, along with a comment. Uniquely, you can upload multiple photos in one go, though obviously with the same attached comment. Images are uploaded at full resolution again, and only subject to Facebook's 2mp treatment.

Facebook Chat No Chat support.

Other features of note Events are shown for the week ahead; a terrific homescreen widget allows full scrolling of combined Facebook and Twitter updates, all in the one place without bringing up the main application at all, plus you can post a lightning fast status update from this widget; social profiles can be linked through, manually, one by one, to entries in Contacts. Nice, but more automation of this function is needed for it to be really helpful across all contacts.

The default newsfeed view, resolutely black-on-white (oh my poor battery!); viewing an inline photo, though with no zooming options, sadly...

At any point you can pop up the 8-icon main menu, with red flags to indicate things you might want to take action on, or look at; Browsing a friend's photo album. Oh dear. This screenshot was taken 20 seconds after entering the album and Nokia Social still hadn't finished rendering more than one tiny thumbnail....!

Uploading photos to my own timeline, with support for multiple images in one go!; the excellent scrollable homescreen widget...

Wrap up

Despite the fact Nokia Social has got better with each new version number, it's still held back massively by performance problems - and it's too late to re-write it in C++ now, so we're stuck with it. If you're not too bothered about browsing photos and if you have an LCD-equipped device (e.g. Nokia 701) then maybe I'd recommend it. Maybe.

Facial is quite a bit better but still astonishingly immature in its UI, even after two years of development - maybe it's too late at this stage to rewrite this too? It certainly feels like a UI and architecture that needs rethinking.

Gravity is a lot more polished and only really held back by the fact that its UI and architecture were originally designed around Twitter, so we get a certain hierarchification (if that's not a word, then I'm calling dibs on it right now!) of Facebook and we get image uploading done within a different part of the application. If you need the best Twitter client as well (not the mention the other services supported) then this is still your best option overall though.

facinate is quite comprehensive, but falls down on a few silly UI issues, plus the low resolution used for your photo uploads to Facebook. If the developer could get these fixed then the score would be ten points higher. Taking it very close to...

fMobi doesn't put a foot wrong here. Its interface has been tweaked over the last two years to the point where it's near perfect and intuitive at every turn. All core Facebook functions are handled well and right now if you just want a 'great Facebook client' then this is the one to head for. Highly recommended. If the developer's got a spare moment then a homescreen widget would be nice too, but that would be very definitely just the icing on the cake.

One little utility that has been popular over the years for digging into the recesses of your Symbian smartphone's file system has been X-plore. Traditionally it has been fully working shareware, but with the developer's newer forays into other mobile platforms, X-plore has now been released as freeware, with a new version number, v1.60. Screenshots and link below.

Here's X-plore 1.60 in action, note that its compatibility is very wide and will run on everything from the oldest S60 devices onwards (even 'Series 60 2nd Edition is supported via a separate download):

Somewhat oddly, the license agreement pane still refers to the shareware origins - ah well, at least there's no 3 second delay on starting and exiting, this is the real freeware deal; confirmation of build date and version number

X-plore in action, tap to expand a folder - you'll get the hang of it. Long press anything for context-sensitive actions and note that many things about the interface (including the zoom/font level) can be customised in its 'Configuration' section on the menu; X-plore is supremely capable, from file viewers to an integrated zip archive tool

You can grab X-plore 1.60 freeware by visiting the download page here. Happy file browsing!

(I'd been waiting for this release anyway, but a heads up from Nokialino jogged me to check again)

I've said it over and over again, the only way to use Gravity is riding its beta track, which maintains all the latest compatibility fixes and new features. Here we have v2.82 build 7286, with SIS file dated a couple of weeks ago, available for download by all. Registered users of the application will get their IMEI numbers picked up and recognised, of course. Screenshots and brief changelog below.

Gravity beta v2.82 build 7286:

• fixes compatibility with Twitter API 1.1
• fixes compatibility with Google's Maps API for previewing the location of a tweet or a foursquare location

In case you're wondering why Nokia Maps isn't used, this being Symbian, apparently it's because Nokia's API only allows the showing of 2000 maps per day for free, whereas Google's APIs allow 10 times the number (roughly).

Here's the latest beta in action:

Installed and working fine on my 808...; about to preview a map from a tweet which has geolocation information...

...and there's Stephen's location; zoomed in a little more and turn on the satellite view, and you can almost view Stephen working on his car lot...!

Great to see Gravity advancing month after month and keeping full service compatibility. Now, Jan Ole, what about an up to date SIS file in the official Nokia Store too?

Admit it. How often have you been caught out by setting your smartphone to 'offline' profile before heading into a meeting or theatre play or church service and then wondering, many hours later, how odd it is that noone's called you or texted you all day? Gah, many times in my case, which is why 'Offline mode timer widget', for Symbian, caught my eye. The name is hopefully self-explanatory, but just in case, there are screens and comments below.

I should point out that there's a similar application from the same developer called 'Silent mode timer widget' (go on, have a guess what it does!), just in case you need that profile rather than offline...

Using this is simplicity itself, as you might imagine. Rather than setting 'offline' mode in the traditional way, you tap on the right side of the widget to set the timer and then tap on the left side to activate it. 'Offline' profile is then immediately in effect, and after the appropriate time limit, your original profile is restored. Meaning that you don't have to remember to change it back yourself. Phew!

Inserting the widget from the 'Add widget' list on the homescreen; setting the timer (in this case for 2 hours) 

Very handy and well worth a quid to me, at least. See also the developer's other titles in the store, there are quite a few widgets of interest.

You can buy Offline timer mode widget from the Nokia Store for £1 here.

In another in his series of occasional mini-app-reviews, Ow Kah Leong tests out the plainly named 'Screenshot app' (go on, guess what it does....), triggering (uniquely) from a lateral shake of your Symbian smartphone. There are free and 'pro' versions, and Kah reckons that it's a useful app to add to your Symbian toolkit if you ever have need for grabbing screens.

Ow Kah Leong writes:

It has always been argued that Symbian ecosystem is a second-class citizen, compared to Android and iOS. While the the numbers are nothing comparable to the other two, I think the quality is not too shabby. In fact, there has been a nice deluge of new additions and the quality is pretty good too. For example, QuasarMX is a powerful music player with a slick UI to boot and numerous settings to satisfy the geeky music lover.

I was browsing the Nokia Store (yes, I know… kinda sad...!) and came across a screen capture app called ScreenShot app, developed by appmolecule. It’s another one of those apps that has only one function and it is reflected in the app name. So what can the developer offer? Its unique point is that you just shake your phone to take a screenshot, no messing with buttons. That’s it.

I remembered when Steve reviewed Saving Private Sheep (a great game, by the way!), he mentioned he had difficulty capturing screenshots of the game. So I tried with 'Screenshot app' and managed to take a few screenshots, shown below:

One point to note though. The phone has to be held upright, else the screenshot will not turn out right:

You can also get the Pro Version, which allows you to change where the images are saved. This is also, incidentally, the only setting to play with.

Not an app for the masses, I suspect, but one that's good to have in your utilities folder, for when you need it.

You download 'Screenshot app' from the Nokia Store for free, or buy the 'pro' version for £1 here.

It's all very well having 'Voice recorder' built into every Symbian smartphone, but there's not exactly a lot of choice in terms of settings (quality can be 'MMS', 'standard' or 'high') and there's a one hour limit hard coded in. What if you want to record in higher quality? Or for longer? Or using a different codec or sample rate? That's where Audio Recorder Pro comes in, offering all of the above. Here's my assessment, complete with audio samples to check out.

The mission here, according to the developer, camera-specialist Harald Meyer, was that he'd been asked by several users for a way to harness the audio capture side of the Nokia 808, and everything developed from there.

Voice recorder works well enough for general use, but it's not quite good enough when capturing original music, should you want to do something with the audio later on. Lossless capture was essential, as was being able to record more than an hour in one go, plus 96kHz sampling was a 'nice to have'. And, in Audio Recorder Pro, these aims have been achieved. Coupled with the superlative HAAC MEMS ("Rich Recording") microphones in the Nokia 808*, you can use the smartphone as an audio capture device in a studio or theatre environment without it embarrassing itself.

* Note that the utility works fine with the standard MEMS digital mikes on the rest of the recent Symbian smartphones (from the N8 onwards), though obviously there will be some compromises in terms of stereo/mono and dynamics.

To give you an idea of quality, here's an 808-captured piece of guitar music, stereo, 96kHz, uncompressed wav (PCM, ~10MB) (there are more [voice] samples of my own below). Fairly stunning, and remember this is lossless, i.e. no compression has been applied, so this is ready for direct import into a digital studio system.

Here's Audio Recorder Pro in action - the app is essentially one big scrolling dialog (implemented in Qt), with a big 'ol Start button at the top:

The main interface, note that the pane scrolls down, as shown here, revealing a wealth of options. Note that not all options chosen actually work together, so you have to know a little of what you're doing and what you want to achieve.

Recording voice calls and FM radio are two party tricks here (as opposed to the main event), but might be useful to some (though note that the FM radio support is only for Belle FP1/FP2 devices, i.e. not Belle Refresh)...

The all important choice of codec - AMR is typically low grade (think MMS), AAC is a great all-purpose codec already used by the likes of Voice recorder, and PCM is for lossless audio (think audio CDs and studio sound); (right) you can play back the last recorded sample within Audio Recorder Pro - or simply find it later in \Sounds on your chosen capture disk...

The sample rate reflects how fast the hardware samples the ambient sound - the faster the better, since higher frequencies and faster dynamics can be more accurately captured; (right) the app is not without a quirk or two, here telling me that the 'default/default' selections aren't 'supported' - restarting the app fixed the issue

In terms of limitations, with a standard FAT-formatted mass memory or microSD, the limit of audio capture is 4GB, which works out to over three hours even with lossless PCM capture, which should be enough for anybody. With exFAT-formatting (supported by Nokia 808 for microSD) the developer notes that recording time is effectively "infinite". Though of course you've got to consider what you're going to do with the files later on and need to make sure that your processing software back on the desktop can handle such monster individual files.

It's worth noting that, although the dialogs offer all the codecs, sampling frequencies, file formats, and so on, most of the options produce results that are no better than the standard, free, built-in Voice recorder (with its quality set to 'High'). All these options are here for completeness - the entire application is really centred around the one use case - lossless capture at a very high sampling rate for up to several hours.

Here are a few brief audio samples (two from the app, one from Voice recorder) - note that unless you have exceptional headphones or speakers, you're unlikely to hear any real quality difference - underscoring the 'pro' part of the application name here.

• builtinsample.mp4 (captured using the free, built-in utility, with quality set on 'high')
• audiorecpro.mp4 (captured using Audio Recorder Pro in its MP4/AAC mode)
• audiorecpro.wav (captured using Audio Recorder Pro in its lossless PCM/WAV mode)

Audio Recorder Pro did have a few quirks and niggles (some mentioned above), but on the whole performed as advertised. I can imagine it being left recording a practice session for a band or orchestra, or even for capturing proper concerts, all of which typically might run to two or three hours.

For casual use, you'd use the space-saving MP4 option (around 60MB per hour), for later re-use, you'd use the full lossless PCM (at over 1GB per hour). Later on, for the latter, you'd just have to import the lossless audio into the studio/editing software of your choice and then chop up/re-master/burn from there.

We've already speculated on Nokia 808s being 'banned' from gigs for video capture (where other phones would be let in). Recording audio is a lot less conspicuous and offers, with this tool, even higher quality. In addition to the rehearsal/lecture possibilities, this is perhaps the new essential phone and software for gig bootleggers?

PS. In addition to the Nokia Store, you can buy Audio Recorder Pro directly from the developer too.

PPS. No live gigs around me presented themselves for a real world high volume test, so comments welcome if you've also been using this tool - what did you do with it and can we hear some of the sample quality?

Here's a neat idea, if a little problematic in theory - have a utility sit in RAM and look for specific touchscreen gestures, then act upon them in customisable ways. This is the essence of CutePhone - so you might have one gesture for bringing up the multitasking carousel, another to pause music, another to launch a specific application. Almost Meego-ish, and certainly full of possibilities.

And CutePhone does, on the whole, work. Unfortunately, there are a few gotchas along the way that might put a dampener on proceedings. Rather than look for gestures anywhere on the touchscreen (whereby they'd get in the way of normal gestures for almost every touchscreen-written application), CutePhone is programmed to look just for gestures originating in the bottom toolbar of the typical Symbian UI. 

Which is all very well, but there were occasions when the detection of the gesture was foiled by the application itself detecting the initial touching of one of its control icons and occasions when the prescribed gestures simply couldn't be detected at all. An 'exclude applications' list helpfully offers to get round some of the worst of the clashes and misunderstandings, but the efficacy of the end result depends very much on how badly you wanted gesture control in the first place.

Here's CutePhone in action:

Your opening view of CutePhone, with a scrolling pane of 13 possible gestures, all starting in the bottom toolbar, just tap and pick from any of the 13 possible actions (symmetry, eh?!) for each. If you pick well, you might just be able to remember most of them too...

Then, in any general application, you simply (confidently) execute the gesture from the bottom toolbar (it gets echoed on-screen, higher up, to let you know that it was recognised) and the appropriate action is taken - in this case, I'd chosen 'N' for 'Next track' in Music player; (right) I'd also experimented with some of the other gestures - the diagonal swipes never worked, while the pure horizontal ones (i.e. along the toolbar) usually got misinterpreted by the foreground application.

Provided you stick to the half dozen gestures or so that work reliably for you and can remember which one does what, then this might be a very useful system shortcut utility. For me, it just crossed the line between being too much hassle compared to the possible gain, plus on the test Nokia E7 there were also system event clashes with another of my favourite shortcut utilities, the eponymous Shortcuts.

Still, you can buy CutePhone here for £1.50 in the Nokia Store if you fancy having a crack at gesture control yourself.

Comments welcome - how did CutePhone work out for you?

[Below is the official demo video for the app]

More platform updates to Symbian are rolling out right now, in this case a new, official build of the Beta Labs WLAN driver update that has been trialled for a while, and a compatibility fix for YouTube video uploading from Gallery (after Google changed the authentication APIs again). Screenshot proof below.

Symbian keeps up again, with the venerable OS acquiring two updates today for all Belle FP1/FP2 devices across the world, seemingly:

• Wi-fi update - v10.04(8), one minor build along from the Beta Labs version of the WLAN driver update, intended to improve reliability and performance of Wi-fi connections to older routers. I've had excellent results from this in recent months, so well done to Nokia for rolling this out to everyone.
• YouTube update to Gallery - Google changed the method of third party user authentication recently and this is Nokia keeping Symbian compatible (you may remember that Gallery acquired the ability to upload straight to YouTube last year).

To check your Symbian Belle FP1/FP2 smartphone (Nokia 808, 701, 700, etc) for these updates, look out'Sw update' in the main app menu. You'll be prompted to restart your phone so that the software can be loaded properly.

It's back! CoverUp, a well respected commercial utility that (ahem) delves into Amazon to get album art for any missing covers in your Symbian Music player library, is back after six months of downtime. Changes at Amazon's end had been resulting in a myriad 'Download failed' errors and the utility was withdrawn from the Nokia Store. Happily, CoverUp has been updated with restored compatibility, plus other cosmetic and performance tweaks. Does it work? Heck, yes. See below for screens, comments and link.

Note that if you experimented with the (also experimental) QML v3.0 of CoverUp a year or so ago then you should remove it before grabbing this new version.

Here's CoverUp v2.4.0 in action on my Nokia 808 PureView:

v2.4.0 - Back in Black! ; I don't remember this welcome message from old versions, but hey, it's good to see some explanation of what it's doing up front anyway...

The initial view of my music collection on my 808's microSD - almost zero artwork!; CoverUp getting to work. Note that album art shows initially in monochrome, in what I suspect is a RAM-saving measure for its buffers. Or perhaps it's stylistic? Either way, it works, with no dramas.

Scan finished, CoverUp takes a few seconds to write all the album art back to your Symbian music library and then you're off and running. Shown above and below is part of my collection, with shiny new album art. And there were no errors from CoverUp, plus the whole procedure took only five minutes or so to grab and store all the art.

No snarky comments about my music tastes, please - your mileage will almost certainly vary here!!

Not shown here but also worth noting is that, for covers which aren't found with the automatic search, you can tap through and refine the Amazon search and then pick the appropriate artwork yourself from the various matches. In practice, this filled in all the remaining gaps for me.

You can buy CoverUp for £3 here in the Nokia Store. And, please, no silly comments about £3 being 'expensive'. You pay more than that for a burger, whereas you'll be enjoying your new album art for months, if not years to come. This is a fair price for an application that's, as far as I know, unique.

Never mind the (for me, completely) non-working version of Swype in the Nokia Store 'collection' (guys at the Store, you might want to remove that?), the kind folk at Nokia Beta Labs have put out a re-issue of the 'beta' status Swype 2.1, with updated language packs (over 30 languages supported) and certificates. And it (kind of) works even on the latest Nokia 808 and Belle FP2. Screenshot proof, link and quote below. It's also (kind of) broken, as you'll see if you try it day to day. Comments welcome!

From the Beta Labs post:

April 17, 2013: Update 

Language packs have been updated to version 2.1.895 and have been newly certified.

Installation

All S60 5th Edition and Symbian^3 devices are supported. Swype comes preloaded with English US, English UK, Spanish, Portuguese BR, and French CA. If you want to Swype in a different language, download one of our 30 additional language packs.

Please note: Installing the wrong version of Swype can cause unwanted behavior so be sure to select the correct Symbian version on the download page. 

The latter warning is just to stop S60 5th Edition (e.g. Nokia 5800, N97 mini) and Symbian^3 (e.g. Nokia N8, E6, 808) generations getting their SIS files mixed up.

Swype installs and works as advertised (unlike the official v1.x version in the Nokia Store on the Belle FP2 808), though there are still a few dodgy moments: - when trying to reply to an email with an excessively long subject line, the text entry area was displayed out of sight underneath the keyboard. And if your reply gets too long, the same thing happens. Plus, replying to a text message using the 'conversation' view doesn't work, for the same reason - the text entry field is hidden beneath the keyboard. I guess you can Swype 'blind', but it's not ideal!

It's worth noting that, in addition to Swyping out your words, you can also tap them out old-style. With the optional 'prediction' turned on, you can even get Swype to auto-correct manual pecking as you go, unlike the built-in virtual keyboard, though the pop-up predictions window does feel a bit intrusive. Your comments welcome. Any tips from old Swype hands?

Here's Swype 2.1 (build 4436) being installed and in action:

As before, grab the beta via Nokia Beta Labs - on the phone itself is the easiest way in, I've found...

Installing the new SIS file - if you've played with previous 1.x versions, make sure these are removed first and your phone restarted; I'd advise installing on disk C in case of problems later if you lock out your other disks on a desktop when connected via cable

There's a slightly awkward help pop-up when you try using a Swype keyboard for the first time - it takes a few seconds to go away(!) - but Swype works well (for this use case, at least) thereafter, especially on the portrait keyboard on Symbian, which is usually so fiddly...

You can download this latest beta of Swype for Symbian here. What do you think of it? Any more use cases where this is broken? Comments welcome below, or there's an official feedback page here. 

PS. Note that some of the related pages on Nokia Beta Labs don't work at present. It's possible that I've been too quick in reporting the update and that these pages will appear in due course.

Another week, another Gravity update, this time to fix compatibility with Facebook login API changes and with Twitter Direct Message deleting. Sigh. When will companies stop fiddling with their public APIs? Gravity 2.82 build 7289 is available within the alpha/beta track inside the app ('Info and updates') or you can grab it directly here.

From Jan Ole Suhr:

"Just uploaded #Gravity Build 7289 with a hot-fix for the Facebook login problem and a fix for deleting DMs ... http://bit.ly/7289ALL "

Here's the new build in action:

Just updated! Note the various changelogs confirmed in the 'Info and updates' pane within the application; deleting a Twitter DM working just fine...

Logged in happily to Facebook too - you saw my Facebook client round-up a few days ago?

The activity needed by Jan Ole Suhr each month to keep Gravity fully up to date with the online services it connects to is somewhat frightening. On most other platforms this is a huge vote in favour of first party clients; on Symbian, raise a glass to Jan Ole and, if you haven't bought Gravity at £6.71 yet, go do so now, it's the way he gets paid!

Although first party clients for some of the major services may never come to Symbian, the developer community is stepping up to the mark with workarounds again, this time with an Amazon Kindle 'client', in the form of 'Erudite Book Reader', shown below. It effectively acts as a middle man between the Kindle 'Cloud Reader' web site and Symbian, making sure that the reading and downloading experience is acceptable. Just don't expect too much...

Here's a walkthrough, to give you an idea:

Brand new in the Nokia Store... Introducing Erudite Book Reader, written by student Mike Sheldon; it's soon obvious that what we have here is a Qt shell on top of a web browser instance, accessing Amazon's Kindle 'Cloud Reader'. The top status bar and bottom 'back' toolbar remain throughout - and note that tapping the back icon exits the app - so stay away!

You can ignore the pop-ups as a rule, since Erudite manages things like downloads for you; a typical Kindle home page (we don't use it much on this account, these are my daughter's picks, in case you were wondering!)

The default is black on white, though a tap of the Cloud Reader settings icon gives the screen, right, where you can change most of the cosmetics, including white on black (more AMOLED-friendly) and a larger font

Jumping about within a book using the Cloud Reader menu; within a book you tap on the left or right of a page to go backwards or forwards; tapping near the top brings up the menu bar shown, tapping at the bottom shows how far you are through the title.

Books are automatically downloaded in the background once you've started reading them here, which is handy, and offline reading does work, though Erudite Book Reader pops up intermittent complaints about 'connections not being available'.

Overall, there were occasional delays and missed taps, plus my initial launch of the application hung up completely and I had to restart the phone to get it going again. Clearly a) a labour of love and b) still relatively immature, you can buy Erudite Book Reader for £1.50 here in the Nokia Store. It may not be elegance personified, but it does give you full, synced, function-rich Amazon Kindle ebook reading on Symbian - and that's something I didn't think would happen within Symbian's lifetime.

Nokia has released its Q1 2013 results, reporting an operating loss of €150 million (up from a loss of €1338 million in Q1 2012), with net sales of €5.852 billion (down 20% year-on-year). Nokia's Devices and Services division's operating profit was -€42 million. The margin in Devices and Services was -1.5% (up from from -5.1% in Q1 2012). Total smartphone device sales were 6.1 million (5.6 million Lumia, 0.5 million Symbian), but mobile phone volumes fell to 55.8 million, down 21% year-on-year.

Nokia's non-IFRS figures (a measure of underlying performance) show a higher profit (€186 million) than the standard figures, due to one off charges around restructuring (-€255 million), asset amortization, and other factors. The underlying profit for the Devices & Services division (€4 million) is also positive for the second quarter in a row. The non-IFRS margin for Devices & Services was 0.1% (up from -3.0% in Q1 2012, but down from 1% in Q4 2012).

As a result of the improved performance, Nokia improved its cash position by €120 million, with the net cash figure now €4.5 billion. Of this amount €220 million was from Nokia Siemens Network, indicating the Devices & Service division was a cash drain. Nonetheless, the improvement in the net cash position will be seen as a sign that the company is in a much stronger financial position than a year ago.

The results, which were slightly ahead of Nokia's own projected weaker outlook for Q1 2013, were below analyst expectations in terms of sales (€6.48 billion versus €5.85 billion), on par in terms of smart device unit sales (5.6 million Lumia devices), and ahead in terms of profitability (-€0.25 EPS versus -€0.07 EPS) and net cash position (€3.7 billion versus €4.5 billion). However, primarily due to the weaker than expected mobile device volumes, Nokia share price is trading down 10%.

The headline figures for Nokia are generally positive, given Nokia's recent history, with a firm pattern of underlying profitability and growing Lumia device sales now established. What is most apparent is that the figures, across the board, have improved dramatically from a year ago. However, in the context of the wider industry, the figures remain relatively weak, and Nokia has a long road ahead as it seeks to grow its smart device (Lumia) volumes. Nonetheless, it seems clear that it will have the opportunity to do so, something that was an open question a year ago.

The caveat remains that the company is now operating in the context of lower device volumes, especially in high-end smartphones, compared to previous years (i.e. Nokia is operating at a reduced scale in terms of device sales, and is no longer as dominant in the industry as it once was). The sharp decline in mobile device volume is a cause for concern; although a gradual decline in mobile phone volumes is probably unavoidable, a 21% decline over last year's sales is faster than expected.

Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, said:

"At the highest level, we are pleased that Nokia Group achieved underlying operating profitability for the third quarter in a row. While operating in a highly competitive environment, Nokia is executing our strategy with urgency and managing our costs very well. 

We have areas where we are making progress, and areas where we are further increasing the focus. For example, people are responding positively to the Lumia portfolio, and our volumes are increasing quarter over quarter. Nokia Siemens Networks delivered another strong quarter and contributed to an overall improvement in Nokia Group's cash position. On the other hand, our Mobile Phones business faces a difficult competitive environment, and we are taking tactical actions and bringing new innovation to market to address our challenges.

All of these efforts are aimed at improving our financial performance and delivering more value to our shareholders."

Device volumes (sales)

Of the smart devices volume of 6.1 million, 5.6 million were Nokia Lumia devices and approximately 0.5 million were Symbian devices. This compares to 4.4 million Windows Phone and 2.2 million Symbian devices in the previous quarter. This was the first quarter in which Lumia (Windows Phone) devices exceeded 5 million units and the first quarter in more than 10 years in which Nokia sold less than a million Symbian devices.

The average selling price (ASP) for smart devices was €191 (up 34% from €143 in Q1 2012 and up 3% from €186 in Q4 2012), reflecting an increased proportion of higher cost devices (principally, the Nokia Lumia 920 and 820).

Nokia's Mobile Phone volume was 55.8 million, down 21% from 70.8 million in Q1 2012, and down 30% from 79.6 million in Q4 2012. ASP for Mobile Phones was €47, down from €51 in Q1 2012, but up from €45 in Q3 2012.

Despite poorer than expected sales, Nokia's Mobile Phone products continue to drive the profitability of the Devices & Services division. For the Devices & Services division as a whole, Smart Devices has a -16.2% contribution margin, compared to a +5.5% contribution margin for Mobile Phones. This is, in large part, due to the relatively low volumes of Smart Devices, as also indicated by the relatively strong gross margin figures (20.7%), against the operating expenses (€420 million) for Smart Devices. However, the picture is improving, with Smart Devices contributions up from -18.3% a year ago and -21.6% last quarter. If Nokia is able to continue to grow Lumia devices sales then Smart Devices should move nearer to having a positive contribution margin.

In terms of the geographic breakdown of sales, shipment volumes and sales declined, compared to a year ago, in all regions, reflecting the decrease in mobile phone sales year-on-year. Notable was the year on year decrease in China (9.2 million units down to 3.2 million units), suggesting Nokia still has work to do in the world's biggest mobile device market.

Combining Windows Phone, Symbian and Asha device sales gives a total smartphone volume of 11.1 million units. This compares with 11.9 million units in Q4 2011 (down 6% YoY) and 15.9 million units in Q4 2012 (down 30%, QoQ). The main reason for the quarterly decline was a fall in Asha full touch sales (down 46%) and a decline in Symbian sales (down 66%).

Nokia's HERE (Location & Commerce) division reported sales of €216 million, down from €277 million in Q1 2012 and down from €278 million in Q4 2012. The decrease was mainly due to lower internal sales (due to lower sales volumes of Nokia devices).

Nokia Siemens Networks reported sales of €2.804 billion, down from €2.947 billion in Q1 2012 and down from €3.988 billion in Q4 2012. Operating profit was €3 million, up from -€1.004 billion in Q1 2012, and down from €252 million in Q4 2012.
   

Outlook

Looking ahead, Nokia expects to see a similar Devices & Services margin in Q2 2013 to -2% (+/- 4%), reflecting competitive dynamics, changes in device demand, and the macroeconomic environment. Nokia expects the sequential growth in Lumia units to be higher than the the 27% growth from Q4 2012 to Q1 2013, suggesting Lumia device volumes of at least 7.1 million units in Q2 2013.

As with Q1 2013, the Location & Commerce division's operating margin is expected to decline due to lower internal sales, mainly due to decreased deferred revenue from lower smartphone sales in 2012 (i.e lower Symbian sales in 2012).

See also

Nokia press release

Earlier results: Q4 2012, Q3 2012, Q2 2012, Q1 2012, Q4 2011, Q3 2011, Q2 2011, Q1 2011, Q4 2010, Q3 2010, Q2 2010, Q1 2010, Q4 2009, Q3 2009, Q2 2009, Q1 2009, Q4 2008, Q3 2008, and Q2 2008

If you use Chrome as your browser then you'll have auto-translation of foreign language web sites built-in. This is just as well, since this large Mobile Review test of nine top smartphones is in its native Russian. The camera testing is fairly comprehensive, though slightly unfair to the Nokia 808 PureView in that its various Creative mode, PureView lossless zoom and Xenon flash weren't used at all. Despite this, the Symbian-powered handset still won out, top scoring with the as yet unavailable 2013 Galaxy S4. Imagine how the conclusion would have panned out if the 808 had been used to its full potential?

Here's the link to the full article, and, as I say, you'll need Chrome or a similar translating engine to read the text.

The second place is taken by the end of Sony Xperia Z. It seems that the software is clearly "nedopileno": not very clear pictures, there is a lot of red shades of color.

Next - Samsung Galaxy Note II. Good camera, but often lies BB, do not know how to choose the point of focus for the exhibition, a lot of noise when shooting in low light.

The next smartphone is very difficult to determine the podium. For example, Nokia Lumia 920 is best "fotkaet" at night as during the day photos with "Lumiya" so-so. HTC Butterfly - a good option for almost all conditions, but slightly behind other devices.

Camera HTC One seemed to me strange: in some circumstances come out very sharp photos in other smartphone loses even MX2. Best shots are obtained when shooting in poor conditions, as the device has an optical image stabilizer (you can reduce the exposure and the value of ISO). As part of the video - the best of all (perhaps on par with the Nokia Lumia 920).

Interestingly, the Apple iPhone 5 is probably the most versatile mobile camera: in almost all cases, I rate it if you do not "excellent", then to "very good." In addition, iPhone 5 has the easiest interface and the lens does not need to rub after each removing the smartphone from the holster or pocket.

A special case is Nokia PureView 808. If you close your eyes to the "dead" operating system Symbian, then Nokia 808 photographs almost perfectly.Approximately at the same level removes Samsung Galaxy S4: great job white balance, accurate selection of exposure, a very wide dynamic range (probably because of the files on the go with the SGS 5-9 MB), the highest detail, a soft noise suppression, a lot of settings, effects and filters.

Therefore Nokia PureView 808 and Samsung Galaxy S4 can rightly divide the first place!

Apologies for the quoted Google-translated text - it reads quite well, but there are occasional lapses.

Mobile Review's conclusions on the various competing camera phones fall very much in line with my own findings. The HTC One and Lumia 920 only really stand out in very low light, their 'party trick', the Xperia Z is ruined by its overzealous image processing, while the iPhone 5 camera is a great all-rounder. I'm not sure where they get the idea that only the iPhone is immune from having to check and clean the camera glass before a shot though!

As mentioned above, Mobile Review missed several Nokia 808 capabilities, all of which would have signficantly shown up the competition (maybe they were afraid of this?):

• Creative modes - they left the 808 in default 5mp mode, whereas by going to its 8mp or 38mp mode, far more detail could have been resolved.
• PureView lossless zoom - this wasn't used at all, again. For looking at distant detail, this would have shown far more than the competing crops.
• Xenon flash - again, flash was turned off for all phones, though several of the low light close-up shots would have turned out dramatically better lit if the 808's Xenon flash had been allowed.

Still an interesting comparison though.

Well, Nokia Beta Labs didn't leave that trial open for long - the S60 5th Edition SkyDrive uploader beta has now been pulled, with Nokia citing 'not enough feedback'. It does rather seem as if this was more a trial of how practical it is to roll out Qt-based apps to older devices with limited C drives, mind you. Quote, etc. below for your interest.

From today's post:

Upload to SkyDrive was published to Nokia Beta Labs because we wanted to get more information on how much memory users have available in their devices after all the updates and application installations they have done. Upload to SkyDrive is a rather small application itself, but requires the Qt components to be installed on the device, and there was a concern if those as bundled would consume too much memory.

The Upload to SkyDrive team would like to thank all the trial participants for the feedback we got. Unfortunately we were not able to get solid data due to the small amount of feedback. Therefore we have decided not to go ahead with official publishing of Upload to SkyDrive.

Thank you for your time and effort in testing and providing feedback!

Best regards,
The Upload to SkyDrive team

As you know, I had problems getting it on my old test device, though I'm not surprised that the level of interest was very low - the number of keen Symbian fans who still run S60 5th Edition devices must now be very low indeed. In case you still wanted to try the uploader (covering Contacts and Photo uploading) and have a compatible device, I've archived the installer here as skydrive_betalabs_v10.2.19.sisx. Just don't complain if it crashes for you, even Nokia Beta Labs isn't proceeding with this tool now.

You may remember my own experiments with the N97, concluding that you can have a fast and fairly usable device or Qt, but not both! Qt is best left to the Symbian^3 generation and beyond, so it's probably just as well that this particular Beta Labs project has been canned.

You've got to love Alvin Wong's hardware experiments. Even more than me, he loves taking something old and unloved and making it work in 2013. In this case, being disappointed by the distinctly un-smartphone-like behaviour of the Nokia Ashas and so going in search of something for the same value or less, from yesteryear, that should offer more functionality. Alvin plumped for the Nokia E71, a QWERTY classic, and (as always) his experiences make for an enjoyable read.

Alvin writes:

The company’s insistence on branding what is rather obviously a line of feature-phones as smartphones is unmatched by any other company. Why is it irritating? Well, in my opinion, calling Asha phones “smartphones” is plainly incorrect. It does not take a great deal of intelligence to see that Asha phones are not even in the same league as Nokia’s own Lumia 520. Asha phones do not run natively-coded third party applications. Asha phones do not even pretend to run more than one app or process at a time. Asha phones can be slow and pokey. The Series 40 OS that Asha phones run on is clearly less functional compared to most other smartphone platforms. Asha phones are not smartphones, and calling them what they aren’t in reality is not something I agree with.

Spurred on by this thought, I wondered if it was indeed possible to buy an actual smartphone for what it would cost to buy a new Asha phone or less. At the time of writing, the Asha 311 was on sale for Rs. 6375, the Asha 205 was priced at Rs. 3523 and the Asha 305 cost a shade under Rs. 4400. Keeping all that in mind, this is what I’ve ended up with (if you visited the site on April Fools’, you’d have seen this already): the most successful QWERTY-monoblock S60 smartphone Nokia ever made.

Unveiled in 2008, there was a time when E71s were a common sight. While its successors never quite achieved the same level of popularity that it did, the E71 brought a huge dose of mainstream consumer appeal into Nokia’s fledgling Eseries lineup. From the E71, E66 and E51 onwards, Eseries devices were no longer boring silver blocks meant for business and enterprise use; they were smartphones that you’d actually want to buy. What made the E71 especially appealing at the time was the fact that it packed high-end hardware specifications (as far as Symbian devices at the time were concerned) in a slim and downright beautiful form-factor swathed in stainless steel. The E71 continues to be one of Nokia’s best-built devices and a true classic today.

Now, the E71 was acquired from an online forum’s classifieds section and cost me just S$50. I picked up a brand-new BP-4L battery for it that set me back a further S$29. That amounts to just under Rs. 3500, and it’s not like I picked up a battered and damaged specimen of an E71; it had been well taken care of in a flip case with a screen protector applied. The only physical faults on this device are rather minor – the rubber flaps that used to cover the microUSB port and microSD card slot have hardened and fallen off, and there is a little gap between the top edge of the keyboard and the bottom edge of the display that allows some of the backlight to leak through. Neither of these issues are particularly major; the jet-black stainless steel finish remains as good as new, and the phone works like a charm.

Read on for the full article.

I'll update this post (or write a new one) if and when Alvin writes up his experiences further. Watch this space.

I'd been meaning to have a go with the E72 again for a while now, loving the form factor, finding HD text on the E6's display a bit too small to read at times, and recognising that the E72 had a truck load of tech improvements over the E71 (though, sadly, not quite the same truck-like build quality). See here for my E72 pimping piece that goes over most of the changes between the two smartphones.

I will get round to this, I promise. There's just so much to do... Worry points for me about using the E72 in 2013? Media consumption would be a big no-no - I guess this is an aspect of convergence which wasn't considered five years ago!

Sitting in my office, taking the backs of a number of Nokia phones (as you do), it struck me that something was missing - holograms. For the last five years or so, the presence of an official Nokia hologram has been a pretty good indication that a battery is genuine (and not some Far East-sold fake). Yet Nokia has been shipping phones over the last 12 months with hologram-less batteries. Photo proof below, but I have to ask - not for the first time - how on earth one might be able to tell these new official batteries from the replacement fakes?

With the brand spanking new Lumia 520 in front of me, I checked the BL-5J battery. Yes, it was the new chemistry that Nokia seems to have been rolling out across its battery ranges, with increased capacity (I'll examine this phenomenon more in a future article):

Good, good. But, turning the new battery over, where's the hologram? The security feature that Nokia used to make a big thing out of? Can it be that cost-cutting measures at the Finnish firm's factories have even extended to not being able to source and stick on the authenticating holograms?

I checked the Lumia 620 and 710. No holograms. I checked the Asha 311, a feature phone (no matter what Nokia says about Series 40 these days). No hologram.

In fact, I checked my Nokia 808 PureView, running Symbian. No hologram. I went back further, to the Nokia 700. No hologram. In fact, I had to go back to the E6, whose production ran from early 2011 to mid 2012, to find one of Nokia's famous 3D holograms.

How is it that no one's noticed this before? And is it important?

It surely has to be a cost saving measure, perhaps shaving 20p or so off the cost of a cell, but it's a dangerous step. A great many of the Symbian, Asha and lower cost Windows Phones all have replaceable batteries and, without a way of telling whether they're genuine or not, it's easy for someone to pick up a spare on Amazon or eBay for a knock down price and end up with something that's fake, has terrible life and is potentially explosive.

In fact, the spare fakes currently being sold still have (fake) holograms, which is a huge ironic twist on the original concept of this security feature! Maybe Nokia merely realised that the fake holograms were now so good that it wasn't worth persisting with the idea?

So, how can you tell whether a Nokia battery is genuine or not? Nokia's own help page (which, incidentally, states that 'Nokia offers two types of batteries: Batteries with hologram label, and Batteries without hologram label') on the subject isn't very helpful. More usefully, on the back of each genuine battery is a long serial number. Each battery made has its own ID in this form, but what's needed here is an automated page on Nokia's web site that:

1. checks that the serial number is valid
2. checks that it matches the battery model number you quote
3. checks that this serial number search hasn't been performed more than a handful of times before

The last requirement would be because a mass produced 'copy'/fake would leave tens of thousands of batteries all with the same 'serial number' (probably copied from a Nokia original) and this would show up when more than a handful of people starting querying the same number. The 'handful' criteria would be to allow for you or a previous owner of your phone/battery to have done a legitimate check in the past.

Comments welcome on Nokia holograms or, as it seems now, the absence thereof... And if Nokia's distrubution teams are reading this, get cracking on that serial number checker!

The story so far: I reviewed HDR Photo Camera on the N8 in 2011, and then HDR Pro Camera, also on the Nokia N8, at the start of 2012, concluding that the massive resolution restrictions made HDR on Symbian of very limited use. The Nokia went and released the 808 PureView, with double the RAM and, for some reason I hadn't got round to trying either of these applications out on the device until now. Has anything changed? Actually yes, the extra RAM enables higher resolution (and higher quality) processing - see below for some investigative conclusions.

On the N8, HDR Pro Camera was limited to 1280 by 960 images in my tests, with anything higher than this crashing the application for lack of RAM - on the Nokia 808 PureView, with the extra 256MB of RAM, resolution is still limited, but even with many other applications loaded, I was able to render HDR photos easily at 2048 x 1152 (one of the suggested widescreen formats), so over twice as many HDR pixels as on the N8 and enough to make the concept worth considering, at least.

Similarly with HDR Photo Camera, which previously had been limited on my N8 to 1025 x 577 HDR shots - on the Nokia 808, I was happily 'fusing' shots at 1537 x 1153, around three times as many HDR pixels.

Having said that, it should be noted that:

• even the 2 megapixel images from HDR Pro Camera are far lower resolution than the 5 megapixel 'PureView' images spat out by the 808 by default
• there's still significant processing time while the bracketed images are 'blended'/'fused' in software - up to a minute in each case. Depending on your subject matter, this may be a showstopper

Of course, the 808 itself produces images that are hardware-image-processed and often spectacular, so it could rightly be argued that you don't really need HDR on the device at all.

Yet there's something rather magical about a surreal HDR image that brings out more light and more colour from a scene, turning it into something other-worldy.

Here then are some of my trials and examples, with comments (click any image to download it or enlarge it in your browser):

Above is a typical shot from HDR Pro Camera, coming out surprisingly well considering I was shooting handheld (normally a HDR no-no), one of a batch which got me thinking that I should highlight what these apps can now do with a bit more RAM to play with...

Heading back to the lake the next morning, but this time with a tripod, to eliminate any oddities caused by ad-hoc hand shake, I took this with HDR Pro Camera:

Yes, yes, the tripod wasn't completely level, but it kept the Nokia 808 steady and that was the main thing... Here's the same scene taken with rival application HDR Photo Camera:

I should emphasise at this point that both HDR applications have a mountain of options and sliders, all of which drastically affect the results. Both the example photos here were taken with close to default settings, but a little fiddling and you could get very different (and surreal) results.

Looking at the two HDR-rendered photos more closely, let's put a central section side by side (HDR Pro Camera on the left):

As mentioned above, the settings used make comparisons somewhat sketchy, but the extra resolution possible in HDR Pro Camera does show up here - look at the distant trees, for example. Plus, having taken a number of other examples, I found that HDR Pro Camera had better colours and contrast on average than HDR Photo Camera - and this was without any of the former's contrast or sharpening tricks, which are also available.

The final question should then, I guess, be, how does the best of these HDR shots compare with the 808's original image of the same scene:

Again, the extra resolution (8mp in this case) of the 808's original image really shows up here - yes, the HDR version has a slightly bluer sky, but on the whole, in all my tests I'd still rather just stick with the excellent 808 images (with all the extras in Creative mode, after all, there's plenty you can do to increase the vividness of colours for a sunset or similar).

So, better results than on the RAM-limited N8, but still a rejection from me overall.

Comments welcome - have you played with HDR on the Nokia 808 and how did you get on? Was it worth it?

PS. Another option is, of course, to use either of these apps or the default Camera app to create 'bracketed' shots that can be combined with HDR software back on the desktop. This is somewhat labour intensive though, and I'm naturally lazy, so.... 8-)