Aha - so THAT's why AppList, the 2014 app store for Symbian, hasn't had any updates or new apps for a week. The developer was busy writing a new game(!) '2048' is a popular Flash game (and rewritten for other mobile OS) and its tile value combining action is now available as a native freeware title on Symbian. See below.

From the AppList description:

2048 is a simple but really addictive game (you have been warned! ;) ). Your task sounds very simple: You have won when you have got a tile with the number 2048. To reach this move the tiles to a direction. While moving, tiles with the same value will be counted together.

Based on the original 2048 by Gabriele Cirulli.

New in the AppList store - see below for links to this if you need them; '2048', written by AppList's own developer - fancy that! 8-)

There's a choice of light or dark themes....

You'll recognise the game, hopefully. The aim is to double up the number tiles until you reach the mythical '2048'!

Hopefully AppList is working out for you all. See here just in case you haven't already got this installed or if this is new to you. Also, if you have custom firmware installed, make sure you tick the option in settings to show 'unsigned' applications, you'll see extra applications!

Almost a weekly happening now, the AppList 'store' for Symbian for 2014 has been updated again, with new languages, categories, bug fixes. You can update simply by opening the AppList client, you should end up on v1.0 build 288. AppList continues to add just the very best of Symbian applications and it's now by far the best starting point for anyone setting up a new Symbian smartphone.

Opening up AppList today sees:

In-app updating is working well in AppList - so everyone's always got the very latest app store on their device.

The 'Unable' dialog is fine - it just wants confirmation that you want to install the same app that's running. Tap on 'OK' and you're good to go. (right) The current app front screen, note that Podcatcher (belatedly) made it, in addition to some other favourites featured recently on AAS.

Curiously, the new category, 'Education', appears to be empty for me - maybe it's populated with another language selected in Settings?

Hopefully AppList is working out for you all. See here just in case you haven't already got this installed or if this is new to you. Also, if you have custom firmware installed, make sure you tick the option in settings to show 'unsigned' applications, you'll see extra applications!

Guest writer Keir Brython reports back on his four months with the Nokia Lumia 1520 after a year with the Nokia 808 PureView. It's safe to say that he didn't find the journey from one platform to another all plain sailing and it's telling that he now has to carry around both smartphones, since the Windows Phone won't yet let him do everything he wants a smartphone to do.... Brickbats and bouquets abound in this real world testimony.

Keir writes:

"After the launch of the Nokia Lumia 1520 I was mainly seduced by its specs and when I finally saw one in the flesh at a local retailer I was mesmerised by the screen which looked so vibrant and had such clarity that I would've sworn it had been painted on the surface of the glass. The inclusion of MicroSD expansion and wireless charging were the two particular features that convinced me to jump from my Symbian powered 808 into the world of Windows Phone. Those features were missing from the Lumia 1020 and the storage space in particular had been a show stopper until the 1520 came along.  

I was pretty impressed by the quality of the 1520 when my package arrived. I'd organised for my service provider to send me one of those ridiculous nano sized SIMs so I was all ready to go. Windows Phone was generally easy to set up and understand but the first disappointment arrived when I tried to organise all of my contacts. I sent them from my 808 to the 1520 via Bluetooth which was easy enough but they straight away got mixed up with contacts from another source, my Microsoft passport account. Now, if you're anything like me, you might have made contact with all sorts of dubious people over the life of your Hotmail (in my case) account. The last thing I wanted was to see all of those names, aliases, photos and details mixed in with the meticulously maintained database of contacts from several generations of Symbian phones. Too bad. I had to spend many hours tidying up, deleting, linking and doing general housekeeping on my contacts before they resembled a workable list once more.

The 1520's screen is a sensation. The 808's is not so bad either despite the low resolution

The other thing that I didn't like was the mandatory 'cloud' storing of my contacts. I can see how it is useful, you have an online backup and you can share the contact list between multiple devices but I have a fundamental issue with uploading the details (which contain full names, numbers, addresses, birthdays, photos) of all of the people I know onto a file server in another country and having no say in it whatsoever. I would much prefer to keep all of that stuff local and make my own backups thanks very much. Too bad. 

Initially I found using the 1520 to be an absolute joy. I very quickly got over the size of the device and was only reminded of it when other people would comment on how massive it was. To be honest, their tiny phones now seemed absurdly difficult to view and I wouldn't want to go back to squinting at a tiny screen. I wasn't really having any problem fitting my 1520 into my trouser pockets either, even my skinny jeans were coping fine.

The selection of applications available for Windows Phone was acceptable. I found both the Nokia suite of apps and also the Bing suite of apps (now renamed sans Bing) to be of extremely high quality and I was impressed by many of them. Bing News, Bing Finance and Bing Weather are probably my most used applications. Skype for video calling also works extremely well on the 1520 and I am loving being able to keep in touch with Mum on the other side of the planet with ease and clarity.

There is a general superficiality to Windows Phone and its ecosystem though. Once I've read the news and checked my Facebook updates each morning there's not much else left to play with. Even on Symbian I had more stuff to keep me entertained. But where the Symbian ecosystem is slowly evaporating, the Window Phone ecosystem is getting stronger so this situation will surely end up more in Windows Phone's favour.

When I moved from Symbian I knew that I would be giving up a lot of functionality and I was right. My Nokia 808 was a real powerhouse. I would often download music videos from YouTube Downloader and then copy them straight to a USB stick and plug them into my Blu-ray player. On Windows Phone there is a YouTube downloader program too but you can only view the videos you download from within the program itself which is a bit naff to say the least. You can't copy them to a USB stick either and they're also not available to send to your TV or Blu-ray player via DLNA. On the subject of DLNA, my 808 could work in two modes, you could turn on a kind of DLNA server and then the device could be found and perused by your TV or Blu-ray player. Alternatively you could run the Nokia Play To application and essentially take over a target device and stream your media. On the 1520 only the latter option exists and while my 808 worked fine with my Sony Blu-ray player, the 1520 doesn't. So no more DLNA for me and since the 1520 also doesn't have an HDMi out port or the ability to write to a USB stick, it's a jolly big leap backwards.

I also have two Nokia Play 360 NFC Bluetooth speakers. They are brilliant. I love them. My 808 loved them. My 1520 not so much. When I touch my 1520 to the speakers it says "Oh do you want to pair with these?" and I say yes. It pairs and then connects … then promptly disconnects. I tap the 1520 to the speaker again and it connects. It goes through this process EVERY time I use the speakers. Despite having the speakers in its list of registered and trusted Bluetooth devices it acts as though it's never seen them before every time I want to listen to music.

Once connected to the speakers, music playback is flaky at best. Generally speaking I get a few songs in before pauses and clicks get introduced to the playback and the only remedy is to disconnect from the speakers and reconnect again. What a nuisance.

There is another major problem with using the 1520 as a music or media playback device. It corrupts its media database. The problem first manifested as duplicate song entries. So I would have 2, 3 and I think the record is 7 listings of the same song even though only one existed on the device. This same problem extends to photos and videos too. I have tried everything to correct it, formatting the MicroSD card with the phone, with the PC andcopying everything back several times. These attempts fix the problem for a short while but give it a week or so and it'll be doing nutty things again. At the moment it's deleting the second song on every music album. I kid you not!

The second song on this album, the title track in fact, is my favourite. Where's it gone?

I am not the only person reporting the media database corruption problems with Windows Phone. At first it seemed to only affect Windows Phones that featured MicroSD cards but Lumia 920 users have experienced the fault too. Have a search, there are tens of discussion forums and thousands of people pulling their hair out trying to find the solution. There isn't a solution. It's a bug. Microsoft has almost begrudgingly accepted the fault and is working on it. In the meantime, I use my 808 for listening to music. The other thing that I still use my 808 for is taking photos.

The 1520 camera is okay. It's probably better than most other smartphones but it's not great. Sometimes in low light conditions I am surprised by the results it achieves due to its clever optical image stabilisation but mostly I miss my 808. It is probably unfair to compare the performance of the 1520's tiny camera with the giant masterpiece in the 808 but there are two things that make the 1520's camera completely flawed. Firstly, it has a lens that borders on fisheye which means that when you photograph portraits, you'll need to make sure that the subject is completely centred else they'll look bizarre. I took a photo of a friend with his dog and it was a great shot but once I'd used the 'zoom later' technique to frame the photo just as I wanted it, my friend's head was noticeably elongated by the lens distortion. Again, I'm not the only one to notice this. None of this really matters anyway because shortly the camera will be entirely useless due to the second problem. After four months of treating the 1520 like china and mollycoddling it to the extreme, I have noticed that the inside of the camera's glass is covered with a lovely layer of dust. How the hell am I meant to get that out?

I had better throw in some positives hadn't I? Windows Phone is very easy to use. I bought my mum a Lumia 625 and she loves it. She has told me that she loves it about 10 times. There is probably nothing else that I could have bought her that she would've been able to get along with so easily. No doubt an iPhone would have been easy enough for her to use but the screen would have been too small for her to use comfortably and it's way too expensive and fragile anyway.

What else? I love the wireless charging. It has changed my life. It's truly not a gimmick and I never consciously think about the state of my 1520's battery due to firstly it being big enough to start a car and secondly having wireless charging plates at my home and office. It's brilliant and it's a feature I would struggle to live without.

My other favourite feature of Windows Phone is the Family Room. I had never even read about it and kind of discovered it by accident but it allows you to share notes, photos and updates, a message thread and best of all a calendar with one or more other people. I have it as a shared space with my partner and we have managed to organise our lives to a ridiculously nerdy degree. I keep a shopping list in there for crying out loud.

The MS Office and business side of Windows Phone is very strong and well executed. Mostly. I had the misfortune of trying to attach a PDF document to an email a month or soback and while I eventually got there by a ridiculously convoluted process, that's an hour of my life I won't get back. Give us a file manager please Microsoft and let us attach whatever we bloody well want to our emails!

Oh yeah, the volume thing. Windows Phone doesn't have profiles so when you adjust the media playback volume, you're adjusting the volume of everything on the device including the ringer! It's a bit of a disaster and I struggle to understand how it was considered acceptable by anyone at Microsoft. Also, when you put your phone on silent, it's kind of optional. Viber for example ignores it. Seriously.

Look, a lot of these problems will probably be addressed by the imminent release of Windows Phone 8.1. It's got to get better right? Let's hope that they've spent most of their development effort on fixing up the real functional deficiencies and less on voice recognising personal assistants that hardly anyone will use once the novelty has worn off.

So in summary, I would say that Windows Phone is not a suitable path to follow if you're a hard-core Symbian user. You're going to find it frustrating. If you're the kind of person who didn't use half of the features of your Symbian phone anyway (and let's face it, you wouldn't be reading this site) then you're going to love its pretty face and shallow personality."

________________

Thanks Keir, for the article. I think a lot of (current and previous) AAS readers will be in much the same boat in terms of journey and experiences, though do note that the volume control issue, at least, is completely solved by Windows Phone 8.1, which breaks the controls down properly.

Comments welcome from others. Have you tried something similar (maybe you moved from the 808 to the 1020), or have you moved to iOS or Android? Or are you clinging to Symbian and devices like the Nokia 808 as the last of their kind?

A lot of people have been saying some very nice things about the Sony Xperia Z2's 8MP oversampling camera, which is why I wanted to give it a (very) quick head to head with the Nokia 808 PureView, albeit not in perfect conditions, weather-wise. Did the Z2 get close to Nokia's masterpiece? See below for my three test examples. There will be more to follow when I get the Z2 in for more serious testing.

The Lumia 1020, the Sony Xperia Z2 and the Nokia 808 PureView, together!

Sony's cameras in the Xperia Z1 and Z1 Compact have been disappointing, despite the oversampling 20MP, 1/2.3" sensor - although not matching the specs inside the Nokia camera flagships, images from the two Z1s should have been somewhere in the ballpark - and they weren't. Sony, it seems, was still learning about smartphone camera image processing and electronics. 

By reputation, at least, the Z2, ostensibly with the same hardware, produces much better results. I'll be doing a more in depth comparison at some stage, but I wanted to get up some data points, first in a feature going head to head with the Nokia Lumia 1020 over on AAWP and secondly here on AAS, head to head with the Nokia 808 PureView.

As usual, there are some caveats. The Z2 does everything it can to force users to spit out images at 8MP, which is, to be fair, a very sensible choice. While the 808 does the same, but for 5MP. Although these resolutions are different, so are the fields of view of the two camera lenses, so however I do it, I can't use the 1-for-1 interactive comparator. I've thus settled for 1:1 crops from the centre detail in each case.

Also, note that these were all shot on a wet, dim and stormy UK spring day - light levels were low, though you could argue that this makes for a better 'ultimate' test of a smartphone camera!

Test 1: Distant detail

Here's the overall scene:

And here are 1:1 crops from the Nokia 808 (top) and Xperia Z2 (bottom), click the links to download the original JPGs for your own analysis:

Despite the lower resolution (5MP versus 8MP), I prefer the 808's photo, with greater detail and consistency, though I'll admit that the 1/2.3"-sensored Z2 does get very close, but only spoiled in the end with the 'over-processed' look. Both phone cameras did well here under very trying conditions.

Test 2: Distant detail (take 2)

Something a little closer, flood boards around 25 metres away. Check out the ford - getting on for 1.5m deep etc! Here's the overall scene:

And here are 1:1 crops from the Nokia 808 (top) and Xperia Z2 (bottom), click the links to download the original JPGs for your own analysis:

Comments welcomed here - the lower output resolution definitely counts against the Nokia 808 here, with slightly less resolved detail - yet somehow the Z2 photo doesn't satisfy - it's clearly heavily processed, to be lighter and sharper than the scene was to the naked eye. In contrast, the 808's image is more natural - which is, probably, what most people go for when shooting a photo in the first place? But I could be swayed either way - the processing does bring out extra clarity in the Z2 image.

Test 3: Close detail

Some animal skulls, around 2 metres away, in the same dingy light and with rain starting(!) Here's the overall scene:

And here are 1:1 crops from the Nokia 808 (top) and Xperia Z2 (bottom), click the links to download the original JPGs for your own analysis:

Another very close comparison to call - again the Z2 output is of higher resolution and more detailed, while the 'purer', more natural results from the 808 impress. Comments welcome.

____________

So - there's not that much to choose between the samples under these conditions and without pushing any boundaries. Of special note is that I'd expect differences to show up when playing with PureView zoom on both devices (yes, the Sony crops into underlying higher resolution in the same way as the 808) and when doing very low light and Xenon-flash-lit test shots. Which are jobs for another day, when the Z2 arrives at The Phones Show for proper review.

No doubt readers will have their say below in the comments, after grabbing the JPGs for themselves... I'd say that the Z2 camera is, indeed, better tuned than that in the underperforming Z1 and Z1 Compact. All photos from the Z2 here were taken in 'Superior Auto' mode, the default and, in theory, most intelligent, but, ultimately:

• the 1/2.3" sensor and optics are roughly one third the size of those in the Nokia 808 PureView (though the sensor is BSI, in fairness)
• the oversampling seems rudimentary and probably not in the 808's PureView class - more work is needed by Sony here
• the LED flash is typically weedy and leagues apart from the 808's Xenon flash

As a result, when I get the Z2 in properly, I'd expect it to still fall short of the 808 across all conditions and subjects. But do, as they say, watch this space!

PS. Watch for a similar piece on AAS, comparing the Z2 with the famous Nokia 808 Pureview(!)

No apologies for the continued shootouts - these are frantic times in the world of smartphone cameras - and we haven't even got to the Samsung K Zoom yet! In this case, comparing the champion Lumia 1020 with the Oppo Find 7a, which has a 13MP camera that also claims to shoot in 50MP UltraHD(!) As is often the case, I also throw in other devices, for comparison, in this case the new Galaxy S5 and the older Nokia 808 PureView.

The Find 7 (and 7a variant, here) made waves when it launched by Oppo issuing some 50MP camera samples - I quickly sussed out how it worked here and I wasn't wrong. But the 50MP mode is a burst mode, effectively and requires a steadyish hand and a two second 'exposure', so although I do a test of this below, it's not really suitable for general photography, which is why I've gone with the Oppo Find 7a's native 13MP output in the main comparisons.

So, let's get to it. Light conditions are appalling in the UK at the moment, it's grey, raining and miserable, so I've kept the tests short and simple. I do envy reviewers in sunnier climes sometimes!

As ever, comparison methodology is hugely complicated by the range of resolutions on offer from the four camera-toting smartphones tested. I wanted to test at about 10MP or so, the native 16:9 resolution of the star device here, the Oppo Find 7a, but the 1020 either shoots at 5MP or 34MP (ok, both at once, actually), while the Galaxy S5 shoots at a native 16MP at this aspect ratio and the Nokia 808 manages 8MP (though oversampled).

Thus, in each case, and using the 34MP output from the 1020, for example, I worked out a central area of interest in each test scene and then cropped and scaled this down using cubic interpolation as appropriate, so that the comparison crops would show the identical subject area in each case. This extra processing step is not ideal, but it'll still give a great idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the four smartphone cameras.

Test 1: (Rainy) landscape

The best I could do in current weather! Here's the overall scene:

First of all, let's test and dispense with the multi-shot composite 50MP 'Ultra HD' mode from the Find 7a, which should compare reasonably well, in terms of detail with the Nokia Lumia 1020's 34MP shots, albeit with caveats from optics and only being able to shoot completely static subjects.

Taking a 'Ultra HD' shot and cropping at 1:1 and comparing with the Lumia 1020's 34MP output we have (Find 7a on top, Lumia 1020 on the bottom, click the hyperlinks to grab the original images for further inspection):

It's fairly evident that the 1020 version is innately crisper and with more detail. The idea of compositing the best from a sequence of burst shots and aligning them according to natural hand shake to effectively 'fill in the gaps' between 13MP pixels is an interesting one - but flawed. There are too many caveats and, as you can see here, the photo still doesn't get close to what the Lumia 1020 can do with less megapixels on a single 'take'.

Tellingly, I also tried comparing Ultra HD output with standard 13Mp output from the Find 7a, with appropriate scaling of course, and couldn't really tell much difference. In other words, there's little, if any, actual benefit from 'Ultra HD' apart from increasing the file and picture size!

Moving on with more standard comparisons then, according to the methodology above, let's look at the same portion of the overall frame, from, in this order: Oppo Find 7a, Samsung Galaxy S5, Nokia 808 PureView and Nokia Lumia 1020. Again, click the hyperlinks to grab the original images.

The point I'm tempted to make here is that we really are at the point of diminishing returns for general outdoor shots, in that there's very little to choose between the photos here, all under rather challenging conditions. If I was being picky, I might actually dock the Lumia 1020 a point or two for its characteristic 'flare' that creeps into photos taken shooting into light (however overcast, in this case).

Oppo Find 7a: 9 pts; Samsung Galaxy S5: 9 pts; Nokia 808 PureView: 9 pts; Nokia Lumia 1020: 8 pts

But it's clear that, as usual, we need to make the light conditions even more challenging if we're to start seeing the phone cameras pushed to their limits.

Test 2: Very low light indoor detail, subject at 1 metre

The idea here is to see how good the sensors on the phone cameras really are, with just one room light a good four metres away, indoors. Here's the overall scene, and note that actual light levels to the naked eye were MUCH lower than the 1020's overview makes it seem here:

According to the same methodology above, let's look at the same portion of the overall frame, from, in this order: Oppo Find 7a, Samsung Galaxy S5, Nokia 808 PureView and Nokia Lumia 1020. Again, click the hyperlinks to grab the original images.

There are three things to look at here. Colour accuracy - for example the 'Quartet' spine is really a pinky-purple and not the rich red the Galaxy S5 makes it out to be(!) Noise - look at the areas of solid colour (again in the Quartet spine background). And detail and contrast.

The Nokia 808 image comes out top - just here, with best combination of low noise, detail and colour accuracy, while the Lumia 1020's image is understandably noisy, given that I was working from the high resolution 34MP image and not oversampling to the same intelligent degree as Nokia's own algorithms. So cut the 1020 some slack here. But all four images aren't bad considering the very low light levels and that I was shooting handheld.

Oppo Find 7a: 7 pts; Samsung Galaxy S5: 8 pts; Nokia 808 PureView: 9 pts; Nokia Lumia 1020: 7 pts

Test 3: Macro, macro, macro

One common complaint against the Nokia PureView cameras (808 and 1020) is that their larger optics don't allow natively close macro shots. So I wanted to include a macro shot here, outdoors in a brief respite from pouring rain. Here's the overall scene:

According to the same methodology above, let's look at the same portion of the overall frame, from, in this order: Oppo Find 7a, Samsung Galaxy S5, Nokia 808 PureView and Nokia Lumia 1020. Again, click the hyperlinks to grab the original images.

Several things are worth noting here - the Nokia 808 loses ultimate quality when used at 1:1 on the sensor (the 808 is heavily optimised for oversampling), so I didn't use much PureView zoom to get 'closer', while I did use this on the 1020 since 1:1 sensor use isn't as penalised. Also, the Find 7a photo was almost impossible to take because, as with some previous Chinese smartphones, such a low quality display is used that it turns into a mirror outdoors. This is, I'd suggest a bit of a downer when taking photos!!

In terms of quality, the Find 7a edges this test, with immaculate contrast and focussing (even though I couldn't see a thing on the display - ironic, eh?), while the S5 gets so close that parts of the leaf are lost in the depth of field. Nice colours from the 808, but the shot is over-exposed and partly blown out, while the 1020's image is a good all-rounder here, considering that macros aren't its strong suit.

Oppo Find 7a: 10 pts; Samsung Galaxy S5: 9 pts; Nokia 808 PureView: 7 pts; Nokia Lumia 1020: 9 pts

Test 4: Party time! Moving subject at 2.5 metres

I remain committed to testing smartphone cameras under real world 'people' conditions, almost always indoors and often with lighting that's less than ideal. In other words, my mocked up 'party' shot, with moving subject at 2.5 metres, a lot for a phone camera flash to do something with. Here's the overall scene:

According to the same methodology above, let's look at the same portion of the overall frame, from, in this order: Oppo Find 7a, Samsung Galaxy S5, Nokia 808 PureView and Nokia Lumia 1020. Again, click the hyperlinks to grab the original images. 

The awfulness of the first two shots above demonstrate yet again why I'm right about Xenon flash and why I'll fight for it against LED flash until my dying day. The Find 7a's shot is simply appalling. The Galaxy S5 does a little better and its shot is typical of the best LED flash can do in a modern, decent smartphone. The Lumia 1020 lights the scene perfectly, but the shot is very slightly blurred by allowing time in the exposure for quite a bit of ambient light, meaning that the Xenon 'freeze' isn't absolute. In contrast, the Nokia 808's shot is perfectly frozen - the shot is darker, but realistically so - and with such crisp detail it would be the work of moments to brighten it up in a photo editor.

Oppo Find 7a: 2 pts; Samsung Galaxy S5: 4 pts; Nokia 808 PureView: 9 pts; Nokia Lumia 1020: 8 pts

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Adding it all up, we get, Oppo Find 7a: 28/40, Samsung Galaxy S5: 30/40, Nokia 808 PureView: 34/40, Nokia Lumia 1020: 32/40. Of course, this is only a small set of test cases/data points (I only had the Find 7a for a day, in this case, so testing was limited), but I think we can still summarise the phone cameras pretty well:

Oppo Find 7a (2014): great results in good light, spoiled only by not being able to see what you're shooting (duh!), gradually worse results as light levels drop, especially for moving subjects. NB. The '7' variant (i.e. without the 'a') has a higher spec screen but the camera is identical, in case you were wondering!

Samsung Galaxy S5 (2014): great results in almost all light conditions, with low light moving subjects the only weak point. Critics point to over-processed images, but you have to look incredibly closely to be offended. IMHO.

Nokia 808 PureView (2012*): comes out top here and, in the right hands, still the best overall photographic tool that's not actually a camera in disguise, provided you stick to using the oversampling. Weak points are the low res screen and tendency to blow out highlights in scenes. [Tip: when there are obvious spots like this, 808 pros often preset everything to shoot a stop under what the 'auto' suggests.]

Nokia Lumia 1020 (2013): does pretty well here, as an all-rounder that doesn't do badly in the party test either. Weak points are, like the 808, that it works best when some or all the oversampling is used, and that shooting into anything remotely light needs care to avoid flare across the frame.

* not available any more, but still a very valid comparison point, especially for AAS readers, this being cross-posted to that site(!)

The presence of the 'party' test skews the results slightly, but only to the extent that I'd say that if you never take such low light, moving subject shots then you'd be pretty happy with almost any camera-equipped smartphone (over about £300) on the market. They're all pretty capable when conditions are favourable, etc.

Of course, there's far more to a good camera phone than raw quality. I've mentioned the display contrast outdoors, but there's also camera and general interface, desirability and power of the underlying OS, size and weight in the hand. So take all of this with a pinch of salt - one more set of data points to help you make up your mind, should you be about to buy something.

Guest 'flow'er Richard Trinkner brings us a very short report that he's had success with at least one 128GB microSD card in the Nokia 808 PureView. OK, it's only one data point, but for those who really do want to carry everything with them then it offers a glimmer of hope.

Richard writes:

"Yesterday, the SanDisk 128GB MicroSDSX card that I ordered from Amazon arrived. I popped it into my Nokia 808 and it worked flawlessly out of the box.

I then shut down the 808, removed the card from the phone, and used an SD adapter to load 78 GB of music on to the card. That took about two hours on my laptop. Then I returned the card to the phone. The 808's native music app took about an hour to index the tracks. After that, I was able to play music from the card and the phone reported its contents accurately. 

This is great news for me, as I can now carry my entire music collection around with me, without trying to rely on cloud services."

Richard Trinkner

Good to hear, Richard. I had all sorts of problems with 32GB and 64GB cards in my 808 a year or two ago, but maybe card compatibility has improved in the intervening time?

Data points welcomed from other AAS readers. Has anyone else had problems - or success - with 64GB and/or 128GB cards, and in what device and custom/stock firmware?

Forgive the jump in platform and pointer to climates new, but I do know that a fair number of people following the 'All About' sites are particular fans of Nokia as a manufacturer in general and its specialism for camera excellence, in particular, not least Xenon flash since 2007 and PureView zoom since 2012. Elsewhere in the smartphone world, there's a reluctance to push the boat out in terms of camera hardware. With one exception.

You'll remember the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom from 2013? 10x optical zoom and Xenon flash? I did a head to head between this and the Nokia 808 last year, concluding that the S4 Zoom won out by a small margin, but only at the expense of significant bulk.

I then threw the Lumia 1020 into the mix here, with the S4 Zoom just getting pipped at the post itself here, though in fairness there's not a lot in it over all my various test cases.

But the S4 Zoom's lens module protruded a good centimetre and snagged on every pocket it was inserted into - truly a compromised form factor.

Which is why I wanted to highlight the announcement, over in the Android world, of its successor, the Samsung K Zoom, with massively slimmed down optical zoom mechanism. The sensor's the same, at 1/2.3", as is the Xenon flash, so performance will be similar - but the crucial thing is the form factor. The first time I saw the K Zoom laid on a table, it immediately brought to mind the classic Nokia camera flagship form factor:

The combination of large camera island, with large sensor, zoom and proper flash, allied to the gently rounded body and full hardware camera shutter button should make the K Zoom very competitive with the 808 and the 1020 in terms of pocketability, even if it is, necessarily, physically thicker.

Not that we're recommending you jump platforms to get the K Zoom, but we thought you'd want to know about this competitor, at least. And, of course, we're getting the K Zoom in on day one of availability, for direct still and video tests with both of the smartphones pictured with it above. Plus whatever else we've got lying around, no doubt.

Watch this space. And comments welcome. Do you think the K Zoom is a spiritual successor to Nokia's camera flagships and vision, the 808 in particular? You can't help but spot certain similarities...

PS. You can find out more about the Samsung Galaxy K Zoom here. Oh, and there's the traditional launch promo video:

Nokia (most of which is now part of Microsoft, of course) may have abandoned supporting the development of applications for the Symbian platform, by wiping all mentions of the OS and all development tools and documentation from its sites, but, as you might suspect, this isn't the end of the story. Enthusiastic third parties have been archiving all the tools and docs, see below for the link and quote.

The mastermind behind the collation is Fabian, one of the guys behind the Delight custom firmwares. Here's the text from the blog post:

Sadly Nokia recently removed all Qt and Symbian Development tools from http://developer.nokia.com :(

But luckily I created a backup of the most intresting files and thanks to matthewkuhl we could find some missing parts and thanks to Eric and his MedaFire accout we could easily reupload:

- All Qt 1.2.1 SDKs (Linux x64 and x32, Mac and Windows)
- s60v3, s60v5, N97, S^3 and Belle SDKs 
- Offline Developer Libraries of s60v5, S^3, S^3 PDK and Belle
- GCCE 4.6.3 + docs
- RVCT 4.0 icnl. SP3
- Carbide C++ (3.4 and 2.7)
- NokiaWebTools 1.2.0
- Carbide UI 4.3 and a couple of plugins 
- eBooks about Symbian, Qt, C++ and Assembler
- Open source projects by CODeRUS and Kolay
- A lot of useful modding tools 

I've deliberately not quoted the download link here so that any interested parties are forced to click through to Fabian's post, where you'll also see donation buttons for him and Eric, for example. Please use these to help support all the great work these guys are doing.

Once within the download pages, you'll see:

Just grab what you need - assuming you're serious about developing Symbian apps, games or themes!

It's easy to see how we could all have missed this, from a year ago, but at the International Image Sensor Society's annual conference Juha Alakarhu, Samu Koskinen and Eero Tuulos, all from Nokia (at the time) presented a detailed paper about the raw science behind 'oversampling' and its benefits. See below for more - it's fascinating stuff!

The conference's 2013 photo - click through to grab the 12MB version and play 'Spot the PureView Nokians' game!

The International Image Sensor Society's conference was in June 2013, when the Nokia 808 PureView had been readily available for a year and the Lumia 1020 was still a month from being announced. Despite the PureView 41MP sensor being ostensibly developed to solve the problem of zooming without needing a bulky zoom lens, the benefits of higher image quality and detail when not zoomed, through oversampling, had quickly become the dominant feature of the 808 at least (I'd argue that the two facets of the same tech are balanced more equally on the 1020).

Juha and his team presented this paper in a 20 minute slot at the conference - grab it and have a read if you want to geek out. Here's an extract from the intro:

The formulas for analyzing the low light performance are developed and they are compared to subjective testing results. In addition to the developed formulas, the key findings show that there is a significant amount of spatial information available above Nyqvist frequency of the camera system that can be captured with an oversampling camera. We also show that the low light performance is essentially defined by image sensor rather than the pixel size

The paper then goes into some mathematical detail to explain how using oversampling on a high resolution sensor, with smaller pixels, produces much better image quality than using a lower resolution sensor (of the same size) with larger pixels. It's all to do with density of raw information and the possibilities for extracting real world image data from it:

Typically the goal in optimizing the camera resolution is to match the pixel size with smallest resolution element that the optical system is capable of producing. In terms of sampling theorem, the pixel pitch defines the spatial sampling frequency, f_S, and thereby Nyquist frequency, f_N = ½*f_S of the imaging system. Nyquist frequency defines the frequency above which aliasing can happen, but it doesn’t yet tell at what frequency image details can be resolved. Optics is typically matched with sensor resolution so that it is capable of reproducing image details at spatial frequency that corresponds to sensor f_N / 2. The sampling done by the image sensor itself is not ideal, as pixels are not point elements but have a certain area over which the obtained signal is averaged. In effect this non-ideality acts as low-pass filter. 

When capturing images of objects with repetitive patterns higher than f_N frequency defined by pixel pitch of the image sensor, aliasing happens and this can be seen as moiré effect. This is evident in luminance channel at full sensor resolution, but with a Bayer pattern sensor the sampling of R,G,B color channels is lower than full sensor resolution and color moiré can result at even lower frequency...

...As a summary, it is very difficult or impossible to capture images that would have true 5 megapixel resolution with a mobile camera that has only 5 megapixels.

...It can be seen that by oversampling we can record details with good accuracy (f_N /2 of 1.4 µm pixel, ~180 lp/mm) at frequency that would be clearly above the highest possible frequency without aliasing (f_N of 3.8 µm pixel, ~130 lp/mm) for the “final” pixel size in 5 Mpix image. 

In plain English then, by using a system with far more raw image information than is needed, above the Nyquist frequency, 5MP images can be obtained with almost zero noise and zero aliasing - hence PureView.

Fascinating. Read the whole paper here. The Nokia 808 implemented all this algorithmic work in hardware, in a dedicated chip, with shot to shot times of much less than one second, while the later Lumia 1020 does it in software, using the phone's main GPU - and is a lot slower (four seconds) as a result. However, it's hoped that future 41MP PureView devices will be able to use much faster chipsets to bring the shot to shot time down to less than a second again.

PS. The emboldened phrase above (my emphasis) also explains Nokia's edge against other 4/5/8MP smartphone cameras. For example, the Android-powered HTC One famously uses only a 4MP sensor, claiming better results because of the large 'ultrapixels', when, quite clearly, the maths shows that you get much lower actual image information and my own tests have indicated that the One and One M8 produce images tantamount to 2MP in the real world, in terms  of detail.

PPS. All of this needs to be allied to the larger sensors used, physically. I.e. backing up the higher spatial sampling frequency is a bigger piece of silicon, gathering more light. Again, backing up Nokia's imaging edge.

"It's just got to get me through the day" is something often heard in relation to smartphones. And it's something that's very true - almost everyone has at least one opportunity in each 24 hour period to plug and charge a smartphone up. But, in an effort to assess complaints about battery life in the Developer Preview of Windows Phone 8.1, I set about a little scientific data collection - and uncovered the scale of how much Windows Phone needs to improve in terms of battery life...

Getting through the day

Let's clear up one thing first - "It's just got to get me through the day" means that a smartphone, under potentially heavy use, has to stay powered on from a possible start at 7am until bedtime (say 10pm). So 15 hours of 'on' time, logged into a cellular network, on wi-fi periodically, pulling down email often, usually with at least one social network syncing to a client, with periodic web browsing sessions, a couple of hours of audio of some kind (e.g. while commuting), perhaps up to an hour of gaming in odd moments through the day, half a dozen shortish phone calls, the capturing of a dozen photos, and other miscellaneous use. 

Hopefully the previous paragraph gets close to what you use a smartphone for - it's certainly pretty typical. And I'd venture that if any smartphone, whoever the manufacturer and whatever the OS, runs out of power before bedtime with the usage pattern above then there's a conceptual problem.

What's the battery used for?

Now, there are two components to battery life. Firstly, actual use. Applications in the foreground, screen lit up, touchscreen in use, GPS active, camera powered up, speaker blaring away - all of that. As mentioned below, there's only so much that can be modelled and tracked here because use patterns and devices vary so much. Plus, you expect to be draining power at a rate of knots when you're using a phone.

Secondly, and more interestingly (to me), is the power drawn when the phone is in standby mode, i.e. sitting in your pocket or on your desk apparently doing nothing. This then is the measure of how efficient a mobile OS (and its applications) is (are). Ideally, there should be minimal power drain when in standby, so that the maximum proportion of total battery capacity is available to power hands-on, foreground use. 

What you absolutely don't want is to have standby power drain so high that, even left in a pocket for the aforementioned 15 hours, the battery will be almost dead by bedtime - clearly leaving no spare capacity at all for actually using the phone during the day!

So - I went testing...

Methodology

The idea in each case was to charge the phone/OS to capacity overnight and then to watch the reported percentage life left through a working day, with 3G/4G SIM in place (on the Three network in the UK), with Wi-fi connected and with a typical set of email and social accounts syncing regularly. Use of the phone was kept as light as possible, as what I was interested in most was the battery overhead for maintaining the running mobile OS - obviously, heavy use of any device would skew the results, since it would depend on what was being done, screen brightness and size, and so on.

A number of caveats are also worth mentioning:

1. An OS's reporting of the state of a device's battery can be (notoriously) inaccurate. What's being attempted is a reading of the battery voltage, together with knowledge of how long it last was since the device was charged, added to a pretty huge 'fudge factor', ending up with a percentage which often amounts to little more than a guess. In other words, what gets reported as "50%" might actually be 60% or 40%. However, over a full charge/discharge cycle, at least the end points are consistent and we can still get a good idea of the relative, real world standby performance of each mobile OS here.
2. Percentages are obviously relative to a 0-100 scale, with the actual battery capacity varying a lot between devices. Which is a large off-putting factor, though I'm testing phones as-is, and real world users will have the same configurations...
3. Other variables include network conditions on each test day, plus Wi-fi strength variations as I moved from room to room in the house.
4. I only did one rough usage pass with each device - ideally, multiple devices of each type would be observed over multiple days, and so on. But there's only so much one man can do, etc(!)
5. In a couple of cases, where readings were missed or recorded out of time, I've interpolated slightly, in the interests of keeping the lines relatively smooth. This is, scientifically, a bit dubious, but then we're trying to guage the overall picture here and not look at minute details.
6. Also not taken into account was battery age - as capacity is lost, over time (many months/years), the rate at which charge will drain will seem faster, of course. But again, short of buying all new devices, there's not much that can be done to allow for this!

Results

[Tested on Lumia 1020, Galaxy Note II, iPhones 4S and 5, Nokia 808 PureView]

Now, it's vital to note, before I go on, that the Windows Phone 8.1 being tested here was the 'Developer Preview' and, as such, is clearly a work in progress - it would be unkind of me to slam it too hard as-is, but I think it's fair enough to point out that improvement will be needed for final builds that go into shipping devices.

And it most certainly is. As you can see from the chart, with an average power drain of over 5% (of a Lumia 1020 battery, in this case) per hour, there's not a massive amount of charge left to power actual screen-on time. After all, even a rough calculation gives 4%x15 hours=60%. Now accept that you don't really want to be going lower than 15% (at which point you'll start getting battery warnings from the OS) and there's only really 25%, a quarter of the nominal capacity of the phone battery, to play with in terms of use. And, in the real world, as battery capacity reduces with time, this figure can only be lower still.

In contrast, my Android test phone managed to preserve well over half its battery capacity for 'on' time over the 15 hour period. Not ideal, but certainly workable in most people's situations. While my older Symbian-powered Nokia 808 PureView went one better, with 80% available for actual usage, and my test iPhone astonishing me* with very low power drain in standby and hardly measurable, even over a full day, almost within the bounds of error margins on a rough test like this.

[* It should be noted that some iOS 7 users have had wildly different experiences, possibly due to newer hardware and electronics, but I'm only reporting what I saw on a '4S' and a '5'.]

Conclusions - what has to be done still in 8.1

Now, all of this surprised me to an extent. Windows Phone, like iOS, was designed to severely restrict multitasking of third party applications and thus keep rogue battery drain well under control. This it does, but it seems like the core Windows Phone OS is actually the main culprit. In fairness, Windows Phone 8.0, tested here, was only marginally less battery efficient than Android, but the latter involves far more lenient multitasking and I'd have expected Windows Phone to be nearer the iPhone line.

In full real world, connected trim, with the Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview on board, battery drain in standby mode is clearly unacceptable - with almost no spare capacity users are forced to charge again mid afternoon or carry around emergency chargers (and recharge the latter overnight too).

All of this boils down to Windows Phone needing to become more efficient at how it uses the phone hardware when the screen isn't on. I'm positive that the Developer Preview still has debugging code within it, plus routines that hadn't yet been fully optimised, especially all the baseband stuff for handling 3G/cellular - see my curve above for 8.1 when no SIM card was present, for example.

Microsoft, I'm sure, knows what it has to do here - and I'll be here in a few months to chart the progress it makes in trying to really compete with Android and iOS.

I couldn't resist this link of interest to a feature on one of my favourite Nokia-using photographers, Olivier Noirhomme, who cut his teeth on Nokia's Symbian-powered imaging flagships (N8 and 808 PureView) before ending up on the Windows Phone-powered Lumia 1020. Olivier's usual favourite subjects are covered briefly, including time lapse, but he also shares a few notable tips.

From the Nokia Conversations piece:

So, Olivier, how did you get into photography ?

It all really started with my Nokia N8 in 2010. Before that, I had several other Nokia devices like the N95 and the 5800 XpressMusic which took, at the time, good quality pictures for smartphones but wasn’t really thinking about photography. With the Nokia N8, I discovered the basics in mobile photography. There weren’t many options back then and it was perfect for an beginner like me.

Then came the 808 Pureview which I still have and still use for the camera. I bought it at the release in July 2012 and learned so much on it. At first, I didn’t understand everything but thanks to a lot of reading, all the Nokia and Pureview websites and blogs and the Nokia community on Twitter, I made great progress months after months and learned how to use the different settings. I tested Rich Recording by recording electric guitar and made my first time lapses. Again, I learned a lot from that.

Next came all the Lumia devices and I had the opportunity to use the 900, the 920, the 925, the 1520 and, of course, the 1020. It’s the one I like the most thanks to its camera. With the additional settings (exposure time, more ISO values and the Nokia Camera app), I learned new things and it revived my interest in photography. Not that I was tired of it but I wasn’t discovering new things with the 808 Pureview after so much time with it.

I love photography now. It has become a real hobby and I enjoy doing and sharing my things and looking at what others come up with. There’s always something surprising to look at and there are insanely talented people doing amazing photographs/videos with “just” mobile phones.

Where in Belgium do you like to shoots photo most and why ?

Belgium is a small country and there aren’t a lot of different sceneries to see. Basically, there’s the countryside, the cities and the sea coast. Not mountains, no oceans, no canyons, no desert, … But each type of scenery here is beautiful. There are cities like Brugge or Brussels (with its “Grand Place”) well known for their architecture. Like you’ll see on some of my pictures, the countryside can be flat in some places (north and center of the country) or hilly (south) with gorgeous nature, fields, forests and lakes.

I live in Brussels but I often go to the countryside because I have family there and it has become my favourite place to photograph. I love nature, walks, being outside and it’s the perfect place to capture animals, insects, flowers, reflections, great colours, gorgeous skies and clouds. I wish I had more time to capture the rest of the country though.

Olivier then delivers his three top tips for shooting better photos:

1) Try to look at things differently than your human perspective, even common and usual things. It can be from above, from below, closer, from unexpected points of view… Don’t hesitate to use a tripod. There are strict photography rules but try sometimes to go against them to see if it can produce something interesting. Try to maximize the shallow depth of field when capturing something close. Time is fun to play with too. Time lapses are an awesome example, as is pictures stacking.

2) Don’t stay on Auto mode and play with the settings. The Nokia Camera is designed to make everything available right way and you’d be surprised to see what kind of results you can have with the same scene by changing values like ISO, exposure compensation, white balance and/or shutter speed.

3) Remember you’re on a digital camera so you’re almost not limited in pictures number. Don’t hesitate to capture the same scene several times and from different points of view, sometimes very similar. One never knows what you could capture with a slight change. You’ll see later which one is the best. Try to share only your best photos and not the whole series of a same scene. It looks more professional. Over time, I’ve learned that not showing the failed or acceptable shots is what creates the amazed reactions when people sees the best pictures.

I'd agree with all three, of course. The last is one I've sworn by for the last 40 years - only show others your very best photos and they'll think that everything you take is a masterpiece! Conversely, show them all the failures as well and they'll realise you have photographic 'feet of clay'....

Here's one of Olivier's photos that I found particularly striking:

Depending of the weather and the season, the sky can look very different and I really like to capture it from the most beautiful blue to the most stormy clouds. In this one, I like the dark trees with the sun behind them and the intense colour of the sky.

I've written numerous editorials on the subject of camera phone imaging on these sites, of course. For example, here, giving my top tips. But a thought I've also expressed before is worth mentioning again - with a really top notch camera in your always-with-you phone, you'll be on the lookout for subjects and situations that will make great images. Whereas with a generic so-so camera in a generic smartphone, you'd see the same scene and think "Nah, can't be bothered, it won't come out very well" and move on.

And if Oliver's reading this, more examples of Rich Recording and your excellent rock guitar skills please!

1998 was the year. I got myself a second-hand Psion 5, running the grand daddy of mobile OS - EPOC, that evolved into Symbian. Yeah, the OS that we all love and hate in almost equal proportion. For the last 5 years, I have been exclusively on Symbian - Nokia 6120 Classic, E63, E72, N8 and finally, 808 PureView. Yet, mid 2014, it's time for a major change.

The Nokia 808 has given me its best for the last two years, accompanying me everywhere. And, even on holidays, as almost the only camera doing photography duty. While the Nokia hardware has been stellar in most cases, especially in the 808's case (41MP sensor and dedicated GPU, anyone?), the same cannot be said about the OS.

While Symbian is completely flexible, it is also obvious to even ardent fanboys like me that it was built for a different era. It will always struggle against the slickness of iOS and later the customizability of Android. But Symbian's maturity and stability means that many users continue to soldier on. Look at Delight custom firmware and Applist - these are all labours of love. Hey, there's even the 2048 game to bring Symbian's game catalogue right into 2014!

My own journey with Nokia and Symbian has introduced me to stuff like Twitter, podcasts, flashing CFW, and more. I come to meet people like Steve (he goes back a LONG way to Palmtop magazine!) and Rafe, and many wonderful others. I've even guest-written a few articles on AAS (e.g. here)! It's really been a most wonderful journey.

But once the infamous February 2011 announcement was made, it was really a matter of that time before I moved on to a new OS. After much thought, research and gnashing of teeth (literally), I've decided to stick with Nokia hardware and have dived into the world of Windows Phone (WP).

Why not iOS? Too pricey and screen is still small. I wanted only one device, so a phablet (for me) is a good compromise. Why not Android? I'm not so much into Google services as to make Android the must-go-for choice. Having decided on Nokia and WP, the next decision is which one – 1020 vs 1520. If the Lumia 930 had been available, it would probably be the one. But having hogged the demo phones in a phone shop for a long time, I decided to go with the bigger screen and better spec (except the camera optics and flash) of the Lumia 1520. And the phone duly arrived on the eve of Good Friday, and I bade a fond farewell to my 808 (traded it in with generous terms and it was in quite a state - chipped casing, broken AV jack and so on).

My last picture using the 808 - the removed back cover!

Firstly, the build of the Lumia 1520 is just fabulous. It’s up there with the best Nokia can offer. No slimy shiny plastic here. Top-grade polycarbonate that feels premium and wonderful to hold. I still miss the metal of the N8 but Nokia shows that you don’t need steel and glass to feel special. I have the white 1520 and it is really special. And my operator kindly included a Viva flip-case which is just a marvelous partner to the 1520 [smell the leather, Steve!]

Secondly, the first thing I did was to get the 8.1 Developer Preview onto the phone, which is really a piece of cake (hey, even my 14 year-old son got it working on his yellow 520!) The camera is obviously not as good as the 808 or the 1020 but is still no slouch. Some samples below:

The bokeh shot of my daughter’s toys

Flowers under bright sunlight

Evening shot (which is slightly darker in reality)

So here I am, almost a month into using Windows Phone as my daily driver. My initial thoughts? Not a review here, but the perspectives of my move from Symbian to WP:

1. Apps selection

Really a resounding win here for WP. It’s rather easy, given the paucity of new apps in Symbian, especially in the past 2 years. However, the important thing is - can I satisfy my own needs? The answer is yes, with a few caveats that I think is limited by WP, rather than developers. I really miss Situations, which controls (on Symbian0 my Profile settings, mobile network, launching and closing of apps etc. The developer has promised to take a look to see if WP 8.1 will allow them to build a similar app, but they are not optimistic. Another is Poddi, which always has my favourite podcasts ready in the morning for consumption [hint, Ow Kah - check out Podcast Lounge's background functionality! - Ed]. Again it’s the nanny side of WP coming into play, which leads me to …

2. Streaming vs downloading

What’s the point in letting me stream a 31MB podcast but WP doesn’t allow me to download it over the same data connection? It just doesn’t make sense. While this limitation has allowed me to utilize the data cap more judiciously – e.g. large games have to be downloaded over Wifi, then again, I have to be plugged in to the mains to start the download. No, it won’t start even if the phone is on 100% battery! Seriously, Microsoft? The battery hit when streaming is surely not worthwhile. There are enough warnings about battery life and data cap. Just let me have the option to override this, if I wanted to.

Podcast Lounge at work – downloading over wifi while it can! [Again, I think you're not using the app optimally, see me after school! - Ed]

3. Gravity

What? A Symbian app? But this is no ordinary Symbian app, for this kept the Symbian app ecosystem flag flying high for years. A Swiss army-knife of an app that combines Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquare, The Old Reader (after Google Reader was canned), Flickr clients, all into ONE app. While not as full functionned as any of the standalone apps, it was my hub of social media and new services. I can upload, check or consume content without ever leaving the app. It is a truly unique proposition, still without equal on any mobile platform.

Ahhhh… dear old Gravity. How I miss you…

4. Multitasking

This is something that I need to get used to, coming from the full multitasking of Symbian. I’m sure this helps the battery life, so I’m for it. But I do feel that the 'resuming' part is not fast enough, even on the top-spec 1520. Too many times, the dots flying across the screen just frustrates me. Another example is Twitter. Gravity (oh, how I miss this fabulous gem from Symbian!) and Tweetian would update quietly in the background and when I switch back to them, all the new tweets have been fetched. But Twabbit just refuses to refresh in the background. However Twabbit is at least more consistent in staying at the last-read tweet.

5. Battery life

While the Lumia 1520's battery is huge vs the 808, it also has to cope with a larger screen and faster processor. But in daily use so far, I have never so far run the 1520 battery down to the last 10%. Starting with 100% at 6 in the morning, I will reach home in the evening with 40-50% remaining and I don’t need a top-up charge around noon. I suspect the reduced use of data for downloading has very much to do with it.

6. Live tiles

The Live Tiles work well for me and look beautiful and sumptuous, especially on the 6-inch 1520 screen. While some will complain that it doesn’t refresh frequently enough, I think it is just good enough. If I really need the most up to date, I would go straight to the app and ensure that I grab the latest information.

Yes, thanks to the Bing Sports Live Tile, we all now know the England World Cup team and Diego Costa will soon leave Athletico Madrid.

7. Action Centre

A good first effort from Microsoft. But I would like to see a toggle for 2G/3G/4G for managing the data connection. Also, the Wifi is really a shortcut rather than toggle, hence there needs to be consistency. I like the “All Settings” that is available in the Action Centre, which I missed initially and this saves me putting the settings tile on the home screen. I would like the ability to swipe away individual notifications if I choose to, instead of all at once (e.g. dismiss one SMS notification instead of all SMSes). But overall I think it is clean and minimalist, just like the overall OS.

The minimalist Action Centre. Note the All Settings shortcut and the battery percentage and date too. And it doesn’t need to drop down all the way.

These are just some my own observations and conclusions over the 4 weeks of using WP. What would I like to see in Windows Phone that was present in Symbian? Some ideas here:

a. Profiles

Maybe it’s because I am a long-time Nokia user. But I like the ability to set up Profiles like 'At work', 'Night', and so on, and manage all the ringtones and volume etc. And it’s here that I missed Situations so much. The app enables me to control when or where to change profiles, which apps to launch or close, which connectivity to switch on or off, etc. It was just so elegant and useful. It’s available on Android but sadly not WP. Quiet Hours seems useful but it is nowhere near as powerful and it’s not available till you switch your region and language to US. However, I have to say that the new Inner Circles function is good.

b. File manager

This is another big one that is missing. I think most users now are quite used to moving files between folders and devices, so the inability and inflexibility of not able to do it is puzzling. However, Joe Belfiore already hinted a file manager of some form will indeed appear soon. And not a minute too soon. There was a weird thing that happened when I was setting up the 1520. I had a N9 ringtone and some Nokia ones that I was very fond of and I had left them on the microSD card from my 808. I connected the 1520 to the PC and moved the sound files to the Ringtones folder. However they didn’t show up. After some googling. I discovered that I cannot move files in that manner. I had to move the files to the desktop and then to the 1520. This worked but it left me scratching my head a little.

c. Expert mode

WP in its current form is great for any new smartphone user or someone who is a 'normob'. My two children get on fine with a 520 and a 610. I got my wife a Galaxy S4 for her birthday and it was overkill as she barely uses 10% of the functions. And the Samsung is bewildering to manage and use. I wonder if 95% of Note/S3/S4/S5 users use more than 10% of the functions. But I digress. I think an expert mode on WP will make sense as a more knowledgeable power user like me would like to turn down the nanny side of WP and demand more control over the phone. For one, I would like to override the silly current downloading rules.

d. Landscape mode

Symbian seems to be the only mobile OS (correct me if I’m wrong) that has proper landscape mode across 100% of the OS – even homescreen and notification tray. WP still runs in portrait mode in those 2 areas. While usable, it just looks weird.

_____________________

My conclusion is that WP is a credible mobile OS and 8.1 will be a most important upgrade. The '.1' is really a misnomer as it is a much greater leap in OS functionality than the label suggests. It is definitely greater than the update from WP7 to WP8.

For most people (like my wife who uses the S4), it doesn’t matter what OS the phone is on, and they don’t really care. As long as the hardware is sexy and the basic apps are there. Hence it is up to Microsoft to entice top-tier manufacturers like Samsung to promote more heavily or release their next top-spec flagship on WP first. Microsoft would somehow also need to find a way to create a must-have title on WP – like Halo on Xbox or Gravity on Symbian. This will, more than hardware and specs, create a lasting user experience.

As for me, Symbian may have exited my smartphone life, but it will always have a special place in my heart. Just like the Psion 5mx!

Guest writer Shibesh Mehrotra takes us on a trip into the past with his rosy retrospective of the Nokia 701 Symbian powerhouse - a classic device that never really received the credit it deserved.

Shibesh writes:

_________

Disclaimer: This is going to be a long, emotional piece. Read on only if you love Nokia, Symbian or me.

It was a summer of desire and a winter of surprises.

For much of the summer of 2011, I had been using a featurephone to get me by. A Nokia 2690, to be exact. Although I didn’t exactly hate the device, I needed something better. Because, well, it wasn’t cutting it for me. I was a media student, and as such, we had loads of assignments etc that involved taking pictures, working with email and I was getting a teeny, weeny bit sick of Series 40.

Don’t get me wrong, I made the most of that 2690 too. I even remember using it to submit most of my assignments at the last minute, when the WiFi connection would stop working and mobile data was my only choice. I also had 8 gigs worth of music loaded onto that tiny device through my SD card. That it managed to play that collection without crashing several times over and dying on me, still surprises me.

Then, in the winter, I did an internship that was especially demanding media-wise. I had to go around the villages that surround my city, visiting schools and colleges, and recording the student’s opinions on a seminar they’d attended. Minor work, for anyone who has a camera.

Except, I kinda didn’t.

So, in preparation for that, I decided to get myself a smartphone. Something that would double up as a camera, and at the same time serve my desire of having a mobile device more powerful to access the interwebz than a one-tab only version of Opera Mini. My choices at the time were the newly-released, NFC-toting, Symbian Belle-running Nokia 701 and the LCD-version of the Galaxy S.

I would tirelessly research both smartphones for a month, video-hopping from PhoneArena to The Phones Show. Review-hopping from All About Symbian to Unleash The Phones. And basically absorbing every piece of information there was on the internet about both. From DailyMobile to MyNokiaBlog, I went through hell trying to decide.

At the time, Nokia still had the inertia of being a household name, whereas Samsung didn’t quite inspire the same level of confidence, the Galaxy S II being just half a year old. And the video capabilities of the 701’s EDoF camera blew the Galaxy S out of the water. In all the test videos I watched online, the Galaxy would periodically drop frames and focus, while the 701 would hold its own till the time you pressed stop. And then there was the dilemma of buying a year-old device vs something spanking new.

In the end, I chose a dying OS on a better device over a flourishing OS on a subpar one.

And I never regretted that choice.

The first few days were glorious. Imagine the excitement of your first touchscreen phone. Add the exhilaration of making a jump from the most basic of featurephones to a top-of-the-line smartphone and that’s where I was emotionally, with the 701.

Browsing the Store frantically for known names of apps that I had seen other people use. Getting slightly disappointed when I found they weren’t available for Symbian. Brightening up again to see the other stuff that I could do with the device. It was pure tech geek bliss.

And all of the things that I would later learn to avoid (having multiple widgets of Nokia Social running on my homescreen, using Nokia Social, trying to coax the EdoF camera to take macro shots) I was learning on-the-job.

Speaking of macros that went horribly wrong…

Speaking of jobs, that video-taking internship went by like a breeze. In good light, which India always seems to have in the afternoons, that camera was brilliant for photos/videos with no moving subjects/subjects with minimal movement. Here is a photo of me that one of the aforementioned subjects took after gifting me a rose:

The 701 was also the only phone that I’ve used as a frikkin phone. Seriously, I have never made as many 6-hour long calls with any other device. I have never sent as many 500 word long text messages with any other devices.

See, the phone wasn’t the only thing I was in love with.

But, as such, the 701 was also the only phone that I brutally threw around in savage anger whenever I got into a fight over the phone. I remember literally hurling it at a wall and then just picking up the pieces, putting everything back together and using it to call someone to send me food.

The 701 incidentally was the first phone on which I discovered, I could download podcasts to. It was the phone that introduced me to the concept of podcasts, the concept of never being alone again. To have people having conversations around me, and me not being obligated to take part in them. To listen to people smarter than me talk about things that, at first, went completely beyond me, and then slowly and surely, understanding those things and moving above and beyond them.

It was the first piece of tech that inspired me to write about it. It was the phone that I had no option except to hack, and play around with its internals. It taught about how smartphone operating systems work and how to bend them to do my bidding.

Here are some other pretty nice (to my eyes) photos that I managed to take with it:

Yes, it wasn’t Android. It didn’t have 900 gazillion apps, but I still fell for it and loved it until the day CJ accepted me into UTP and handed me a 620. I still love it. I still sometimes take it out of the cupboard, caress it, switch it on and play with it. It’s got its fair share of battle scars. The lock key is gone, the screen now has a crack which I have no idea how my brother managed to put on it. I mean, I threw the frikkin’ thing at a wall and the screen didn’t crack, my brother cracked it in 2 days.

Anyway, the point is, the 701 kinda made me who I am today. If it wasn’t for that phone, I wouldn’t have spent hours upon hours bent over my laptop going through the forums at DailyMobile and Symbian-Developers trying to figure out some nitpicky thing that bothered me. I probably wouldn’t be into tech.

Or maybe I would, I don’t know. What I do know is that today I’m happy with the journey I began with that phone. And maybe that’s what all of us need. To be happy with the device we chose, at the end of the day.

To everyone reading this, I hope your first smartphones were as special to you, as mine was to me.

________

Thanks, Shibesh! If anyone else out there would like to wax lyrical in such style about their own favourite Symbian smartphone then please get in touch. 

_{[article first published at UTP, used here with kind permission]}

New in the AppList Store for Symbian. If you are fond of biking, live in select countries and carry a Symbian phone, you may now have a little less trouble looking for rental bikes. Developed by mkiol, the app currently supports every system provided by Nextbike.

From the AppList description:

Cyklop is an application that supports you in using bicycle sharing service. It allows you to find free bikes or stations near you. Currently supports every system provided by Nextbike in more than 80 cities from Germany, Austria, Latvia, Poland, Switzerland, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, United Arab Emirates and New Zealand.

I can't vouch for effectiveness, since I'm in the UK, so I'd welcome comment from anyone in those other countries.

Some screenshots:

Thanks to Vedhas for the images - the functionality of the app is pretty self-evident.

Hopefully the AppList Store is working out for you all. See here just in case you haven't already got this installed or if this is new to you. Also, if you have custom firmware installed, make sure you tick the option in settings to show 'unsigned' applications, you'll see extra applications!

What happens when you set out to create an ultimate camera phone, when a hump is not a dealbreaker, when Xenon flash is a must and when no compromises are involved? From 2012, 2013 and 2014 come the two Nokia PureView camera phone flagships, plus - hot off the production line - the new Samsung Galaxy K Zoom. The latter, unlike the monstrous S4 Zoom from 2013, is streamlined and eerily similar in form factor and scope to the Nokia couple. But which will win out?

If you thought the Nokia Lumia 1020 had a camera hump, if you thought the 808 PureView had a bigger bulge, then both are somewhat overshadowed by the form of the Galaxy K Zoom. Not that it's as 'monstrous' as last year's S4 Zoom, which really was a standalone camera glued to a low end smartphone - here, the K Zoom slims things down a lot, with curves and integration of the camera into the form factor that reminds me very much of the 808 PureView. Most importantly, the overall thickness is acceptable as a 'phone', there are no 'sticking out' bits that catch on pockets, and the underlying smartphone spec is very decent indeed.

But we're looking here at raw camera performance in all light conditions. And, as usual, I'm going to focus on results, not on experience. The Lumia 1020's 4 second shot to show time is the main issue here, with the 808 and K Zoom coming in comfortably at well under a second - but it's hard to assess how much of an issue this might be to a user, so just photo quality is being tested here.

As usual, there are some notes and caveats. The disparity in default output resolutions again wrecks any hope of a like for like comparison, at least in terms of resolution. 5MP oversampled (808) vs 5MP oversampled and 34MP full resolution (1020) vs 15MP (K Zoom). My methodology instead was to therefore approach each shot/scene with a fresh mind, deciding on the best way to approach it on each device in order to get the best results. The option of using either the 5MP oversampled version of the 34MP version on the Lumia 1020 is a point in its favour, but then again, the micromanagement of which file is which quickly becomes a pain, so it all evens out in the end.

I haven't gone with a points system here, since:

• the pros and cons of each device in each test scene are self-evident
• any total would be skewed by my choice of subjects
• the resolution disparity was so huge
• in a couple of cases, a test shot from a particular device wasn't available (mea culpa)!

All photos were taken with full 'auto' everything in the software, except where noted.

Test 1: Sunny

A shot so easy that anything could nail it - though, to be picky, I'm also looking at exposure, colours and raw detail. Here's the full scene:

There weren't significant differences in exposure, so I moved ahead to raw detail. Here are 1:1 crops from central detail, from the Nokia 808 PureView (top), the Nokia Lumia 1020 (middle) and Galaxy K Zoom (bottom) - use the hyperlinked names to download the original JPGs if you want to examine them yourself, etc.:

Just as on last year's S4 Zoom, the K Zoom's high resolution images are on the verge of over-exposure when shooting in sunlight - clearly there are some tweaks still needed to this new device's firmware. Crisp, sharpened detail though, while the two Nokia PureView devices' oversampling ensures high quality 5MP results in both colours and detail.

Now, what about zooming in? With lossless zoom on the two Nokia PureView devices, to around 2.5x, and by 10x optical on the K Zoom. Here are 1:1 crops from central detail, from the Nokia 808 PureView (top), the Nokia Lumia 1020 (middle) and Galaxy K Zoom (bottom) - use the hyperlinked names to download the original JPGs if you want to examine them yourself, etc.:

The new K Zoom's 10x optical zoom, as one might expect, nails this comparison, with fantastic zoom detail - simply amazing. Meanwhile the Nokia 808 does well enough, but suffers from the loss of oversampling at this end of the zoom spectrum. And the Lumia 1020 makes a mess of the exposure when zoomed in. I'd have gone back and reshot this photo with manual reduction of exposure, but the K Zoom was (naturally) so far in front here that there wouldn't have been much point.

Test 2: Zoom indoors, decent light

Looking only at zoom and maximum resolved detail, this was an indoor tableau at the same military museum as above. Here's the full, unzoomed scene:

There (again) weren't significant differences in exposure and colours, so I moved ahead to raw detail, in this case only looking at the zoomed version, since I was interested in the mannequin's head. Here are 1:1 crops from central detail, from the Nokia 808 PureView (top), the Nokia Lumia 1020 (middle) and Galaxy K Zoom (bottom) - use the hyperlinked names to download the original JPGs if you want to examine them yourself, etc.:

As expected, at full PureView zoom, the lack of oversampling reveals the raw noise in the Nokia sensors - not unpleasantly so, but certainly noticeable - the K Zoom's sensor noise seems of about the same order, which was a pleasant surprise, as I'd expected worse. The 10x optical zoom does reveal extra detail, too, so thumbs up for the K Zoom here.

But let's not spend all our time on the zoom - what about using the Galaxy K Zoom as an as-is camera phone, i.e. shooting the full scene in front of me. Can its higher resolution live with the oversampled but lower resolution purity of the Nokia PureView pair?

Test 3: Overcast landscape

With light good, but not sunny, a mass of greenery and detail, plus a handy sign near the edge of the frame. Here we're looking at both purity and optical accuracy then. All unzoomed, so as to gather the whole scene, here's the view:

Here are 1:1 crops from left hand side detail, from the Nokia 808 PureView (top), the Nokia Lumia 1020 (middle) and Galaxy K Zoom (bottom) - use the hyperlinked names to download the original JPGs if you want to examine them yourself, etc.:

No real surprises here - the 16MP result from the K Zoom has more pixels, but is a little noisy and only has slightly more detail than the 5MP results from the two Nokias, with their bigger optics and oversampling. It's apparent that, zoom aside, we really need to start pushing lighting conditions a lot more if we want to see major differences and deficiencies.

Test 4: Low light macro

Indoors at the museum, shooting through glass at a display of models in very low light (with flash disabled, obviously, to avoid reflections!). Here's the view:

Here are 1:1 crops from central detail, from the Nokia 808 PureView (top, 5MP), the Nokia Lumia 1020 (middle, in full resolution mode this time, for a change) and Galaxy K Zoom (bottom, 16MP) - use the hyperlinked names to download the original JPGs if you want to examine them yourself, etc.:

The lack of surprises continues. The 808's oversampled photo has immaculate colouring the feel, while the 1020's full 34MP version here has enormous raw detail but not really punchy enough at the pixel level. And the K Zoom gets a nice compromise between colour, detail and contrast - the only controversy here is overall handling of the ambient yellow/green lighting (grab the JPGs to see more of this) - the K Zoom image is best here to my eyes, but it's debatable.

Test 5: Night time

Time to really push the (non-flash) envelope then, with a true night shot. Only a little light left in the sky (it was darker than the photos make it seem!), let's push the sensors and sampling systems. All unzoomed, so as to gather the whole scene, here's the view:

Here are 1:1 crops from central detail, from the Nokia 808 PureView (top), the Nokia Lumia 1020 (middle) and Galaxy K Zoom (bottom) - use the hyperlinked names to download the original JPGs if you want to examine them yourself, etc.:

Again, all as expected. The Nokia 808's oversampling does what it can, but with no OIS there's an understandable blurriness from the long exposure and hand wobble. Meanwhile the 1020's OIS and oversampling produces a terrifically clear result, and the K Zoom produces something with higher pixel count but also a lot more noise - and little extra detail.

Now, one of the reasons for Nokia going with software zoom rather than optical was that the latter suffers in low light, with not enough light getting to the sensor - so I'd expect that the K Zoom's optical zoom to be unusable under these conditions. Surprisingly, this wasn't the case. Here's the 1020 crop again, followed by the K Zoom's results at 3x (middle) and 10x (bottom) optical zoom:

Yes, there's a healthy degree of sensor noise (though not as ghastly as on other recent industry sensors, such as Sony's on the Z2), but being able to read a car number plate at 100 metres in almost pitch dark conditions is a tremendous feat for a phone-hosted camera.

Test 6: Xenon flash time

Starting with a static subject (me) and taken with fill-in flash indoors (though with bright light coming from a doorway nearby) by my nephew. So we're talking about 'normob' levels of hand shake - though with Xenon being employed hopefully all this should be catered for. Here's the whole scene:

As you'll see from the crops below, without my usual steady hand on the shutter button and attention to detail, even these devices can produce less than ideal results. Sometimes these things are half to do with the photographer, you know 8-)

Anyway, here are 1:1 crops from central detail, from the Nokia 808 PureView (top), the Nokia Lumia 1020 (middle) and Galaxy K Zoom (bottom) - use the hyperlinked names to download the original JPGs if you want to examine them yourself, etc.:

The complication here is that there was some light, so the Xenon flash's normal 'frozen' results are being masked a bit by captured light from ambient illumination that's also captured during the exposure. It'sa tough trick to pull off and the Lumia 1020's more advanced image processing and intelligence nails it, while the 808 struggles to expose properly (and I was a good 2.5m away) and the K Zoom is rather overwhelmed with light, producing a somewhat ghostly effect.

Right, let's get rid of most of the ambient light and get back to my traditional 'party mock up' selfie:

Test 7: Party, moving subject

As usual, I'm making no attempt to stand still and, obviously all three of these Xenon-flash camera phones make a decent attempt at freezing my motion. You'll be familiar with the set up by now, so let's jump straight to the crops from central detail, from the Nokia 808 PureView (top), the Nokia Lumia 1020 (middle) and Galaxy K Zoom (bottom):

Each of these shots has something to recommend it - the Nokia 808's is fairly dark, but then it was pretty dark in the room, while the Nokia Lumia 1020's shot ramps up brightness enough to produce a more pleasing photo, even if it didn't reflect what your eyes might see. It's a tricky balance to get right. The K Zoom errs even more on the 'bright' side, adding in some impressive detail as well.

If I were to pick a smartphone for snapping at parties in mid 2014, I think I'd still go with the 1020, overall. At least if no zooming in was required - you have to remember that zooming in can be a great way to get 'candid' snaps at social events.

Verdict

That I've been picky about minute details in some of the above photos should be put into perspective - these are three of the world's best camera phones. I was touring the museum above with my nephew, armed with your average 'normob's Android smartphone (a 'Vodafone' something or other), and the difference between these three phones and his was roughly analagous to a calculator next to a modern supercomputer. Sensor, optics, flash, resolution, zoom, display quality, speed, all were a generation apart.

Of course, a more valid comparison would be devices like the 1020 and K Zoom to more general purpose 2014 smartphones, such as the Galaxy S5, Xperia Z2 and Apple iPhone 5S. And it quickly becomes apparent that there are two reasons for choosing the 1020 or the K Zoom: you need zoom capability, to get closer and get more detail; and/or you need proper Xenon flash, for better evening and indoor shots. If neither of these apply then you don't need to consider these devices.

However, zoom and Xenon are both quite addictive, once you start to realise that you can shoot any subject, any time, with relatively few limitations. The K Zoom, in particular, is surprisingly close to having a £150 standalone camera with you all day inside the body of your go-everywhere phone.

Picking a winner here is tricky, of course. The Nokia 808, based on results above, comes out a narrow third place, but then is out anyway for all practical purposes, with its lossless zoom being outclassed here and with it being almost impossible to recommend to others, with Symbian support now almost completely withdrawn by Nokia (now Microsoft).

If the form factors were identical then I'd go for the K Zoom every time because why wouldn't you want optical zoom? But the Lumia 1020, in particular, is noticeably sleeker and thinner than the Galaxy K Zoom, and I suspect that (even though the latter is smoother and thinner than last year's S4 Zoom) most people would find the Samsung just that little bit too large and bulbous.

If your needs are less towards needing a standalone camera inside your phone and if you're OK with Windows Phone then the Lumia 1020 is still the best camera phone in terms of maximum quality at minimal inconvenience, while the Galaxy K Zoom's results are very comparable to the 1020 in most conditions and leaps and bounds ahead when zooming is needed - at the not inconsiderable expense of another 5mm of camera 'hump' and a whopping 42g extra in weight. 

It all depends on what you need. And, given that the two camera phones run completely different operating systems, means that, for the very first time, you now have a real choice. It's not just Symbian and Windows Phone anymore. Xenon and zoom and Android do go together after all.

Watch this space for more comparisons, including an OIS video stabilisation test, 1020 vs K Zoom.

PS. I've concentrated on photo quality and form factor above, but there's the user experience, too, of course. The Lumia 1020's shot to shot time is legendarily slow, at four seconds, while the 808 and K Zoom are well under a second. The software environment and choice of modes and settings, is comparable across the phones, with the Samsung perhaps having the biggest range of modes and options overall (on Windows Phone, a lot of the extra bits are bolt-on applications).

The Nokia 808 and Galaxy K Zoom do share a curved design language that does its best to hide the camera bulk...

I don't have a name for this one, i.e. in terms of who developed it, other than Cybercom, based in Australia, but it seems that I wasn't the only Nokia N97 (design) defender in the world. What we have here is a brand new firmware for the five year old Nokia N97, lovingly curated, fully functional and checked, and backed up by pages and pages of instructions and guides. Impressive.

In addition to not having a developer name to hand, the firmware itself is unremarkably named (CFWs usually get something memorable, like Delight or DarkStar!), but the content seems excellent, taking the limited N97 internals up to its maximum potential. Here's part of the intro from the firmware download page:

There are many CFW but full with bugs. For example many CFW have full and mini qwerty virtual keyboard but video calls are disabled because stupid moders overwrite StaticFeatures.dll to enable one feature but disable another. Most of them do not know how to edit properly StaticFeatures.dll neither how to integrate properly other fixes and features.

Even if you find a bug free CFW working on 100% (there are only few in the Internet) they are so badly wasted with stupid splash screens, startup pictures, shutdown greetings, branded menus, stuffed with apps, nasty icons, unwanted keyboards that cause you facepalm. And almost all of them are not based on the latest software version for nokia C6-00 firmware v42.0.004 of C6-00, hence you get older browser, music player etc. Thereby this nokia N97 custom firmware is unique of its kind, based on last firmware v42.0.004 with all bug fixes, full and mini qwerty virtual keyboard, but no pollution with fluffy things and stuffing inside, clear and good to go. Original style without built in stupid splash screens, startup pictures, shutdown greetings, branded menus, unwanted apps, nasty icons, unwanted keyboards etc. After flashing you are free to install anytime your themes with icons, apps, patches, settings you like and configure is up to you. No need to bear someone else bad taste design just because is hardcoded inside! Clear nokia C6-00 custom firmware with all necessary bugfixes but no pollution inside. Many customizations can be added and removed after flasing, so no need to hardcode it within firmware (see additional patches)

Last but not least, only before flashing if you like you can add your own virtual qwerty keyboard with your language, no matter what German, Bulgarian, Italian, Urdu, Hebrew, Chinese, Arabic, African et cetera. Just in few easy steps make your alphabet emerge on the virtual keyboard in order you like.

The main download link is then given, but I'll let you visit the main page in order to get that. 

The page goes on to provide:

• A detailed changelog of what's in this N97 firmware
• Detailed instructions of how to get Nokia Maps working in 2014 on the N97, including syncing favourite places
• How to make own virtual full and mini keyboard with your language
• How to Flash? Or revive a dead phone and bring it alive when you kill it and won’t boot
• Tribute to Nokia N97 (this is heartfelt and makes the same good points about the N97's good points that I've made over the years, most recently here)
• How to fully back up your app and data set, then restore afterwards

Plus a lot more. A great read for N97 geeks - maybe it's time to rescue yours from the back of your desk drawer?

Guest writer Rick den Ridder writes: “De dag die je wist dat zou komen.” It’s a (pretty bad) Dutch translation of “the day you knew would come." I wish it wasn’t so, but have to admit it: my Nokia E7's BL-4D battery has trouble to make it through the day. That means I have to make a decision. I either have to spend a ridiculous amount of money to replace my sealed battery and be able to keep my phone for another year, or I spend some more and get a brand new smartphone instead. It seems like an easy decision, but it’s not at all. Saying goodbye to my phone would also mean that I have to leave a form factor behind.

Guest article from Rick den Ridder:

__________________________

It all started 4.5 years ago, when I got my first smartphone and welcomed the Nokia E75 in my life. It was not the best phone of its time. It had no touch screen, no 5 megapixel camera, but it had something else: a physical qwerty keyboard. I remember being glad that I did not have to use T9 anymore and that I used the keyboard for everything; countless sms messages, a lot of calendar appointments and some emails as well. For a short time, I could not wish for anything more.

After a while, I looked around a little bit, and another phone started to grab my attention. The Nokia E7 was stunning and better than the E75 on all aspects. From the beginning on, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would make the switch. Some time went by, it became May 2011, and I had my ideal phone in my hand. I customized it, learned every aspect of it and knew it would take a very, very good phone to make me want to switch again. That phone never came (although, there was the Nokia E710 that I would still love to have), so I used my E7 with great pleasure for the last three years.

I must admit that it is no longer on the top of its league in 2014. The small capacity of the 1200 mAh battery means I have to save energy at all times, the 16 GB internal storage is not enough to take my complete music collection with me and the EDoF camera is not able to make close up shots. They are all downsides I immediately forget when I do one of the following things:

• Sending a Whatsapp message (approximately 25 times a day). It’s the keyboard of the Nokia E7 that I fell in love with. It not only helps me to type fast or without looking, I really enjoy using it as well.
• Accidentally dropping my phone on a hard surface (approximately once in every two weeks). It’s nice to know that after the countless falls my phone survived, there is no doubt it will also survive the next one.

Of course, I always knew that I could not use the E7 for the rest of my life. It is also pretty clear for a while now, that the E7 will not get a successor. The fact that I have no prime candidate to replace my phone, is not because I haven’t looked around. When searching for a new phone, I started with the pros and cons of the E7. With pain in my heart, I know I have to let go the physical qwerty keyboard once I decide to buy a new phone. The biggest advantage of the E7 cannot be found in any current smartphone. 

As I said, I drop my phone a lot. This will not be different when I buy another one. The only brand I can really rely on is Nokia, so that limits the search to an ‘ultimate Lumia model’. All high end smartphones have a good battery, so that’s one concern less. Then, there are two specifications left: a good camera and a lot of storage space. If it’s just for the camera, the Lumia 1020 is of course the phone to choose. The 1520 and 930 also have great cameras, but I consider the Xenon flash as a real advantage. If it’s about storage, I’d really want to be able to use a micro SD card. That pretty much leaves me with the 1520. Biggest disadvantage of that phone: the 6” screen is way too big.

So, let’s go back to the beginning. Should I buy a new phone, or spend some more time with my Nokia E7? I tend to stay with the phone I love, because the only two phones I would consider are still too far away from the phone I want to have. 

Is it reasonable to hold on to the E7 or is it time to move on? Should I buy the 1020, the 1520, or is there another phone I overlooked completely? Please let me know what you think.

__________________

Thanks Rick, please leave your answers for him in the comments below!

Microsoft's ongoing absorption of Nokia is gradually being felt in the shutdown of some services which Symbian users have relied on for ages. June 2014 sees Nokia Internet Radio going to way of the dodo. But fear not, because brand new in the AppList Store for Symbian is cuteRadio, more or less a drop in replacement for Nokia's old service.

From the AppList description:

cuteRadio is a user-friendly internet radio player for Maemo5, MeeGo-Harmattan and Symbian.

Feature include:
- Around 30,000 stations included. Stations can be edited, and additional stations can be added manually.
- Search stations and browse by genre, country and language.
- Access recently played stations.
- Add stations to your favourites.
- Sleep timer.
- Network proxy.

As usual with Internet Radio directories, there are quite a few 'misses' in the URLs and resources specified, around 30% of the stations I tried were either off air or there was a server problem of some kind. But cuteRadio did, on the whole, work - and this is only the very first version!

Arising in the nick of time, it's cuteRadio! You can browse the 30,000 stations in various ways, here (right) by genre...

Or here, browsing by country, here an alphabetical list for the UK. Note that titles, artists, etc. are supplied (or not, as the case may be) by the station - this isn't cuteRadio's fault. (right) The error at the top of this screen is probably something out of date in the station directory....

Drilling down into station detail and (right) long pressing to add it to my 'Favourites'...

This has always been the best way to get around any list of tens of thousands of Internet Radio stations - just spend an hour finding a load of favourites and candidates up front and add each as a favourite... (right) Three cheers for Stuart, already a Symbian star with the likes of cuteTube(!)

You can add your own stations if they're not in the directory, but you will need the source URL for its media, of course. (right) the settings include a sleep timer and a network proxy (for getting round regional restrictions?)

See also the cuteRadio homepage here.

Hopefully the AppList Store is working out for you all. See here just in case you haven't already got this installed or if this is new to you. Also, if you have custom firmware installed, make sure you tick the option in settings to show 'unsigned' applications, you'll see extra applications!

In addition to cuteRadio, which only launched a couple of days ago, both cuteTube and MusiKloud have been updated, with details below. A real flurry of Symbian development from Stuart, thanks to him for the his support of the platform.

From his Marxoft blog come details of the various updates. Here's the cuteTube one:

cuteTube is now updated to version 1.10.1.

The main focus of this update is some additional download features, including support for downloading subtitles and multiple connections for each download (download acceleration).

Both the MeeGo-Harmattan and Symbian versions can be updated by going to Settings -> Update in cuteTube. 

You can get going with cuteTube by grabbing it within AppList.

Here's the MusiKloud update:

MusiKloud is now updated to version 1.5.3.

This is a small update that adds the option to set a network proxy. The update also add the ability to cancel ongoing operations in the Symbian and MeeGo-Harmattan versions.

Both the MeeGo-Harmattan and Symbian versions can be updated by going to Settings -> Update in MusiKloud. 

You can find MusiKloud here in AppList.

And finally, the new cuteRadio also picks up an update:

cuteRadio has now been updated to version 0.1.2. The Symbian version can be downloaded from here, the MeeGo-Harmatan version is available at OpenRepos.net, and the Maemo5 version can be obtained from the Extras-Devel repository.

Changelog:

• Added option to clear ‘now playing’ by swiping down the popup (Symbian/MeeGo-Harmattan).
• Fixed initialisation of the volume control (Symbian).
• Fixed adding of stations to the database.
• Other minor bug fixes.

Or, again, you can grab this from AppList.

Great to see these core media applications getting some love and attention. Hey, the Nokia Store might have closed to new apps and updates, but with some developers still going strong and with AppList up and working, is anyone missing Nokia much?

Guest writer Sabby Jolly takes us on a decade-long tour of the glory and the pain of Symbian software and hardware. 2002 to 2012, all in the one feature, almost 4000 words and a (seeming) lifetime of experience. Save this for a coffee break and then nod along with Sabby....

Sabby Jolly writes:

Where should I start with this? It's absolutely obvious that I am a Symbian fanboy, a loyal Symbian user ever since I got the Nokia 7650! I can't believe I've been a Symbian user for nearly 12 years now! It's been my choice of OS since day one. A smartphone is a Symbian phone. That's the motto that I've followed over the years!

Now, let's get to the point here. We've all used Symbian phones at least once in our lives. And we know they are awesome! They've always been well ahead of the curve. At least till 2008, that's when Nokia dropped the ball on the hardware front, effectively crippling the capabilities of the platform.

Now, all of us have faced a lot of problems with our phones. Most of them were hardware based. But a lot of them were software based too. Yes, our very own Symbian had its share of bugs. Sometimes even monsters! And it still has them! And I'm going to point those out, through the means of the Symbian phones I've used over the years, and will list of the one major bugs from each of them!

The Series 60 era 

Let's start with the father of all the smartphones, The Nokia 7650!

At first, I fell in love with that phone's design. And then I used it, and I fell in love again, with the way it worked! The way Symbian looked at that point. But, I also remember a wild array of bugs and glitches that came with it. Bugs, that carried on all the way to the final hurray of Symbian, and glitches, that made their own legacy!

See, as a longtime Symbian user who is still using a Nokia 808 PureView as a secondary phone (I never used the 808 as a primary phone, and I will elaborate on that later on), I've learned to live with all the unwanted perks that Symbian has bestowed upon us. From the very begining of days to the end of days.

I used the Nokia 7650 for almost an year, and it was a beautiful experience, mostly. As the super-rocking people of "Poison" said, 'Every rose has its thorn', Symbian turned out to be a bunch of those roses. And the biggest thorn of all was the "Non-existent Ringtone bug". The name of the bug is pretty self explanatory, when someone called, the phone vibrated, but it didn't ring. It wasn't a particularly popular bug, but it was something that I lived with for almost an year!

You see, every now and then, the phone decided to automatically go into Silent mode, unofficially though, since it still showed "General" in the profiles menu. To give some numbers to this fact, around 6 times out of 10, the phone would just vibrate, and it was a big issue, since at that time, phones generally were used for calling purposes. So, obviously I went to the Nokia Care Centre, and they happily reflashed the firmware. But it didn't work. A month down the line, I was given a replacement unit. And that unit also had that bug. 

That was the moment that I learned how to live with Symbian. It's got its issues, but once you look past them, it's awesome!

I mean, it had a camera at the back! With 4 MegaBytes of on-board storage! And 4MB at that time meant a lot! And thank the Lord, that the photographs it took were mostly only around 40 kb in size!

It was a good year though! I then moved on to the Nokia 3650. Mr. Roundbottom, I called him! The phone that turned me into a film maker. Not Spielberg-ishy, but more like, blowing up old toys with crackers and then recording them on phone, film maker!

The 3650 had a unique design, which I found rather odd, but I thought it would grow on me. It didn't. I constantly missed the coolness of the 7650's slide mechanism! But at least this one used to ring!

I used this one for about a year and a half, and it took a lot of falls in its stride! The hardware was solid! And so was the software. Most of the time. You see, the 3650 had a number of software issues as well, that were never resolved. The one that I remember the most though, was the one that made using it a nightmare on its bad days. This was the first time that I had experienced the error named "Lens error, restart the camera application" (or something like that, my 808 still gives me this error, every couple of months).

The photography part of the camera always worked fine. It was the video mode in the camera that gave me this error. And it always took a complete restart of the phone to make it go away. I did a lot of full formats, they never helped. And I didn't even bother going to Nokia as I knew they'd simply reflash it and the problem would remain as it is. It got on my nerves a number of times, but I lived with it.

And then I moved on to the holy grail of Symbian devices (and smartphones in general), the Nokia 6600! The phone that took the idea of a smartphone to the masses! And it was the phone to have at that time. Owning a 6600 made you hip, and classy, both at the same time! This one was the real deal. It had an awesome camera, a neat design, and it simply rocked! 

It was made of the stuff dreams are made of. And it also came with its own set of bugs, most of them never really bothered me, except the one with the music player! If you had more than 100 full length, high quality songs in its memory card (I used a 256MB one), then the music player simply froze on start up. The only way to make it work was to delete songs, and keep their number down.

It was a bit of a downer, having a large 256MB of memory, but getting limited with the number of songs you can put on it. Though the rest of the software ran marvellously. And this is the phone where Symbian first shone in all its glory!

With the arrival of the 6600, came the mainstream acceptance of the Symbian platform, and with that, came the third party developers. And they made some amazing apps. Like the one named "IRremote". I had so much fun with this app, in places like libraries, hotels, and a couple of times in a hospital snack room. I used to change the channel to my favourite one, and put the volume on high! There was a restaurant near my place, and whenever I went there, I used to turn their tv on! The owner would then go and switch it off. And I would turn it on again. It was spooky, for others of course!

I used the 6600 for about 2 years! That phone ended up staying with my family for around 4 years, and it was awesome till the very last day it worked.

________________________

The S60 3rd Edition era

I then moved on to the Nokia N80, the love of my life! As you may remember, I particularly liked the slide mechanism of the 7650, and when Nokia launched the N80, I knew I had to get one. And I was the first in line to get it when it finally became available in the market. And WOW! I was in love again. That slide mechanisn, that 3MP camera at the back. And when I turned it on, I forgot about everything, and simply got lost in its gorgeous screen. Sharp as a knife.

It had a 352x416 resolution, 2.1 inch display, that meant, it had a 259 ppi pixel density. Back in 2006! Did I mention that it was also the first mass produced smartphone with a dual core processor? Yep, dual core! And this boy had everything. Everything!

• Gorgeous Display - Check!
• Awesome Camera - Check!
• Wifi - Check!
• 3.5G - Check!

It was basically a pre-N95, N95. And I still have this phone with me, I keep it with me at all times! Can't help it!

It was (and still is) awesome, but that doesn't mean it did not have any issues at all. In fact, this is the device with the most issues that I've come across. The biggest one being the issue with the Wifi. It simply won't connect to most of the wifi routers. As Symbian had issues decrypting the WPA security protocol at that time. To make it work, I had to put my modem on WEP, which, is rather insecure! And not to mention, almost all the public wifi's used to be WPA. And even if they were WEP, it still had issues connecting to them half of the times. 

There were more issues, like the one I had mentioned above, "Camera Error!". It still has this, and the only way to fix it, is to restart it.
This is one error that has carved its own legacy in the Symbian universe. From the days of the 3650, to now, the Nokia 808 PureView, no one at Nokia seems to have an idea on how to fix this!

And then there was the dreaded Wifi scanning issue which would drain the battery in less than 2 hours. It kept on scanning for Wifi networks, even though you turned Wifi scanning off. And the only way to fix it? Any guesses? Yep, the stock fix for most of Symbian's issues, "Restart the phone!".

Anyway, I still use this phone every now and then, just for the nostalgia-kick, and it still has most of the issues. But I love using it, just because of the power it gave to me. S60 3rd Edition was where Symbian started to display the standard traits of the present day smartphones. 

It had support for high resolution camera sensors, it had the support for Wifi connectivity (although it was a little spotty at that point), it had support for transmitting audio/visual media wirelessly, via Wifi. Back then, it was known as Upnp (connect to home network). Heck, it also supported Multi-Core processors. 

Where it went wrong? The polish. The implementation. And the faults in the core Symbian development guidelines. 

Nokia tried to fix a lot of issues with the Nokia N80 by providing software updates and hot-fixes. Some of them were fixed. Most weren't. And, there were massive issues with it on the hardware front as well. 

To squash them all at once, Nokia started working on another project. The successor to the Nokia N80. The phone we know today as the Nokia N95. The poster boy of the entire Symbian legacy!

And they made the N80 better in every possible way when they went in to create the N95. This was the phone, that made people say, "Okay, maybe we don't need the swanky animations, and restricted experiences. Maybe we need a computer in our hands!" And that's exactly what the N95 was. A computer in your hands!

Obviously, I was one of the earliest adopters of the N95. When I opened the box, I was simply stunned. It had a double, two-way slide! How could have I not loved it? And this one had a built in GPS! Again, something that only Symbian could natively support at that time. Before that, no one felt the need for a GPS in a phone. But when the N95 came out, each and every other manufacturer was like, "Woah, this is something that we have to do now!" 

It was a mindblowing device. Sadly, though, I lost mine only 2 months later. In a crowded New Delhi market. It was never seen again. At least not by me. Damn you thieves!

Even though I used it for only 2 months, I still ran into issues (hey it wouldn't be normal if I didn't run into issues), the one that I noticed the most was the battery drain issue, because of the Wifi scanner! The same issue from my old N80, carried over to the N95. Though that issue was fixed about a month after I lost my phone. My brother had an N95 as well, and he never faced that issue after that update.

And I didn't want to buy a new one, so I went back to my old pal, the N80. Used it for another year or so, and then came the touch screen Symbian generation!

The S60 5th Edition era

I stayed away from the Nokia 5800 as if it was the plague! And that was because I had my eyes on the N97! And I had to wait for a while before it was finally launched. I started using it, and that's when it occured to me, I  should have avoided this one too! I mean, I loved the design, the build quality, the construction and the feel of the device, but, it felt like Nokia didn't pay as much attention to its internals. It was, and still remains, the most criminally underpowered smartphone ever made.

I was in two minds about continuing with this one. On one hand, that build quality was simply majestic (running out of new words here), but on the other, the enitre experience was so hamstrung, and so stuttery, that I knew I wouldn't be able to live with it for too long. 

About 3 months down the line, I decided to call it quits. That was the last time I used S60v5. This was where Nokia, and Symbian as a whole, dropped the ball. It was not ahead of the curve anymore, there wasn't any vision in what Nokia were doing with the hardware, and the developers were doing with Symbian. It had so many issues, and so many problems, that I knew right there, that no matter what Nokia does, they'll never be able to fix this one. And they never did.

S60v5 marked the death of Symbian in the eyes of the consumers. It was a death sentence that eventually caused everything that has happened to Nokia and Symbian since. And the N97, was the bullet that delivered it. In my opinion.

I had my share of issues with Symbian & Nokia before, but I never felt such frustration when using a device. No points for guessing then, that I returned to my Nokia N80, yet again. And I was sure that I would use this phone, till the moment it dies, and then, I'll have to choose between either iOS, or Android (it was the new player back then, but it was evolving at a rapid pace).

I used my friend's iPhone for a week, as a trial run, that's when I decided never to buy an iPhone for myself. Simply couldn't use it. It had way too many restrictions. So I decided to go for the new Samsung on the block, The Samsung Galaxy S. The first one, that is. And I was about to buy it, when the Nokia N8 launched! Thank the lord of timing here! I'm glad I didn't go for the Galaxy S, boy am I glad.

The Symbian^3 era

Instead, I waited about 3-4 months, and bought the Nokia N8, a couple of weeks before its official international launch, through some of my sources in Nokia's retail unit at that time. And wow! After so many years, I wasn't disappointed in either Nokia or Symbian! In fact, I loved them even more.

The Nokia N8 was my dream come true. The design, was so amazing, it felt like you were holding an aluminium (or titanium) submarine in your hands. And we all know, the camera! That 12MP Carl Zeiss lens, with the Xenon flash. Was, and still is one of the best camera units ever put on a smartphone. 

When I started using it, it was an amazing experience. It wasn't stuttery, the capacitive screen helped making the experience even better. And there weren't a lot of issues with it. Used it as my main phone for almost 4 years. From mid 2010, to the beginning of 2014! Even though I bought some new phones in those 4 years, the N8 remained my choice.

And there weren't many issues with it. The ones that were there, had been in Symbian's code for a long time. Long enough, to completely fall under the radar of the Symbian developers. Like the bug with the camera application, "Lens Error: Restart Camera Application".

And there was a new one as well, another one that would drain the battery faster than a bowl of candies disappearing at a fat-camp. The issue with the display, as in, the display simply wouldn't turn off. No matter what you did. Locked the phone? Hah! Display still on! Locked the screen? Yep, still on! And the only way to fix this? Can you guess? It's the one that I talked about earlier, "Switch the phone off and on again!" , but with a slight change, you see. It didn't always go away by a simple restart of the phone, sometimes, you had to restart it multiple times. And then, you couldn't touch the device for at least 5 minutes after it has switched on again! 

A tiny, yet absolutely present black dot on the otherwise amazing experience that I had with my N8. But thankfully, that was fixed after a minor update. And it worked fluently, even with all those modules and features, on a meagre 256MB of RAM, and a slightly underpowered, 680 MHz processor. It was underpowered in terms of processing power, but Symbian ran  on it absolutely fine. One of the many things that I love about Symbian, better management of available resources. Something that Android can only dream about. That too would be a dream inside a dream. Yes, an 'Inception' reference in a Symbian article. The first of its kind!

I was extremely happy with my N8, and I had every reason for that. The camera was awesome. Not simply because of the Camera sensor, but because of the mature image processing that Symbian allowed in its imaging stack. Something that Android still hasn't done quite right yet.

It had HDMI out, with a micro HDMI slot built in. And of course, it was a Symbian device. Symbian, in its best form yet on a touch screen device.

And then came that dreaded day. The day that fire started at Nokia, the one that eventually burned them down. The day of the burning platform. Our very own Symbian was mercilessly put to death. With that unforsaken internal mail sent by the new man in charge of things at Nokia. While the jury is still out on this one, on whether it was a vice decision or a grave mistake, I still believe, that was the day the our Nokia started dying inside.

And I was sad beyond anything that words can explain. It was like losing an old friend, in the most freaky way possible. That's how I felt when Symbian was put to rest. While I still used the Nokia N8 as my primary phone, I bought some other phones as well. Though they never became my main phones. For various reasons.

The first one of those was the Nokia Lumia 800, and I will be honest with you all, I hated it. It was like the first time I used an iOS device. So many limitations. It didn't make any sense as to why Nokia dumped Symbian and MeeGo in the favor of Windows Phone. No sense whatsoever!  I sold it a month later.

Back to my N8. I was happy with it. Even though Nokia, the company that I loved the most was falling to pieces, I was content with what I had with me. A Nokia device to remember them by.  And I had no hopes to see another Symbian device from Nokia that I would want to buy.

Symbian Belle

And then came the Nokia 808 PureView! I could not believe what I was seeing. I cross checked many times, just to make sure that it was 41, and not 14(MP)! It was like an old friend came back to life, for that one last goodbye!

And again, obviously, I bought the 808 PureView a couple of days before its official availability! I just could not wait to get my hands on it. As soon as I started it up, the first thing that I did? I opened the camera and went crazy. Took almost 200 snaps on the very first day!  Took it to work, and most of my colleagues, they had never even heard of it. Never heard about a 41MP camera in a phone (that crowd was mostly Apple and Android oriented). And they all went crazy with me! Each and every one of them from my floor came up to me, just to have a look at "that phone with a 41mp camera in it"! I was already known as a big Nokia fan at my workplace, but after I bought the 808, I was termed the Nokia fanboy! Because it did not make sense to any of them, as to why I would spend that much money on a device with almost no apps and with almost no future in it.

But I knew I had utility for this phone. I was a budding musician back then, used to play with my band, and I knew it would be awesome to record our own gigs in surround sound with Rich Recording!

I also had another use for it. I shot short films on it. On my road to becoming a short-film director!

Even though now I have a DSLR with me, the Canon 60D, I still use my Nokia 808 PureView for more than half of the shots in my new project.
In fact, one project of mine was entirely shot on the 808 PureView! It involved placing cameras on bikes, so I turned to my 808. And it worked flawlessly! People still don't believe it was shot on a phone.

Now, coming to the reason, why the 808 never became my primary phone - it had bugs. The biggest one? The screen wouldn't turn off! The same one from the N8, carried on to the 808. Though on the N8 it was fixed. Yet somehow, I crept up again in the 808. Never to be fixed again, because of the lack of support for it.

I even used custom roms, but they all had/have this issue. currently using the Delight firmware. I still face this problem ever so often.

So I keep it at home now, most of the times switched off, and only turn it on when I need it! So that it lives longer, and doesn't burn out the way my friend's Nokia 701 did, because of the same issue. She tried restarting and all, but her phone's condition was so much worse, that even restarting and even formatting didn't work. Its screen was constantly on for months. Until its motherboard simply overheated and died. 

Now, even though the days of Symbian and its glory are over, there still remains a legacy, something that it created. Fans that it made on its way. Like the fans that still use these devices, and still read through articles like these.

We, the fans, are a part of the Symbian legacy, and we will take it forward. One way, or the other. As far as I am concerned, I'll make sure that the first device that my kids use, would be a Symbian. And a Nokia. Neither "either", nor "neither".

And as I said earlier, through the song of the good people of "Poison", "Ever Rose Has Its Thorn", I think I am somewhat addicted to being stung by those thorns every once in a while. Maybe you all are too.

See you all around!

Sabby Jolly

_________

Thanks, Sabby, an entertaining and interesting read, though in the interests of balance, I should point out that you missed an entire swathe of Symbian - all the Series 80 Communicators and UIQ stylus-based smartphones - but maybe someone else can take up that part of the story in another feature?

SL