"The attacks keeps coming. This is a third attack from the same forces and this time a faster droid transporter is on its way to deliver the attack". So begins an enhanced version of the original Undroid robot-fighting game (launched and updated in Spring 2013), here requiring sharper reflexes than ever before and with 50 levels and 35 unique enemy robot types to conquer. The fluidity and atmosphere of this action/puzzle hybrid has to be seen to be believed.

From the developer's site:

Our long range communications group has hacked into their ship computer and taken control of one droid. You have been chosen to control that droid. Once again, you must weaken the enemy before they arrive on earth by using the droid to inflict maximum damage on the attacking droid army. You have three days before they reach Earth. 

Features:

• Sensor / joystick controls 
• 16 upgradeable weapons + specials 
• 35 unique enemies 
• 50 levels

Maybe I'm missing something, but Undroid 2 seems to be free for Symbian users, whereas it's a commercial purchase for Android, etc. At last, a reason to stay with Symbian?(!)

Screens of the game in action:

You can download Undroid 2 here. It's a blast - and very difficult, there are potentially hundreds of hours of gameplay here.

Here's a video demo of Undroid 2 by the developer:

Very definitely consider this as just a Friday link of interest, but.... You can trust Andrew Orlowski to be controversial. Informed, but controversial. In this case, with the arrival of the iPhone 6 and typical Apple profit margins, he takes a sideways look at the economics of the smartphone industry and ends up concluding that Android is doomed in the mid and high tiers. Symbian is mentioned in passing, though there's no mention of Windows Phone, so I add that myself....(!)

From Andrew's piece:

Today's long overdue updates to Apple's iPhone line, which had been moribund for years, are going to squeeze some rival manufacturers to death. New iPhones at last means that Android, Google's smartphone middleware, will soon look attractive only for budget vendors selling into fast-growing emerging markets.

The problem, in a nutshell, is this. Why should you continue to make something at all if you lose money doing so?

The answer some big names will shortly come to is: "Sorry, we can't - we're bailing out." Because it's all about margins.

Back in 2008, Google made the consumer electronics industry an offer it couldn't refuse. We'll give you a operating-system platform that lets you make an almost-as-good-as-an-iPhone, so you can make profit margins almost-as-good-as-Apple's. Android was modern and it was "free", and manufacturers could tailor it. Neither Microsoft nor Symbian could compete, while RIM/BlackBerry milked its ancient platform for too long, until it too dropped out of contention.

He goes on to, slightly prematurely perhaps, predict the commoditised demise of the Android smartphone world, but it's a thought-provoking read.

Of course, the three companies concerned, Google (Android), Apple (iOS) and Microsoft (Windows), all have two things in common:

• they're looking not just to immediate smartphone share/profit/acceptance, but to success in a wider ecosystem involving tablets and laptops too
• they have deep, deep pockets and are unlikely to run out of cash anytime soon, meaning that smartphones and smartphone OSes can be something of a loss leader if needed

As a result, none of the three mobile operating systems (per se) are in imminent danger, though Andrew does make some good points about individual manufacturers. It really is tough to make money at the middle and high end of the market unless your name is Apple, which plays to very high end, luxury, high profit margin business.

Which all makes it especially interesting that Microsoft bought Nokia's Devices and Services business - yes, the best-selling Lumias were at the low end, but there were certainly high end models like the 1520, 1020 and even the new 930 which would have been tough to rely on for mass market profit, so an independent Nokia would have had to make some tough decisions about device line-up going forwards.

Guest writer Stuart (surname withheld) reports on using a YubiKey with a modern Symbian smartphone. It's a little clunky, though, here's his brief report.

Stuart writes:

"The YubiKey has been around for several years and it is a USB device which has a keyboard HID profile. That means the device is detected as a keyboard and not a mass storage device, as most USB keys are. It is often used for 2-factor authentication, with the possibility for generating one-time passwords in synch with an existing service or a user-created one. The YubiKey NEO is a YubiKey that adds NFC capability to the standard YubiKey.

The Yubikey NEO has 2 storage slots on device which are accessible by a capacitive button. A short press emits whatever is stored in the first storage position and a long press emits whatever is stored in the second storage position. I used simple static text passwords in my testing of the YubiKey NEO since I wanted the YubiKey to be a basically be a physical key. I wanted it to be able to unlock my Symbian phone and have the password for an external memory card.

Since the YubiKey NEO has a standard-sized USB connector, I had to use it with the USB OTG cable to interface with the Symbian devices. The implementation of USB OTG is available at device boot up so I could use it to unlock my phone instead of using the on-device keypad. I had similar success when using a password on my microSD memory and I was able to transfer it to another device and just use the YubiKey NEO instead of using the on-device keypad.

Using the YubiKey NEO in this manner was a nice proof of concept as a physical key for a Symbian device but needing to use a USB OTG adapter limited its ease of use. Perhaps using the YubiKey Nano permanently inside a USB OTG adapter might be a stop-gap solution until they make YubiKeys with a microUSB connector."

Thanks, Stuart!

Bonus link to YubiKey

These two games won't be unfamiliar to AAS readers, but both are now free from the developer, rather than being commercial in the (soon to be defunct) Nokia Store, so I thought it well worth highlighting them here.

Lafix 2 is (obviously) a refinement of the original Lafix, as in 'fix the mirrors so that the laser beam gets routed properly':

It's a terrific puzzle that had me scratching my head and getting stuck fairly soon!

Monsterit is more my sort of thing, being a physics-based arcade game, in which you drive a monster truck over various obstacles without overcooking the gas and ending up in a pile of spare parts:

There's apparently a 'Monsterit 2' coming too, so hopefully the developer will get in touch when that happens.

The games were originally in the Nokia Store for £1 but the SIS files are now a free download from the developer here.

I may get mocked for my 'party' mock-ups when testing smartphone cameras, but my tests represent a better look at real world photos, i.e. of people indoors. Moreover, I also take into account facilities like lossless zoom, whereas this slightly questionnable set of test results from the usually reliable DxO mark folks shows the new Apple iPhone 6 models to both be top of the tree, with the classic Nokia 808 in 6th place and the newer Nokia Lumia 1020 down in 10th place overall! Remind me to take the DxO testers down the pub sometime and explain how to really test phone cameras....

Now, don't get me wrong, there's benefit in looking at colour balance and accuracy in photos, and the DxO folk do a good job at this. And yes, the Lumia 1020 (and Nokia 808 before it) can sometimes get these factors wrong. But here's DxO's latest overall chart:

Now look, there are other factors used in real life which just aren't taken into account by DxO's scoring system:

• Indoors or in low light, shooting people and other nearby moving objects, LED flash is almost completely useless. What's needed is a Xenon flash, lighting the scene 10x brighter and in 1/100th the time. I've ranted enough about this in the past, but it's the ONLY way to ensure that low light people shots aren't blurred by the subject's movement.
  
  
  A typical shot from the Nokia 808 or Lumia 1020, Xenon crisply freezing people and actions - James and Trevor were clinking glasses in the classic 'cheers' action - note the beer in the glass caught mid-slosh. Try snapping this scene on an iPhone 6 and it'll be a blurry mess.
   
  "Get them to pose" will no doubt be the answer, as in the DxO test shots, but who wants an album full of 'posed' shots? The best shots are the most natural and usually involve smiling or laughter at the very least. Xenon flash is a huge factor and it needs taking into account when comparing phone cameras, which are highly likely to be used 'down the pub' or in a living room or at a party.
   
• There's no accounting for innovative features like the PureView zooming system, whereby you get genuinely lossless zoom up to 4x. When you're trying to get (optically) closer to a subject to get a more candid shot, Nokia's high megapixel system is genuinely unique. Add in the 'reframe' system on the 1020 and it's a winning combination. For example, take a look at this real world example:
   
  
  
  See that cool 'Blade' in the distance? Using the built-in PureView zoom (and with a bit of re-framing on the phone using the supplied facility, as well), we can save or share this image:
   
  

________________________

I'm no fanboy, mind you. I'm not drinking the Nokia/Microsoft kool-aid (well, maybe a tiny bit - it's tasty). The 1020's shot to shot time is too slow and the camera application is too slow to start (note that the older 808 was a lot faster, thanks to a dedicated imaging signal processor). But, if we're concentrating on absolute image quality, as the DxO folk are, then camera speed shouldn't matter. And it beggars belief that the Xenon flash and zoom functions on the Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 weren't considered at all in the scoring.

It should also be noted that the DxO system also factors in video capture performance, an area where I'd agree that Nokia doesn't automatically top the field, though the PureView zoom works even better for video than it does for stills. And, despite the 1020 having OIS, the Snapdragon S4 chipset isn't up to capturing 4K video or handling super-fast frame rates for special effects, so it's not surprising that the (808 and) 1020 fall slightly  behind here. But the OIS does produce very decent video capture, the 1020's no sluggard in this regard, plus on both the 808 and 1020 you get the stereo Rich Recording HAAC mikes that can cope with the loudest rock gigs.

So is there a really reliable smartphone camera test that includes flash performance on moving subjects? And maximum detail when zoomed? Nope, at least not to my knowledge. I do try in my own camera head to heads to include these factors among the test scenes, but I suspect I'm in the minority - most reviewers shoot testcards that don't laugh and ignore the zoom aspects of Nokia's PureView technology - go figure, on both counts.

For my part, I'll be putting the Xperia Z3 and Z3 Compact head to head with the Nokia 808 and Lumia 1020 in the next week, watch this space. And, I promise, no testcards or statues. You might get a steam train or two and a laughing guy with a beer bottle though!!

Launched back in 2008 as part of the Ovi brand (which rather flopped overall), Ovi Sync (later Nokia Sync), a SyncML server that synced up PIM data to Nokia's cloud, is being shut down in December. I can't imagine anyone reading this still uses the service, since the advent of Mail for Exchange services and servers proved more modern and convenient, plus newer smartphone platforms have CardDAV and CalDAV for push access into the likes of Google. But, just in case this is still relevant to an older device of yours, see the quoted email below.

Here's the email, anyway:

Dear Nokia mobile phone customer,

We wanted to let you know of important changes affecting people who use Nokia Sync on Nokia Series 40, N9 and Symbian phones. Nokia Sync is the service that synchronises your contacts, calendar appointments and notes between your phone and the cloud. 

We are planning to discontinue the Nokia Sync service on 5 December 2014. After 5 December 2014, you will not be able to access your data through the Nokia Sync service. We strongly encourage you to export and/or migrate your data from the service before this date. 

Beginning today, you can use the following options to ensure you can continue to access your data. This includes the option to export your data so it can be imported into other services, or migrate your data to secure, cloud-based services from Microsoft. 

Option 1: Export 
Option 2: Migrate 

In the interest of information privacy, all data that is stored in Nokia Sync will be destroyed following termination of the Nokia Sync service. 

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. If you have any further questions, please see our CARE support site CARE Nokia Sync. 

The two links provided are actually quite useful. The first (after signing in) lets you download a standard .csv delimited text file of contacts, for re-import somewhere else, while the migration tool leads directly into a Microsoft/Live/Outlook account and is of obvious interest to anyone switching from a Nokia Sync-ed Symbian phone to a Windows Phone.

To be honest, I'm surprised the service lasted this long, and well done to all concerned for providing two useful exit strategies.

From back in the day, Ovi Calendar, which used to sync to a S60 phone's on-device calendar....

Last covered here, in 2013, FilesPlus has been out of action in terms of Dropbox support for many months, after the service changed its APIs, but the developer has now found a solution and there's a new, fixed version of the popular utility available online via the dev's page and also in the AppList Store. Update: note that, for signing reasons, you have to have a rooted or custom firmware device (e.g. Delight CFW) in order to install FilesPlus.

Shown here are screens from the AppList store client on my Nokia 808, in which I updated my copy of FilesPlus, but you can also get the raw .SIS installer here.

As a reminder, the description for FilesPlus is fairly mouth watering:

File manager with cloud service integration. 

• Print a file or URL with Google™ Cloud Print.
• Sync files with multiple cloud storages (Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Cloud Drive, FTP and WebDAV). 
• Schedule auto-sync by folder. 
• File management with cut/copy/paste.
• Preview images in your folders.
• Bluetooth transfer.
• FolderPie functionalities.
• With Russian, Deutsch, Italian and chinese translations.

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, as you have custom firmware installed, make sure you tick the option in settings to show 'unsigned' applications, you'll see extra applications!

Anyone still using the Nokia Social application, that debuted with the Symbian^3 platform back in 2010, should note that the hooks at the Facebook and Twitter ends are being severed by Microsoft at the end of October. Polite notices in the Facebook and Twitter streams have notified users still using the system, though the suggested alternatives amount to using the relevant mobile websites, which is clearly not the full picture, by my reckoning.

Here's what a Nokia Social user sees right now:

Of course, Nokia Social never really achieved its potential, the promise was that plugins into more social networks would be added in time and this never happened. Plus it was implemented in a combination of HTML5 and Qt, I think, and performance was rarely blazing, compared to the various standalone third party clients for Facebook and Twitter. Having said that, the integration with Contacts was well done and it did work. Well, until the 24th October 2014.

Nokia's pages recommend checking each service's mobile site for a standalone first party client - there's an old one for Symbian that's not that good, but there's no mention of going third party. I think I'd still recommend Fmobi for Facebook and Gravity and Tweetian for Twitter. What about you? What do you still use and how future proof do you think it is?

No, no, I haven't got an iPhone 6 - but reader Vlado Grouev has been doing some detailed shootouts and I wanted to delve deeper into his data. The units tested, under various light conditions, were the iPhone 6 (not the 6+) and the Nokia 808, running in its 8MP PureView mode. Which one has the better camera? Go on, have a guess. A wild guess.

Test 1: Daylight, landscape

In this case a house on a hill, in bright but cloudy conditions. Here's the overall scene, as captured by the 808:

And here are the 1:1 crops from central detail, Nokia 808 and then Apple iPhone 6, click on each crop to download the original JPG (thanks, Vlado!):

At first glance, both photos look pretty good, and indeed they are. But look closely and appreciate the purity of the white on the house's sides, the detail - e.g. the window blinds - the naturalness of the trees, both on the left and on the right. Now look at the iPhone 6 crop, everything's that tiny bit less distinct, less 'real'. A good effort here by the iPhone, but its sensor is outclassed, of course.

Test 2: Daylight, macro subject

In this case a colourful flower. Here's the overall scene, as captured by the 808:

And here are the 1:1 crops from central detail, Nokia 808 and then Apple iPhone 6, click on each crop to download the original JPG (thanks, Vlado!):

It's tough to judge this one, since I wasn't there and don't know the exact colour of the flower in real life, but the 808 version looks more immediately impressive, certainly if you look at the full JPGs.

Test 3: low light, no flash

In this case, a garage at night, with artificial/incandescent lighting. Here's the overall scene, as captured by the 808:

And here are the 1:1 crops from central detail, Nokia 808 and then Apple iPhone 6, click on each crop to download the original JPG (thanks, Vlado!):

The iPhone 6 does pretty well here, actually, plucking detail from extremes of low light, but there's a fuzziness to everything (derived from sensor noise) that's not there in the Nokia 808 version, with the oversampling producing a cleaner output, even in its reduced-effectiveness 8MP mode. To quote just one example, look at the tiny dots above the "i"s in 'California' - they're visible in the 808 photo and not in the iPhone 6 one.

Test 4: low light, flash allowed

In this case, an ornate working fountain, in almost pitch darkness. Here's the overall scene, as captured by the 808:

And here are the 1:1 crops from central detail, Nokia 808 and then Apple iPhone 6, click on each crop to download the original JPG (thanks, Vlado!):

Oh dear. There had to come a point where we compared the results of weedy LED flash (the iPhone 6 is no worse than 99% of other smartphones here, but still.....) with the proper Xenon flash on a real camera phone. I'm not even sure words can convey the difference above. See the full JPGs if you want to see the full iPhone 6 horror. Again, I'm sure the latter is no worse than a Samsung or Motorola (etc.), but there's no comparison with the 808's flash.

Thoughts

Look, I get it, the Nokia 808 is obsolete, effectively, while the iPhone 6 is far higher specified. And the latter's camera can do neat tricks with video, such as shooting at 120fps, plus it's arguably more modern in its approach to the 2014 smartphone ecosystems. But this test was all about taking great photos with your phone, and it's safe to say that even the latest Apple imaging tech can't get that close, for still shots and across all light conditions, to the mighty 808 PureView.

The test shots here were plucked from Vlado's public galleries here and here, with his permission. As an exercise for the reader, I'll leave you to download more shots and perform more comparisons.

I thought many AAS readers might be interested to note that yesterday on Phones Show Chat, I spent an hour (with Ted Salmon and Andy Large) interviewing David Wood, the guy who helped start Symbian and who was its chief architect for much of its life. We touched on Series 60, UIQ, Series 80 and 90, Symbian^3, as well as wider platform matters. And, for the record, David's favourite ever Symbian devices was the QWERTY-based E61!

The podcast can be heard here, embedded, over on my stevelitchfield.com site, or you can grab the MP3 directly here.

(And if you feel the urge to subscribe to the podcast, then here's the RSS feed!)

We also covered David's recent commercial ebook, covering a decade of Symbian - an amazing read for any Symbian enthusiasts, almost the A-Z of the ups and downs of the OS over the last decade and a half.

The book is now out in electronic form, at least, for the Kindle, here on the UK site and International (US) site. 

Definitely a tool for hard core geeks and network admins, Wake On Lan does exactly 'what it says on the tin'. And, among other things, proves that there still tools and apps being written for Symbian. Please shout if you try this and find it useful!

From the description on the AppList store:

Wake On LAN is a simple tool which allows you to wake ethernet devices, such as computers, media centers, network storages, etc. from sleep, hibernation or stand by mode (soft turn off) over the LAN (Local area network) or WAN (Wide area network = internet). Application also lets you manage your devices (add, edit or remove) and backup/restore the whole device list.

Some screenshots of the tool in use, which will give you an idea of the hard core geekiness involved:

You can grab Wake On Lan in the AppList store on your Symbian device, it's currently at the top of the home page.

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, as you have custom firmware installed, make sure you tick the option in settings to show 'unsigned' applications, you'll see extra applications!

Sent out to affected users in the last few days, is an email from Microsoft, quoted below, effectively meaning the end of the Nokia SIM-driven intelligent email set-up and 'push' system that has been used for Symbian handsets for years. Of course, in 2014, many people may already be using a custom Exchange email set-up (e.g. with Nuevasync to Google) or may have set their email up with IMAP or POP3 manually, and if you didn't get the email then your mailbox probably isn't affected.

Thanks to MyNokiaBlog for the report, we have this quoted email from Nokia:

Please update the Mail settings on your Nokia phone to avoid service disruption

Dear Nokia mobile phone customer,

We’ve noticed that you are or were using the Mail app on a Nokia Symbian phone to access your email account. We’re changing how email is delivered to your phone and need you to take action.

Beginning 17 November 2014, the Mail app on your Nokia Symbian phone will no longer let you send and receive new email, or read existing email unless you update your settings.

Go to http://nms.nokia.com/em/c and immediately complete the steps shown to continue using the Mail app. When done, you’ll enjoy uninterrupted access to your email.

Don’t miss a single message. Please act before 17 November 2014 to stay connected to your email. Go to http://nms.nokia.com/em/c today!

For further instructions, visit the following pages for your corresponding device.

• If your device is E5-00, C5-00, E72, E72-1, E72-2, E73, E52, E52-1, E55, E75, E75-1, X5-01, 6700s, 6710 Navigator, 6710s or 6730c, check out the instructions here: http://nms.nokia.com/em/f

• If your device is E63, E71, C5-03, C5-05, C5-06, 5228, 5230, 5233, 5235, 5238, 5250, 5530, 5630, 5730, 5800XM, X6-00, N73, N78, N82, N85, N86 8MP, N95 8GB, N97, N97 Mini, 6220c, 6270c, 6760s, 6790s, E51, E66, E61i or E90, check out the instructions here: http://nms.nokia.com/em/g

• If your device is N8-00, C6-00, C6-01, C7-00, E6-00, E7-00, X7-00, 500, 603, 700, 701, 808 PureView, Oro, N97 Mini PR2+ or any other Symbian ^3 device, check out the instructions here: http://nms.nokia.com/em/c

The links go to pages effectively walking affected users through deleting their mailboxes and adding them back in again, this time with all manual set-up of settings, and a number of suitable parameters suggested by Nokia's/Microsoft's help pages.

There's also the heavy implication that emails for affected users were being pushed from a Nokia email proxy, something which will also be closed down on 17th November 2014, though I've been using Exchange access to access my email on Symbian for so long that I'm out of touch with how this works/used to work.

I do wonder how many people are being affected by this - comments welcome. Did you get the email (I didn't)? Were your current mailboxes set-up through Nokia's SIM-driven wizard (i.e. set-up isn't possible for most hosts unless there's a SIM card in the phone to guide a server wizard as to which settings to use)?  Is your email on Symbian currently 'pushed' by Nokia after a wizardly set-up several years ago?

For all those (the majority?) using Exchange directly to a host, I don't think anything will change or break, but hey, it's always a good time to at least make a note of your salient email access details and settings, just in case?

Andy Hagon has been a trusted writer for AAS and many other sites in the last few years and I was interested to see his latest full-length feature, in two parts, covering trying to use two older Symbian devices from the Nokia Eseries, in late 2014. See below for links and quotes. It's fair to say that he was frustrated trying to live with 2010's E7 and even more so with 2009's E72. Part of the issue is that Andy didn't have the years of Symbian knowhow behind him, the magic geek tricks, the 'right' SIS downloads, but then why should he? And the average user would know even less. More seriously, the biggest issue was one of software and services, which have simply moved on so far from five years ago - and there's a big mismatch between what the two devices were designed to plug into and the mobile world of today.

Here are the links anyway, along with a brief quote, to wet your appetite, both the articles are easy and fun reads:

http://www.onetechstop.net/2014/10/14/e-is-for-extinct-or-is-it-part-1/

In late 2014 it is becoming more and more difficult to remember a time when the device in your pocket that you used every day was more-than-likely a phone that ran on Symbian. Nokia once had it all tied up: by 2010, they were selling around 110 million phones around the world, running on Symbian. That seems so surreal. To think that more people on this planet were using Nokia phones than iPhones or Samsungs. Weird, right? Think back even further to a time before Apple talked about “an internet device, a music player, and a phone” in January 2007, and you hark back to a time when there was no Windows 8, no Instagram, no Justin Bieber, and no bloody twerking. Ah, memories.

But coming back to the present for a second (because you can’t reminisce all day can you?) we are surrounded by large, touch-screen smartphone slabs that do pretty much anything, and none of them are running on Symbian. They run on iOS. They run on Android. And one or two even run on Windows Phone. (Tee hee.) But the percentage of phones that run on Symbian in the latter part of 2014 is absolutely miniscule compared to the heady days of yore....

...

So the E7 was all loaded up with apps, emails, calendar entries and contacts. It was raring to go, so I charged it up and headed out into the New York weekend. 

And unfortunately, that is when I hit some dead-ends. You see, despite my efforts in making sure I’d ticked all the right boxes and done everything right with updates and the latest apps and even restarting the phone a few times during the app installation process to ‘keep the system happy’, Symbian just is not stable enough (in my E7 anyway) to be relied upon fully. It wasn’t long before I was checking my Tweetian feed, wanting to switch out and check my email, when the screen froze up. It was like time had stopped, I could do nothing with the phone. No hardware button could release it from its syntax error prison, and the only thing I could do was hold the power button down for about ten seconds to do a full soft-reset. The phone went off, and came back on again, booting up all the little areas that it needs to be ready again. No worries! Except that it happened again later on in the evening, and I had to reset it. Again.

There seems to be this fact that Symbian just doesn’t like to be used. I know that sounds daft, but Symbian is happiest when the screen is in standby and you’re leaving it alone. As soon as you want to start actually doing things, you know, smartphone-type things, it gets angry and moody and stomps its feet, and pouts and refuses to play. 

And from part 2: http://www.onetechstop.net/2014/10/25/e-is-for-extinct-part-2/

Yeah, so… no. It was nice to stroll down Nostalgia Avenue for a few hours, but the path just led to Exasperation Lane instead of Fun Times Road, and I justhad to knock it on the head. I didn’t even give myself the chance to explore all of the quirky keyboard shortcuts – I honestly felt like I was wasting my precious time by trying to use the E72, so I simply decided not to waste any more of it. But the real shame is the fact that the E72’s hardware is gorgeous, even by today’s standards. Solidly built, beautifully designed, but it’s quite upsetting that the software doesn’t stand the test of time like its physical form does. Why can’t apps and services just bloody work for more than a few years?! Grrrr.

I sympathise with Andy's experiences here - it's completely fair to say that the only ways to use Symbian in late 2014 is as a 'feature phone' (witness the number of people still using E71 and N95s etc.) or with somewhat extreme geek knowledge. As part of the latter group, I reckon I could use both the E72 and E7 daily and most of my smartphone lifestyle would remain intact (see all my 'Pimping' articles, for example). But then I'm Mr Symbian and have SIS downloads, magic runes and stuff that even the techy Andy Hagon doesnt know about! And yes, even when set up, I agree that I'd find the overall experience somewhat slow and frustrating, on the E7 and E72, at least.

Anyone who knows Andy will saythat he should have hung onto his Nokia 808 - possibly one of only two Symbian phones which still 'cut it' fully in 2014, in terms of speed, RAM, and so on. And even the mighty 808 needs careful software curation these days in order to keep everything chugging along!

Comments welcome, of course.

“What an oddball pair of smartphone cameras to compare!” I hear you say. “One from several years ago, one with greatly different ambitions from the current month!” Indeed, though the question I was really asking myself was whether improvements in sensor technology and image processing since about 2011 could compensate for a seven times smaller sensor. In other words, could refined tech and intelligence trump physics?

All of which does the Nokia 808 PureView a disservice. After all, the first 41MP oversampling sensor with dedicated graphics processor required a lot of tech and intelligence, even if it was hard-wired in silicon after five years of development. But, as discussed in my Lumia 830/1020 showdown, I’ve been impressed by how much Nokia’s (now Microsoft’s) engineers have been able to pull out of an average 1/3.4” sensor, albeit surrounded by an OIS mechanism and utilising new Lumia Denim image processing algorithms.

The idea for a head to head between these two devices and their cameras is also appropriate because I remembered that the 808 can shoot in a 8MP oversampled mode (i.e. a typical 34MP 16:9 image is oversampled in hardware down to 8MP, reducing digital noise), while the Lumia 830 shoots, as we found, in roughly 8MP too (in 16:9 from a 10MP full sensor), making for a relatively easy like-for-like comparison.

With all this in mind, I headed for York in pretty good weather (for November!) to shoot some test scenes. Everything was generally set to ‘Automatic’, as usual, except where noted, though note that both the 808 and Lumia camera applications allow a great deal of flexibility for anyone who knows what they’re doing and wants to shoot a specific shot in a specific way. The only modification to this principle was to set the JPG encoding in the 808 to ‘Superfine’ - although I’ve shown in the past that it doesn’t make that much difference, every little helps when we’re looking for absolute image quality.

Test 1: York Minster

Yes, the detail was in shadow against a bright sky, so I added one exposure stop for both the 808 and 830. Here’s the full scene, as shot by the Lumia 830:

And here's 1:1 detail from the centre (ish) of the frame, using our famed interactive comparator, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the image fragments:

(original image JPGs: Nokia 808 PureView - Lumia 830)

There's definitely a more natural look to the detail in the 808 photo, but the 'texture' in the 830 version isn't unpleasant. Comments welcome?

Test 2: Brightly coloured replica steam train

Shot on full automatic, this is a replica of Stephenson's famous 'Rocket'! Here’s the full scene, as shot by the Lumia 830:

And here's 1:1 detail from the centre (ish) of the frame, using our interactive comparator, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the image fragments:

(original image JPGs: Nokia 808 PureView - Lumia 830)

Again, the 830's photo has a slight whiff of 'processing' about it, plus any artefacts are derived from sensor noise, but you'd still be pretty happy with the overall result, I think.

Test 3: Sunlight, old building landscape

A typical sunny landscape, with some great building detail centred. Here’s the full scene, as shot by the Lumia 830:

And here's 1:1 detail from the centre (ish) of the frame, using our interactive comparator, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the image fragments:

(original image JPGs: Nokia 808 PureView - Lumia 830)

More of the same, really, in terms of the extra noise reduction and sharpening having an impact on how 'real' the end result is in the Lumia 830 image. In addition, there's a slight colour cast difference, with the scene being arguably a little too orangey-yellow, something I've observed before in Lumia cameras.

Test 4: Indoor lighting, medium distance detail

A nice shot of a steam engine, indoors in the museum, on a turntable at around 20m. Here’s the full scene, as shot by the Lumia 830:

And here's 1:1 detail from the centre (ish) of the frame, using our interactive comparator, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the image fragments:

(original image JPGs: Nokia 808 PureView - Lumia 830)

Possibly due to the slightly less than perfect light, there's a definite red tint to the Lumia 830 photo, meaning that the rich green doesn't come through as well from the engine. Detail and noise levels are pretty good though. The Nokia 808 produces a perfect result, as usual(!)

Test 5: Poorish light, model

To add extra challenge, this model scene in a railway set-up was shot through glass. Here’s the full scene, as shot by the Lumia 830:

And here's 1:1 detail from the centre (ish) of the frame, using our interactive comparator, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the image fragments:

(original image JPGs: Nokia 808 PureView - Lumia 830)

Shooting through glass (without flash), results were bound to be imperfect, but both camera phones do pretty well here. I'd give the 808 the edge yet again, of course, with slightly more real detail (e.g, look at the petrol station sign) even though the resolutions were identical.

Test 6: Night time

Well, almost night, with just the faintest glow still in the sky, plus it had been raining, as you'll see from the damp road. Here’s the full scene, as shot by the Lumia 830:

And here's 1:1 detail from the centre (ish) of the frame, using our famed interactive comparator, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the image fragments:

(original image JPGs: Nokia 808 PureView - Lumia 830)

The Nokia 808 lacks OIS (Optical Image Stabilisation), of course, and - handheld - its camera software just can't cope with a really dark scene (it ended up at 1/10th second exposure here). What would be needed would be a tripod and quite a bit of manual shot set-up in the Symbian Camera software. In contrast, the Lumia 830 does pretty well for such a dark scene and the OIS works beautifully, with a 1/3s exposure being absolutely no problem.

Conclusions

I should emphasise again that I'm NOT pitching the Lumia 830 as a successor or competitor to the older Nokia 808. Not at all. I'm simply interested to see how far modern sensors and processing go to make up the vast difference in sensor size (the 808's camera sensor is SEVEN times bigger, in terms of surface area). Answer? Quite a way.

Not far enough, though, as you can see for yourself in all light conditions apart from extreme dark landscapes, handheld. And I haven't even ventured into Xenon-flash territory for human low light subjects, an area where the 808 still reigns supreme. Or played with the 'lossless' digital zoom on the 808. It's clear that physics still wins, which will be a great relief for the Isaac Newtons of the world(!)

The point though, is to note that, despite the aforementioned sevenfold disadvantage in terms of physics, the more sensitive BSI sensor, the OIS, the newer lens and the clever image algorithms get the 830's imaging quite a bit closer than seven times worse (than the 808), I'd argue. The photos here are an interesting data point, at least.

PS. For more on the 830, including me bemoaning that its full photo experience hasn't actually arrived yet, see my full review. 

PPS. If only the Nokia 808 PureView had been developed further, with the dedicated camera image processor delivering 'instant' oversampling, and the extra-bright Xenon flash.... Heh. But don't get me started on THAT hobby horse!

For all supported platforms, including Symbian and Windows Phone, Nokia's HERE Transit (/Public Transport) back-end has now been significantly upgraded, as detailed below. The big change for fellow UK residents is that the whole of the overground rail network is now in place - as demonstrated below on two affected platforms.

From the HERE blog post:

We’ve learned how giving you transit information is difficult – any city might involve dozens of separate authorities, each with different data sets in different formats, with very different levels of accuracy and access.

But despite all that, there’s a lot of progress being made every day. And today we’re going to describe a few of the latest additions.

David Volpe is senior product manager for HERE transit, a combined team that handles everything from contributing to deals with local transit operators to how routes appear in our apps and services....

....In Europe, transit tends to be more centralised and co-ordinated, and when authorities want to get involved, it’s possible for HERE to make a lot of headway, fast. There are often also existing aggregation authorities we work with that have compiled national databases for their country.

Northern Europe has been a particularly fruitful region – with 100 per-cent coverage now available in Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and the UK. (In the UK, overground rail services have been a recent addition, completing the transit picture there).

Also in Northern Europe, with good coverage already, we are working to complete full coverage of Finland, Lithuania, and Iceland.

Recent deals with Deutsche Bahn in Germany, and with the Parisian transit authorities have been notable additions. HERE also taps directly into the source data from Deutsche Bahn, so any changes to services are reflected immediately, and the train timetable is reported in real-time.

See the full blog post for details of other continents.

I gave the Nokia HERE public transport systems a quick run through, in each case setting up a route (Woodley to York) and then drilling down to connection details, itinerary/maps, etc., on both Symbian (on the Nokia 808):

...and on Windows Phone (on the Lumia 1520):

Good work by the HERE guys - and I'm even gradually coming round to the overall UI used!

As regular readers will know, I'm not a huge Whatsapp fan, mainly because it's a right royal pain for someone who switches phones almost every day. However, I do recognise that it's popular both in the grand scheme of things and also on Symbian, making a big new Whatsapp release notable. And yes, that's a big name application being updated still for Symbian, don't be too shocked!

Here's the changelog for WhatsApp v2.11.771 for Symbian:

• completely new emoji input (like on Android, supports multiselection, shows last used emojis in the first tab)
• the messaging view font size depends on the system font size (menu, settings, phone, display, font size)
• the contact information page now shows more contact informations additonally to the WA number, like email addresses and other numbers and all common groups
• improved performance

And here's the download link you need: 
http://www.whatsapp.com/nokia/WhatsApp_2_11_771.sis

Thanks to master Symbian hacker Fabian, by the way, who also provides information and a link for a special modded version (i.e. for those with custom firmware or hacked Symbian phones) of this new Whatsapp release, which has these options:

• installable on all drives, not just C:\ only
• for phones which have all 3 drives, no more backups on C:\
• no blocking homescreen popups for new messages
• WhatsApp doesn't start automatically at the end of the installation
• you can choose if you want to en-/disable the autostart of WhatsApp while installing

Again, here's the place to grab the modified version:
http://forum.dailymobile.net/forums/symbian-3-applications/80295-whatsapp-messenger-v2-11-771-modded-versions-30-10-14-a.html

Great stuff for any Whatsapp fans on Symbian!

Multiple reports have been coming in about Nokia Suite having been broken by the disabling of SSL 3 support on Nokia and Microsoft's servers to avoid possible POODLE exploits. This appears to have been a problem for the last two weeks and there's no sign of Microsoft fixing the issue, so I've quoted the appropriate workaround below, as suggested by power users on Nokia Discussions.

Here's the quoted write-up and workaround (there are actually two, but the first is just to use other tools, so....):

Nokia Suite connects to the server account.nokia.com and auth.gfx.ms. For these servers, SSL 3 was disabled on October 15th 2014. As of today, these servers require TLS 1.0. Nokia Suite does not use TLS 1.0 but only SSL 3, because Nokia Suite uses the QT framework 4.7.4. Up to that version, the QtNetwork class QSslSocket used SSL 3 and not TLS 1.0 as default protocol. You can test yourself via a terminal command and OpenSSL:

openssl s_client -connect account.nokia.com:443 -ssl3

which simulates the behaviour of the Nokia Suite. Therefore, the initial request of the Nokia Suite is rejected with a SSL/TLS handshake-failure. Because of that, Nokia Suite gives this wrong error message. Hopefully, Nokia enables SSL 3 again. 

Workaround – replace two DLL files (2nd Edit: added step about exit)

1. exit the Nokia Suite via right-click in (bottom, left) Windows Notification Area (system tray)
2. download this modified version of libeay32.dll …
3. download this modified version of ssleay32.dll …
4. replace these two files at C:\Program Files (x86)\Nokia\Nokia Suite\

Of course, the ideal solution is for Microsoft to re-enable SSL3 on the servers, even unpatched - POODLE isn't a big deal for 99.999% of users and relies on man in the middle attacks, something which is fairly unlikely with Nokia Suite.

I'll update this post if the servers/protocols do get fixed.

The end of an era? Rafe and I record the last ever All About Symbian Insight podcast. No, the site's not going away, but after an absence of over six months, we felt it appropriate to at least draw a line under the Symbian-centric podcasts. And we go out with an hour-long bang, with a heady mix of news, retrospective and our picks of our favourite Symbian devices.... ever.

Covered are:

• Recent news in the Symbian world.
• The State of Symbian and a look back at the last decade or two.
• Our favourite five Symbian devices EVER. Each. Plus a few extras!

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

Apologies for the break in your normal run of podcasts with Rafe, but the chance arose to sit down with Damian Dinning, ex-Nokia and its head of imaging for years, the guy (with his team, of course) behind classics like the Nokia N73, N90, N93, N95, N82, N86, N8, 808 PureView and, of course, the Lumia 1020. The chat was in a quietish pub and is hopefully very listenable - the content is about 60% Windows Phone-related, 30% Symbian-related and 10% generic, but there's plenty here of interest to all readers/listeners, I think.

Subjects covered include:

• The Samsung G810 (yes, really)
• Lens covers and coatings
• Durability
• Refocus and Cinemagraph
• Rich Capture and Dynamic Flash
• Oversampling
• Camera humps
• LED versus Xenon
• Multi-frame capture possibilities
• Noise reduction algorithms
• Processing requirements in modern camera phones
• Lumia Camera and the 1020
• Windows Phone stability
• Damian's thoughts on Android and iOS
• Musings on the N9
• Musings looking back on Symbian 

Listeners might like to note that I recorded the chat on a Nokia 808 PureView - there are a couple of points where Damian picks the device up to illustrate something, so apologies for a few rustles and taps here and there!!

You can follow Damian on Twitter here, by the way.

The Nokia Store, as far as Symbian users are concerned, hasn't been much use for a while, with content frozen as of the start of this year, and with the very store itself starting to become available for some users in some markets. Although it's not exactly a direct replacement, and competing with ventures like AppList of course, Opera Mobile has stepped up to the plate in an initiative designed to pick up some more of the slack.

Exactly how it all pans out has yet to be seen, but certainly there are moves afoot to morph the Nokia Store domain over to Opera's control. 

Firstly the press release from Microsoft, which must be glad to be seeing the back of Symbian (and the other platforms listed), reading between the lines:

As we focus our efforts on helping the Windows Phone developer community grow and succeed, we recognize that people from all corners of the world still love their classic Nokia phones. And, for those of you who develop great apps, games and other content for these phones, there’s good news in store for you.

Starting in early 2015, Opera Software will extend the Opera Mobile Store to work with even more Nokia phones, including those that run Series 40, Series 60, Symbian, Asha and Nokia X software, ensuring people can continue to enjoy a variety of great apps.

Opera Mobile Store is one of the top app stores in the world and has recently reached 200 million average monthly visitors. With users hailing from 196 regions across the globe, Opera Mobile Store offers many of the same features as Nokia Store, including free and paid-for global and local apps for Nokia phones.

We expect Nokia Store to close in the first half of 2015 when the redirection to Opera Mobile Store is complete. And, while we’ll miss all your great apps on Nokia Store, we couldn’t be more excited about the future of those apps on Opera Mobile Store.

'Couldn't be more excited', eh?(!) Anyway, moving on, there's a fuller press release from Opera itself:

Opera Mobile Store will replace Nokia Store as the default app store for Nokia feature phones, Symbian and Nokia X smartphones, following an agreement between Opera Software and Microsoft.

Beginning in the first quarter of 2015, people who access Nokia Store from Series 40, Series 60, Symbian, Asha and Nokia X devices will be automatically redirected to Opera Mobile Store, where they will be offered the opportunity to become customers of Opera Mobile Store and have access to tens of thousands of apps for their Nokia phones.

The transition to Opera Mobile Store will enable millions of people who use classic Nokia phones to continue to have a trusted source for apps, games and content. The process of migrating customers from Nokia Store to Opera Mobile Store is expected to be complete in the first half of 2015, at which point Nokia Store will be closed.

....When the transition of customers from the Nokia Store to the Opera Mobile Store is complete, Opera is positioned to become the third largest app store in terms of downloads.

With close to 300,000 apps and games available in the store today, and millions of downloads each day, the Opera Mobile Store has a wide reach for developers looking to distribute apps.

Opera Mobile Store today supports more than 7,500 different devices, from feature phones to the most advanced smartphones. It is a trusted platform used by more than 40,000 developers around the world.

Developers looking to publish apps on the Opera Mobile Store can do so by visiting apps.opera.com.

Of course, the existence of a new store doesn't help all those who purchased content from the Nokia Store and will soon not be able to re-download it (if the Store is working for you now, make sure you've downloaded/installed as much as possible!)

Obviously, this will have a much wider target audience than geek initiatives like AppList, but the downside will be a lot of content which is, shall we say, trivial, no doubt. Watch this space for something of a guide to the Symbian applications which still work well and are easily available for the end of 2014...