If, like me, you just use 'USB'/'Mass Storage' mode to hook up your Symbian smartphone to Windows 10 then you'll have no issues - just drag and drop as usual. However, it seems that there's more of an issue if you require sync features such as Nokia Suite/PC Suite/Outlook/Thunderbird, or if you need to flash on new custom firmware or use the smartphone as a modem. Fear not though, because the guys behind the Delight CFW are on the case, with a helpful set of notes linked below.

Fabian, from the Delight team, says:

The old Nokia drivers are made for XP, Vista and 7 and not compatible with Windows 8 or Windows 10, the driver signature isn't valid/compatible anymore. It also seems that Nokia didn't use proper/offical APIs back in the day.

However, Huawai uses the same common/BB5 APIs and their drivers are compatible with our devices and with Windows 10.

So the workaround seems to be (somewhat bizarrely) to use Huawei's drivers to let Symbian smartphones still sync!

To read what to do if you need to access a Symbian^3-era device through syncing or flashing tech, see this useful (if brief) post over at the Delight blog.

Ah yes, the professionally-rated best camera phones of the world. In this case, DxOMark calling the shots. Here's a quiz: what have the still cameras in the Nexus 6P, Xperia Z3+, iPhone 6s, Blackberry Priv and Nexus 6 got in common, as tested by DxOMark? Answer, they're all way ahead of the Nokia 808 PureView and Lumia 1020 for still photography. Eh? What? I contend that DxOMark's testing is rooted in cloud-cuckoo-land and that a new 'realMark' is needed. (© Steve Litchfield, 2016!)

DxOMark is pretty well respected, due to the care they take in analysing still and video photography. But they're treating phone cameras like DSLRs and, as such, aren't testing all the use cases and modes that people encounter out in the real world.

My evidence for this? Here are the top 18 smartphone cameras, as ranked by DxOMark for still photography:

1. Sony Xperia Z5 - 88%
2. Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+ - 87%
3. Samsung Galaxy Note 5 - 87%
4. Nexus 6P - 86%
5. LG G4 - 86%
6. iPhone 6s Plus - 84%
7. Samsung Galaxy Note 4 - 84%
8. Sony Xperia Z3+ - 84%
9. iPhone 6s - 83%
10. Droid Turbo 2 - 84%
11. Motorola Moto X Style - 83%
12. Blackberry Priv - 82%
13. Google Nexus 6 - 81%
14. Nokia 808 - 81%
15. OnePlus 2 - 80%
16. HTC One A9 - 80%
17. Samsung Galaxy S5 - 80%
18. Nokia Lumia 1020 - 79%

At which point, if you've been around the world of Symbian or Windows Phone - or Nokia, generally - for a while, your jaw will drop and your opinion of DxOMark will drop faster.

Now, I should state that I too have tested most of the above smartphones and there are some cracking cameras in that bunch. And some middling units too. Yet most are much higher in the rankings than the two monster PureView devices from Nokia. How is this possible? Because DxOMark is only testing a small part of a camera's functions and performance.

Part of DxOMark's testing rig...

Specifically, here's what's wrong with the methodology and ratings (in my opinion):

• Test photos are taken while tripod-mounted - obviously 99.9999% of real world photos by real users are taken handheld. I can appreciate why a tripod is used - to eliminate variation in hand wobble between devices, but it unfairly disadvantages all the phones with OIS (optical image stabilisation) - in this case the Lumia 1020's stabilisation works rather well and yet the OIS isn't used at all in testing.
    
• Flash isn't reported on in the scores. I appreciate that flash-lit shots (e.g. of pets, people) are rarely ideal and/or realistic, and that photo purists (like the DxOMark folks) avoid using flash wherever possible, but to not rate flash at all puts the two smartphone cameras with 'proper' (Xenon) flash at a huge disadvantage. 
    
• Zooming isn't tested at all. I appreciate that this is because every phone other than the Nokia pair here can't really zoom at all, so DxOMark is using dumbed down expectations. But completely ignoring one of the core selling points of the 808 and 1020 is very disappointing.
   
• All tests are done with initial phone firmware - there's no concept at DxOMark in going back after a major OS/application update and checking out improved image capture. The 808 had this nailed at the outset, but the Lumia 1020 took a good year for its imaging performance to be best optimised. But none of this mattered, because all DxOMark seem to care about is rankings based on each phone's initial firmware. Probably because of the workload involved in re-doing testing, but not really fair to any phone whose camera stumbles out of the blocks but then improves markedly.

To use an analogy, if these were car tests, it would be pitching a Ford Fiesta against a Ferrari but limiting both to 30mph, second gear-only and up and down a suburban road. All out of the factory, with no chance to 'wear in'. A complete travesty, in other words.

Answering the criticisms above, in my hypothetical (or maybe I should do this?) 'realMark' rankings, I'd cover (and rate based on):

1. Static scenes in good and bad lighting, but handheld, so testing stabilisation as well as light gathering abilities and resolution.
2. Flash lit photos in typical indoor/evening lighting, of both static and human subjects, the latter my standard 'party' test, of course.
3. Testing optical/lossless/digital zoom - this is implemented in a variety of ways in modern hardware, but is certainly worth trying out - so many shots can be instantly improved, at capture time, by zooming in, to 'crop' the field of view and make the shot more 'intimate'.
4. Re-testing devices after major software udates - hey, I'm not afraid of a little hard work(!)

And I've been doing a lot of this over the years in my many camera phone head to head testing on AAS and AAWP - I seem to be the only one doing 'party' and 'zoom' testing in the tech world, sadly.

An example of the type of real world snap that is utterly ignored by DxOMark's methodology: handheld, fast moving and unpredictable subject(!), indoor lighting, etc. Somehow my Xenon-equipped Nokia didn't seem to care about its DxOMark score, it just provided me with a cracking photo! (Bonus link: the Art of Xenon)

Another shot made possible by using features not DxOMark-tested. In this case zoom, on the Nokia 808, here's Oliver's shot of his cat's eyes, with the zoom letting get incredibly 'close' (see, it's not just for distant objects!) and providing fabulous natural 'bokeh'.

DxOMark (and many other tech site) reviews tend to major on well lit static shots. I appreciate these are easiest to test, but out in the real world people like shooting animate objects in all lighting conditions and at all distances. I've seen some horrors. Some of which, at least, would have been alleviated with a little stabilisation, Xenon flash and lossless zoom...

Here then is to 'realMark'. Copyright err.... me, 2016!

PS. As a tease to my next cameraphone test, see the snap below:(!)

Guest writer Stuart Cutts writes: Mobile World Congress 2016 is now here and, as usual, Rafe will be treading mile upon mile of the show floor to get an insight into the latest and greatest in the smartphone world. A number of 'special' announcements – be it from LG, Samsung and others, will be making the MWC headlines. But for many Symbian and camera phone enthusiasts it will take something very special to get close to the announcement that happened 4 years ago – of the Nokia 808 Pureview. Not just 41 megapixels, not just that huge sensor, but the last device for Symbian which, at the time, was everything and more I wanted in a smartphone. For some then the 808 is still be used in 2016, testament to the many qualities of the device.

Stuart carries on: Many of us will remember the announcement, the interviews with Damian Dinning and the demonstrations. Wanting to see all three colours, then waiting for availability and wondering if the device could be as good as it looked.

While we are on memory lane, this is how AAS reported the day and Rafe and Steve also discussed MWC 2012 in Podcast 205.

What are your memories of the announcement, the device and the 808?! As always comments and memories welcomed!

Stuart Cutts

Tiny Planets is a popular application for Windows Phone which has now been backported to Symbian - it takes a photo and wraps it around a single point, creating, as the name suggests, tiny planets, themed around your original image.

From the AppList entry:

Easily convert your photos into Tiny Planets using a wide range of tools provided into this application.

Notes:

• Tiny Planet is tested and optimised for original Symbian Anna, Nokia Belle ReFresh/Belle FP1/Belle FP2 FW.
• The program will probably work on different CFWs, included deep modded CFWs like "Delight".
• But there is no guarantee that all functions will work properly on that type of deep modded FWs.
• Note, If you have CFW with renamed or replaced original Symbian Anna, Nokia Belle "Gallery" folder, better use Self-Signed version.
• Otherwise you will be not able to open images via app's bottom bar "Gallery" icon, you will get black screen in Unsigned version. To open images in that case, you need to open them via program "Menu" by choosing "Open Image" or install Self-Signed version.
• Tiny Planet was originally developed for FP2 devices, because they have more RAM, so it operate faster and smoother on them.
• But Refresh devices are also ok to use it. Tiny Planet can convert and save 5-9MP (and smaller) images quite fast.
• It also can process and save 10-15MP images, but in this case program needs more time, about few mins.
• As about 16-60MP and bigger images, they can be viewed and edited in Tiny Planet, but due limitations of HW can't be saved.

Some screens of Tiny Planets in action:

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!

Having shot a whole batch of test photos/scenes for AAWP, I couldn't resist including the venerable Nokia 808 PureView in the mix - I thought it would be interesting to see the imaging progress made by other manufacturers in the four years since the 808 was first announced.

I should note, by the way, that the Lumia 950 and 1020 saw off the Galaxy S7 (edge), so the Samsung was coming in off a bit of a beating...

Happily, the Nokia 808 is very happy shooting in 8MP in one of its 'Creative' modes, so I was able to match the output resolution pretty well with the S7 edge's, making direct comparisons easier. Following the same pattern as the AAWP feature and using my original Lumia 1020 images for overview/reference...

As usual, my tests span a wide variety of subjects, distances and light levels, trying to really exercise the range of these devices. And as usual, click any 1:1 image crop in order to download the original JPG, e.g. for your own analysis. Plus I'm scoring each image/crop out of 10 as we go along, in order to arrive at a definitive winner.

Test no. 1: Into hazy sun, landscape 

A regular subject of mine, the Herald at my local aviation museum, here shot into hazy sun to see how the phone cameras would cope. Here's the overall scene (as shot by the 1020):

And here are crops/links from, in order, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy S7:

The images here do a good job of showing off the various imaging priorities, at least in terms of algorithms. The Nokia 808 PureView photo is very natural and realistic, while the S7 (edge) adds large amounts of sharpening - the aim for the latter is to look good on the phone screen, to the user, whereas the 808's shot looked dull on its own screen yet superior here on the level playing field of a web page.

Scores: Nokia 808: 10 pts, Galaxy S7: 7 pts

Test no. 2: Blue sky, natural detail

Always a test of how good a smartphone camera's algorithms REALLY are, looking at the incredible textures and fragile detail in nature, here set against a pure blue sky. Here's the overall scene (as shot by the 1020):

And here are crops/links from, in order, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy S7:

The differences in algorithms are just as pronounced as for the plane example. Here you can see the effect of the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge's sharpening on a subject which has fine detail. When you look closely, the effect is really, really ugly. In contrast, the Nokia 808, even at pixel level, feels almost like you're looking through a window at reality.

Scores: Nokia 808: 10 pts, Galaxy S7: 6 pts

Test no. 3: Sunny macro

A tiny, delicate flower, lit by the sun, very tricky to get the focussing right - the 808 was hardest because of the larger optics. Here's the overall scene (as shot by the 1020):

Here are the crops from, in order, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy S7:

The 808 had to be backed away and PureView zoom used before I was finally able to lock focus, this is the Nokia 808's bête noire - and although it looks OK on the phone screen, you can see from the crop here that the focus still isn't perfect and that the white petals are over-exposed. The S7 took a couple of tries to get focus, but the result is outstanding. Perhaps over-sharpened still, but the subject needs it in this case, I'd argue.

Scores: Nokia 808: 5 pts, Galaxy S7: 9 pts

Test no. 4: Tricky macro, dew on spider's web

Really, really hard to get focus on the delicate web and not on the background. Here's the overall scene (as shot by the 1020):

And here are crops/links from, in order, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy S7:

There's a certain artistic beauty to the Nokia 808's photo, but it's clear that focussing for this macro shot wasn't right, yet again, while the S7 manages to nail the focus and capture more detail, even if some of this is artificial. I have to dock the S7 a point for me having to trick it into focussing in the first place though - the very fast auto-focus kept wanting to switch to the background! 

Scores: Nokia 808: 4 pts, Galaxy S7: 7 pts

Test no. 5: Sunny zoom

Time to use the zoom facilities in each phone camera properly, shooting the front of the Gannet from the museum fence - about 30 metres away. Here's the overall scene (as shot by the 1020):

And here are crops/links from, in order, the Nokia 808 PureView (using its 2.5x PureView lossless zoom) and the Samsung Galaxy S7 (using mainly digital zoom):

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the digital ('make most of it up') zoom on the Galaxy S7 edge produces much uglier results than the largely PureView (i.e. smart cropping into the high resolution sensor) zoom on the Nokia 808. This crop comparison shows, perhaps more than any other in this feature, the strengths of the Nokia concept of a physically large, high resolution sensor rather than using lower resolution and relying on software tricks.

It's not all doom and gloom for the S7, as we'll see below, but its results with even a little modest 2.5x zooming, as here, show approximations to detail and - again - a very ugly representation of the natural world - look at the bushes behind the plane. The Nokia 808 is the clear winner in this sort of zoom test - as you'd expect.

Scores: Nokia 808: 8 pts, Galaxy S7: 5 pts

Test no. 6: Low indoor lighting

Low light is where the going gets really tough for camera phones, of course. In this case a table lamp with 40W bulb and a guitar in the foreground. Here's the overall scene (as shot by the 1020):

And here are crops/links from, in order, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy S7:

A tough call but even though it couldn't focus quite as closely, I think think the Nokia 808 gets it, with more accurate colours and a less processed look overall. 

Scores: Nokia 808: 9 pts, Galaxy S7: 7 pts

Test no. 7: Ultra low light

The ultimate test of how much light each smartphone camera can acquire, even in the toughest conditions. This is a print in our living room of a New York city scene (I think) and I'd made the room virtually black. To my naked eyes, I couldn't see ANY detail on the print. Here's the overall set-up (as shot by the 1020), though note that this phone photo makes it seem MUCH lighter than it really was.

And here are crops/links from, in order, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy S7:

Even allowing for this being a print from a deliberately 'pointillated' (is that a word?) painting, it's clear that the f/1.7 aperture on the Galaxy S7 helps it a lot here - with OIS to help with a longer exposure as well. Plus it focussed instantly, even in this very low light, whereas the Nokia 808 had to be set to use the LED flash for focus assist. 

The Nokia 808's result, without flash allowed, is unusable of course - if this were a static subject and the user had some time and equipment, then a creative shot on a tripod could match the S7's result - but my tests here are more 'real world' than that. Overall, a definite win for the Galaxy S7, which has enough light gathering power (at least, for static scenes) to work miracles in low light.

Scores: Nokia 808: 2 pts, Galaxy S7: 10 pts

Test no. 8: Party time

My standard moving-subject-in-low-light test, with me laughing while the shutter is fired. In typical party conditions, lowish light and with flash definitely needed. Here's the overall scene (as shot by the 1020):

And here are scaled crops (because even I wouldn't care about pixel purity from this sort of shot!) from, in order, the Nokia 808 PureView and the Samsung Galaxy S7:

The Galaxy S7 went for 1/100s exposure here, with the result that, unusually for LED-flash camera phones, the moving subject is more or less frozen - we really are getting to the point where I can stop my Xenon flash ranting, at least for this use case (fill-in flash outdoors remains Xenon's last holdout!)

The Nokia 808 shot is still slightly better and brighter, but the S7 really isn't that far behind.

Scores: Nokia 808: 9 pts, Galaxy S7: 8 pts

Verdict

Here are the summed scores across my demanding tests:

1. Galaxy S7: 59/80pts
2. Nokia 808 PureView: 57/80pts

The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge then narrowly defeats the classic 808, from four years previously. Overall, the S7's score is slightly disappointing. It's terrific in low light and its autofocus speed is unparalleled, but the ugliness of the oversharpening down at the pixel level really lets it down for anyone who wants to produce insanely good images on their phone. The S7, like the 1020 and 950, can also shoot in RAW format and at least users can then process images before all of Samsung's consumer algorithms have done their dirty work.

For those keeping score with the two Lumias, here's the full list, culled from the original article:

1. Lumia 950: 65/80pts
2. Lumia 1020: 64/80pts
3. Galaxy S7: 59/80pts
4. Nokia 808 PureView: 57/80pts

It's a compliment then to the 2012 Nokia 808 that it got so close to the 2016 Galaxy S7, but these days to have a relatively small aperture and no OIS really hampers the 808 in low light, in situations for which the flash isn't suitable (e.g. subject too far away). 

We perennially get Nokia 808 fans (of which I'm one, generally) over on AAWP saying that the 808 can beat any Lumia in terms of imaging, but test after test of my own proves otherwise - the 1020 beats the 808 on almost every count other than raw shot to shot speed, while the Lumia 950 beats even the 1020 over all use cases, while maintaining near instant shot to shot times.

Still, I thought you'd all be interested in how the last great Symbian camera phone held its end up again Samsung's latest and greatest....

Admittedly a little late in the day, but welcome nevertheless, the antidote to Symbian/Nokia Mail hassles, ProfiMail, is now freeware, should anyone still need a very functional (though quirky) email client for a Symbian or S60 phone of any vintage. There's a new binary from a couple of days ago and I've been tipped that it's fully working without payment.

Here's the blurb from the ProfiMail page:

• Automatic synchronization of messages with the mail server
• IMAP folders
• Attachments - view, save, send
• HTML messages with images and hyperlinks
• Built-in File Explorer
• Push email - instant notification about new messages (using IMAP IDLE)
• Address book
• Signatures
• Support for POP3 / IMAP / SMTP mail servers
• Writing mails using T9 dictionary (if available on phone)
• Multiple email accounts
• Rules and filters allowing selective message download
• Opens and browses ZIP archives
• Support for various character encoding - Western, Cyrillic, Central European, and more
• Build-in image viewer for JPG, PNG and other popular formats
• Text viewer for standard text, HTML and Word documents
• Optimized for GPRS - get headers first, then download message bodies which you really want to see
• Access Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail, and other webmail accounts’ via POP3 or IMAP support
• Scheduled message download
• Sound notifications

Interestingly, ProfiMail isn't yet in AppList for Symbian, though I'd hope the developer considers allowing this, since it would be a very high profile addition!

Note that the app still displays a 'demo' notice when installed - I think this is just cosmetic though. Data points welcome!

Described as a "FileNotes is a lean text editor for Symbian that provides convenient access to the files you need to keep on hand", this is brand new in the Symbian AppStore client today. Of special note is full physical QWERTY support, i.e for the Nokia E6 and E7.

From the AppStore description:

• Immediate note taking: starts with focus on last opened file.
• Direct Save/Quit button.
• Data are saved as standard plain text files (unlike the native 'Notes' application).
• Volume keys modify font size.
• Toolbar: wrap, arrows to help positioning the cursor precisely, delete left/right, select word/line/all, copy/cut/paste, keyboard on/off, indent, insert bullet. Long press buttons for additional behavior.
• Gesture: swipe two fingers over the toolbar to undo/redo.
• Rotation sensor: tilt the phone to switch backspace between 'left' and 'right' direction. While virtual keyboard is opened this will move the cursor.
• Home-screen widget to show text excerpt and provide shortcut.
• Menu > History for quick reopening.
• Menu > E-mail to send current file or selection.
• Menu > Options to customize ergonomics, style-sheet and widget display.
• Virtual keyboard: choose between standard layout and former 'Anna' style.
• Compatible with E6 physical keyboard and Ctrl shortcuts: C, V, X, A, Z, Y, S (save), O (open), N (new), Q (close), E (e-mail), T (indent with tabulation), W (toggle wrap), H (history), R (reload)

Some screenshots of this in use:

The full text editing interface, very slick and programmed using the Qt libraries; (right) plenty to fiddle with in the settings

More settings, this time looking at the supplied homescreen widget, able to show the first part of an opened text file, for quick reference and access...

You can grab FileNotes here in the AppStore.

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!

One of the most popular sub-topics in my features on camera-toting smartphones is low light and night time capabilities. Now, partly this is about arty shots of sunsets, churches and fountains, but more usually in the real world this is about friends and family in living rooms, pubs and events. Which usually means relying on your smartphone camera's flash. With LED flash now coming in 'triple' form and with many differences in processing capabilities under the hood, I thought some tests were in order. Will Xenon, the original winning tech, still come out on top?

Some of the camera phone (flashes) tested!

Of course, testing this without exposing real world friends and family is going to be tricky, and I can't rely on a pet since they never do remotely the same thing twice. So I reverted to the original best test of camera flash capabilities: a spinning fan in a dim environment. It's not a perfect simulation of snapping humans in low light but it should give us some interesting data points and insights.

Here there are contender smartphones and cameras I used. I may add to this table in the coming weeks, depending on the other hardware arriving for review:

Xenon flashes should light my subject more fully and much faster, of course, with typical Xenon flash pulses lasting as short as 10 microseconds, which is why I love quoting the example of 'freezing' people dancing at a party or club. But there are other factors at play - larger apertures let in more light on the newer phones, meaning that shutter times for LED-lit shots can be shorter, plus the use of triple LED again adds less need for a long exposure (and thus a blurry subject). And then there's post processing, now very practical with such powerful modern chipsets in smartphones - so known colour balance issues can be corrected, noise reduced, details sharpened, and so on. Usually with good effect.

So, my test shot then. A spinning fan, about 1.5 metre away (typical of many people/evening/candid shots), moving from side to side but caught head-on at each point in its cycle, against a white background, with just a 60W overhead ceiling light on and providing ambient lighting. I tried the shot several times, handheld, with each of the test smartphones and discarded any that looked like they were sub-standard - the crops here are the best the phone cameras could do.

Here's the overall scene, (as shot by the Nokia 808 PureView and brightened slightly for this overview shot):

And here are central crops, scaled appropriately (though not massively) so that the field of view is similar in each case. I'm marking each phone camera here on illumination, motion freezing (i.e. lack of blur in the fan blades and, in extreme cases, the fan body itself), and shutter lag (the shutter icon was tapped as the fan passed the central position in each case, but with flash turned on some of the phones acquired a definite 'lag' before the shot was taken:

Nokia 808 PureView:

Not bad, though ultimately darker than we're used to in these days of large apertures and OIS ('turning night into day'!) Perfectly frozen though, the 808 went with a shutter speed of 1/50s (aperture is fixed at f/2.4) but with the very bright Xenon flash nearly all the detail was captured in well under a microsecond. And there was instant capture, no lag at all.

Illumination:  7/10; Motion freezing:  10/10; Shutter lag:  10/10. Total=  27/30

Nokia Lumia 1020:

Brighter and with a typically (for an older Lumia) warmer colour cast.  Also perfectly frozen, the 1020 also went with a shutter speed of 1/50s (aperture is fixed at f/2.2), the Xenon isn't as bright but more light was let in within the exposure, easily compensating. There was a slight shutter lag, as many 1020 owners will verify when trying to 'time' snaps, here seen in the way the fan has rotated a little clockwise.

Illumination:  9/10; Motion freezing:  10/10; Shutter lag:  8/10. Total=  27/30

Lumia 950:

Perfectly lit (to my eyes) with the triple LED unit, but the LED flash's much longer duration had no hope of freezing the motion. The 950 went with a shutter speed of 1/12s (aperture is fixed at f/1.9) and there's was minimal shutter lag, thanks to the fast chipset and camera electronics. For the curious, I also tried out the same low light scene with 'Dynamic Exposure' (i.e. without flash turned on), but the results were much worse here.

Illumination:  10/10; Motion freezing:  2/10; Shutter lag:  9/10. Total=  21/30

Lumia 930:

Much as the Lumia 950, as you might expect, though not quite as well lit and with slightly more shutter lag. Again 1/12s exposure was used, with the 930's aperture fixed at a relatively small f/2.4.

Illumination:  9/10; Motion freezing:  2/10; Shutter lag:  8/10. Total=  19/30

Lumia 640:

Ah yes, your average budget camera phone camera producing complete rubbish in low light with flash. No surprise here for the 640, with a characteristic purple tinge and with lots of digital noise. The Lumia 640 used an exposure of 1/25s and its aperture is fixed at f/2.2, though note that all apertures are relative to sensor size - which in this case is tiny.

Illumination:  5/10; Motion freezing:  2/10; Shutter lag:  9/10. Total=  16/30

Google Nexus 5:

The Nexus 5 also went with a shutter speed of 1/50s (aperture is again fixed at f/2.4) but with OIS helping keep things crisp and a 1/3" sensor meaning that there's just about enough light captured. The result is about what my eyes were seeing, but other phone cameras in this test did better. There's noticeable shutter lag, common to virtually all Android phones when LED flash is used - sadly, meaning that it's usual to miss 'the moment'.

Illumination:  7/10; Motion freezing:  2/10; Shutter lag:  6/10. Total=  15/30

Google Nexus 6:

With the same software as the Nexus 5, but with brighter dual 'ring flash', the 1/40s exposure (on a f/2.0 aperture) gives a much brighter result and the faster chipset means that shutter lag isn't as bad.

Illumination:  9/10; Motion freezing:  2/10; Shutter lag:  8/10. Total=  19/30

Google Nexus 6P:

A competent shot, exposed accurately (though relatively darkly), with a 1/60s exposure freezing the fan body perfectly (though not the fan of course), at a fixed aperture of f/2.0 again. Shutter lag when LED flash is 'engaged' is terrible though. Why can Android phones not get this right? Is it a hardware or a software limitation?

Illumination:  6/10; Motion freezing:  3/10; Shutter lag:  4/10. Total=  13/30

Apple iPhone 6:

Minimal shutter lag but also minimal motion freezing, with an exposure of 1/20s (at f/2.2) - typical optimisations from Apple mean decent enough shots in low light, but with some motion blurring where people are moving slightly.

Illumination:  9/10; Motion freezing:  1/10; Shutter lag:  9/10. Total=  19/30

Apple iPhone 4s:

Essentially a dimmer version of the iPhone 6 shot, as you'd expect with the same 1/20s exposure time (set in the same software) but with a f/2.4 aperture this time.

Illumination:  8/10; Motion freezing:  1/10; Shutter lag:  9/10. Total=  18/30

Verdict

Adding up the scores should give us an idea of the flash capabilities of all the smartphone cameras tested:

1. Nokia 808 PureView: 27pts
2. Nokia Lumia 1020: 27pts
3. Microsoft Lumia 950: 21pts
4. Nokia Lumia 930, Google Nexus 6, Apple iPhone 6: 19pts
5. Apple iPhone 4s: 18pts
6. Microsoft Lumia 640: 16pts
7. Google Nexus 5: 15pts
8. Google Nexus 6P: 13pts

My core aim here was to see how well triple LED flash did in place of Xenon on the previous generation of Windows Phone flagships - and for anything that's moving - kids, people, pets, you really can't beat Xenon, as the test shows. The fan was spinning at something like 500rpm yet the blades were frozen in time by the Xenon bulb in the Nokia 808 and 1020.

The Lumia 950 is the best of the rest and the Apple iPhones tested did their best too, but yet again I bemoan the lack of 'proper' flash on a mainstream smartphone - since the Lumia 1020 all we've had is the incredibly bulky (and troubled) Samsung Galaxy K Zoom. Now, critics of the 808 will say that its OS is old and not fit for purpose in 2016 and they'd probably be right. Critics of the 1020 will say that the start-up and focussing times are too slow and you're likely to miss the moment before you've even pressed the shutter button to kick off the Xenon flash. So take those points on board if you will.

The biggest disappointment and surprise here was the abysmal LED flash performance of the Huawei-made Google Nexus 6P - this is supposed to be a flagship, yet there's about a one and a half second lag if you leave the phone to auto-focus and still a half second lag if already manually tapped-to-focus.

You'll know already that I rate the Lumia 950/XL camera as the best in any phone in 2016 (e.g. the comparison here with the acclaimed LG G4), but when you factor in the specific use case of needing flash then you really, really can't beat Xenon, no matter the other faults of the old host devices here.

Comments welcome - I doubt we'll ever see another phone come with Xenon flash, sadly. But consider mine a permanent vote for such a mythical beast.

PS. Pro tip: on the Lumia 1020 when shooting people/kids/pets, bear in mind that the 1020 likes to use its OIS to maintain a long enough shutter time to give you some ambient light context itself - this can result in 'ghosting' in photos if the subjects are more than a metre or two away - so experiment with the 'creative' mode, dropping the exposure manually to (say) 1/125s to emphasise the Xenon-captured reflected light more than the ambient. In this way, you can get closer to the Xenon purity of the Nokia 808, for example.

One of the requests in the comments recently was to test audio capture when shooting videos. And, as it happens, I'd been thinking about doing this for a while anyway. So I headed out with six smartphones and tried to shoot video and audio in as controlled conditions as possible: in a quiet garden, by a windy, noisy road, and in a rock-level music setting. That should be enough to set the best from the rest, I thought...

Here are the six smartphones I took with me:

• Nokia 808 PureView
• Lumia 1020 (running Windows Phone 8.1)
• Lumia 950 (running Windows 10 Mobile 10586.xxx)
• Lumia 950 XL (running Windows 10 Mobile 14xxx, i.e. Redstone)
• Marshall London (Android 5.1)
• Lumia 930 (running Windows 10 Mobile 14xxx, i.e. Redstone, but the slow ring)

The inclusion of the Marshall London was because it claims stereo MEMS microphones, just like the best Lumias, i.e. is 'gig ready'. We'll see. And the order of the devices above was messed up slightly by me (ahem) forgetting to shoot with it at first. Oh well.

Yes, there are a hundred other devices and OS combinations I could have tried, but these are only data points at the end of the day. What I was particularly interested in was how the various generations of Nokia/Lumia fared against each other - and also whether that Marshall phone could come close.

My test video/audio settings were:

• sitting in my summerhouse, looking out on a quiet garden - listening for birdsong and, well, silence - is there too much hiss from the phone's audio capture system?
• by a breezy, fairly noisy road - here looking at how well the microphones in the phones resist/cancel out wind noise, mainly.
• in a gig situation (ok, a jam night), testing how well the phone's microphones stand up to rock decibels! And it was loud - very loud, I was sitting right in front of the PA and drum kit and my ears are still ringing 12 hours later!

I then compiled the footage from all the smartphones into a montage, with comments below on how the various smartphones did. Bear in mind that the video below is hosted on YouTube, and so some of the service's compression will have been used, though I wouldn't expect that to affect audio much. Note also that the video side of things is deliberately only at 720p - I wasn't testing the picture side of things at all, so I kept things quick and light.

Here's my assessment of how each smartphone did on the audio front. Note that this would be the point in a cross-device video capture comparison where I point out that the 'gig' bit is a non-starter for most smartphones because they simply can't cope with the volume - yet every phone here coped well, thanks to Nokia and then Microsoft (and Marshall's) use of MEMS high amplitude microphones. Amazing.

Anyway, on with the verdicts:

• Nokia 808 PureView: decently low noise during video capture (and lowish frequency) - it's why I use it to film my Phones Show to this day; good wind resistance when shooting outdoors; exemplary gig recording at the loudest levels - the audio this produces would pass for a professional live album soundtrack.
    
• Nokia Lumia 1020: slightly louder background noise and higher pitched (and so more noticeable); microphones pick up more wind noise, but not showstoppingly so; excellent gig recording, if not quite up to the 808's level of dynamics and crispness.
   
• Microsoft Lumia 950: horrible left channel clicking artefacts are evident - I've been reporting these to Microsoft for months - it's definitely a software thing. I'm guessing an issue in the firmware; greater susceptibility to wind noise, not helped by the mike seal issues, plus note that audio from my voice was quiet because only the rear-facing microphones are used in video capture at the moment - again a software limitation; gig recording was 'OK', helped partly by a slightly mellower piece of music being played here, but looking at the waveforms in my video editor, there were significant digital distortions - again, a software issue. Roll on production Redstone for all!
   
• Microsoft Lumia 950 XL:  excellent low noise levels and capture in all conditions, with the exception being the same susceptibility to wind noise as on the 950 - I'm wondering whether this can be fixed/cancelled/filtered in software? Gig recording was pretty good, though I did feel as if the audio lacked the depth of that from the best here - it sounded a bit 'thin'.
   
• Marshall London: digital noise in the audio was relatively (and disappointingly) high - but the London does excel when there's some signal - it equalled the mighty Nokia 808 when it came to shooting a gig, at least in terms of the sound (best not talk about the picture side of things, which was terrible!)
   
• Lumia 930: digital noise was again disappointing - anyone else get the impression that Microsoft hasn't really optimised Windows 10 Mobile for the Lumia 930? I'm guessing it's not high on their priorities - after all, it only recently got stereo sound again! Great gig sound again though.

As usual with my features, I do like a few numbers. So I took the liberty of scoring each phone/software combination out of 10 for each scenario:

* Of course, this being a rock gig volume test, how could the best scores not go up to 11?(!)

The Lumia 950 is clearly underperforming here - my gut feel is that its firmware is letting it down - maybe I should bump it up again to Redstone, since the 950 XL performs vastly better in terms of audio capture - and the microphones and electronics are (in theory) the same?

The Lumia 1020 is the stalwart it always was and probably still the best compromise overall when it comes to great video capture for picture and audio plus a workable modern OS (in this case Windows Phone 8.1). While the Marshall London impresses mightily for an Android phone in terms of audio but can't compete in terms of picture quality, and the Nokia 808 is left as the gold standard, yet again - this is now a four year old phone and its output is still bettered by nothing else in many ways.

Comments welcome of course, if you have time to watch - and listen to - the video above. Do you agree with my assessments?

Big changes are afoot at long time Symbian stalwart developer Marxoft, with a brand new release of his Qt-based DownLoad manager (QDL), plus corresponding new versions of cuteTube and cuteRadio, see all the quotes and links below. Note that these new versions are newer than those in the AppList Store (which seems to have gone quiet).

From Stuart, regarding QDL:

QDL has now been updated to version 2.1.0, with an initial release for the Symbian platform. This is a major update with an entirely new codebase and improved plugin APIs, including support for plugins written in JavaScript aswell as Qt/C++ (I will hopefully document these soon). New features include global and download-specific custom commands (executed when the download is completed), and support for dynamic settings requests (such as an option to choose a video format or provide login credentials) from plugins when making download requests.

But what you really want to see are the new versions of his YouTube client and his Internet Radio app. So....

With regarding cuteTube:

cuteTube2 for Symbian has now been updated to version 0.2.8. This update fixes playback and download of some videos that had previously stopped working. However, due to a lack of support for SSL in the Symbian multimedia backend, videos that require SSL will remain unplayable unless downloaded first.

In addition to the playback/download fix, the update includes a small UI change to use the status bar for page titles, resulting in some extra space for content.

You can update to 0.2.8 by getting the SIS package from here.

And regarding cuteRadio:

cuteRadio for Symbian has now been updated to version 0.4.2. This is a minor update that includes a small UI change to use the status bar for page titles, resulting in some extra space for content.

You can update to 0.4.2 by choosing 'Update' within the application, or by getting the SIS package from here.

Great work from Stuart, they both seem to work perfectly - yes, even in 2016 - on Symbian Belle (Delight) here on my Nokia 808. Comments welcome regarding compatibility below!

I've been trying to establish why these updates don't appear in AppList, to no avail. Anyone know?

Thanks to Lawrence W for the heads-up and photo below - it seems that Whatsapp, a faithful stalwart on Symbian for a decade, is to end support for the platform at the end of this year. One by one, modern services are ending support for Symbian - obviously by not coding for it anymore, but also - as in this case - by a physical break in service, probably because servers dedicated to handling Symbian-specific traffic are being reassigned or decommissioned.

Here's the message that Lawrence got:

Will this affect you? Do you still use Symbian for Whatsapp messaging? Comments welcome!

Here's something interesting - and it features 15 Nokia N8s, would you believe... Artist Paul Sattress has assembled the discarded Symbian flagships from 2010 into an art installation, video shown below, part of the 'Mobile Muster' trade display, to be shown off on August 10th 2016.

From Paul:

I help those who help me be a public artist, and that is why this piece will appear at a trade show in the Mobile Muster stand. I was interviewed last year for Mobile Muster during National Recycling week.  This interview describes how I display and why. You can read it at http://exchange.telstra.com.au/2015/11/10/the-art-of-the-mobile-phone/ This Telstra blog post focused on another phone piece called 'The Waifs', by the way.

The video below is Paul's latest creation, months in the making, with special circuitry installed inside each N8 to allow the display to be driven in this way. Impressive, eh? Even if it's not really anything to do with Symbian....(!)

Despite the various pros and cons for 'touch' over the years, we're firmly in a mode in the tech world now where touch makes the most sense, in terms of text input, controls and general interaction. So why haven't we seen screen sizes increase to fill most of the front area of our phones? I examine the history of the form factor, in terms of screen-to-body ratio, and wonder whether we can't have our cake and eat it, in terms of phones that are manageable yet with monster displays...

I'd like to start, as Jule Andrews once sang, "at the very beginning". In this case around the year 2000, when the first smartphones were starting to appear. I'll gloss over the Nokia Communicator line, since they were clamshell devices and once you introduce a hinge then all bets are off in terms of screen size analysis (the 2016 equivalent might be thinking about folding AMOLED screens, as rumoured in Samsung's line-ups).

So, with a deep breath, and with a few notes and caveats:

• I can only fit a handful of example/classic devices on the chart because otherwise it would get far too busy
• I assume perfectly right angled device corners, i.e. a rectangular form factor, to simplify the maths (slightly - it still needs some trigonometry!)
• I also assume perfectly square pixel matrices, but this is pretty much a given as otherwise your images and content would be noticeably squished(!)
• I assume flat display fronts, something which you can't take for granted with the arrival of the Samsung 'edge' phones, whose display is genuinely wrapped around a little at the edges. So these end up with slightly higher ratios than for traditional flat-display phones, below.

An obvious trend upwards, as you'd expect, as technology became ever smaller in terms of chipsets and components, while the cost of larger and higher resolution screens came down. There are some surprises along the way - who'd have thought that the screen-to-body ratio of the first smartphones was so low? 18% for the venerable Nokia 3650 (though its curved front rather messes up my rectangle-based maths, so take this with a pinch of salt)! At least the Sony Ericsson P800 and the Windows Mobile range led the way, with larger screens and relatively smaller bezels - though look at any of those early smartphones side on and you'd be AMAZED how thick they are. In 2016, if a phone is over 1cm thick it's pronounced as a 'brick' - smartphones in the early 2000s were regularly well over 2cm thick!

The introduction of the iPhone in 2007 broke the 50% mark for the first time and clearly started something of a trend. Capacitive screens and who cares about the cost, etc... However, the cost came down quickly and the iPhone range got overtaken by first the flagships in the Android world: the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 5, and Nexus 6 all spring to mind in terms of large screens and small bezels for their era. And secondly, every other mobile OS/variant, of which Windows 10 Mobile is probably the most notable, with the Lumia 950 XL having an insanely high ratio, bettered only by the (cheating slightly) Galaxy 'edge' series.

But what's curious is how the trend has flattened out at about the 75% mark. Now, given my assumptions above, not least about a device having 90° corners - which would be very uncomfortable (though the Lumia 1520 had a good try at this), plus the compulsory earpiece speaker and top-of-phone sensors, it's evident that getting close to 100%, i.e. all-screen, is never going to be possible. But why can't it get close to 90%?

The old excuses were that there had to be space for physical controls down the bottom, and that you had to have somewhere to grip the phone 'down there'. But I don't buy these excuses anymore - the Windows controls are all virtual, while I can't see anyone ever gripping their 'phablet' using the bottom centimetre of glass below the display - modern phones are all so big these days that it's about cradling them with fingers, whether in two-handed or one-handed mode.

Let's take the popular (ok, among Windows 10 Mobile enthusiasts, at least) Lumia 950 XL, as just mentioned. We have a world beating 5.7" screen, part of which is taken up by virtual Windows controls, though it's still a large display. But it could be larger. There's a good centimetre at the bottom of the glass that's not used for anything, plus a similar centimetre at the top (and below the earpiece and sensors). With modern motherboards and chipsets being so tiny and with modern displays (especially AMOLED, which don't need backlights) being so thin, why can't we have a device that's almost all screen?

I calculate that a 6.3" screen could be used in a phone with the plan form factor of the Lumia 950 XL, with no issues. It just needs a manufacturer to get past the psychological hurdle that 'people want to hold the bottoms of their phones'. They don't. Not these days. People haven't held phones by their bottoms since the days of QWERTY and T9, and that was half a decade ago.

We've seen 'bezel-less' designs coming out of Asia, not least those from Sharp, with buzzwords like 'Infinity Display', but they only usually refer to the side bezels (and even there they're cheating, in the style of those 'edge' designs from Samsung). Look, we all love seeing Netflix, YouTube, captured photos and videos, gaming, etc. on a big phone screen. Yet we love holding something smaller. 

In my case, the aim is to find a design that I can wrap my hand around, ensuring a secure grip while out and about. The Lumia 950 is perfect for this, but it only has a 5.2" screen. However, if the display was enlarged, going from the bottom edge up to beneath the sensors and earpiece, we'd have a full 6" diagonal screen in the same physical form factor.

Spot the wasted space in the Lumia 950 - a full centimetre above and below the display. Anyone for a 6" screen in the same form factor? It can be done...

I've taken most of these phones apart and, while I appreciate that there are sometimes extenuating factors, in the vast majority of cases, with the 2016 display and chipset technology there really is no reason why we can't have a smartphone that's effectively 'all-screen'. There's only really a big up-side for the consumer and no downside, aside from a little more design and testing work for the manufacturer, plus the realisation that there's no room to put a logo on the front, but hey, isn't that what phone backs are for?

Let's take the hypothetical example of the Lumia 950 XL above. It already has a screen-to-body ratio of around 75%. With the 6.3" screen postulated above, and with the maths redone, the ratio becomes more like 92%. Now that's more like the theoretical maximum, the trend line that the phones in the chart above should be aspiring to.

Comments welcome - am I barking mad? Personally I think that we'll see ratios of 80%+ within six months and we might even get near that 90% mark by the end of 2017. It's how the phones/pads/communicators of the future will look, you know....

PS. I'm sure someone's going to point out that touchscreens are tricky enough as it is when passing the phone to someone else (e.g. a parent, to look at) - they always seem to touch something they shouldn't. However, the extension of the displays suggested here will make very little difference - it's not as if you hand over your precious smartphone by holding it using the bottom centimetre these days - instead you cradle it and brace it on its edges, as needed.

Today marks the first for Juha Alakarhu back at Nokia, though this isn't quite as significant as it sounds, see my thoughts below. Of course, we're very happy that he's back in an imaging-related job and in his beloved Finland!

Juha was crucially instrumental in most of the Nokia imaging breakthroughs over the last decade, taking us from the days of 2MP fixed focus phone cameras right up to tens of Megapixels, advanced OIS and oversampling, through the Symbian era (including N8 and 808) and then Windows Phone (Lumia 920, 1020). Juha was taken on board to Microsoft as part of the Nokia Devices division take-over, but has now headed over to pastures new at... Nokia, though this time it's the Ozo professional 360 degree camera team.

Here's his tweet from earlier:

A small announcement: today was my first day in Nokia Technologies! I am now new Head of Imaging in the Ozo team.

— Juha Alakarhu (@jalakarhu) August 1, 2016

Congratulations to him on the new job, though contrary to the usual 'gloom and doom' reports around the web, his departure from Microsoft won't have any real impact, since the top end phone camera components available to all manufacturers are now very close to the best of Lumia.

In other words, Juha and his team advanced phone imaging enormously from about 2005 to 2015, but the latter has definitely plateaued in recent months - I still rate the Lumia 950 and 950 XL, in development from 2014 and released late 2015, as the best camera phones in the world, but the margins are now so small that you really have to look down at the pixel level to establish the margin of victory. So a no-name manufacturer in China can look at the possible components from the top camera factories and pluck out (say) a 16MP unit with 1/2.4" sensor, OIS and multi-LED flash, and get results not too far off what Juha's last babies under Microsoft could achieve, all at relatively minimal cost and without any real R&D.

Of course, there's more to imaging than just the hardware, and we've seen software algorithms and image processing make quite a difference - and it's also here where the 950 and 950 XL score. But, thanks mainly to Juha and team, the hardware's 'done', the software's 'done' and there's not really anywhere else to go in terms of consumer smartphone imaging. If the rumoured Microsoft 'Surface phone' (what I've referred to cheekily in the past as a 'Lumia 1060') uses the identical camera units to the 950 and 950 XL then this will already be eminently 'good enough'. And then some.

So hats off to Juha and his team and we genuinely wish them well in their efforts to advance imaging tech on new fronts - just don't get too depressed that your existing Lumia's imaging is suddenly second rate!

Now, go with me on this. I'm contending that the current Microsoft Lumia 950 and the 2006 Nokia N95 have a lot in common - more than you might think. It's just that there was something about the 950 in my hand as my main smartphone that reminded me of a feeling I'd not had for a decade. Then it hit me. Ten years ago I'd had the ground-breaking N95....

I still have the presentation box for that first Nokia N95 (from WOM World, as it was then), with the slogan on the top 'There's a thing in this box. But it's not one thing, it's many.' The idea of the Nokia N95 was that it was the first  smartphone to really encompass all the emerging portable tech in one small gadget. High spec 1/2.5"-sensored 5MP camera, GPS, loud stereo speakers, and so on.

Now, technology has moved on in the intervening decade and the N95's feature set is now commonplace - in fact, it's de rigeuer and exceeded in even budget phones in 2016. But the Lumia 950 gives me something of the same impresison. That of one smartphone that can do everything. OK, apart from most of the Google services. And Snapchat. And Pokemon Go. But again, bear with me.  

Here then are the main factors that make the Lumia 950 remind me of that original N95, a tech classic in its own right. Might the list also cause you to re-examine the 950 in a new light?

1. Materials
   Both are unashamedly plastic. I know the current fashion is for aluminium, but plastic has its advantages too - it can be formed into any shape, it's cheaper, it absorbs impacts much better and it's fully transparent to radio signals, so that's better reception for GPS, cellular and Wi-fi and the possibility of Qi wireless charging.
     
2. Flexibility
   Now, back in the day it taken for granted that every phone had a battery you could get at, replace, swap out, etc. Ditto a memory card that could be inserted and swapped. The iPhone, arriving shortly after the N95, changed the industry's thinking and now most smartphones arrive with a battery sealed inside and many also have non-expandable internal storage. Sadly. Like the N95, the Lumia 950 has a replaceable battery, plus you can put in as much storage as you like via microSD.
     
3. Best kept secret
   Now, I know what you're going to say - the Nokia N95 sold in the millions across the world. But only over a couple of years - it was very expensive for its day - and even then only as part of a very small smartphone scene (less than 20% of all phone sales were smartphones then). And if you cut out the majority of N95 owners who bought it because it was the new tech on the block then you're left with an enthusiast tech community of fans who knew the device was the pinnacle of convergence and used the heck out of it. Now with the Lumia 950 and Windows 10 Mobile, with seemingly miniscule (5% or so even in main markets) market and mind share, so again we have something in your hand that makes you stand out from the crowd, the populace with their mass of iPhones and Android devices.
     
4. Best camera phone in the world
   It really was. Back in the day - early 2007 - the Nokia N95's large 1/2.5" 5MP sensor ruled the imaging world. For phone-shot images, at least - we were still a long way from DSLR quality. The N95 was streets ahead of everything, I'd argue, with only a couple of souped up, imaging-centric feature phones as competition. And now in 2016 we have the Lumia 950 as - demonstrably - the best camera phone in the world, beating off the Samsung Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s/SE.
     
5. Pricey at first but came down fast, similar at each stage
   This is true of most new tech, but the Lumia 950 and Nokia N95 both typefied the trend, with prices that were arguably 25% too high at launch and then were down to the 'right' price around six months afterwards. And with monetary values which were nigh-on identical. Which means that the Lumia 950 can now be picked up for under £300 new and SIM-free.
    
6. Buggy and crippled but fixed up in software within six months
   Yes, yet another huge similarity - the original N95 was almost unusable - I had one of the first off the factory floor and the first v10 and v11 firmware was appalling. Yet v12 fixed things up acceptably and I seem to remember v20 firmware introducing 'demand paging', i.e. not all of every running application had to be in RAM all the time - this meant an increase in the free RAM after booting from about 20MB to 30MB - a massive jump. The Lumia 950 similarly arrived incomplete, with the OS in something of a state and evidently unfinished, yet with the Redstone update about to hit production devices we've got something much more capable and polished all round.
     
7. Up against the iPhone!
   And a world full of Androids now too. The original Nokia N95 was pitched, within six months of launch, into a head on battle against the Apple iPhone. The latter arrived ridiculously immature and under-featured, yet the futuristic vision of the 'Internet in your pocket' and an all-touch interface was something that proved sustainable in the long term, while all the N95's massive feature set gradually got merged into the iPhone range - by the time of the iPhone 4S we'd effectively reached parity. And here we are in 2016 with the Lumia 950 still facing the Apple iPhone as its nemesis, this time the iPhone 6s. And about two billion Android smartphones too, of course - Android hadn't even been dreamt up when the N95 was launched.
     
8. The '95' factor
   And I can't ignore the most trivial but obvious similarity that both models have the number sequence '95'. The '9' series always signified the top of the range in the Nokia world and this has carried over into the Microsoft naming. Heck even the Lumia 1020 is really the Nokia 909 - did you know that? Check the various internal 'about' screens!

Comments welcome then. Is it just me making this sort of 'classic' comparison?

Proper (Xenon) flash has been something of a major bullet point for many Symbian and Windows Phone users over the last decade. From Nokia N82 to N8 to 808 to Lumia 1020, Xenon is where it's at if you want super-crisp evening shots of people (think parties, receptions, and so on). And yet Xenon has been very rare in the smartphone world generally, i.e. away from classic Nokias. Yesterday at IFA 2016 in Germany though, Motorola announced a new 'Moto Mod' from camera specialists Hasselblad that includes a Xenon flash and transforms a brand new Moto Z phone into a DSLR of sorts. Yes, it's Android, but this tech development is very definitely a 'link of interest' here, I think.

To scale, the Nokia 808 PureView, the Nokia Lumia 1020 and the Moto Z Play plus Hasselblad 'True Zoom' Moto Mod...

From PhoneScoop's coverage:

First, the True Zoom is not an independent camera. You cannot use it without a Z Droid; it has no battery of its own and needs power from the Z Play. That's kind of a bummer. The True Zoom completely covers the phone's camera, where other mods leave the camera exposed. That means when the True Zoom is attached to the Z Play, you're using the True Zoom and not the internal camera to take pictures. Ironically, the True Zoom is about the same size as an independent camera.

It snaps onto the back of the Z Play like any other mod. It fits firmly and won't fall off, despite its weight. Yeah, this thing is heavy. I don't have an actual number, but the phone+camera is weighty — and bulky — as hell. In fact, the combo was too big for my jeans. The added physical controls might be worth the bulk.

The Hasselblad has its own shutter button, zoom dial, and power button. Pressing the power button turns on the camera and wakes the Z Play. Alternately, you can wake the camera directly from the app or the writ-twisting gesture common to Motorola phones. I love having the zoom dial and two-stage shutter button to focus and snap the shutter.

The True Zoom has its own 12-megapixel sensor and xenon flash. The flash is hella bright, and images are automatically stored in the phone, not somewhere in the camera.

What are the benefits of this mod? There are several. First, 10x optical zoom. You get the benefit of glass to help in and in so doing retain all the pixels of the image. Second, optical image stabilization. This helps reduce shake. The flash is much brighter than any available on a smartphone. Last,it can capture images in RAW format, which aids in editing after the fact.

Which all sounds interesting, with the caveat that the snapped-on Mod is pretty huge - think a Lumia 1020 with the official DSLR Grip clipped on. Plus, as you'll see from Michael Fisher's hands-on below, the True Zoom mod is also incredibly slow at focussing, almost unusably slow - probably a byproduct of having to use the phone's CPU to do most of the contrast-based auto-focus, I suspect, and this through a pogo-pin interface. Let's hope that software updates can improve things.

See the last section of Michael's review here:

It's all a tiny bit underwhelming, we wouldn't expect sub-Lumia 1020 focussing performance in 2016 tech. Even though Xenon fans will be waiting to see my own verdict on this when review loan hardware becomes available.

PS. Here are the official specs of the Hasselblad True Zoom, is it wrong of me to say that I'd still much rather have a Lumia 1020, with much larger sensor, full OIS when shooting video?

Born as 'Instagram' for Symbian (last covered here) and then presumably renamed to avoid legal action(!), InstaPro has had numerous updates in recent months, so here's a shout out to the latest version, v4.1.0, now available in the AppList stpre for Symbian.

I'd highlight that this is commercial software and that you'll need a license key before even starting it. And there's a slight barrier here in that you have to buy this license on the Web first. InstaPro helps with this by launching you into Web, but some have found that they needed to complete the (3 Euros) purchase on another device. Once you have your license key (a very 2006 way to do things!), you're good to go.

From the Store description:

• All registration functions: Login & Register
• Great browsing experience
• Search users & locations and tags
• Same interface with mobile for easy usage
• Send & Get Direct Messages & Photos
• Upload your photos with cool effects like gray or pop-art
• See what are your following doing?
• Accept & Deny follow requests
• Follow your friends or verified users
• Edit your profile informations including email confirmation.
• Change or remove your profile photo
• Connect your Facebook & Twitter account for sharing your photos on social networks.

And here's InstaPro in action, some promo screens:

Curiously, my own registration information from the original 'Instagram' version didn't seem acceptable, so data points welcome here. You might have to buy the app again?

Still, good to see someone still supporting this platform in 2016.

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!

As an industry watcher, the world of smartphones has never been more competitive or better value. It's also duller than ditchwater. And, apparently, growth has now stopped and sales are in decline... With IFA 2016 just over in Germany, where yet another batch of almost identical 5" touch slabs were announced, I'm tempted to suggest that now really is the time to look for character in our smartphones. Where are the USPs? Are they now relegated to older, almost retro, devices, while new products fall over themselves to stay anonymous?

You'll have seen the tech news over the last year. Here's a typical (made up!) news post:

Company ABC today is proud to announce two new phones, the XYZ Prime and the XYZ Prime Plus. With 5" and 5.5" 1080p touchscreens and Snapdragon 617 chipsets, these two new Android 6 smartphones wow with their metallic finish, 13MP HDR-capable cameras, 2GB RAM, and flexible storage, the second nanoSIM slot can double to accept microSD. It comes with a range of covers and comes in 'dark grey, silver and champagne gold'.

Sound familiar? These devices will all look near identical too, touch slabs with iPhone-esque antenna lines, iPhone-esque curves and often with iPhone-esque UI nods too (Huawei/Honor even foregoes an app list/drawer). It's all a bit depressing. Not just for me or you, but for the industry as a whole - smartphones are now so similar that it makes very little difference which one you buy (away from the extreme bottom end) and the main differentiator is price, which doesn't bode well for anyone's profit margins.

It also makes smartphones very hard to fall in love with. Yes, I know that's a strange statement to come out with, but I'm sure that everyone reading this has a favourite phone of days gone by, a phone which wasn't just a slice of high tech but seemed to have a character, a personality of its own. Something that you felt at one with, which you were happy to hold and cherish, more than a simple communications tool, a phone which fitted your needs better than anything else on the market?

The motley selection above was gathered for a quick snap on the bed - I have something like 100 PDAs and smartphones from the last 25 years in my cupboards, but these will do to illustrate my point - there are some classics in the photo above. Let me pick out just a few which illustrate the 'character'/USP argument well:

• The Nokia N93 (top middle), with its 'TV mode', camcorder modes, flip phone modes, the N93 took lovely photos and video with stereo sound - too bad the actual smartphone experience was horribly crippled by the lack of RAM (a common Nokia trait, sadly). But nevertheless, every moment I picked up the N93 I had a sense of this being ultra-cool, of owning something exclusive, something special.
    
• The Marshall London (just below the N93) retains one of my main SIMs to this day, even though it's patently outgunned by everything else from 2015 and 2016, because of the rubberised case, the stereo speakers with incredible fidelity and, yes, the Marshall logos - on the front, back, and even on the battery. It's just such a cool phone to own and use.
   
• Any number of the Nokia QWERTY-keyboarded smartphones and communicators, but I'll pick out the Nokia E75 here (top right, in red!), the slide-out transformation from T9 candybar to QWERTY input was very well done and the keyboard surprisingly easy to type on - all in a very small physical form. As with most of the other phones here, it was also quite rare, so there was always the 'exclusivity' factor when typing on it in public!
   
• The Nokia N82 (just below the E75, top right) - famously featured in the Stavros parodies (oh, go on, watch them in your lunch hour, you know you want to!) - the pinnacle, in 2007/2008 of phone imaging, thanks to a protected 5MP camera of high quality and a genuine Xenon flash. That the keypad was atrociously un-ergonomic perhaps only added to its quirky character. And if you could find it in black (much rarer) then it was just about the coolest phone on the planet. Unless you wanted one of those first-gen iPhones... [spit]
    
• But just to show that I hold no malice for the iPhone, I've put in the black iPhone 5s above too - the recent larger iPhones are so generic in form factor, plus they've been 'copied' so much, while the older iPhone 5 range were precision machined and always felt premium - and personal - in the hand. These days there's even a SE model with the same form, if you really do want to go down this route.
   
• The Nokia Lumia 1020 - I'd go so far as to say that this is the only Lumia/Windows Phone with any real character of its own - it was an evolution of the 'fabula' 800/920 (and others) design, but perfectly proportioned with that glorious and purposeful black camera circle on the back, housing the Xenon flash and monster 1/1.5" 41MP sensor with OIS that takes unbelievably good 'Pure' 5MP oversampled photos. True, general operation is slow by 2016 standards, especially shot to show times in the camera, but even today I have my third (yes, ahem, third!) SIM in my Lumia 1020 and love it all over again every time I pick it up. A true sign of a classic. 
  
  The Nokia N9 - perhaps more than any other device here, the N9 exudes character because it was effectively one of a kind. The only production device running Meego, the doomed high end replacement for Symbian that got axed in 2011 by Stephen Elop. The N9's hardware was similarly styled to the Lumia range ('fabula', etc.) but its interface, applications and potential was staggering. And much copied over the next 5 years by other OS - this was the original 'swipe UI' smartphone.
    
• Other phones featured in the photo above include the Nokia E7, Nexus 6, Nokia 9500 Communicator, Nokia 7710 and Nokia 808 PureView.

It's blindingly obvious that part of a phone having 'character' is that it is (or was) flawed in some way. If you think about 'characters' in films and on TV, the most interesting are always those with weaknesses and flaws, where you're rooting for them against the odds. It's the same with phones with character, there was always something to battle against, something to align yourself with the phone, fighting together to accomplish everything you need to do.

It occurs to me, given the above admission, that I shouldn't be championing phones with 'character', by this definition - shouldn't I be celebrating phones which 'just work', doing nothing brilliantly but also nothing terribly? Yet there are a legion of those in 2016 and I can work up very little enthusiasm for any of them. Whereas here I am in 2016 writing eulogies for specific devices that are in some cases well over a decade old.

In addition to the smartphones in the photo above, my (ahem) museum does extend to another 40 or 50 devices (going back to the earliest handhelds and palmtops), but I had to draw the line somewhere. I'd love to hear in the comments which smartphones from the last (say) decade that you consider to have 'character', phones which you (perhaps) named(!) and certainly fell in love with. Over to you!

Nice find by the people over at Nokia Collectors, with photos of the unreleased Nokia 6770 Slide, pictured with the high end (but similar form factor) Nokia N86 8MP. So many memories of the form factor, even if the OS and Internet-facing services have been left behind in 2016.

Being shown off here is the Nokia 6770 Slide. It's a 'dummy internal developers's prototype'. Specifications, were this to have all working components, are quoted as:

See also Symbian Zone and Nokia Collectors, plus info on the Nokia NEO/Atlantis/E80/X7-00.1/Silver N950.

DigiPassion reports the welcome news that Microsoft has updated the old Nokia Software Recovery Tool (NSRT) , thought abandoned, along with all some of the old Nokia Series 60/Symbian firmware images - and it all now works again, with images now firmly on Microsoft's servers! Guess Microsoft is not quite the 'evil empire' after all? Good news anyway, and this will breathe new life into quite a few older Symbian-based phones.

From the DigiPassion piece:

Good news for Nokia phone users! Microsoft recently released a new version of Nokia Software Recovery Tool (NSRT) for good old Nokia phones. In this release Microsoft has fixed the Nokia firmware download issue. As you may know Microsoft closed down all Nokia websites (including phone software repository) earlier this year. This rendered all the firmware downloading softwares (like Navifirm, Nokia Suite, NDPM, Nokia Care Suite etc) useless. This NSRT update makes it clear that (fortunately) Microsoft has not deleted the Nokia firmware files altogether. Rather they have just shifted the files to their own download servers. This shift resulted in change of firmware file URLs which can be accessed via new NSRT now. Hopefully other such softwares will also get updates in the future with access to new download URLs....

How to download Nokia phone firmware files using Nokia Software Recovery Tool?

• Download latest version of NSRT from here and install in your computer (compatible with Windows 7 or later OS)
• Launch NSRT and connect your Nokia phone (in switch ON condition) with computer using USB data cable
  Wait for a while as NSRT detects the phone – it will show phone details at the left side and latest available phone software at the right-hand side
• Click “Install” button – read and agree to the terms – NSRT will start downloading firmware files – wait for the download process to complete
• If you just want to download the firmware files (and not want to flash the phone) then keep an eye over the download process and disconnect the phone just when the download finishes. Otherwise NSRT will start flashing the phone soon after the download process.

You may then use these files later on to flash your phone via NSRT (or any other such software like Phoenix Service Software) in offline mode.

Thanks to DigiPassion for spotting this welcome news. By the way, the 'here' link above is directly to the .exe file for Windows, so wait until you're on the PC that you're going to use until you hit it.

Reports are in that only Symbian^3/Anna/Belle (upwards) devices are supported. So nothing for S60 5th Edition and before. At least, not yet.

Not being able to 'recover' a messed up phone was a major pain in the Symbian world over the last year and many times I had to point people towards the Delight custom firmware pages. Delight is only available for a handful of phones and, of course, it's not exactly 'stock', so it's good to see that the official OS images are all back now online. Many people, including me back in 2014, had been downloading and stockpiling certain device firmware images 'just in case', but it seems now that this archiving wasn't necessary and that Microsoft still has every image needed.

Of course, none of this helps fix other holes in Symbian's operation in late 2016, with gaps developing for social services, email, web browsing, and so on. There ARE workarounds for some things, feel free to share any of your favourite tips below or in an article submission to AAS. In an ideal world, I'd write them up myself, but I've moved on to Windows 10 Mobile and Android for my primary devices. C'est la vie.