No, amazingly, this isn't a totally new game, but a) it's recently updated in the Nokia Store (presumably Belle FP2 compatibility - I was testing it on the Nokia 808) and b) we've never even mentioned it before on AAS. So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I give you the graphics-accelerated, physics-based [fanfare] Incredible Circus for Symbian. Well, screenshots of it running, anyway, along with some impressions.

Glossy splash and menu screens impress, along with some jaunty music (which can be turned down or off altogether)....

There are two level packs of around 50 levels, which (as you'll see later) should be enough for almost anyone; (right) hints are shown where needed to let you know the game mechanic about to be introduced - here it's an elastic platform

You control the platforms and other interface elements, trying to bounce the daredevil stuntman off elastic platforms, off bouncy barriers, avoiding missiles and onto the (higher) destination platform - quite a stunt. In fact, the difficulty level is surprisingly high. I got stuck on about level 9 of the first pack - but then maybe I'm just not cut out for the circus!

As you might expect, you accumulate score and gradually unlock successive levels; (right) the next level pack, ready and waiting

You can download Incredible Circus for free here in the Nokia Store. It's not clear exactly why it's free, but maybe we shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth - grab it for a rainy day?!

Maybe you've grabbed this in the past and are an old hand at Incredible Circus? If so, how far did you get and what did you think of the difficulty curve?

Poddi Podcatcher is one of the few (read - two) serious podcast clients for Symbian. Our recent review conclused by hoping for more development and addition of missing features. The developer has been hard at work on Poddi Podcatcher, bringing in many new features in version 1.1.0, and has gone on to push new features into the application along with version 1.1.1 in addition to many bug fixes.

From our review:

Poddi is only at version 1.0, so I expect to see more development or at least I hope there will be. As it stands, I feel there are a few basic podcatching options missing – particularly in the realm of automating the process of downloading content. I also experienced slow user interface performance and several crashes. This means I cannot recommend it yet, especially since Poddi costs £3.00 in the Nokia Store while Podcatcher is more functional and costs half as much. When Poddi improves its functionality and stability, its contemporary user interface could help it to win the day.

And here is the version 1.1.1 changelog:

Features added:
-  Progress indicator during feed refresh
-  It is now possible to stop a feed refresh before it has completed.
-  Compatible with Qt 4.8
-  Link to @ByteformApps (twitter.com/ByteformApps) Twitter feed on About page.  Follow this account for future updates on Poddi.

UI improvements:
-  Eliminated UI freezes during playback
-  Major performance improvements throughout UI


Bugs fixed since 1.1.0:
-  Fixed bug where home-screen episode counts (and download queue) would not update under Belle Refresh/ Qt 4.8
-  Fixed hang when starting with no network avaialble
-  Fixed constant re-downloading on refresh when attempting to parse Atom feeds
-  Fixed OPML importer to support wider range of outline formats, including some malformed ones
-  Support for multiple-redirects during feed fetch, and download
-  Fix percent-escaping error on redirected URLs (fixes bug with Radio France episode downloads)
-  Better determination of downloaded file name (fixes bug with 361 Degrees podcast)
-  Wider support for unusual date formats on episodes.
-  Check GUID before adding "new" episode to list (fixes bug with old ESPN feeds)
-  Change "User Agent:" string to one that doesn't cause a redirection to a mobile website that doesn't have the feed info (fixes bug with ZDF video podcasts)
-  Improved handling of non-Nokia Remote Control interfaces.
-  Fixed "Out of Memory" errors when attempting to download missing or damaged files
-  Removed UI glitches when updating current episode playback position

In part 1 of this feature, I introduced the concept of ISO adjustment and showed some rather extreme examples to illustrate how the apparent sensitivity of the sensor is increased. In this, part 2, I take a couple of real world use cases and look closely at the difference ISO adjustment makes. Although demonstrated on the 808 here, the feature is applicable to any good camera phone that allows you to manually override the ISO setting.

In part 1, we used an example that was so dark that it wasn't really representative of a scene you'd try to snap in real life. What about scenes that have more light in them, at a gig, or indoors in the gloom - is there still an argument for fiddling with ISO?

ISO adjustment under controlled conditions

One problem with ad-hoc event snaps is that everything's changing all the time, it's impossible to replicate the combination of subject and light from one shot to another. In an effort to demonstrate ISO adjustment even more clearly, I isolated a statue in our living room as a good subject, illuminated only by a 60W bulb about ten feet away and with a nice shadow behind. Leaving aside flash issues (i.e. Xenon or LED), I turned this off completely, so as not to confuse the situation, i.e. I wanted to capture ambient light only.

Here's the statue scene at ISO 100:

Then again at ISO 400:

Then again at ISO 800:

To the naked eye there's not much difference, other than the first having a little camera motion blur due to the longer exposure time used. In a low light situation like this where you don't want to use flash (for whatever reason) and you don't have a tripod to hand, it's perfectly practical to consider increasing the ISO number in order to gather the scene more quickly and reduce the effects of handheld camera shake.

So that we can see the differences more easily, let's crop in on the central detail for all three images, ISO 100 at the top, then ISO 400 then ISO 800:

Yes, snapping a statue at half a metre without flash in a poorly lit living room is itself a bit artificial, but the controlled conditions give a beautifully clear illustration of the tradeoffs between ISO speed and noise.

The top crop shows obvious camera shake/blur (exposure time was 1/2s), even though I was trying to keep the phone steady, while ISO 400 is sharper (exposure time was 1/8s) and ISO 1600 sharpest of all (exposure time was 1/30s).

Why not, then, keep ISO that high all the time? Because you also get lots of noise - look at the shadow of the statue on the wall - the noise (artefacts/speckles) gets much worse as we move from ISO 100 (almost no noise) to ISO 1600 (everything in the image has a mottled pattern of randomness superimposed).

Now - is there an optimum ISO setting, for which you get the best chance at a crisp shot and yet minimise the amount of noise incurred? Yes, absolutely, see my conclusion at the bottom.

An extreme example from a rock gig

Using high ISO numbers at gigs isn't a new concept - I was using ISO 400 35mm film back in the 1980s to snap my favourite musicians (while trying to avoid the bouncers - you were usually not allowed to take photos - how times have changed!) and the technique works just as well these days. Here's an extreme example from April (i.e. pre-Nokia 808, this was actually taken on the N8), we were at a gig and in a very non-optimum position, high up on the side of the balcony, here's the overall scene, which shows how far away we were from the centre of the stage action:

Now, I wasn't after anything special, but it would have been nice to get a snap that was a bit closer. With my Nokia N8 on ISO 100 and then cropping in, I ended up with something like this - the archetypal mobile phone camera blurry snap:

So all very murky in terms of detail then, with elements of motion blur from the subject (shutter time was 1/10s or so) and probably from my handheld use too. So I tried setting the ISO to 800, here's one of the shots, cropped in again slightly:

A dramatically different feel to the photo - note how the shot is crisper (shutter time was 1/30s), yet with the downside that I talked about above, i.e. far more digital noise ('speckles') and a somewhat artificial look to proceedings.

Although I didn't save the image at the time, I seem to remember that the N8 on 'automatic' wanted to use ISO 300 - probably a good compromise?

I'd welcome more examples from others if you've been taking high ISO shots and comparisons at live events (I don't get out as much as I used to!) - leave them in the comments or email me.

In summary

I mentioned above that for most situations there's probably an optimum combination of ISO, exposure time and so on, that will give you decent results without too much blur or noise. There is, and the thing to realise is that Nokia got there before you. Take a photo on your N8 or 808 in lowish light (without flash) in full 'automatic' mode and look at the ISO figure used (in the EXIF data) - you'll usually see something like 200, 300 or 500. In other words, the algorithms in the camera software are spotting the same ambient parameters you are and are coming to similar conclusions.

If you're simply after the best, optimised photo with least chance of camera shake and the least noise, then leave everything on 'automatic'.

Which is reassuring, i.e. that you don't have to jump through mental hoops everytime you want to snap something - just trust the N8 or 808 software. And it reaffirms the name of the detailed settings panel on the Nokia 808 - 'Creative'. It's explicitly for when you want something different, some special effect, something..... creative. The rest of the time, you can relax and let the Camera app take the strain (though see also my piece on 'Scene modes', which offer a great compromise between 'Auto' and 'Creative').

PS. And I can't help but repeat my maxim from part 1, whatever mode you're in, whatever light conditions, do everything you can (stop breathing, rest the phone on a ledge or tripod) to keep the camera phone stock still - it makes all the difference!

PPS. If you're really into low light, flashless photos then of course the Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia 920 will be of interest - keep up with our continuing review coverage over at All About Windows Phone.

Argh, not, not another bubble shooter! Actually, this one's quite well done, though with something of a fatal flaw. First of all, The Bubble Shooter is completely free, albeit laced with ads, secondly it moves at a frenetic pace and is well animated and pitched, with successive levels getting longer and, in theory harder. Except that they don't. Get harder, that is. They just get longer... and longer.... it's fun, but at some point all of us will just lose interest. Or maybe I'm just too good at bubble shooters? Screens and link below.

Gameplay is exactly as you'd expect from the genre, with the ability to bounce bubbles off the sides of the area and bubbles being targeted with a single tap - match groups of 3 or more somewhere near the top of the stack and you release a virtual cavalcade...

As you dismiss bubbles, new rows appear at the top of the playing area, and everything moves down a notch. The idea is to stop the bubbles reaching the bottom and, for each level, to achieve a certain number of pops. This number rises by 20 or so for each subsequent level. In theory, if the game was hard enough, this would be enough to make levels themselves harder - sadly, either I'm just too good and too quick, or the game's not hard enough, since after 30 minutes play I hadn't become near to being killed. The cynic in me realises that the longer I play, the more 'tween level ads I get to see (right), and that this indeed might be the developers' ultimate aim here.

Level by level - no problem, for me, at least!; (right) bright and colourful help screens - in fact, the whole interface is bright and fun to play and interact with. I just think The Bubble Shooter could be.... harder!

See what you think! You can download The Bubble Shooter for free here in the Nokia Store.

I've seen many physics-based games in the last year which have clearly taken inspiration from Angry Birds, but Super Angry Birds has to take the biscuit as the most cynical and most disappointing. From a ridiculously pitched free trial to a complete lack of graphics acceleration, this fails on every level. Screens, comments and links below.

The premise here is that the critters are pigs alien invaders and you have a catapult cannon with which to blast them out of various positions propped up on pillars and platforms. That's... actually all you need to know.

And the screen above is the very first thing you see after the splash graphics. Five minutes. And that includes tapping past the level screens and introductions - essentially you just about get the hang of firing one cannon ball to kill one alien and then it's all over. Trial over. Time to uninstall the game, etc. It's quite simply ridiculous, as is charging £5 via your phone bill (which would have to repeated if you ever reset your phone or lost the game somehow, compared to buying the game for £3 on the Nokia Store, which is good for at least 10 re-downloads. 

OK, so there are 200 levels - but you'll only see two or three in the 'trial'. At most.

That's the theory anyway - I didn't get awarded stars for any of the three levels I managed to get though... Methinks there's more playtesting needed.

The interface involves using the up/down icons to aim your cannon and a long press on the circle icon to decide the power. The graphics are fairly primitive, as you can see here.

Worst of all though, the physics are all handled by the main processor, which means that animations are jerky and slow - nothing feels fluid. We're talking game animation from 2009. Given that every Symbian smartphone since the 2010 N8 has had a full GPU which can handle this sort of thing in a heartbeat, not using it is criminal.

The bottom of screen toolbar has left/right icons for scrolling the view - that's right, there's not even any swipe/drag detection. Super Angry Birds feels like an early beta for the Nokia 5800 in 2009. The other two middle icons are to rest to the cannon view and to zoom out to see the whole scene.

Thumbs up from the game but not from me. If this was a full review, the score would be in the low 30s. And that's out of 100.

You can download the free 'trial' here from the Nokia Store to see what I mean. Or buy the full version for £3 here. I wouldn't recommend it though.

Although games continue to appear for Symbian, as of late 2012, it's safe to say that most of the best ones have already now appeared - begging the question of which are/were the best, at least for the touchscreen generation? If you've just picked up a Nokia 808 then where should you start in your search for gaming? We're not talking thousands of top games, as on iOS, but there are still plenty of decent leisure titles that are well worth investigating. Here's a crowd-sourced top 20!

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

In reverse order(!):

20. iBomber

A tower defense game with immense polish and refinement, reviewed here.

19. Mau Mau

The classic card version of 'Uno', immaculately programmed to work with either keypad, keyboard or touchscreen. Reviewed here.

18. ZingMagic Chess V

The longest running chess franchise on Symbian and a tremendously polished game. Available here in ad-supported version and here as a commercial game.

17. Sky Force Reloaded Protoxide: Death Race

The best known shoot 'em up on Symbian never loses its blasting appeal. It seems there's an error on the Nokia Store for this, probably a result of an old install certificate. So - in a last minute substitution, let me put a vote in for another action game, Protoxide: Death Race, with stunning graphics and smooth 3D action. Amazing stuff. Here's my review.

16. Raging Thunder 2 HD

A step too far, perhaps, in terms of game extras, but you can't fault the value proposition and graphics in this driving epic. Reviewed here.

15. Monopoly Classic HD

The ultimate incarnation of a board game classic, brought right up to date, with electronic everything. Reviewed here.

14. Tetris HD

Superbly implemented, it's Tetris, with several game variations. It's official, it's colourful and the gameplay will last a lifetime. Reviewed here.

13. RealGolf 2011 HD

Pushing the graphics capabilities of the Symbian^3 generation phones to their limits, gameplay here isn't fabulously fast, but then this is golf - it's not supposed to be fast! Still a recommended game. Reviewed here.

12. Dungeon Hunter 2 HD

A stunning isometric RPG with all the trimmings. Reviewed here.

11. Need For Speed: Shift HD

The ultimate 'straight' street racing game for Symbian - very polished, very fast. Reviewed here.

10. GT Racing: Motor Academy

And the equivalent for circuits, GT Racing is the most out and out realistic sports car racing sim on the platform and the one I keep coming back to because it's just so challenging... Reviewed here.

9. Slice Ice

The arctic logic slicing game that will frustrate for hours. Reviewed here.

8. Pro Evolution Soccer 2011

The ultimate football game on Symbian. Arcade action, strategy, depth, it's all here. Reviewed here.

7. Dalton the Awesome

The best 'running' game, pursued by zombies, no less. Drawn graphics 'draw' you in, etc! Reviewed here.

6. Cut the rope

The cross-platform arcade puzzler, getting your head around strategy and split second timing in order to feed the monster... Reviewed here.

5. Micropool

The game I've played most over the last few years and, it seems, quite popular with Symbian gamers everywhere. The key to its success is a powerful interface and good AI to challenge yourself against. Reviewed here.

4. Sparkle

Arguably the most polished game I've ever played on Symbian. Sparkle will amaze (and addict) you in every way. Reviewed here.

3. Fruit Ninja

Cross platform again, surely everyone's played this by now? Anyway, it's on Symbian and playing well.... Reviewed here.

2. Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD

The most popular car racing title on the platform, albeit one with powerups and other gimmicks - hey, it seems people like these! Reviewed here.

1. Angry Birds

I've cheated slightly, since it wasn't clear by those voting as to which of the various Angry Birds titles they were voting for! But all are polished and well worth a look - also available for every other mobile platform, of course... For example, the 'Seasons' version is reviewed here. And here are the standard and Rio variants in the Nokia Store.

It's all very well having a navigation package to guide you from town to town, but sometimes it would be nice to see where you've been - especially if you just got lost and wanted to know where you went wrong. Or if you want to analyse a common journey and see if there's a better alternative. Or perhaps you want to track a cycle ride or other leisure journey? That's what Track My Route Pro is designed for and it does it pretty well, let down only by some UI bugs.

Here's Track My Route Pro in action:

Not often you see a legal Windows-like T&C on a Symbian app! (right) the splash screen offers some clues as to functionality

Easy enough to get started and then maps are pulled over the air on your cellular connection as you drive, with position logged every second or so.

Various options for saving a completed route (or section thereof), could be handy for building route segments for a club outing of some kind?

Saved routes can be brought up again at any point and shared by Bluetooth, Email, etc. with the route itself being a (valid for two weeks) URL such as http://scms.migital.com/myroute/map.aspx?id=1161 that gets included in the communication.

My main disappointment with the application was that performance wasn't great, and not helped by a huge bug in the touchscreen UI. With a map on screen, you can't usually swipe upwards at all - instead, you have to swipe down a bit, which then releases the code to allow you to swipe upwards - making map navigation a real pain.

You can buy Track My Route Pro in the Nokia Store for £1 here.

The 361 Degrees Podcast has returned for a fourth season. In the fourth episode of the new season, we talk about whether things (services / apps / experiences) should be mobile first. 

Episode description:

This week the team ask themselves, "If smartphones are so great shouldn't more things be available first (or better… or quicker) on mobile?" We discuss the candidates for being 'mobile first' and the challenges. We also discuss our 'things of the week' (in-store wifi, ditching international calling charges with VoIP and the HTC / Apple patent settlement) and anticipate the next '361 Live' being held tonight (a few last minute tickets still left).

361 Degrees also now has an associated newsletter:

Updates on each episode (and bulletins between seasons), 'behind the scenes' news , comment round-ups and personal views from the team. 'Back Chat' also offers a way to respond directly to the team on the topics we discuss each week.

You can sign up for the newsletter here.

About 361 Degrees

361 Degrees is a podcast all about mobile technology. From consumer to enterprise and from fun to industry analysis, we investigate and discuss mobile technology and the mobile industry.

You can follow and subscribe to 361 Degrees on the dedicated mini-site, on Soundcloud, with an RSS reader or podcatcher, via iTunes via Zune or on any of the hosts' sites.

You can't beat an old game classic revamped for modern touchscreen phones - Warships - Sea on Fire! is in this mould and very well done, with my only slight concerns being over some of the developer's monetisation methods. Loads of screens, comment and the Store link below.

Battleships, of course, is the game classic being modelled here. The original has two pads of paper and pencils, while the plastic version has bazillions of little pins to lose and get sucked up in the hoover - this all-software version at least promises instant gameplay with no hassles....

A pretty enough splash screen, but some of the page-to-page dialogs are a little amateurish. There are social links and online options, though no multi-player options, sadly - that would have made a big difference in this turn-by-turn classic. There's a 'datasync' option, claiming to retrieve updates and more, but every time I tried this, I just got an error...

Nice to have three different themes for the game UI, but the 'unlock' isn't quite what you may think - read on.... It's also nice to have so many languages supported out of the box - well done, Tequila Planet.

Basic dialogs and help screens - all very no-frills here, but let's move on swiftly to the game itself...

As you might expect, each battle is prefaced by deciding where to place your ships on the traditional gird. Thankfully, it's all touchscreen-driven - no grid references are ever needed in Warships - the grid labels are purely for nostalgia reasons!

A battle in progress, with animated cannonballs flying in to wreak (animated flaming) destruction - (left) on my fleet, (right) on my opponent's!

More basic dialogs, but the game itself was fun and very well implemented. Note the various stats at the bottom of the screen....

The stats are then compiled into an overall score for each battle; (right) which can then be sent into an online competition... if you cough up £1.50 for a premium SMS.... Hmmm, I think I'll give this a miss, thanks.

Bit by bit, you rise up your local rankings table; (right) the themes mentioned earlier are unlocked, not by achievements, but by more premium SMS action.

Now, with Warships: Sea on Fire! available for free, it's obviously churlish to complain about the developer wanting to get some recompense for his hard work. It's fair enough to have the two extra themes as paid-for options, but premium SMS seems awfully primitive now that proper in-app purchasing is available in the Nokia Store. After all, if you have to reset or change your device, you'd have to buy the themes all over again.

I could, however, live with the current implementation - it's having the online high score thing also done by premium SMS that's galling - not a very good way to encourage active competition, I feel.

The lack of online multiplayer is very telling too. After a few games against the computer AI you'll quickly get bored - knowing that a human is on the other end adds an extra something that would be well worth upgrading for. Over to you, Tequila Planet, what can you manage?

You can download the free base game of Warships - Sea on Fire! here in the Nokia Store.

Nokia has been consistently at the top of the camera phone tree for a decade now, but many people were curious about Nokia's choice of using 5 megapixels as the default  capture resolution for the 2012 Nokia 808 PureView. The claim is that the pixels themselves are 'pure' and that most people don't need more than 5mp, but I wanted to quantify the 808's claims in the best way I know possible - by comparing directly with Nokia's own 5mp Xenon-equipped imaging flagship from five years ago, the N82. Let the shoot out commence!

Before showing actual photos (gathered on a trip to South Hill Park in Autumn sunshine), a reminder of the basic specs of the two stills cameras, separated by five years, remember:

Although the Nokia 808's camera specifications naturally outgun the N82's by a fairly large margin, it should be noted, even emphasied, that the 2007 Nokia N82 has a camera sensor that's much larger than all the Android, iOS and Windows Phones on the market today, in 2012. Yes, Nokia has/had that much of a lead in terms of camera phones. But I digress...

By the way, if my featuring the classic N82 has you getting all nostalgic, then look out for a revised 'Pimping' article for this five year old device, coming to AAS very soon....

So to my tests then, seven test shots across different conditions and subjects, looking at both the overall exposure and the detail captured.

Test 1: landscape, sunshine

The archetypal test 'snap' - any camera-toting phone should get this nailed, of course. I wouldn't expect much difference here between the N82 and 808, and indeed between any smartphone camera from the last few years. Here are the two photos, resized first to fit on this web page, the 808's and then the N82's:

As expected then. Cropping in to look at the central detail, we see:

The colour difference in the brickwork is somewhat striking, though I have to say that neither photo gets it right - the actual colour (to my eyes) is more of a fuller orange, darker than the N82 makes out and not as red as the 808 suggests. There's not a world of difference in the detail here, but then this is a small crop of a 5mp image and the raw resolution is the limiting factor here. If you look really closely, you can see more contrast and less artefacts in the 808's image, but the differences aren't massive.

Test 2: bright colours, sunshine

Brilliant direct sunshine and some stunning golf autumn leaves against a brilliant blue sky. The colours and the intricate detail in the leaves should prove very testing. As before, here are the two photos, resized first to fit on this web page, the 808's and then the N82's:

Both phone cameras do a great job, especially considering the N82 is from so long ago... Cropping in to look at the central detail, we see:

Again, both phones do well, though again once you look really closely (e.g. the branches) you can see more detail and better realism, even though both photos are taken at the same resolution.

Test 3: green detail

One of the biggest issues with older cameras, in my experience, is that they lacked the processing power and to handle a mass of colour with fine detail (e.g. grass and greenery), producing a muddy mess instead of trying to follow the detail. The N82 and N95 definitely fell into that trap, back in 2007, so I chose an impressive tree, a mass of green. As before, here's the 808's photo and then the N82's:

Hmm.... definitely a slight discolouration creeping into the N82 images here - the 808's colour for the huge oak tree is perfect. Cropping in to look at the central detail, we see:

Where leaves overlap, you can definitely see the muddiness I mentioned earlier, with the JPG compression being unable to cope with the mass of subtle detail. In contrast, the 808 crop above shows plenty of original detail, plus (as I'll come back to below) there's the facility to zoom in or increase the resolution if needed....

Test 4: macro detail, sunshine

Let's go macro - I noticed some tufts of wool, presumably left over from a livestock demo, lying in the sunshine. Perfect for a detailed macro shot. Here's the 808's try and then the N82's:

Both phone cameras do well here - if anything I prefer the N82's colouration. Cropping in to look at the central detail, we see:

The detail in the central, focussed part of the 808's image is astonishing - the N82 does well, but there's blow out in the brightest parts of the photo and, again, muddiness where the detail is too much for the compression being attempted. In case you're wondering, by the way, the original 808 image was 1.1MB and the N82 one 1.5MB, making the 808's image all the more impressive.

Test 5: extreme macro

The ornate detail on an 'interestingly' coloured bench handle, lit by weak Autumn sun, low in the sky. Let's see how much of the texture of the painted metal each camera phone can capture. Here's the 808's snap and then the N82's:

Something slightly odd about the handle colour in the N82 version - again, the 808 had the colour nailed properly - it's too pale and the wrong shade in the bottom photo. Cropping in to look at the central detail, we see:

Not too much in it, but the 808 definitely has the edge for contrast and detail - the 808 crop somehow looks more... natural.

Test 6: indoors, low light, no flash, close-up

Not that much light around here, just ambient lighting on this paralympics photo. I turned flash off for both phones so that I'd be looking just at naturally gathered light. Here are the two photos, resized first to fit on this web page, the 808's and then the N82's:

The N82 shot looks clearer, but it's slightly deceptive because (as with all the shots here) the 808 has a slightly wider field of view, so shooting from the same distance it fits more into the frame and everything looks slightly smaller. Cropping in to look at the central detail, we see:

Cropped right in, it's easy to see that the 808-captured verson has richer, purer colours, with far less artefacts - look at the rich blue top for example - it has been turned into something of a mottled purple mess by the N82.

Test 7: Xenon-lit Christmas tree

Ah yes, with Christmas fast approaching, where would we be without the archetypal Xenon-flash-lit tree shot?! There was reasonable artificial/ambient lighting too, so this wasn't lit entirely by the flash, but you'll get the idea anyway. Here's the 808's snap and then the N82's:

Both excellent Xenon snaps - but then the N82's flash is around the same brightness as the 808's (unlike the N8's which was half the size). Cropping in to look at the central detail, we see:

The murky artefacts are back - look at the pine needles in the N82 version compared to the individual leaves in the 808 shot. Look also at the smooth detail on the red bauble, which is turned into a slight orange decoration with more fuzzy artefacts by the N82 camera.

Five years of progress

I'm being a little hard judging the N82's photos against the very best of 2012, but that was, after all, the point of the article. The N82 photos above (and typical N95 photos - which had the same camera unit, albeit minus the Xenon flash) were leaps and bounds ahead of the competition back in 2007 - hey, the iPhone didn't even have auto-focus at the time. So, in hindsight, it's astonishing that the N82 is even comparable to something from 2012, and credit's due where credit's due.

But the advances in sensor technology and image processing in particular have a noticeable effect, as you can see above. There's also, in the Nokia 808's case, a huge extra factor which I haven't tested at all - the ability to shoot at 8 megapixels or even 34 or 38 megapixels if needed, using the native resolution of the giant 808 sensor. Plus, when composing a shot, the PureView system can be used to losslessly zoom in, to better frame something and pull out more detail. 

PS. More to taking photos than just the photos....

There are two more important factors that are well worth picking up on. Firstly, the N82, which seemed quite fast enough back in the day (all phones ran at that speed!), seemed to be wading through treacle when focussing, bringing up image previews and saving files. In contrast, the 808 focussed in an instant, brought the image up almost immediately and was at least an order of magnitude faster.

Secondly, there's the screen clarity - compare a low brightness QVGA, 2.4" display with a high brightness, ClearBlack Display nHD 4.0" screen and, well, there's simply no comparison.... switching between the two phones in terms of user experience, even as just a camera, was like going from a handheld TV from the 1990s to a 2012 40" LCD television.

Again, this isn't a sleight on the N82 - it was  terrific for its time, but processor and display technology has improved enormously since 2007.

Comments welcome. Could you go back to a Nokia N95/N82 phone camera? Would you notice the difference? 

With slick mapping and address finding that belies its free status, TaxiCounter is a slick little utility that might well save you some money if you're a regular taxi cab user. Once you've set the appropriate rates for your city or area, the taxi fare for any journey can be estimated. Of course, it can't factor in jams or time of day, but hey, it's a good start, and may well identify a taxi firm that's either good value or ripping you off...

At the heart of TaxiCounter is the ability to change currency and the various parameters of taxi ride costings, with subtleties like startup costs and minimum prices. Start and stop points can be selected by simply double tapping the map - the approximate addresses are then looked up online (e.g. "15 Haddon Drive, Woodley") and the cost calculation done.

It's easy to edit this dialog and change the calculations. The 'Contact' tab is to record the details of your most used taxi firms (handy, though you'd have thought they'd already be in Contacts), while 'Counter' simply starts a calculation based on your current position and time, i.e. so you can compare what's on the taxi's meter with what's on screen. 

TaxiCounter appears to be developed by a French developer and the English isn't perfect, but it's free and it's potentially quite useful, so no complaints here.

You can download TaxiCounter here for free in the Nokia Store.

One surprisingly common need for most of us is to collaborate with our partner and other friends and family over specific to-do lists, whether they're jobs to be done or presents/groceries to buy. There are various low-tech ways to do this and some very high-tech (using Microsoft Office or Google Docs), but there should be a happy middle ground - and there is, thanks to Todoteria, a server-based solution that's custom designed to help people share to-do lists in real time. Here's a brief look at the new Symbian client, written in Qt.

The idea here is that the Todoteria server keeps the lists central and you maintain or share them from there. I'm sure other such systems exist in the cloud, but it's unusual to see one implemented specifically for Symbian. Each list you create can have a custom or random identifier (to keep it unique on the todoteria system and provide a URL that you can give to others). Once created, anyone you give the address to can check off items (i.e. "bought that" or "done that"). 

Obviously, you can have multiple lists on the go - I've used 'random' IDs above (generated by the server) but you can probably get away with something like todoteria.com/steves50th for a present list, for example. At least until the system gets really popular and such addresses are taken. Even then, lists expire by default, so will presumably disappear from the address system and can be re-used by others.

Implemented in Qt, the Symbian client's actually slicker than the slightly clunky web-based editor, though you need the latter for the initial sign-up. There's an excellent set of Help screens which lead you nicely into how it all works.

Well worth a look if this sort of collaborative to-do management is something that's been lacking in your family or club...

You can download the Todoteria client here for free in the Nokia Store. There are mutterings on the Todoteria site about a 'pro' account to get more features, though I suspect these are still being worked on.

If ever there was an aptly named game, it is the subject of this review, King Oddball. The game is yet another physics simulation (which is no bad thing), but it's more a game of timing. As King Oddball swings back and forth, held by his tongue, you have to choose the right moment to release, so as to create the most havoc and destruction on the tanks and helicopters waiting below. Yes, this game is that strange, but is it equally addictive?

King Oddball is a strange creature whose body consists of a hardened head and remarkably long tongue, but nothing else. His only goal in life seems to be destroying helicopters and tanks. We don't know why, as there's no story. Frankly, I can't imagine a story that would justify such a strange situation.

Nevertheless, the game world is as it is, and it's actually quite fun. On a mechanical level, King Oddball is a game about pendulums. As you release the rock, it shoots off with a tangential velocity and its speed is related to where in the swing it was let go. The lower down, the more kinetic energy is built up, and the faster the rock will go.

If you manage to release right at the stationary point of the swing, before it starts back on the return swing, it will just fall straight down with no sideways motion. It's all about the interchange of potential and kinetic energy. You were listening on that day in school, right?

If the rock manages to hit a military target then it will rebound in another direction, which is where I felt the physics gave way to artistic licence – but I'm not complaining. The trick, then, is to try to set up the rebounds such that the rock will land on another target, and another; the more targets hit with one rock, the greater the score multiplier will grow.

Things are made more interesting by having some tanks mounted on platforms and others behind destructible brick walls. In later levels there are even some vehicles encased in ice, which require an extra knock to be destroyed.

As with many games, there's an achievement system built into King Oddball. As you perform more and more tricks, intentionally or not(!), you'll receive new badges. For example, the headache badge is awarded for hitting yourself on the head!

The levels of the game are attached to a map of the landscape King Oddball is presumably fighting for. The entire world looks to be a three by three grid, but every square within that is divided into a four by four grid. King Oddball cannot move to a new large square until he has conquered all sixteen sub-levels (fifteen actually, see below).

To make things more interesting, I'd hoped the world map might offer some sort of meta game, where the path across the map was affected by your performance in the levels, and vice versa. Unfortunately, there's no such interplay. However, each four by four grid has a square given over to a special interest point.

For example, the third block of levels gives you access to a mini-game which has a dedicated set of levels where King Oddball only has one rock to destroy all targets. It's well placed in the order of things. By the time it is reached, the player should have already discovered some nuances to the game and thus earned a few achievements, and so will appreciate the skill required to complete the mini-game.

King Oddball is clearly unique, and at £1.50 in the Nokia Store it doesn't break the bank.

Highly recommended.

Having done a walkthrough of the various resets available for Symbian^3-class smartphones like the N8, it may well be that you followed me all the way through to the end and then regretted doing so because you actually did need the photo and video editors, Adobe Reader and so on - in other words, the 'sales package software' that gets zapped if you use the four finger reset of doom... Worry not though, for I show you below how to restore your phone to full 'factory fresh' condition - in fact, better than factory fresh, since it'll have the very latest firmware on it as well.

The state of a Symbian phone when you first turn it on is dependent on the firmware that's installed (e.g. v111.xx.xxx), this is stored in a read only area of your phone's flash memory, designated Z:, which is where the OS gets loaded from; and it's also dependent on the sales package software, the extra apps which are (usually) market-dependent and which get preloaded at the factory - games, offers, major third party apps, trials, and so on. It's these latter that were missing if you went for the 'ultimate' reset in my earlier tutorial. 

So I thought I'd better at least give you some pointers about restoring the sales package software, in case you decide that you wanted all this after all. All 1.2GB of it (though admittedly that does include some full-fat 'HD' games).

I say 'pointers' because this isn't going to be a blow-by-blow tutorial, mainly because the software we'll be using to put the sales package back on isn't 'end user' software. For obvious reasons.

In fact, I'd better start with some disclaimers:

• Don't do anything like this if your phone is still in warranty - if it is, go make friends with the people at your local Nokia Care Point and hopefully they'll do this for you.
• Don't blame us if something goes wrong.
• The 'Phoenix' software referred to here isn't openly available, which means you'll have to source it via a Google search (e.g. "Phoenix 2011 download") and, again, we couldn't possibly officially endorse you using it. And you should approach likely download sites with all malware defences raised - just in case.

Some pointers, then...

With Phoenix 2011 installed and your device (e.g. the N8 you did the 'ultimate' reset on) powered on, in Nokia Suite mode, and connected via microUSB, start up Phoenix and click on your USB connection in the top-left dialog. Then use 'Scan product' on the 'File' menu. Your phone should be found and shown in the bottom status bar.

On the Tools menu, pick 'Data Package Download'.

Your phone's product code will be shown, click on 'Check availability'. You'll see confirmation of the latest firmware available and the option to download it. Note in particular the option to 'Download optional files also'. Check this - this is the Sales Package software needed.

Yes, it's a big download with the optional files - 1.5GB or so. Set it going, note the download folder and make a cup of tea.

Once downloaded, find the files on your hard disk - in a folder named after the Nokia device name (e.g. RM-596 here, for the N8) and copy the folder into /Program files/Nokia/Phoenix/Products, as shown below:

Now back to Phoenix, use 'Open product' on the 'File' menu. The firmware files then get loaded into the applications.

Use 'Firmware update' on the 'Flashing' menu and click on 'Options':

You'll see that the vital 'emmc' package ('Memory Card Content', itself a bit misleading, since it includes lots of bits that get installed onto the system disk (C:)) is included.

Finally, pick 'Refurbish' from the main flashing dialog and sit back and wait while the magic happens.

Once flashed, your phone will be restarted, as good as new - or possibly better(!) And hopefully with all the sales package apps back where they were before you started experimenting!

____________

I normally say 'comments welcome' after an AAS article, but I've kept this deliberately high level since All About Symbian isn't the best place for detailed help on fixing software flashing issues. There are plenty of other help forums which are better suited! Please keep any comments generic - the mods here aren't your personal firmware support team!

It came to my attention recently that many of the links in my older 'Pimping' articles on All About Symbian had now broken, usually because the downloads they linked to no longer exist. Plus there was the odd nugget of information which was not valid anymore. I can't promise all new text, but I have at least gone through the following four articles and made sure all the software links are fixed or replaced: Pimping the Nokia N82, Pimping the Nokia E72, Pimping the Nokia N86, Pimping the Nokia N96.

This 'pimping' series is looking at hardware which is one or two steps from the cutting edge, yet with a little loving care can be brought well and truly into the 2011 smartphone world. In this case, it's the turn of the phenomenal Nokia E72, which offers a fixed, traditional QWERTY physical keyboard in a one piece, robust form factor, plus a realistic battery life (with the 1500mAh BP-4L) of three days of normal use, something which most 2011 units could only dream of.

Full article links:

Pimping the Nokia N82 (candybar, indestructible, Xenon flash)

Pimping the Nokia E72 (qwerty candybar, 3 days battery life)

Pimping the Nokia N86 (first 8mp camera, large sensor, best dual slider ever made)

Pimping the Nokia N96 (2.8" S60 screen, terrific visibility)

Astronomy is an app genre that thankfully never seems to go away. Mobile devices are the electronic companions always at our side and can provide an excellent guide to the night sky. We've had quite a few astro apps through our doors here at All About Symbian (see our Top 5 apps list), and Smart Planetarium is the latest astronomical discovery in the Nokia Store. Let us take a look to see where it fits into the constellation of other Symbian astronomy apps.

My first impressions of Smart Planetarium proved to be somewhat deceptive, as the overall look of the application, coupled with slightly sluggish graphical performance did not reflect kindly. However, delving beneath the surface and considering the feature sets of competing applications provided a very different picture.

When you first open Smart Planetarium, you are greeted with a star map of the sky, complete with constellations, an equatorial line (including compass bearings), and even an ecliptic line (the line that the sun appears to take across the sky). The only user interface elements are zoom controls (there's no pinch to zoom) and an "ESC" button, which reveals a toolbar. That bar only has an exit option and a menu icon though – there are no Nokia Belle style toolbar icons. Among the available menu options are toggles for the ecliptic and constellation patterns, in addition to an azimuthal grid.

Tapping on any object in the sky brings up a table of yellow text giving the vital statistics any astronomer would want to know such as magnitude, spectral type, coordinates, and so forth. Furthermore, certain objects of interest in our solar neighbourhood also have a dedicated screen to show animations of their dynamic features. Examples include the precession of Saturn's pole (and thus its rings), the motion of Jupiter's four largest satellites, and the phases of the Moon, Venus and Mercury. These animations can be run back and forth via a slider, or can be stepped through in set time increments via on-screen buttons.

Unfortunately, there is no search mode, so explorations require manual dragging, zooming, and tapping to identify. Even though its presence wasn't immediately obvious, there is also an augmented reality view too. This feature wasn’t clear because it appears to be disabled for viewing angles which point below the horizon, and doesn't activate until you point the phone upwards to the sky. This actually makes perfect sense – it makes a subtle way to turn augmented reality on and off. However, it is not what I was used to from using similar applications, thus I initially missed it.

In addition to setting your viewing coordinates based on current time, data and GPS coordinates, it is possible to manually enter a location, date and time. This is very handy for assessing the location of objects in the sky on a future out-of-town observation trip.

Overall, Smart Planetarium is pretty comprehensive, but it is missing a few key features, such as Messier objects, and a red mode for aiding one's natural night vision. As mentioned above, the lack of a search tool makes anything more than casual browsing somewhat tricky too.

Compared to other applications like Stellarium Mobile and Star Chart, the graphics of Smart Planetarium look distinctly bare. Whether or not this matters depends on if the developer intended the application to be more of a novelty app or a serious observation companion. Most of the options would point to the latter, but in that case the lack of a night viewing mode is a serious mark against it.

Smart Planetarium is priced at £1.50, which is equal to many of its competitors, and given its feature set I'd say it merits serious consideration.

Out for a while but not covered here yet, I thought the reduction in price of this rather nifty arcade puzzle might be an opportunity for a mini-review here. Candy Bombs combines elements of 'Columns' and 'Frozen Bubble' to produce instantly graspable gameplay which is perfectly pitched for a challenging game. Screens and link below.

Although £1 to buy, there's still a promotional screen to click through, but it's so well drawn that I'll forgive the developers, Joyco - indeed these other games look worth checking out.

Bare bones menus, but everything's here, right down to fine control of the background music and sound effects...

Down to the game, then, blocks of four (or more) touching coloured candies of the same colour explode, with your aim in each level being to destroy a certain number of candies. The 'drop and twist and move from side to side' game mechanic is similar to Tetris and a thousand imitators.

Unusually, there's (virtual) button rather than touch-swipe control - this works surprisingly well, playing the game with two thumbs (the left hand controlling left and right). There's no multitouch, but then you'd naturally do just one operation at a time, trying to line up pairs of falling candies to settle just where you want them.

Gameplay is well pitched in that candies start falling faster and a baseline of (malteser?) candies rise faster and faster, giving you less space and time to think and work with. In short, Candy Bombs is well pitched and quickly gets into "Oh, darn, missed that one, now I'm really going to have to think and move like a dervish to survive!" territory.

You can buy Candy Bombs for £1 here in the Nokia Store.

Supplied with full source code, Qt DrumKit is a multi-touch, fully working virtual drumkit for Symbian and Meego, complete with recording facility. It works well as an example of how responsive a Qt application can be, even if I did notice a few visual and audio glitches when really pushed hard. Interestingly, the same DrumKit code, with some tweaks, also works on Series 40 devices (via Java ME) and even (developer-unlocked) Windows Phones (via XNA).

Here are screens from the project when installed on a Nokia 808:

There are actually two drumkits to 'play' on. Here's the first, a synth style set of pads - as you play each pad, it lights up. You can use multitouch to play more than one at once and the sounds do ring out, though the 'green lantern' visual effect is only applied to the first pad hit:

Long press on a pad/drum and you get to customise the kit as needed:

Tap the left hand drumkit icon and there's a 'real' drumkit to play on instead. The same idea as above, except that this time you get subtle drum animations rather than lighting effects, when hit.

The 'record' and 'play' controls at the top are self-explanatory and work well. In terms of performance, I did notice some break up of the sound samples when playing multiple drums simultaneously - is this an issue just on the 808? Comments welcome!

You can download the Symbian SIS file here, 1.8MB, and it should install on anything from the N8 onwards (including the VGA-screened E6).

Along with the project, there's a fun little musical promo from Nokia Developer:

Anyone remember the Tron light cycles? OK, so the movie made for a more exciting experience than any subsequent computer game, but at least you can try your hand at Tron-style action here in Light Racing, for all touchscreen Symbian smartphones and with full 'multi-player'. I show it below on the Nokia E6....

In theory, up to four players can take part, with the remaining slots being taken up by 'AI' opponents. Though, in this case, the thought of four people trying to both watch the action and prod their icons on the tiny 2.4" E6 display is somewhat risible...!

The main interface and help screens are somewhat barebones, but the game is quite configurable, not least because it runs in four different speeds, according to taste.

And so to the game itself, with each human player tapping on anti-clockwise and clockwise rotation controls as needed. Though, as ever, when your light cycle returns towards you, you've got to carry out the mental leap that the controls don't also mean 'just' left and right(!) Easy enough when you get the hang of it though.

The animation is smooth, though on the small E6 screen the light cycle 'lines' are quite thin and when an AI player decides to double back on itself at light speed with zero pixels between the two tracks, it can be hard to see exactly what's going on.

Whether this is worth picking up for £1 in the Nokia Store depends on how much pleasure you derive from Tron-style racing. Personally, there's a bit too much tracing rectangles of ever decreasing size in the hope that your opponents run out of space before you do....

Almost certainly sneaking in with Symbian Nokia Belle Feature Pack 2 was direct uploading of captured videos to YouTube - it works brilliantly, but there's a huge caveat about the whole concept. Below, I show what to do and what to worry about....

Grab a short test video (trust me, keep it short for now - see later....) and then find it in Gallery. Note that there's a Facebook icon front and centre as the way to share this media. Don't be put off by this.

The icon is simply showing the last service you used to share something - don't worry, it'll change in a moment. In the meantime, tap on the options menu (the three lines):

Choose 'Share' (i.e. just as if you were going to share the media via Facebook etc.) You'll see (what to you is probably) a new option, to upload to YouTube:

As this is the first time you've done this, there's a log-in process (subsequent uploads will be authenticated automatically):

... And then it's on to adding title and description as needed. Note that because this sharing mechanism is tightly baked into Belle FP2, the new keyboard is available to help with spelling and word-completion:

Here's a typical upload 'form', simply fill in and then tap on 'Share':

That's it!

There's no obvious way to tell how far the upload has got, but there is a 'sharing' plugin for the standard Symbian Belle notifications pane - so swipe this down and you'll see the upload meter. Tap this and there's the opportunity to cancel the upload if needed.

Once you get back to the Gallery screen, you'll see that the little YouTube icon/shortcut has displaced the Facebook one. Mind you, if you then share something to Facebook, the icon will switch again, so....!

The bandwidth issue and best solution

There's an endemic problem in all this though, and it's both an obvious one and one that's common to all smartphones on all platforms. My short five second 1080p video clip, captured on the Nokia 808, was about 10MB. A real world clip, say a minute of a band performing, would run to well over 100MB. Even on a good 3.5G connection, this will take a while (tens of minutes) and will take a big chunk out of whatever data tariff you're on. 

And there's no way to force the OS to only use Wi-fi for uploads. All of this is the downside of the terrific video quality and resolution we're now seeing from mobile devices, but I'd argue that it's worth going old-school in terms of specs. When you're shooting something which you know you'll want to share while mobile, pop into 'Creative' mode and downgrade the resolution to '360p'. On the 808, this also has the happy benefit that you can zoom in a lot further without losing quality - up to 12x, to get the singer's face up close or the guitarist's hands, etc.

At 360p, a minute of video will be only around 16MB, which is far more practical to share from a 3.5G-connected mobile. And the people who watch your clip online will still get a decent enough experience in a typical web-hosted playback window - things will only look a bit blocky if they go full-screen on a desktop or laptop display.

Just - please - remember to switch back to 'Auto' or similar afterwards. You won't want to be still shooting at 360p for that crucial baby footage that's intended for 1080p editing on the desktop!