Sebastian Brannstrom's Podcatcher and CoverUp have been Symbian staples for years, each commercial applications and garnering decent sales as a result. With Symbian in its twilight days and in light of the Nokia Store 'freezing', Sebastian has taken the generous step of making both applications freeware as of now. See the links below.

Podcatcher is the only fully Symbian-native podcast client on the platform and is something that I and many others have used for years. Here's the link to it in the Nokia Store, now listed as freeware.

CoverUp is an excellent way to fill in gaps in your Symbian music player's album art, back-filling it all from Amazon's music listings. Here's the link to it in the Nokia Store, also now listed as freeware.

With the Store about to freeze, having an application go 'free' has an extra benefit beyond the obvious one of not having to pay for it anymore. It's now possible to grab the SIS installer file directly, should you want to archive it for easier installation in the future (or if the Nokia Store goes away under Microsoft's oversight). To save you knowing the trick, here's Podcatcher's installer and here's CoverUp's.

Note also that Sebastian is working on Wiki pages for Podcatcher and CoverUp, both works in progress.

Consider this a bit of a blast from the past - AAS reader Kurt Kaufman has sent in a nice batch of photos taken during 2013 on his Nokia 701. This was a fairly rare Symbian smartphone, released in 2011 and equipped with Nokia's second generation EDoF (Extended Depth of Field) camera. You can read more about EDoF gen 2 here in my own write-up, or see below for Kurt's rather nice photos and some comments....

The current craze for 'smart' apps and devices taking multiple photos and then combining them to show detail at multiple focus points is all a tiny bit ironic in the light of the existence of Nokia's EDoF technology since 2008, but let's leave that to one side and look at some nice examples of what the (rare) second gen EDoF camera in the Nokia 701 can do, thanks to Kurt:

[in each case, click the photo on the page to download the full 8MP version, should you wish to examine it]

Impressive shots, all in all, from a camera unit that's blazingly fast because of not needing to focus at all.... The last shot shows the limits of EDoF though, with the rabbit being just a tiny bit too close for comfort. EDoF gen 2 did slightly extend the usable range of the technology (down to 35cm) but stray that little bit closer and you start to get the characteristic fuzziness shown above.

It's a shame that EDoF never really took off - consumers and media alike merely perceived it as 'fixed focus', when it was far more clever than that. Part of the problem, in addition, was that people do like taking macro photos - of food, flowers, pets (as above), and so on. And this is where EDoF struggles.

Feel free to share your own EDoF masterpieces below - especially if on the 701 too....

Delight Custom Firmware (CFW) is very popular these days among hardcore Symbian enthusiasts, so it's noteworthy that the very latest build, v1.3, for the Nokia 808 just came out. See below for screens, links and changelog. Delight just got better - and no, you won't have to reinstall everything, assuming you're coming from a previous Delight CFW version.

From the official v1.3 page, here's the changelog since Delight 808 v1.2, the version I covered in my Pimping article:

Fixes:
- maximum homescreens set to 10 again
- fixed problems with SMS app after changing the skin via Delight App
- removed some double files, entries and unneeded folders
- missing calendar widget skin 

Mods:
- torch mod, now you can enable torch via lock key in power saver mode
- profile symbols, based on 7b's old Belle 111.30 vesion
- new stackmail widget .mif
- EvenFaster patch for ROMPatcher, thanks to padrino
- redesigned emails widgets

Updates:
- updated Delight App to 1.2.1
- addded more apps to menu folders
- share via YouTube got updated to last version

Translation fixes:
- Operator widget
- Torch widget
- WebView widget 

So only a few additions, plus some bug fixes then - most interestingly, for me, was testing out in the in-place updating via Phoenix (i.e. using 'Update Software' rather than 'Refurbish'):

In theory, it's important to go into 'Options' before clicking on 'Update Software' and remove the EMCC and UDA components, but I left everything on defaults (it's a fair cop, I forgot to tweak the flashing options) and the firmware update still worked just fine.

After the update is flashed, the Delight Updater system installs a few extra components - the only one I needed to tap on 'OK' for was the one to 'Run 1.3 Update', since I was already on Delight v1.2.

As usual , there are a wealth of non_English language options, see the original page for installation details on these.

Moving from v1.2 to v1.3 without any data or app loss 8-)

Comments welcome - how smooth was your Delight CFW update process?

AAS reader and (in this case) guest author Richard Trinkner (in the USA, unusually for a Symbian enthusiast) had an interesting tale to tell in a comment recently. So much so that he's now drafted a fuller version for the site, see below. It's fair to say that, although not mentioned explicitly, he's as much a Xenon-flash fan as myself and that this is a clinching factor in the narrative.

Richard writes:

I thought I might share my 24-hour experience owning a Samsung Galaxy S4 (running Android 4.3) after owing a Nokia N8 for a year and a Nokia 808 for 6 months. Long story short: I ran back to the 808 after just 24 hours with the Galaxy S4.

Why did I switch to the Galaxy? One of my sons has a Galaxy S III and loves it because the app selection is so rich. I checked out the Android Play store for apps and was amazed by the phenomenal array of apps for Android phones. I've read the AAS review of the Galaxy S4's camera and decided that it might be worth sacrificing a small bit of camera quality to move to the rich ecosystem of Android apps.  Despite my love for my 808, I bought a Galaxy S4 at the local T-Mobile store.  I was really looking forward to ESPN videos, Bridge Baron, the Sibley guide to the birds, seamless integration with Gmail, etc.

^{(my own [Steve's] photo from AndroidBeat.com)}

At first, I was really happy with the vast array of apps to choose from for Android. But quickly I realized that I would have to spend more money on apps to duplicate the native app functionality from my 808. Living in Colorado, and being one to prefer a weekend hiking in the wilderness and driving on remote roads, I need offline navigational abilities. Sygic for Android seemed to be the best choice to duplicate Nokia Maps' functionality, but it would cost $US40. I tried the trial version and liked it just fine. To create the functionality of sound profiles, I bought the Android app "Sound Profiles."

After a few hours, I was stunned by how quickly the Galaxy S4's battery drained. My entirely subjective feeling was that it drained about twice as fast as my 808.  This was my first negative feeling about the Galaxy.

Then I became aware of how many apps were active in the background.  I used a taskkiller app to kill the background apps, but found that I needed to run the taskkiller every few minutes to kill them off again. The apps seemed to me to be ones that had no need to be running in the background. These were "normal" foreground apps, not system utilities you might expect to need to run in the background.  These were apps that I had properly closed (killed), not ones that were running because I had launched them and forgotten to close them. I could use Android's native interface to check which apps were running, but none were actually shown. Only when I used the task killer did I see all the tasks running quietly in the background. Very frustrating. 

I could have dealt with these problems until I came to appreciate the horrific nature of the camera.  After reading the AAS review in which the S4 tied the 808 as a camera, I tried to take some indoors posed photos of family members by the Christmas tree.  Despite being a reasonably accomplished amateur photographer, I couldn't take a single passable photo with the S4. Every shot was grainy, with or without the flash. The flesh tones were appalling blue/green. I tried to use the on-screen shutter button, which was hard to hold still while taking the picture. I configured the phone to use the volume rocker for a shutter button, but that experience was even worse, as the volume rocker is on the wrong side of the phone to use it easily as a shutter button.

Once I got back to my own home, I tried taking some stills of my bedroom with the S4, hoping that maybe I just needed to develop more skill with the S4.  Every photo turned out to be heavily grainy and blurry. I took out my now-SIM-less 808, and easily took superb photos of the bedroom, with excellent color reproduction and clarity. I was even able to read the titles of book spines across the room, whereas with the S4 I could only barely tell that the shapes were books at all, let along books with titled spines. 

I've now packaged up the S4 and will return it (less a $50 restocking fee) to the T-Mobile store. Although I still miss the apps available in the Android world, I'm happy to have a usable camera again in my pocket. I'm also happy to know that my battery is still nearly fully charged several hours after charging.

I went back to the web to look for reviews of the Galaxy S4 camera. Unfortunately, very few of the shootouts on the web demonstrate how the cameras do in the situation probably most users will require the most: indoor, posed photos of friends and family. I would be content without being able to take 'frozen' photos (such as your famous beer-drinking pub-like photo), but I absolutely must be able to take still images of family and friends indoors. The Galaxy S4 was deeply disappointing - virtually unusable for anybody with a moderate desire for quality from a camera.

On Christmas morning, many people in my family gave each other Shutterfly products (custom photo drinks coasters, framed photos, etc.) and I was quietly proud to realize that every one of the photos used were taken by my Nokia 808. (I share my photos with family using SkyDrive, and family members had used my photos.) Not a single photo given as a gift was from an iPhone or Android phone. (Maybe the Nokia 1020 would create usable images?)

In any case, I just thought you'd all be interested in my real-world brief flirtation with the S4. Also, in the future, I'd give more attention in photo shootouts to 'indoors, people' photos. Even if the S4 might be able to take decent high-light-level outdoor photos, its indoors photos are abysmal.  Now, I'll either stay with my 808, consider the 1020 (despite its limited native functionality and apps), or wait to see what the rumored Sony Z2 will be like next year.

Merry Christmas, all!

___________

Thanks Richard. I did qualify my 808/S4 photo tests with the caveat that the ranking of the smartphone cameras depends hugely on what sort of subjects you shoot. If (like me) there are a lot of 'indoor, people' shots then only Xenon flash will do, as I [cough] believe I've mentioned many times! The Galaxy S4 takes terrific outdoor shots of macro subjects, for example, but as you say it (and almost every other smartphone on the market) struggles indoors with living, moving people!

A very interesting tale overall and one which resonated with many of my own observations. Comments, all?

Nokia's DC-19 Universal Portable USB Charger provides an easy way of topping up your phone's battery when out and about. That's something that seems to be an increasingly common requirement, a result of integrated batteries having become the norm, and the reality that most smartphones need to be charged at least once a day. There are a large number of portable battery charging products on the market, so is there anything that makes Nokia's latest entry in this category stand out from the crowd?

The Nokia DC-19 is the latest in a long line of portable battery charging accessories from Nokia, but it is most obviously a direct upgrade from the Nokia DC-16, with which it shares a similar columnar shape. But, as we shall discover below, the DC-19 is very definitely an upgrade, with the most important factor being a 50% increase in capacity, with no commensurate increase in volume (both the DC-16 and DC-19 are around 50cc in volume).

As with other recent Nokia accessories, the DC-19 is available in multiple colours (yellow, white, and cyan). These colours provide a match with some of the most popular colours used in Nokia's Lumia and Asha devices. However, it is worth noting that the DC-19 is a Universal Portable Battery Charger, which means it will work with any device that charges via microUSB.

The box contains the DC-19, a CA-189CD USB to microUSB charging/data cable, and a small user guide/warranty leaflet. The charging cable is colour matched to the DC-19 unit and is around 25cm long. The cable is covered with a rubber material that adds extra grip and that should stand up well during day-to-day usage.

Even a quick glance at the DC-19 makes it obvious that this is a Nokia product, carrying clear hallmarks of a product that has benefited from the attention of the Nokia design team. It's not just the now ubiquitous use of colour, it is also about the shape and feel of the product. Also notable is the use of a dual-shot casing design similar to that of the Lumia 625. 

At one end, there is a button (with battery icon) and four LED lights. On pressing the button, the LEDs will light up to indicate the charge level, something that is particularly useful if it has been a while since you used the device. At the other end, there is a Type A USB port and a microUSB port. The first of these is used when charging a device, while the second is used to charge the DC-19 itself. This means the device can both charge and be charged with the cable included in the box. 

The DC-19 has a capacity of 3200mAh, more than enough to fully recharge every device in Nokia's Lumia and Symbian device range, with the exception of the Lumia 1520's 3400mAh battery. For a relatively small device it is an impressive capacity, an indicator of both good design and advancing battery technology. Equally impressive is the 1200mA charger output, which means the DC-19 will recharge devices faster than many competing products (a charger output of around 950mA is more typical). It will also charge a greater range of devices, since some require higher levels before the charging circuits will activate.

The recharge time is impressive too, with Nokia quoting a full recharge time of 200 minutes, though this is partly dependent on what you're using to recharge the device. Recharging off a computer's USB port may be considerably slower than recharging using a wall socket, depending on the power set up of the USB port being used. When recharging, the DC-19's LED indicators will light up one-by-one to indicate the charge status, with a flashing light indicating the current charging level (e.g. three constant lights and one flashing light indicates the charge level is between 75% and 100%).

The DC-19 supports "daisy chain" recharging too, whereby the accessory is connected to a wall socket (or USB port), and a phone is connected to the DC-19. In this scenario, the DC-19 will recharge first and then, subsequently, recharge the phone. It's particularly handy when on the road with limited cables / power sockets / USB port, or simply for the plug-in everything and "forget until morning" use case. 

At the start of this review, we mentioned that the DC-19 as essentially being a replacement for Nokia's earlier DC-16 charging accessory. Making a comparison between the two shows several significant advantages in favour of the newer accessory. Battery capacity has been given a boost of almost 50% (2200mAh to 3200mAh). The increase in the output current, which means the DC-19 will charge devices faster than the DC-16, is also a notable upgrade, as is the the faster recharge rate. 

There's no need to upgrade if your current accessory is serving you well, but if you're looking to buy a new Nokia branded portable battery charger then the DC-19 is the unit to go for, even bearing in mind the £12 or so price difference between the two accessories. The DC-19 is currently available from Amazon UK for £31, but we expect that price to fall as the accessory become more readily available. 

Compared to other portable USB chargers in this category (e.g. Anker Astro Mini), the DC-19 is relatively expensive, but you're paying for both a superior specification and the reliability that comes with the high quality Nokia design and branding. You will also find other products that offer a higher battery capacity, but that comes with a size increase, which means they are generally unable to match the slip-in-the-pocket convenience of the Nokia unit.

That balance between portability and capacity, together with excellent design and top-of-the-line specifications, is what makes Nokia's DC-19 accessory stand out from the crowd and makes it one of the very best portable battery chargers in its class.

Essential for every Nokia device owner? Not quite, but it's really not that far away.

You'll remember that I featured Google HD for Symbian a month ago, showing how it gave a viable way into official Gmail, Google Maps and more? It just got updated, with the changelog shown below. Several significant improvements, along with some reassurances from the developer.

Here's the changelog for v1.8.6 from version 1.5.0:

• Many bugs fixed
• Split screen keyboard
• Links open in default web browser
• Statusbar can be set to visible
• Minor UI changes

Here's Google HD in action:

Getting started with Google HD, which gets slicker and slicker...

Split keyboard entry seems fine, albeit complicated by me using Swype here...; (right) the main Settings screen, all very graphical...

Browsing Google+ and switching Google 'modules'....

Given its reliance on specific URLs and browser user agents, I did wonder about updates for Google HD through 2014, what with the Nokia Store freeze-out. Happily, the developer, Koonooz, confirms:

Yes, Google HD support updates out of Nokia Store, it auto-checks for updates and lets a user know when there is an update available, the updates will be available to download from my own server. 

Future updates will be distributed as self-signed apps, apparently - these install in the same way as other SIS files, though with an extra dialog to tap your way through. 

The developer notes that all of his other Symbian apps are self-updating for 2014 too, in case you fancy trying them too:

• YouTubeHD+
• Facebook HD (an update is already on its way to resolve some issues)
• Facebook Downloader
• Yandex HD

A new year dawns and it seems that the Swype (v2.x) Beta that many of us had been using on Belle FP2 devices like the Nokia 808 has stopped working properly. Reported faults include simple non operation, device freezes and bogus update checks. This is the end of the road for Swype on these devices, though note that the earlier Swype v1.x (still in the Nokia Store) still works fine on Belle Refresh devices like the N8 and C7. [Update: see below for a hacked SIS installer that still works fine, at least on devices freed from the stock Nokia firmware restrictions!]

On my Nokia 808, having faced complete non-operation today, and even after disabling it (in Swype's own settings), trying to remove the 2.x beta version was tricky, as the usual 'Remove' app routine for Symbian didn't work first time. I had to restart the phone and then try again.

Version 1.x (in the Nokia Store) does still install under Belle FP2 (I tried it), but it doesn't integrate at all into the FP2 split keyboard system - the latter overrides Swype.

News on older devices like the N8 is better, in that the (non beta) version 1.x in the Nokia Store still installs and works fine (under Belle or Belle Refresh, of course):

It's perhaps to be expected that betas expire at some point, though a proper warning notice would have been nice, rather than Belle FP2 users suddenly find that things just weren't working and have to diagnose the problem for themselves.

Ah well. What now for Nokia 808/701 users? No Swype, it seems, so it's back to the built-in QWERTY keyboard. This does suggest words after mistypes, but (crucially for me at least) doesn't auto-correct them on the fly (as Swype 2.x did).

Update: thanks to Claudio in the comments below - we have a fix - at least for people who have abandoned Nokia's stock firmwares and switched to a custom firmware like Delight. Swype for Xeon (another CFW, but that's not vital here) installs and works fine on my (Delight CFW) Nokia 808, even in 2014. The usual caveats about Swype not being ideal for Messaging's conversation view apply, but otherwise Belle FP2 is up and running with Swype again! 

As everyone's now aware, the Nokia Store (for Symbian apps) is effectively frozen as of midnight tonight. Which means no updates, no new applications - nothing at all. Of course, a lot of the content can stay as-is (and will still be downloadable), but there are bound to be updates needed in order to maintain compatibility with external services, plus there will always be some bugs needing addressing. Begging the question of how such updates can reach Symbian enthusiasts across the globe.

Assuming they haven't been heeding my advice to make their apps self-updating over the last couple of months, developers of Symbian apps do still have a number of options, per application:

1. leave the app as-is in the Nokia Store. This may not be ideal, if the app becomes incompatible with service APIs or if new bugs come to light.
     
2. update the application and distribute it from the developer's own server as a self-signed SIS file. Such installers pop up an extra caution when installing and aren't suitable for low level utilities or anything that's ambitious, but they'll do fine for general purpose apps and games.
     
3. update the application and distribute it from the developer's own server as an unsigned SIS file. With digitally signing now being next to impossible, such unsigned installers would only be compatible with devices with the 'installserver' patch in place - this typically comes along for the ride with custom firmware (e.g. here), but can be applied independently if required. Two years ago I'd have put the proportion of Symbian smartphones that had been 'hacked' in this way at under 0.1%, but with Nokia's withdrawal of official support and updates and with the shrinking of the Symbian userbase and the increasing popularity of custom firmwares, I'd put the proportion at between 1% and 5%, enough to be significant. 

Of course, the last two options also require some central mechanism for letting users know of the update - something which will be lost with the Nokia Store freezing. It's possible that an alternative third party-run app store will arise for Symbian, but in the meantime I'd suggest simply letting us know at AAS (use this email address) and, assuming the update is significant enough, we can flag it up in our 'Flow' coloumn on the front page. To make things easier for us, please include a full changelog for the last version or two, plus a handful of screenshots in JPG format and any relevant download links, of course.

Existing directories like mine for applications and games will continue to provide a first port of call for new users wanting some guidance as to what to install first, of course.

(Left) some of the OS patches in Delight custom firmware. InstallServer bypassing is included; (right) CuteTube showing the way, with full integral update checking and downloading.

I'd also recommend that, even though we're past the January 1st, 2014 deadline, developers still look into incorporating update-checking into application code, so that, once a user has the application installed, they won't need to notice news of an update on a web site - the app itself will do the work. Even if it's as minimal as a textual notification. Third party champion apps like CuteTube have shown the way here.

Comments? What else can be done to keep the life of Symbian users and developers running as smoothly as possible in 2014?

OK, it's a fair cop, v4.3.4 of qooWeather is a trivial update, switching the weather forecast in a slightly more timely fashion as the days advance, but it's also significant in that it's effectively the last update to qooWeather now that the Nokia Store has 'frozen' and because, with Nokia's Weather service terminating, qooWeather just became the number one weather option on your Symbian homescreen.

From the (final) Store description:

Choose your favorite city or add your location (by tapping on the city edit field) and get a 5-day weather forecast provided by MSN. 
The data will be updated automatically or manually - only a mobile data connection is required.
You have day/night, can choose between different widget layouts and change the transparency of the widget. 

Here's qooWeather in place on my Nokia 808:

Unlike some other Symbian applications which require fewer permissions and can therefore be updated outside the Nokia Store, supplied as 'self-signed' applications, the 'qoo' suite of apps mostly need more powerful permissions (e.g. integrating with qooSaver, which ties into the Symbian screen saver system) and, with the cessation of Nokia app signing, are effectively also frozen in time along with the Store itself.

Anyway, qooWeather makes a cracking replacement for Nokia Weather, it works on any Symbian device (even the E6, famously) and it's only a quid. What are you waiting for?

With the disclaimer that the article contains several links back to this very site(!), do note a helpful piece by Alvin Wong here on the current state of the Symbian ecosystem and what you can do to prepare for another year (or more) of using the OS. It's true that his article is something of an overview and that most of the tips have been covered here on AAS in the past, but the more information that's disseminated to the wider world, the better and there are a couple of nuggets of wisdom to pick up along the way as well.

From Alvin's poetic intro:

The year is 2014. The remaining users of the Symbian and MeeGo platforms, once given assurances that their environment will be maintained until 2016, wake up to a post-apocalyptic landscape, one where essential services have been cut off, left in a state of stasis or put in cold storage until the end of time. Thankfully, the platforms were designed to be independent entities that would survive long after their stewards packed up and left for greener pastures. 

In this post-apocalyptic landscape, survival is essential. A significant number of users have chosen to leave the environment, leaving their devices behind, but others choose to stay on resolutely. Small, unofficial communities huddle together in various pockets across the wasteland, pooling resources together to ensure continued life. “Homebrew” development becomes a vital and important activity in the townships, fixing things that inevitably break and maintaining links to the world outside the wasteland.

The trading of SISX and DEB files becomes a common practice among the survivors. Some choose to disable platform security through homebrew software in order to lift restrictions on apps that were first enforced when the stewards were in power, a long time ago. Hardware repairs are done using replacement parts obtained unofficially, and users are encouraged to take good care of their devices as repairs can be difficult and/or costly.

Alvin then goes on to run through some familiar and not-so-familiar bits of advice. I was intrigued to his link to an unofficial repository of Nokia device firmwares, for example, though do please note that you should visit this with all anti-virus defences turned on and all common sense engaged. And with fingers poised over the 'close window' command in your browser (yes, it's one of those sites!)

I also loved Alvin's attitude and advice to others about the same:

There is no significant money to be made from investing developer time and effort into Symbian and MeeGo in 2014. Donations and thanks go a long way towards justifying continued effort from the remaining developers, not bad attitudes. Be nice in comment threads and forums, and remember that no one is obliged to do anything for you or your device.

Absolutely. You can read the whole article here.

The Nokia 808 may now be almost two years old and effectively obsolete as a commercial product, but that hasn't stopped it being enjoyed by many and still used in interesting photographic comparisons. In this case against two huge DSLRs and a popular compact camera, in the hands of Luke Van Eede. Summary: the 808 holds its own against the mighty DSLRs and slaughters the compact.

The three devices that the 808 was tested against were the (compact) Panasonic DMC-FT5, the (DSLR)  Panasonic DMC-GX7 and the Canon EOS 400D.

For each test photo, across a wide range of scenarios, Luke has provided 1:1 crops and magnified versions for ease of comparison. Here's one of them:

 

Cropped and magnified (Nokia 808 top left, the FT5 top right, the two DLSRs on the bottom):

From Luke's summary:

In the end, this really was a test to see if the 808 is as good as standard cameras. I think I have proven that it is. It performed better than the FT5 in almost every photo. The 808, GX7 and 400D are so close in some of them, its hard to say which is better. It just goes to show that Nokia really know what they are doing when it comes to camera phones.

To be honest, almost two years after the Nokia 808's launch, the only phone camera that has got close to it is Nokia's own sister device on Windows Phone, the Lumia 1020.

We're now into 2014 and I suspect that through this year we'll still be seeing 808 and Symbian-relevant articles being published and linked to here at AAS, albeit perhaps not at the same pace as in 2013. Watch this space.

WhatsApp is a greedy application, likes to take over control of your SIM card and phone number (albeit for logical reasons) and also needs a little control over when it's allowed to run, check for new messages and so on. WhatsApp Scheduler is a recently updated utility that provides just this control, with the only caveat being that this is part of the brave new world of applications outside the cosy Nokia Store - and, with this being quite a low level utility, it needs permissions and it comes 'unsigned'. You'll need custom firmware or similar to be able to install this successfully.

From the developer's description:

WA Scheduler periodically starts and stops WhatsApp to check for new messages. You only need to set the days and hours you want sync in, then select an update frequency. By running in background you can get message notifications from WhatsApp without being always connected.

Some screens, again courtesy of the developer:

Configuring WhatsApp Scheduler, setting WhatsApp for daytime operation on workdays only....

There's a full changelog for recent versions and a download link here.

This could turn into a bit of a FAQ for this and future news and 'flow' items on AAS, but in order to install this you'll need to be running custom firmware and with the InstallServer patch active (as far as I know - clarifications welcome in the comments), or similar. If you're not sure if your device can install 'unsigned' applications then you almost certainly can't!

If you're a newbie to custom firmwares, check out some of my Delight adventures, e.g. here.

Also, WhatsApp itself isn't in the (frozen) Nokia Store, so download it here.

The subject here is Store bloat. And it's something which I've been ranting about now for four years, on various sites. Yet the people in charge of the main smartphone app stores haven't learned. In fact, if anything, they're getting worse.... at letting in 'apps' which mainly serve to dilute the world's overall impression of that particular OS and ecosystem. Here are three questions that the QA employees concerned should be asking themselves before hitting the 'approve' button.

Author's note: This article is hosted primarily on All About Windows Phone and the examples quoted are from the Windows Phone Store, but the principles apply to the Nokia (Symbian / Series 40) Store too, which is why I've tagged it for All About Symbian as well. And yes,  I know that the Nokia Store has now frozen for Symbian users, but all this applies/applied to that Store's frozen content too. Plus it applies to the Android and iOS application stores, lest other platforms feel left out!

________________

Let's start with the straws that broke the camel's back in terms of my motivation for writing this piece... Candy Crusher Saga Pro for Windows Phone. Candy Crush Saga is a top-grossing freemium game on other platforms and the Windows Phone world has been eagerly awaiting it too. And along comes the aforementioned, a similar game with an extremely similar and therefore misleading title, yet inferior production qualities and evidently not the real thing. How was this allowed through the QA process in Microsoft's Store approvals department? I accept that 'clone' games are perfectly acceptable provided they play well enough and don't cause too much confusion. But in this case, the game title includes every character from the branded original. Did no one stop and think "Hmm.... isn't this just going to confuse users and players? Maybe we should ask the developers to find a different name?" Apparently not.

The listing for the Candy Crush 'clone' - I'll come back to those right hand permissions later, below...(!)

When an application/game is submitted to any mobile Store, there are a number of checks that have to be made, most of them legal or technical - are any manufacturer brands used without permission, is there offensive content, does the title crash the smartphone OS, does it terminate properly if asked to do so, and so on. As far as I know, there are no 'common sense' questions asked at all.

There's not even a basic check for a duplicate name. As was evidenced by another 'straw' from yesterday, as part of my research into guitar tuners for Windows Phone. It turns out - get this - that there are up to fourteen (depending on how you count) applications called "Guitar Tuner" in the Store. Fourteen. To misquote Sheldon from BBT: "In what universe could this possibly be allowed to happen?" What goes through the mind of a Microsoft Store QA  employee as he's looking at the fourteenth application called "Guitar Tuner"? How do his neurons ever get to the point where they trigger the motor action to click on 'Approve' on his or her screen?

11 "Guitar Tuner"s from the first few screens in the Windows Phone Store, plus some other variants for good measure...

And this is just the tip of the iceberg - looking through the raw 'new apps' feed (which we get access to as part of the AAWP back end) is shocking - something like 80% (figure justified below) of all applications seem to be irrelevant cash-in novelties of one sort of another.

For example:

• "The songs of [various-named pop artist] (MP3)".
• "RSS-derived news of [some TV star in the other side of the world who no one's ever heard of]".
• Shell applications which do nothing other than fire up one of the applications you already have on your phone.
• Applications which duplicate the functionality (and, as we've seen, the name) of existing Store content which got there first, a long time ago.
• Apps or games which require outrageous permissions for their central function and which are clearly up to no good (see the Candy Crush clone listing above - look at the permissions in the right hand column - there is NO reason for such a game to access camera, location and microphone!)
• Novelties which do nothing except make a particular sound effect or show a particular image.

I'm sure you can think of plenty of other examples of items in mobile app stores which are little more than a confusing waste of space.

Now, thankfully, when you look for 'new apps' here on AAWP, we present you with those that are 'featured' and thus curated to some degree. But the poor user, when searching the Store on their smartphone (whether WP or Symbian or iOS or Android), has to wade through the full mass of detritus. 

I've been ranting and railing for years that mobile app stores should be better curated, but the people behind each Store and ecosystem merely seem to want the application 'number' to keep rising and don't seem concerned at all with the quality of the applications themselves. I got so fed up with it on Symbian that I even compiled my own (low tech) curated list of the best apps and games - the only ones you actually need. Such an exercise on other platforms would be a little impractical because even a curated store would number in the thousands of titles. But put (say) four thousand into perspective against getting on for 200,000 in the Windows Phone Store [and up to a million in the iOS and Android stores]. Am I really saying that 98% of titles in the Windows Phone Store are worthless and shouldn't have been allowed in, in the first place?

Yes. Well, maybe. In addition to the 2% of 'essentials', I'll accept another 18% that are simply very 'niche' - typical longtail apps. But that still leaves 80% of Store content which falls into one of the damaging classifications listed above.

_________________

So, I'm working in a mobile Store approvals centre. I've checked that app/game XY doesn't crash my four test phones, nothing in its branding or graphics looks likely to offend anyone or cause legal issues, what questions should I also ask before approval? How about:

1. Does XY have a name which is a duplicate of something already published, or is likely to confuse or mislead users in some way?
     
2. Is XY irrelevant? i.e. Does it fail to add anything to a user's experience in getting to the content or functionality in question?
    
3. Does the application appear to require permissions grossly out of proportion to its function? Perhaps it's effectively a trojan, harvesting more information than it should? 

If either the answer to any of these questions is 'Yes', then I'd politely decline the Store submission, replying to the developer with some boiler plate text explaining why.

What do you think? Would such common sense questions help keep the dross down and improve your Store experience? Would you rather have a Store with 'just' 30,000 applications but all of them worth looking at?

PS. In case you think Apple and Google do a better job in their app stores, try searching for 'Guitar Tuner' on an iPhone or Android device. Same deal, same issue, same lack of common sense.

In All About Symbian Insight 245, hosted by Steve and Rafe, we start by talking about the state of Symbian app updates in the context of the freezing of Symbian content in the Nokia Store. Other topics covered in the podcast include a Nokia 808 versus Lumia 1020 (with Lumia Black) comparison, weather widgets on the Symbian homescreen, Delight custom firmware, Swype, and more.

This podcast was recorded on Tuesday 7th January 2014.

Topics covered in this podcast include:

• Symbian application updates in 2014
• In the white corner: Nokia 808. In the yellow corner: Lumia Black
• Podcatcher and CoverUp both now free forever
• Nokia Weather officially discontinued
• One last hurrah - Situations v2 available - and free!
• The very last CuteTube update.... in the Nokia Store
• Podcatcher and CoverUp both now free forever
• qooWeather final Store update, now premier homescreen weather option?
• The end of the road for Swype on Symbian?
• Delight CFW v1.3 now out for the Nokia 808
• Delight custom firmware for the Nokia E7 and X7 is... planned!
• Delight custom firmware hits the Nokia 700 too
• How to: Back up your offline country maps for Nokia Maps
• Google HD update delivers UI tweaks, split screen keyboard and fixes
• Review: Google HD Browser

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

Guest writer Ow Kah Leong has crafted this mini-review of a Symbian application that's new to AAS at least, Singapore Bus. Go on, guess what it does....! [By the way, if you'd like to review something that has never been reviewed so far on AAS, then drop us a line.]

Kah writes:

This feels rather weird. It is 2014 and Nokia Store is officially frozen. The OS is dead. Why am I writing an app review then? Well, I admit that I am essentially a Symbian fanboy and my 808 still serves my needs. And this is a really good and free (no in-app advertising rubbish) app:
SingaporeBus serves a rather specific public transport need in Singapore.

It started out with providing public bus arrival timings at the bus stops but it has gone a little beyond that through the various updates. The version available in the Nokia Store is the latest version and addresses a number of bugs.

The screenshot on the left shows the startup screen. Along the top are the 3 views available – by bus-stops, by bus services and favourites. The app will use GPS to pinpoint your location and provides a list of the nearest bus-stops. It will show the bus-stop number, name of bus-stop and the list of bus services available at the bus-stop. Swipe to the right and it shows the available bus services nearby.

One more swipe to the right shows the list of favourite bus-stops. Along the bottom are row of icons – Exit, Map, Refresh Position, Search and Options. In any of the views, tapping on Map icon (the one that looks like a map), will bring up up a map showing the bus-stops (see below) – and it even works in landscape mode! When in bus service view, the map will also show the route of the selected bus service.

What’s more, tapping on the Menu icon and select StreetView will bring up street view of the bus-stop! Impressive……

One last functionality that I need to mention – route planning. Long-press on bus-stops to select 2 bus-stops as Origin and Destination:Once the Destination is selected, the app will provide the option for the user to choose the mode of travel is given. Select the option (by the way, MRT is Singapore’s version of the Tube) and voila! The options are provided, with duration, distance and even total cost.

This is really a labour of love of the developer and he even has a similar app called LondonBus. I downloaded it and took a look. It looks generally the same and functionalities are also similar. So why use this when there is Nokia Public Transport? The Nokia app is really limited in Singapore with only MRT (or Tube for UK readers) info and nothing on public buses. So SingaporeBus really fills an app need for me and I use it regularly.

You can grab SingaporeBus here.

___________

Thanks for writing on AAS, Kah!

As a fan of hardware QWERTY keyboards, I (and some other E6 and E7 owners) may be interested to note today's news from Bloomberg, in which the future direction of that company seems to be focussed around a return to QWERTY candybars. Meaning that even if your E7 (or, more appropriately, E6) one day packs up or becomes too abandoned, there may well be one smartphone company which has still got your back.

I've featured the Nokia E6 in particular in recent times, highlighting its strengths here and discussing the benefits of custom firmware here. But there's no doubting that, in terms of pure hardware specs and quality, Blackberry's Q10 has got it beat (at the expense of BB OS 10 being immature). And now it seems as though Blackberry's future direction is set to move with the Q10 and its desecendants, giving E6 owners a possible way forwards into 2014/2015 and beyond.

From the Bloomberg article:

BlackBerry Ltd. (BB), which struggled to entice customers with touch-screen models last year, plans to return its focus to keyboard-equipped phones under Chief Executive Officer John Chen.

“I personally love the keyboards,” Chen said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s Jon Erlichman at the InternationalConsumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. In the future, the company’s phones will “predominantly” have physical keyboards, he said, rather than touch screens.

Chen, who took the CEO job in November, is trying to rebuild the company after last year’s BlackBerry 10 touch-screen lineup fizzled with consumers -- contributing to billions of dollars of writedowns. As part of his comeback plan, BlackBerry is refocusing on the corporate and government customers that fueled its early success. Those users preferred real keyboards because they made it easier to hammer out e-mails.

Regular listeners to podcasts I've been on in the last year will have noted that I've said from the very beginning that going to full touch (and challenging the iPhone, Android and Windows Phone) was a big mistake. Blackberry should have led the OS 10 generation with the excellent Q10 and would almost certainly have fared far better. And now it seems that my opinions have been vindicated with this latest reported news from CES.

See also my original Nokia E6, Blackberry Q10 head to head here.

Comments welcome. Would a Blackberry Q10 with full mature software set replace your Nokia E6 or E7?

Whatsapp, despite being a pretty core Symbian application for many people, hasn't been in the Nokia Store for many months, so the freezing of the latter didn't cause it to skip a beat. This is something of a placeholder link of interest, but I did note that there's yet another in its series of regular app updates, this time to version 2.11.265. 

From Nokialino:

There is a new update of WhatsApp for Symbian devices that switch to version 2.11.265 

For those unfamiliar with the app, WhatsApp is a popular cross-platform application for texting and sending multimedia content (photos, videos, GPS location, etc..) Via the Internet, based on telephone numbers (no need to sign up and then automatically detects who among Our contact has the same application).

As usual, no changelog is not available, if you notice improvements let us know!

(Screens from our last Whatsapp story. For complicated reasons, I just can't face running Whatsapp at all!)

The new version of the app can be downloaded from the official Whatsapp website, as will future versions, of course.

The supported Symbian UIs/platforms are the usual S60 3rd edition, S60 5th edition and Symbian^3, Anna and Belle.

I wonder which other Symbian applications you consider 'core' to your day to day life that should perhaps be kept updated outside the frozen Nokia Store and which perhaps aren't? Worth you dropping the developer a line and letting them know that a) you're still keen for updates, and b) the likes of AAS is still keen to give them publicity for such efforts?

The whole point about the Nokia 808 PureView's camera was the hardware-accelerated oversampling system, taking up to 41 megapixels of data and combining pixel data to produce 'pure' super-pixels. Zero noise, accurate colours, and so on. Yes, you could also use the sensor mass to zoom in losslessly too, but the oversampling was the key selling point for many. This is an area where the software-based oversampling in the Windows Phone-powered Lumia 1020 couldn't match the 808 - or at least not until now. Black has arrived.

File this of interest to anyone interested in the development of Nokia's PureView imaging technology - the latest 'Black' firmware update to the Lumia 1020 introduces oversampling algorithms which match the efficacy of those in the Symbian-based 808 PureView. It's true that the Lumia 1020's processor takes a couple of seconds to do what the 808's dedicated image processor does in a fraction of a second, but at least the end result is (more or less) the same.

1020 advocates will also point out that the 1020's sensor and algorithms are more effective across the whole PureView zoom range, plus there's Optical Image Stabilisation to help out (and this also comes into its own when shooting video), but as ever there are pros and cons for each device.

What's noteworthy is that the oversampling now matches the 808's, at any rate. From my AAWP piece:

The new OS update for the Lumia 1020 (and all other Windows Phones) includes a whole new set of oversampling and image processing algorithms, interpreting the mass of data coming from the 1020's enormous 1/1.5" (see below) 41MP sensor in new, 'purer' and more accurate ways.

I had high hopes for the Black firmware update for the Lumia 1020, with the new oversampling algorithms, and I wasn't disappointed. The gold standard for oversampling is the Nokia 808's hardware processing of the 41MP sensor data and, with this update, the Lumia 1020 matches what the 808 achieves in terms of reducing noise and creating 'purer' pixels. It's true that the software-based approach here is still a lot slower - shot to shot times on the 1020 are still over three seconds - but the important thing is that the 'PureView' vision is fully realised on Windows Phone with this update.

In fact, in terms of image quality, I'd declare the Lumia 1020 with Black to be nigh on 'perfect', and you'd hopefully agree, given the images above? Aside from faster shot to shot times (achieveable perhaps with a 1020 successor in 2014 with four times the chipset speed?), there's almost nothing that can be improved on here.

Of course, having declared the 1020 to be 'perfect', there's the other 99.9% of smartphones (sold) to be considered, most of which fall horribly short when trying such a wide set of test shots as used here. So, across the industry, there's clearly a long, long way to go. But at least we have a new gold standard, a new benchmark.

And, as with the 808 PureView before it, I suspect the only way the Lumia 1020 will now be topped for photo quality will be by the introduction of its own successor. 

Here's a photo from the Black-ified 1020 and a crop:

Pretty impressive, though in fairness most decent camera phones will get this shot right. Let's be impressed by the detail and general purity of the image at a 1:1 crop from near the centre, though:

It's a fair cop, this link of interest isn't directly to do with Symbian (AAS) or Windows Phone (AAWP), but it's worth noting that the popular (cough of self interest here) Phones Show Chat audio podcast has spawned a FlickR group/community that's dedicated to great photos taken on smartphones (i.e. no standalones or SLRs or tablets allowed). Perhaps not surprisingly, given the quality of the company's camera phones, the many hundreds of submissions so far are rather Nokia heavy, with plenty of great shots from the Nokia 808 PureView and the Lumia 1020, 1520, 920 and 925. Links and examples below.

The 'Phones Show' FlickR group has a number of adjudicators (I'm not one of them, on purpose!), who pick a photo of the week, each week, and a winning photo of the month, each err.... month. And a real, genuine prize is then dished out from the ever growing PSC prize pool.

Anyone can join the group, it's all free, of course, see the Phones Show FlickR group home page for instructions. The only rule is that you have to have taken any submitted photos on a phone. Failure to comply with this rule will result in a) excommunication from the group and b) us 'sending the boys round'....

One of the big advantages of FlickR over other ways of sharing/pooling photos like this is that each image can be viewed in a variety of sizes, usually right up to original resolution, plus there's full EXIF data to pore over, to see how each photo was actually captured (including the device used).

There have been some stunning entries so far. Here's one taken on a Nokia Lumia 1020 that I liked - and deliberately stopping myself from choosing yet another sunset or dawn landscape(!):

And what about this dramatic shot, snapped on a Nokia 808 PureView:

Great stuff, be sure to check the group out here. And, of course, see also the main Phones Show and Phones Show Chat podcasts.

Psiloc has been one of the longest standing Symbian developers, dating back to the earliest Series 60 days. In fact, I seem to remember Psiloc apps on my Nokia 9210 Communicator. But all things come to and end, it seems and, after multiple reports from AAS readers, I think it's safe to assume that Psiloc is no more, at least on its Symbian side, with the company's 'Licensing server' not contactable for weeks, with application functionality not working, and with even Psiloc's web site repeatedly crashing in a maze of SQL errors.

I contacted Psiloc about the problems mentioned here but as yet have had no reply - another bad sign!

Let's start with the phone-side issue. Psiloc's Traveler is the company's flagship application and indeed was bundled by Nokia on many Symbian handsets, including (here) the Nokia E6. Let's boot up Traveler as it stands today:

Starting with the weather module, resolutely saying it has no data; (right) the currency converter can't reach its server....

Flight Assistant, one of the several in-app-purchases, just fails when it can't reach its licensing server; (right) a spinning globe... forever. Has Psiloc gone for good?

In addition, if you head to Psiloc's web shop and click on any Symbian application, you get this:

Which isn't good. It seems as if both the applications and the web site have simply been left to rot - a nicer gesture would have been to have made the applications freeware. In fact, Psiloc has the capability to sign applications itself, so there's no reason whatsoever why this couldn't be done, even after the Nokia Store freeze.

In the meantime, you'll probably want to move your Traveler application icon to an unused folder, or perhaps try removing it altogether. If you rely on Font Magnifier and it's currently working, then best leave it alone. But be aware that it probably can't be reinstalled after a hard reset etc.

Ah well. Comments welcome if you can shed more light on this situation and/or timescales.