Interview with Tam Hanna, CEO of Tamoggemon on Symbian^3

Introduction

Tamoggemon has made some great software for the Symbian S60 platform. At Best of Symbian, we have reviewed TouchCalc Lite and LocaNote, two 4 star applications.

Here’s an interview with Tam Hanna, the founder, CEO and head developer of Tamoggemon about his views on Symbian^3 and Qt. Tam, as always has been very candid and outspoken about his experiences with Symbian. Some of his comments are highly technical and more tuned towards the developer but nevertheless very interesting overall. In a nutshell, Qt has improved the development experience greatly, but there’s more to be done. There is a strong integration of Ovi as one should expect, considering its the focal point of Nokia’s mobile business in the coming years. With Qt being released every quarter or six months, we will hopefully see periodicity in software updates for Symbian^3 devices. The image below shows Tamoggemon’s latest game, BallZ developed using Qt, running on both a Symbian 5th edition phone, N97 Mini and a Maemo (now MeeGo) device, the N900.

Read on.

1. Tell us about your experience with Symbian^3?

I have not had too much hands-on time with Symbian 3 as of this writing. I did have some hands-on timer with a Nokia N8, but cannot comment further as this was unofficial.

However, the OS looks sensible to me.

2. Will Tamogemmon’s applications run out of the box on Symbian^3 or is there are porting work involved?

I have been able to test LocaNote, and can say that it will run out of the box MOSTLY. I say mostly, because some parts of the GUI system don’t work perfectly and need to be reworked especially due to the way Nokia handles events from the capacitive screen. And, the improved landscape mode also needs some more “engineering” to make it look as good as it should.

Once again, the product works. But it is not perfect; but this is unsurprising, as the drawing engine of LocaNote is heavily optimized.

The “landscape mode eeker” was a bit disappointing, as almost every application currently on the market uses more than two CBA buttons. Nokia should have invested more energy into that – as it looks now, their implementation works but looks ugly.

3. How has Qt enhanced the development experience?

Greatly. You can see the attached image, which, btw, is the first-ever public appearance of JezzBall for Maemo.

It makes porting really easy. Even porting to new, yet unconquered platforms is possible…but more on that another day.

4. What’s are your favorite features in Symbian^3 as a developer and as a user?

From an user point of view, it is definitely the improved use of screen real estate in landscape mode.

As a developer, its probably the significantly stronger integration of Ovi. For example, if you look for a theme, you automatically see an Ovi icon telling you “there’s more on Ovi”.

I know that quite a few of you will now expect me to state that I consider the integration of the Qt libraries a must. But I have to admit that this is not as serious as it is perceived by many: keep in mind that Nokia is legally obliged to release an update to Qt at least once every 12 months to prevent loosing the rights to the product.

Given that Nokia tends to push out a new version every three to six months (please kill 4.6.3 already – the UI in 4.6.2 worked a lot better), every library would be outdated by the time it hits the ROMs of user handsets anyways.

5. Tell us about the improved Graphics architecture on Symbian^3 and how you will leverage it for your applications?

Probably not. At Tamoggemon’s, we see ourselves as a business application developer rather than a games house.

So it is very unlikely that we will ever need advanced 3D visualization, etc.

6. How does Symbian^3 compare with other Smartphone OS – iOS 4 and Android 2.2

Beats iOS 4 IMHO – if just because there will be devices with QWERTY keyboards.

As for Android, I don’t really know as I didn’t have enough hands-on time with the platform yet.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Review Conditions

NetQin Mobile Anti-Virus for Symbian was installed on a Nokia 5800 XPress Music, a Symbian^1 device.

Installation

Installation can be done via the Nokia Application Installer. Alternatively, you can copy the file to the device and just open the .sis file on the phone to begin the installation.

First View

There aren’t too many Anti Virus software for Symbian. Lets find out about NetQin Anti-Virus.

Main Review

NetQin Anti-Virus software suite for Symbian performs 4 function in its role as a  are Virus Scanner, Network firewall, Boot Acceleration and First Aid.

Virus Scanner

NetQin is a standar anti-virus application but focusses on viruses that specifically affect mobile devices. It scans all the drives on the mobile device and returns the status. You can also configure the drives that can be scanned. There is an online Virus database that has all the details of the viruses. The latest virus seems to be RC Commwarrior that will search nearby Bluetooth devices and spread around leading to resources being consumed heavily on the mobile thus affecting normal use of the mobile. The website has the details of the Symbian viruses. In the online database, in addition to the latest security threats, NetQin also gives a category of major security risks, including Privacy Steal, Account Trojan, Fraudware, Data Damage, Malicious Service Order, System Damage, Fee Consume, Backdoor, Badware and Prankware. The terms may be not well worded, given its a chinese translation but they seem to be quite serious.

When first installed, NetQin downloads the latest database online since the virus database on the installed version has expired. On the main screen, the version of the Virus database and the last scan date is displayed. You can update the virus database by just pressing the “Update” button on the main screen.

Network Firewall

As you start using applications that access the web, via GPRS/3G and 802.11 WiFi, NetQin keeps track of the applications and gets a one time approval from you, the user for allowing network access. Approved services are added to the Trusted Apps. Rejected apps are added to the Untrusted Apps list. The Network Firewall also keeps a record of all network traffic sent and received by the mobile. It doesn’t differentiate between WiFi and GPRS/3G but I’d like to see this difference. Since the traffic is measured based on the application’s usage, and not the ratio technology, NetQin probably doesn’t differentiate between the WiFi and GPRS/3G when collecting network traffic.

The Network Firewall detected all WiFi access and GPRS/3G access and warning was given immediately when the application starts.

The applications that are in my Trusted Apps list are Ovi Maps, SPB Mobile Shell (why did it access the web??), Browser, Nokia Email and Nokia’s “Client Platform”, which is a securewidgetlauncher.exe. A quick google search revealed that is a part of the Ovi store application and is installed as a background process.

NetQin picks a default access point for downloading virus database updates. You can setup the Periodic scan reminder and other options like auto-update and auto delete virus.

Monitor

The Monitor is turned on and runs in the background even if you quit NetQin. But the Monitor is not visible in Handy Taskman as a running task. You can set Monitor to start automatically at device boot.

To check if the Network Firewall also monitored bluetooth transfers, I transferred image files back and forth between the mobile and my desktop. NetQin didn’t detect the bluetooth file transfer! In the Monitor settings, the Monitor Security Level can be set to check for “Executable files only” or “Monitor all files”. The default setting is “Executable files only”. I change the setting to “Monitor all files” but even then, NetQin didn’t detect or block bluetooth file transfer.

The Monitor also alerted me that applications are being installed and uninstalled.

Boot Acceleration

NetQin identifies the list of applications that have been configured to start at device boot, either by the user or by the application itself, automatically. You get the choice to disable such applications to increase device start up time.

First Aid

Phone First Aid, when started closes all applications in the device except NetQin security program. It can then restore the phone to normal state. I have faced a few situations when the phone needed first aid, but these were times when the phone was bricked, with a while screen. I don’t know if First Aid will help in such a scenario.

System Manager

Qin Coins

NetQin has introduced the concept of Qin Coins which can be used to pay for a variety of NetQin VIP services. You can gain Qin Coins by participating in NetQin activities like providing feedback, reporting viruses and recommending it to friends and earn rewards. Or you can activate / recharge via the mobile pone. The service is currently not available.

When you uninstall NetQin, it warns you that auto start programs that were disabled will be enabled again. Very useful information.

Handling

NetQin has a neat logical interface with key functions accessible on the main page and other configuration options presented to the user as tabbed pages. The security warnings are unobtrusive. Overall, I had no trouble getting around the application to set it up and access information I needed from the System Manager about my Nokia 5800 periodically.

Weaknesses

I was surprised that NetQin didn’t alert me upon Bluetooth transfers – whether it was ordinary files or Symbian S60 executables. NetQin also didn’t warn me about software being installed on the device. There should be a policy about Bluetooth transfer that the user should be able to setup. But the point is Symbian’s Bluetooth security is outstanding and it doesn’t really need further protection.

Conclusion

NetQin mobile security services holds over 68% of Chinese mobile security market. NetQin delivers proven mobile security solutions based on Cloud-client Computing Platform – including anti-virus, SMS-filter, anti-spyware, and privacy protection – to more than 45 million users in more than 200 countries worldwide. NetQin has partnered with China Mobile, Nokia China, Symbian, Samsung, Baidu, Sony Ericsson and a few other companies in its endeavor to deliver mobile security services. NetQin is also a platinum partner of the Symbian Foundation.

All through the review, one question that came to my mind Do Symbian phones get affected by viruses? Are they truly vulnerable to attacks to warrant installing an Anti Virus software? While the jury is still out on this issue, there is no harm in having a robust anti-virus software to protect your smartphone.

NetQin can be downloaded for free here. For automatic virus updates, priority services from NetQin and other benefits, you can subscribe to NetQin updates using Qin Coins or payment through your mobile bill.  It is a must have. I’ll give it 5 of 5.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Review Conditions

HandyPaint from Mobivio Solutions was installed on a Nokia 5800, running Symbian^1.

Installation

Installation via the Nokia Installer or by directly opening the .sis file on the Nokia phone.

First View

HandyPaint from MobiVio Solutions is a powerful and easy drawing tool for your Symbian S60 smart phone. It has a plethora of functions, which you’ll read about in this review.

Main Review

HandyPaint has all the features of a standard drawing tool, but each feature is implemented with better design and is well thought through for best user experience. It can be used to draw, edit pictures captured with your camera’s phone or edit screenshots.

Advanced Drawing Tools

Standard tools supported include pencil, a large palette of colors, straight lines, curves, rectangles, ellipses. It also includes a polygon shape. In all, over 30 tools are supported. A resizable toolbar is present on top of the canvas that can be used to pick the tools you want to use.

The curve drawing tool, lets you change the curve shape on the canvas by providing various editing points on its entire length. By touching one of the points, you can easily shape the curve to fit your needs. This is a nice feature that provides rich drawing abilities on a mobile device.

The rectangle, ellipse and star tools have a further tool options which can be brought up by a long press.

A long press on the square tool brings up 4 drawing options for rectangles – outline, filled rectangle, outline rectangle with rounded edges and filled rectangle with rounded edges.

Similarly, long press on the ellipse tool gives you options to create filled circles and ellipses or outline circles and ellipses.

The toolbar gives 12 Pen Sizes of varying width with which you can draw pictures. HandyPaint also has unlimited undo / redo which is very useful.

Customizable Tool Bar

The toolbar can be docked anywhere on the canvas. It can be dragged around and placed at different places so that it doesn’t come in the way of drawing or editing a picture. It also auto hides itself from the screen as you begin drawing on the canvas. The toolbar can also be resized to rearrange the buttons in two or three rows. Its also translucent so that the image behind it is not fully hidden from view.

Anti Aliasing

MobiVio describe their drawing as anti-aliasing drawing. This is supposed to give excellent drawing performance because the lines, circles, curves and ellipses on a drawing are extremely smooth without jagged edges, like other paint tools. I did observe that the quality of the drawing is better than most other applications.

Zoom on the Canvas

HandyPaint provides a zoom in / zoom out for the canvas which is very useful for viewing and editing minute parts of an image. When the zoom button is clicked in the tool bar, the zoom bar is displayed on the canvas. Zooming in and out is a smooth experience.

Pan on the Canvas

When you touch the hand button on the toolbar a thumbnail of the picture or image you are editing is displayed on the bottom of the screen and you can pan in and out of the canvas to specific parts of the picture to do minute drawings. I set the zoom size to 200 and then pan to one part of the image so that I can draw it in greater detail.

Multiple Image Formats

HandyPaint supports multiple image formats like Bitmap, Jpeg, Gif, Png. Bitmaps and Jpegs can be saved as low, medium or high quality which will vary the size of the image.

Save Work in Progress

To save work in progress and open the image later for editing, HandyPaint support a native image format called hpf. Files saved as .hpf can be reopened again for further editing. This is a useful feature for the serious image editor who is not constrained by the small screen.

Color Palette

HandyPaint offers a huge color palette with an advanced color option where you can select the RGB mix to get unique hues.

Text Styles

You can add text to images just like other Paint applications.  Different font styles like Bold, Italic, Underline and Strikethrough are supported. But I found that the text box doesn’t resize itself to the length of the text. So if you create a small text box and create a longish word, only the later part of the word is displayed. It was a little painful to fit the text into the text box.

Camera Images and Screenshots

HandyPaint lets you import images captured with your camera phone and also take screenshots and edit them.  It gives you 10 seconds to choose the screen before capturing it. Its not as efficient as Screensnap but useful nevertheless.

Handling

HandyPaint is great to use. I didn’t have any problem getting around the application, find out options and learning about all the features. Its very user friendly but a very feature rich application. The casual user may find it a little demanding to start with but will get used to it as time goes by. The pull up menu from the bottom, borrowed from Android is a great space saver and is eliminates the boredom of S60’s hierarchical menu structure.

Weaknesses

I didn’t find any major weaknesses in the application from a feature list point of view. HandyPaint took up close to 10 Mb of RAM and when I operated the Screen capture utility, the RAM usage increase further. The difficulty in fitting text into the text box can be removed in newer versions.

Conclusion

HandyPaint is a highly feature rich drawing tool for the Symbian^1 platform and its probably the best as of today. HandyPaint can be downloaded here for a trial or purchased for $14.95. Its good stuff and I’ll give it 4 of 5.

Hot in the heels of the first release, SPB Mobile Shell has released an update, version 3.5.5 which has many improvements, the most important being efficient RAM utilization.

Memory optimization (10M less RAM usage)

There is sufficient RAM now to run many applications in parallel, especially Maps, Skype, or the Music Player.

Media player widget

The new Media player widget lets you play and pause music without having to open the Music Player.

4 free themes for Symbian

SPB has created 4 new free themes for SPB Mobile shell which can be download here. All the themes are stand alone .sis files which can be installed separately. The themes are color based, and there are Red, Green, Black and Blue themes. I installed them on the C drive, thinking they will integrated with SPB Mobile Shell, but these are the usual themes for S60 UI. I must say, the themes are really beautifully designed. The icons are changed, the background looks nice. You can use these themes even without installing SPB Mobile Shell. See images below.

But the theme isn’t fully displayed in SPB Mobile Shell’s home screens. SPB Mobile Shell continues to use its own image for the home screens and the themes don’t appear on the home screen! I can see the themes on the top and it doesn’t look very nice. I’d like to use the themes on my home screen too. Ideally, the themes must be setup from the home screen and they should be available on the home screen too. See the images below where they don’t fit well in the home screen.

Operator Name Widget

The operator’s name can be setup as a widget on the home screens but I wonder how useful this is.

Shortcuts to the most used files

You can now setup shortcuts to almost all files in your Symbian phone on the home screens. This is very useful, for frequent files like documents, etc. Essentially it works like the Desktop, on a Windows machine where we keep recent files or files that we need to access most often.

New Memo/New Anniversary items in organizer menu

In the Organizer, you can now create a new Anniversary without having to create a new contact or or open up the native Calendar application.

Customized Call Button

The Green Call Button can now be configured to open either the native Dialer or SPB Call Log. The SPB Call Log is a much improved version of the native Log application. It stores entries for several days and you can do many operations in the SPB Call Log, like saving the number as a new contact, call, email or send SMS to the contact.

Landscape/portrait orientation control

SPB Mobile Shell 3.5.5 also lets you fix the screen orientation to only Portrait or Landscape, thus disabling the accelerometer. You can also set it to “auto”, which means as the device is tilted, the screen rotates automatically to landscape mode or portrait mode.

Conclusion

In our earlier review of SPB Mobile Shell, I complained a little about RAM utilization. This update improves the situation greatly and also adds many useful features. Its worth the upgrade.

Introduction

Nokia doesn’t have a version of the Ovi Music Player for the Mac. Its a long time coming but Mac users are not completely left behind. There is still Nokia Multimedia Transfer, which allows you to do the following with your Nokia mobile:

• Transfer music & playlists from iTunes
• Transfer and copy photos and videos from iPhoto
• Sync bookmarks
• Transfer files from your Mac

Setup

The application is available in two versions, 1.4 .2 is for MAC OS 1.5.8 (Leopard) and 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) and 1.3 Beta, for Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger). You can connect Nokia Multimedia Transfer via Bluetooth or the data cable. I used a Nokia 5800 Xpress Music for the transfer.

Music

You can transfer all DRM-free content from iTunes to your Nokia mobile. Protected music and audio books cannot be transferred. Once you select “Enable iTunes Transfer” in the Device Settings, all playlists, podcasts and music are now visible in Nokia Multimedia Transfer and you can choose what you want to transfer. Before transfer, you can choose to change the encoding, to save space on your phone’s external memory. But I prefer to leave the encoding undisturbed, but if you really want to save space, suggested encoding is Apple’s AAC 128 Kbps format.

Its important to note that this is music transfer, not sync. Sync lets you transfer meta data of your music files from the mobile back to your primary media too. The downside to not having sync is that play counts, last played and other meta data, that’s useful to create dynamic playlists in iTunes cannot be updated. I would ideally like to keep all my media content n iTunes and use multiple devices for playback.

Its a long way off before I migrate lock, stock and barrel to Ovi Music Player because its not in the same level as iTunes, as of today.

Album artwork, embedded in the mp3 file will be transferred but not album artwork created using iTunes’ get album artwork feature.

Photos & Videos

Nokia Multimedia Transfer also lets you transfer photos from iPhoto to your Nokia mobile. You can not only transfer photos but also Events, that are created in iPhoto. You can also choose to resize the images before they are transferred to the phone to save disk space.

In order to import photos from your phone back to iPhoto, click the “Enable this devices as a digital camera“. With this, whenever the device is connected, iPhoto is automatically started, if Nokia Multimedia Transfer application is open, and you can import the images to iPhoto.

iTunes and iPhoto videos can also be transferred immediately when the Nokia phone is connected to the Mac. Videos playable by QuickTime and are not copy protected can be copied. Nokia Multimedia Transfer also lets you transcode the videos before they are transferred, to make them playable on your Nokia phone.

Sync Bookmarks

With Nokia Multimedia Transfer, you can sync bookmarks between Safari and your Nokia internet browser. Bookmarks in a bookmark folder with your device name, say Nokia 5800, in Safari will be synced with the bookmarks on the device. When you change your bookmarks in Safari or on your device, Nokia Multimedia Transfer will synchronise your bookmarks on both.

Transfer Files

You can browse the contents of your device from your Mac and transfer files to and from the device using the Nokia Device Browser. I suggest that you use this only for files like application executables, etc and not media files. For media, use only iPhoto and iTunes transfer.

Conclusion

Nokia Multimedia Transfer is no where near a comprehensive multimedia desktop application for the Mac to sync with the Nokia device. Its a testimony of the market share of Mac versus Windows. Nokia obviously has a large team working full time for the Windows platform. Ovi Music Player, Ovi Suite and other applications run on Windows and they are more feature rich. But for a Mac user, Nokia Multimedia Transfer is better than nothing. Its still a good application, if you’ll forgive the lack of basic features like music sync etc.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Review Conditions

PhoneTorch 2.0 was installed in a Nokia 5800 XPressMusic, an S60 5th edition device with Symbian OS 9.4.

Installation

Installation is imply via the Nokia Application Installer available in the Nokia PC Suite. You can also transfer the .sis file to the mobile’s memory card and start installation directly from the phone.

First View

I always thought flashlight applications for the mobile phone were overrated. There is a wow factor and the first impression is always good but I wondered if they’d be really useful when you really need a flashlight to search a car key dropped on the road at night or finding your seat in a movie theater. Read on.

Main Review

PhoneTorch uses 2 light sources on your phone – the LED flash and the LCD display. The LED flash of the Nokia 5800 is quite bright and I found that it functions truly as a low intensity flashlight and is very useful. I used it in both the use cases I mentioned above and it proved useful. The LED can be turned on and off from within the application.

The LCD display lights up the entire 3.2″ display with the color you want. You can change the color of the display too. The light intensity of the display can be reduced or increased.

PhoneTorch also lets you send out Morse code using the LCD display. You just have to type the text, like SOS, and it send out dots and dashes by short and long bursts of LED light.

PhoneTorch can be configured to autostart on your phone. The hardware Camera key can be configured to be a shortcut key and can be used to turn on / off the LED flash.

You can set the application resume the light state when you last quit it. Which means if you quit the app with the LED on, the next time you restart it, the LED comes back on, without you having to turn it on. That reduces the number of taps you have to make when you badly need some light.

Handling

PI found PhoneTorch to quite fast showing now latency when I opened it to start the flash light. When the app goes to the background, you can use the hardware Camera key to turn on and off the LED. This is thoughtfully done so that once again, key presses or taps are reduced. But you cannot open the camera when PhoneTorch is running, because it hijacks the hardware Camera key.

But I found that ScreenSnap, the screen capture application overrides PhoneTorch too! So when you have ScreenSnap and PhoneTorch open, pressing the Camera key

Weaknesses

Obviously, keeping the LED flash or the display turned on for many seconds will drain the battery in a flash. Its not really a weakness, but something one should remember when keeping the LED flash turned on for many minutes and complaining that the battery on the device is poor. Notice the power spike in the image below, when LED flash is turned on.

Conclusion

I found that the design of PhoneTorch was well thought out. Quick access to open the application and toggle the flashlight easily are two use cases which have been given paramount importance and implemented perfectly. With simple controls, great ease of use, PhoneTorch is good stuff and can be purchased here for $2.99.

PhoneTorch is one application that silently stays in a corner and shows its value at the most important moment.
PhoneTorch with all its functionality is supported in Nokia S60 5th edition, 3rd edition FP2 and Sony Ericsson Vivaz, Vivaz Pro and Satio. Older vesions like N95 are also supported, but with limited features. Its a truly useful application and I’ll give it 4 of 5.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Mini Review

TviderLite, is a fancy little Twitter client created exclusively for tweeting multimedia status. Now, you’d ask, why would I want to have a separate client for multimedia, when I can use, for e.g. Gravity which supports posting images via TwitPic, TwitGoo, Yfrog, img.ly, Posterous and MobyPicture? But does your twitter client post and instantly clicked picture, captured video or audio clips to a public timeline and also your own Twitter timeline?

With a beautifully implemented user interface, Tvider is a refreshing new Twitter application that I find quite impressive, in what it does.

Read on.

Tvider has four ways to update your status – InstaPix, InstaVideo, InstaAudio and MemWiz.

InstaPix lets you capture a picture and tweet it.

With InstaVideo, you can capture a video, from within Tvider and instantly plays it back to you so that you can decide to tweet it or not.

InstaAudio records is a voice recorder that tweets audio message to your timeline.

When you playback the video or  audio, Tvider also displays the length of the clip in seconds. That gives me an idea of how long it will take to actually tweet the clip online. Tvider obviously maintains its own server to host the public timeline which will contains hundreds of thousands of images, video and audio clips. So the multimedia is of the smallest resolution possible. I don’t see this as a real issue, considering that more and more multimedia creation and consumption is via the mobile’s small screen.

MemWiz, which I find to be a name that’s not related to the function it does, lets you pick a file and tweet it. But in reality, it only lets you select images to tweet. But the additional benefit is that you can add a comment along with the picture that you wish to tweet.

Tvider.com has a public timeline to which you can login with your Twitter handle.

Download

TvideLite 1.4 can be downloaded from m.tvider.com. TviderLite only supports Multimedia tweets, as explained on the tvider blog.

The premium version of Tvider supports Text and Multimedia tweeting, viewing tweets and other operations like DM, Replies, follow, unfollow, etc which are the standard features of Twitter, But Tvider premium, is only available for subscribers of two service providers, Airtel and 3 Networks. Mobile subscribers of other networks cannot get Tvider premium!!

TviderLite and Tvider are currently available only for S60 3rd edition devices. I tested TviderLite on my Nokia E71, a Symbian 9.3, S50 3rd edition FP 1 device.

Conclusion

TviderLite is perfect for travel blogging and for sharing instant emotions to people across the world. I enjoyed the simplicity of its user interface. Its good stuff and I’ll give it 4 of 5.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Review Conditions

ABBY Foto Translate was installed on a Nokia 5800 XPressMusic, an S60 5th edition device with Symbian OS 9.4.

Installation

Installation is simply via the Nokia Application Installer available in the Nokia PC Suite. You get different .sis files for different languages.

First View

ABBY Foto Translate, as the name suggests, instantly translates words captured on your S60 Symbian camera phone into the desired language. The concept of snapping a few foreign words and getting their meaning immediately is very exciting. Lets see how well this ambitious idea has been implemented for daily use.

Main Review

ABBY Foto Translate, is a very simple-to-use application. The use case is for a typical globe trotter, who needs a quick translation of road signs, restaurant menus,  news paper headlines, business card and so on. When the visitor in a foreign city needs to translate a magazine article or an instruction manual, he would approach a professional translator for this job. ABBY Foto Translate uses ABBY’s award-winning optical character recognition (OCR) technology for converting images of words into text and mobile dictionary software.

I used the French –> English translator version for my tests. When ABBY Foto Translate is started, it opens the camera view finder with its own interface. You just point the view finder to a block of text and press the on-screen camera button or the hardware camera button.

Remember to have the text appears horizontally on the screen and is parallel to the guiding line, that’s visible on the view finder within ABBY Foto Translate application. The application expects the camera to have auto-focus because it automatically focusses on the word you point to and takes an image.

If the camera’s focus is poor or blocked, ABBY Foto Translate, points this out so that you can adjust the distance of the text from the camera and point it correctly. In the image below, you can also see guiding line which should be parallel to the text.

ABBY Foto Translate not just captures a single word you point at, but all the words that fall within the view finder of the camera. Each word in the captured text is treated as an independent block which is character-recognized and translated for the user. After the image capture and processing is done, you can select any of the words in the captured text to get the translation. As long as ABBY Foto Translate has successfully captured that word as a complete block, you will get the  translation perfectly.

I learnt, after may trials, that I should keep the camera at the right distance to capture enough words for translation, but not too far away from the text that ABBY Foto Translate fails to pick words correctly and as unique blocks. When the camera is kept too far away, a whole paragraph is recognized as a single block and fails to be translated. See examples in the images below.

Handling

Making sure the camera’s guiding line is parallel to the text and the text is horizontal on the screen is a little cumbersome and it will take many attempts to get it right. Otherwise, its very simple to use.

Weaknesses

Many a time, I observed that ABBY Foto Translate didn’t capture the block with precision. Many long words were captured as incomplete blocks and the dictionary failed to return a translation. For e.g., in the image below, the word I wanted to look up was “nous”, but ABBY Foto Translate has blocked the letter S and has given a vague translation! But this is did not happen often. Most of the time, I got the whole words blocked and were translated correctly.

Conclusion

ABBYY Foto Translate is worth a look. It will surprise you by the accuracy and the detailed dictionary it points you to. Its fast too. ANNYY Foto Translate is available for Symbian OS S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition (v9.1/9.2/9.3/9.4) in English, German and Russian languages. You obviously need a camera, and ABBY recommends a minimum of 2 MP with autofocus for best results.

ABBY Foto Translate is available for 8 languages and doesn’t need an internet connection or mobile network connection is required.

You can download a trial or purchase it here.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Mini Review

Koinup, the virtual world social network, has introduced 3D Wallpapers to adorn your Symbian home screen but with a difference. The 3D Wallpapers application is the 1^stmobile application entirely dedicated to “avatar art” i.e., screen shots of virtual worlds like Second Life, World of Warcraft, Aion, Avatars, breathtaking 3d art and virtual Landscape photography images.

The 3D Wallpapers users will have the chance to browse and pick selected collections of avatar artworks created by 3D artists, and hundreds of amazing videogame and virtual world screenshots, fantasy artworks and fanart.

The purpose of 3D Wallpapers is to raise awareness about a new generation of artists that use 3D and virtual worlds as their own canvas. “Virtual worlds influence the way we perceive reality, by changing our aesthetic taste” says Edoardo Turelli, Koinup co-founder and CTO.

Download

3D Wallpapers can be downloaded in the Ovi Store. I installed 3D Wallpapers on my Nokia 5800, a S60 5th edition device running Symbian OS 9.4.

Conclusion

Koinup gives a refreshing new look to wallpapers and has a collection of hundreds of images in the 3D and  fantasy art categories. The images are of the correct resolution for your mobile’s screen. The wallpapers used in this review is only a small sample of the hundreds of wallpapers you can get for your mobile device. Its definitely worth a look.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Review Conditions

SPB Mobile Shell was installed on a Nokia 5800 XPressMusic, an S60 5th edition device with Symbian OS 9.4.

Installation

Installation is simply via the Nokia Application Installer available in the Nokia PC Suite.

First View

SPB Software has created a new UI shell called Mobile Shell 3.5 for Symbian, available for Symbian-based touchscreen devices (works on Symbian S60 5^th Edition and higher). We have reviewed other UI shells for S60, Handy Shell 2.0, M1 – Android UI and MyPhone here at BestofSymbian, lets see how Mobile Shell fares against the incumbents in the market.

Main Review

SPB Mobile Shell has come up with a new UI that’s more than just a token front end interface for the Symbian applications and tools that reside in the background. Its a completely new user interface with multiple screens and customizable widgets that give you up-to-date information at a glance such as time, weather, calendar, upcoming appointments, alarms, new call and messaging events which can all be accessed with a single touch.

Five Home Screens

Mobile Shell comes with five Home Screens that is similar to the Nokia N8’s three customizable home screens. Each of these screens, are fully customizable and one can add various widgets on the screen and its only limited by the screen real estate. The 3 images below show the three screens. By default, 3 Home Screens are created. You can add additional screens easily.

You can switch between the screens by just a flick of a finger to the left or to the right. The sliding Home Screens don’t loop around to get back to the main screen. As you can see on the image of the main home screen below, the clock, contacts, wireless manager, profiles and calendar view are all widgets and each can be customized or moved around the screen to one’s preference.

At the bottom of Home Screen, there is a toolbar that allows you to switch between SPB Mobile Shell components and access the Menu button to view the available options of the selected tab. The image below shows the options you get when you edit the Home Screen by pressing the right button on this toolbar. You can change the Layout, Add a new Widget, rearrange the widgets on the Home Screen using Edit Layout and change the Background and modify other settings that further customize the Home Screen and the Layouts. SPB Mobile Shell comes with a few pleasing background images that stretch across the 3 screens. As you slide the home screens, they seem like sliding across a landscape image and its very well implemented. By pressing the Show Home Screen widget, you can get back to the native S60 home screen.

3D Carousel

The 3D Carousel is another method to flip through the various screens. It can be enabled by tapping the button on the bottom left of the Home Screen. The Carousel gives you a preview of all the pages of SPB Shell. I expected the Carousel to be slow and CPU hogging but the experience was actually very good. Flipping through the carousel was very fast. Kinetic horizontal scrolling helps. If implemented badly, poor feedback of the 3D Carousel could have undone all the hard work done for the SPB Mobile Shell but SPB have pulled off the impossible and have come out unscathed by providing a great user experience on the Carousel.

Home Screen Layouts

The home screens have two layouts: Professional Home Layout (disabled by default) and Lifestyle Home Layout. The Professional Home Layout is sober looking while the Lifestyle Layout is more flasy in its appearance.  You can enable both layouts at the same time and switch between them too.

Widgets

Mobile Shell has a number of widgets that you can choose from. Each of these widgets have context specific actions that can be configured on the widget is added to the Home Screen. Some of the widgets I really liked were the Contact widget, that I’ll talk about in more detail in later sections, Picture Frame, Birthdays & Incoming Items. The Birthday widget picks all Birthdays and Anniversaries stored in the Contacts. The Shortcut, takes you further to other custom SPB shortcuts which can also be added to the Home Screens. I particularly liked the Wireless Manager shortcut that lets you access all wireless services, WiFi, Bluetooth and Radio via a single Widget.

Add Widgets to the Home Screen using the Add widget button in the main menu then select the item you want to add to the Home screen. Add a clock, a picture frame, the Google Search bar, or a calendar that shows upcoming appointments, etc. Widgets can be moved around the Home Screens. To drag widgets to the desired locations, you have to select Edit Layout and then tap and hold on a widget with some pressure before you start to drag. While dragging, do not release your finger until you have reached the target position.

Launcher

The Launcher tab, which can be opened by tapping theLauncher icon in the toolbar in the bottom of the Home Screen, adds a fast and convenient way to navigate through your device. All of the pages support kinetic scrolling. Launcher tab has two main pages: Launcher and SPB Menu. The Launcher shows Pinned shortcuts, recently used programs, and a finger friendly task manager. You can use the left/right gestures to switch between Launcher main pages. At the bottom of the Launcher pages, there is a toolbar that allows you to return to the Home tab and access the Menu button to view the available options of the selected page.

As expected, the Launcher is widgetized and can be edited. Two rows of Favorites can be added to the Launcher, which has a Simple and Advanced Mode. I didn’t find much difference in terms of use between the two modes. Sometimes, I felt there were too many configuration options on the Home Screens, which is the undoing of Symbian as a user-friendly smartphone OS!

The SPB Menu contains all of your device programs, settings, and tools well organized in categories. The SPB Menu is basically a unified interface to Symbian’s tools and settings from within the Shell. In order for a user to access all of the applications and settings from SPB Mobile Shell and completely abstract the native S60 UI, SPB Menu is a necessary function.

Contacts

The Contacts page is a very important component of SPB Mobile Shell. The Contacts tab helps you to manage your contacts and calls without going to the S60 address book.

The Contacts tab has three pages: Favorite Contacts, Call Log, and SPB Contacts. The Favorite Contacts, lets you add many icons with specific call actions, e.g. calling to Mobile, Home, Car, etc. The “Phone” icon against the contact means a mobile phone number is dialed, when contact is pressed. Similarly a “Home” icon is used when you setup the specific call action to call the Home number. When no icon is present, the Contact is opened for you to select the action you want to perform. The Contact’s image is also displayed.

The Call Log simply replaces the Log application in the S6 UI.

SPB Contacts is an improved version of the native Contacts application. You can search an application by just typing out a name – just like T9 Nav. I find this to be extremely useful and it scores greatly over the native Contacts application. SPB Contacts and Call Log have full kinetic scrolling.

Weather Panel

The Weather Panel is quite useful, with a small window on the Home Screen and a larger Panel with the weather forecast and current conditions for the city. It unfortunately doesn’t support multiple cities but you can change the city from a long list. You can setup the Weather updates to be done periodically or only when you get WiFi connection.

Background Screens

SPB Mobile Shell comes with preinstalled background images and also has some additional images on the web that can be downloaded from within the application. The background image is tiled across all the Home Screens and as you flip the Home Screens, it appears that the Home Screens glides through a vast canvas.

Handling

While SPB Mobile Shell could be a little overwhelming at first glance, due to the multitude of Screens, Widgets and Panels, once you get used to it in a day or two, its a delight to use. I have been using it for over a week now and I am completely comfortable using SPB Mobile Shell for all my operations, from making a phone call, opening applications and checking the weather. I particularly liked the custom widgets like Photo Frame, Birthdays, Wireless Manager and one touch contact calling.

I installed SPB Mobile Shell in the C: to get the fastest response. It takes upto 20 Mb of RAM space but its well worth it. SPB Mobile Shell didn’t slow down my Nokia 5800 in anyway.

Weaknesses

There are way too many Settings. Every possible tweak and customization that can be made to SPB Mobile Shell is available to the user. There is a geeky touch to the SPB Mobile Shell, which rubs off from the Symbian experience.

Just like the S60 UI, multiple context specific Settings exist in each Home Screen for each different Panel and Widget. The Weather Panel’s Settings page are different from the Calendar’s Settings page. While this is logical and specific to Widget or Panel that you want to configure, this is exactly the bane of S60 which we lament about. A single Settings page for all Widgets and Panels, with lesser options would go a long way in engaging the lay user. I guess most people won’t go beyond the basic settings that come with the first install.

Conclusion

SPB Mobile Shell completely abstracts the S60 UI and provides an immersive experience. With a mix of amazing features like the 3D Carousel for the wow factor and absolutely utilitarian features like Widgets and Panels, SPB Mobile Shell is a winner.  I look forward to using it on a Capacitive touch screen where the touch experience will be much better than the Resistive touch screen of the Nokia 5800. I give it 5 of 5. SPB Mobile Shell can be purchased for $29.95 for downloaded for a free 15 day trial.