Issue: 3

Once again two weeks seem to have flown by. The season is winding down a bit here and I hope to be a bit more active in writing, so far I've been reading and making helpful comments. I hope you'll be hearing about how my Symbian stuff helps me in my everyday work.

Your Symbian continues to grow apace and we now have over 7,000 readers - not bad! Hopefully some of you will be interested in two of things that the rest of the team have been organising�

T-SHIRTS
Now there is the perfect way to show your support for Your Symbian. Yes Your Symbian T-shirts are now available. As well as being the latest fashion item to be seen in the price includes a donation to help pay the running costs of Your Symbian. If your interested in obtaining this latest style please visit the website at http://www.yoursymbian.com/tshirt.php

PUB MEET
Your Symbian together with All About Symbian is planning a pub meet (Symbian OS user get together). Details will be available of the website shortly but the brief plan is for a meeting the night before the Symbian Exposium starts in London. The meet will therefore be on Monday 28th April. The meet will be at a pub in Central London (look's like its going to be near Oxford Circus). If you at all interested in Symbian or just want an interesting evening out please come along! There will be several prizes up for grabs and some guest 'speakers' to show you some of the latest stuff for Symbian OS. We can guarantee that there'll be some face and names you'll recognise (you'll get to meet some of the dark faces behind YS). More details on the website and in next week issue, but should you want to come, please keep that Monday free.

Unfortunately I won't be able to make the meet or anything else for that matter. I did think about holding an event down here, but the penguins aren't very good at holding phones�

In the rest of the issue looks out for the exciting banner competition and more, including a look at the mysterious Navi - the first of many YS exclusives!

Hope you all have a great April.

Sophie.

Just when I thought it was safe to get out the deck chair, rain hits my Welsh valley like a soggy flannel. "We've had our summer" some old Herbert (probably a distant uncle - in Wales, all old men are my distant uncle) tells me. Clearly, he thinks I looked too happy and feels the need to do something about it. Pushing me to one side, he pops into the Cwmtwrch newsagent and buys his Lottery ticket. Resisting the temptation to tell him that my odds of getting some sunshine this weekend are probably better than his of getting a tenner, I leave him to the task of choosing the numbers which won't make him rich this week. I feel sorry for the inevitable frustration he will feel for yet again failing to ensure his happiness.

What that fella needs y'see, is LottoNumbers by Mobizex (http://www.mobizex.com), and a Symbian phone. With this combination of advanced hardware and intuitive software, he will be able to offload onto his smartphone the effort of thinking of some random numbers - which is why computers were invented in the first place (insert rant about pseudo-randomness here please - Sophie). The benefits of doing this are so numerous that anyone who dares suggest that only a putz would pay money for a machine to think of some numbers should feel ashamed for his inhumanity. After all, the old man will not only be able to blame the phone for not being right, but also avoid the self-condemnation that such accusations would bring. For $2.95, you too could save yourself such heartache.

This fella is missing out on so much because not only will his smartphone pick lottery numbers out of the ether, it will also tell him where he is! That's right! A developer new to the Symbian family, SkyDoc have developed an application called MiniCPS (The CPS meaning Cosmic Positioning System). How this application works is truly fantastic. Using the night mode camera, you take a photograph of a clear night sky and using GPRS, sends that picture along with details of your current cell, time and position of the horizon to an on-line server and calculates your position. It also gives you details of the stars, which you have photographed. I am well impressed with this and I think it is well worth the $35 currently being asked.

But of course, those who live in more civilised climes will not be interested in such ancient means of navigation. Just as you're not interested in old fashioned means of communication such as letters and telegrams. One means of communication that is as stubborn as an evil regime is Fax and refuses to go away is that of the Facsimile. The eighties yuppy would often say "Ok, ya! Fax it to me and I'll read it when I get to the office". But we're in 2003, so what's changed? Now, your yuppy can say, "Ok, ya! Fax it to me and I'll read it on my phone" because Bitween (http://www.bitween.com) has released Mobile Fax for Series60. This software will automatically answer any incoming Fax calls and store them on your phone for reading, allowing you to delete and/or forward (though not necessarily in that order) any incoming Faxes, or even send your own! Now that's what I call a good idea! Weighing in at only 160Kb, it seems quite reasonable to me, and the price tag isn't too bad either at $26.

The Nokia Communicator hasn't been forgotten and what's more, you don't even have to put your hand in your pocket to enjoy the four Communicator applications that caught my eye! The first three are for those who are learning medical things like "what do arms do," "are toes important" and "if girls don't have willies, what do they have?" All three are all by Shubhasoft (http://www.shubhasoft.com) and are by no means cheapo titles with a view to having a market share in the hypochondriac self-diagnosis brigade. The first is Anion Gap (which, until I recently, I thought was a place near London - and if I'm honest, I still don't really know what it is) will calculate your Anion Gap (is it between your ears) if you enter Sodium, Potassium, Chloride and Bi-Carbonate value of the Serum. Second is the application called Serum Osmolality which requires you to enter the Sodium, Potassium, BUN, and Glucose value of the Serum before it gives you the 'Serum Osmolality value as per the clinical formula'. Finally is Abbr in Mobile, which gives you the meanings of various medical abbreviations. Excellent if you're about to pull something out of someone and just want that little bit extra certainty that you've got the right thing.

Did I say four applications? Ah yes, the final application that I think is truly marvellous has been released by the SETI institute and is called SETI@Phone. Most of you will have heard of the SETI@Home project, but now a version of the software has been released for the Nokia Communicator (apparently, they've bypassed the PocketPC and Microsoft Smartphone because of security concerns). Fetching data from the Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico (either via a normal internet connection over the air, or synchronised via your PC), it runs in the background, analysing data for signs of possible extraterrestrial intelligence. No doubt, this will have a detrimental effect on your battery, but it does look cool as a screensaver and you can know that wherever you are, your phone is doing your bit to prove that we are not alone in this wonderful universe (http://setiathome.berkeley.edu).

Anyway, I'm outta here so take hair y'all and look after yourselves. It's dangerous out there!

Well, it's been a couple of years since I wrote anything to do with PDAs, Psions, Symbian or Penguins (Hoi! - Sophie), instead I've been stuck in a world Cyberpunk art, half written stories and management coups. However, it's good to know some people remember me; and a chance phone call with an old acquaintance led me to a darkened back room of Soho to find the latest Symbian OS phone. It's also good to know that these old acquaintances gave me a sly nod to let Your Symbian have the first 'preview' of this impressive piece of techno lust. And you thought I just dropped off the face of the planet to escape the Argentineans� (Well, I thought so? - Ewan)

The in house name of the device is "The Navi." Several points for stylish name, shame it sounds a bit familiar. The Navi is revolutionary for several reasons, firstly, the device is entirely comprised of a 408x352 screen, housed in a stylish red and white plastic shell (faces are replaceable) for the 'consumer' version and there is a platinum 'executive' model also in the works. Number and text input, as well as menu navigation, is provided by a new idea� your input is through an infrared matrix that sits just above the recessed screen. Think of the screen having a touch sensitive layer, but rather than touching plastic, you break beams of infra red light. This pad covers the whole screen, which displays the options underneath as you progress. This new method has various advantages over the more traditional touch screen in that the screen does not have the high reflection rate, also it enables some very interesting configurations for games playing.

When it comes to text entry (note the screen is exactly double the Series 60 size), you have three options. The first is Series 60 layout over the whole screen, where 2x2 pixel squares imitate one pixel (ie Series 60 full emulation). Secondly we have the Series 60 in the top half and an overlayed ABC keyboard in the bottom. Your third option is a full screen number pad with a small display at the top - it's so nostalgic it reminds me of the Nokia 2110!

The phone is tri-band so will work anywhere (Port Stanley? - Sophie). Okay, almost anywhere. It has good old GSM, GPRS, and 3G when it becomes available. The built-in radio isn't quite perfected yet, the circuitry only runs down to around 909mhz so Radio 5 is hard to get, but it should be fine in the final release. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, Infrared and Advanced Serial are all supplied as standard.

The OS is Symbian� or is it? Half way through my demo, they leaned over and accessed the Setup Menu, pointing out an icon marked 'Palm.'

I kid you not here, the phone displays the Company Logo (comically reading Weyland Yutani - the development team are huge Aliens fans by the looks of it) and the phone switches itself from Symbian OS into Palm OS 5. All my contacts, agenda, notes and task data was read by an implementation on SyncML and everything was readable by the standard Palm applications. Now I've effectively got a 320x320 screen Palm with a soft graffiti area for input. Instantly I can feel millions of Palm Users throwing their Treo's out the window, loading up the 128mb of Ram with some of the thousand Palm applications out there, all the while not realising they have the more powerful Symbian Software as well.

This has sold me the phone. But wait� there's more!

[Geek Mode On]

Tech specs time, it's powered by an Xscale 500mHz processor, with 96mb of Flash Rom and 128mb of SDRAM available internally. 32mb is reserved for programs to run in, so that's a whopping 96mb for storage. Don't forget the MMC slot and Compact Flash 2 slot can provide additional memory storage. This enables you to use additional CF Peripherals, while using external programs/data in the MMC slot. Currently only CF Modems and WiFi cards are supported, but "the manufacturer" assures me that will change as demand requires.

Graphics is provided via some custom chips lifted from a Radeon 8mb 3d graphics card, and sound is equally impressive with a CreativeLabs SoundBlaster 5.1 Surround Stereo, though the phone only has a mono speaker, you can attach external speakers to the headphone jack. Its pretty impressive playing GLTron in surround sound, especially when Sark's light cycle cuts you off.

[Geek Mode Off]

Innovation is the key with The Navi, and none more so than in the power department. The built in battery, which recharges via the USB/Firewire/RS232 cradle allows for 1 week on standby and up to 6 hours talk time, which is pretty impressive for a 72-bit colour screen. However, this is only the beginning. The Navi provides one additional power source, a kinetic battery known as WristFlick.

In normal day to day use, the WristFlick extends the battery life by around 20%. It continually recharges the battery through natural movements. So as you walk (with the phone in your hand or pocket), the kinetic circuitry converts this movement to electrical energy. As well as extending battery life, it acts as an emergency source of power if you are away from your mains charger. If the battery ever runs out, no problem, give it a quick flick with your wrist for a few minutes, and you'll have a bit more juice. Ingenious, to say the least.

PC Connectivity is provided via the cradle, which, as mentioned, features USB, Firewire and RS232. The syncing software programmed by some of the people responsible for Symbian's own syncing software, gives you as good synchronizing as you would expect from those programmers. The phone also features impressive connectivity on the road, with an attachable port replicator which features all the usual ports, including LPT, USB, Firewire and Ultra Wide SCSI.

Summary

I only got to play with The Navi for a few hours, but it was a good size (about 7650 size, but all screen, no flip out and a lot thinner) and has feature set to die for. It's scheduled for release in around 5-7 month's time. Watch out, it's going to clean up.

=============================================
YS LETTERS PAGE - edited by Ewan; answered by all the Gurkhas�

Right you lot, you're all fired. Get out. Alt-F4, ctrl-e, pull out the AA batteries, I don't care any more.

(Sophie hands Ewan a glass bottle of Irn-Bru and a deep-fried Mars bar. "What's up, McLeod?")

I'll tell you what's up. The amount of letters that we received for Issue 3, that's what. Guess how many could count to the Star letter with the fantastic prize? No go on, you'll never guess.

(Ehrm, none? - Sophie)

None!!!! That's right! You all just take, take, take, and you give nothing back. Not to me, to your fellow YS readers, or to Noumena who probably had another copy of MSG Karting to award someone.

Look, you're in your email client right now. Hit "New Mail" and tell us something about Symbian, your phone, your pet dog, I don't care! I just want something to read that isn't "The Sunday Post..."

(How about a banner competition? - Sophie)

Hmmm... Okay.... That might work. Right, let's try this. You may have noticed that on the YS homepage we now have a range of witty banners for you to host on your website so people know where to find us. Have a look at them on www.yoursymbian.com/link.php if you haven't found them yet.

They may be cringe-worthy, but its the best that we could come up with thanks to the feedback you lot give us. But I bet you lot could do better. So why not, rather than sending us a paragraph for the Star Letter prize, you send us a new slogan.

The best one gets blasted in pixels all over the web, and we might find a fashionably Crap cotton prize.

(Hold on, we got a few tiny letters, can you do another Shorts section? - Sophie).

-- From Oz in Germany --
Good stuff.
--
Thanks Oz, at least we know someone appreciates what we're doing.

-- From David in South London --
Have you sent the second issue of YS? Phil and myself have not received it... but then our IS department has recently been overzealous with spam killing and blocking emails containing any word considered rude.
--
Could this be the answer? We send out thousands of copies of each issue, and the Data Police Suits mean we have only 7 readers?

-- From Sophie on West Island --
Mum,

Yes I got the Marzipan Squares from Grandma. As usual I only managed to get through about half of them before some of the more adventurous Penguins decided the pink ones looked like fish. He took it straight out of my pocket this time, but he waited until I was looking somewhere else. The weather never really closed up, which is a shame because I'd been invited over to- (Oi!, this is one of mine! - Sophie)
--
Which makes up for my confusion last issue over the one from your Mum!

And that's me up to the word limit! See you all in next issue's Letters Section, assuming we get more than 87 bytes passing through the inbox.

=============================================
STAFF INTRODUCTION - Richard

This is a story all about how
My life got flip turned upside down.
So if you'd take a minute and sit right there,
I'll tell you how I became a Symbian user.

In Yorkshire, England, I was born and raised
But Wales is where I spent most of my days,
Playing on my Amiga like a friendless fool
And programming the BBC Micro in the school.

But computers ain't all I loved to play,
Heck a fella's got a live day by day.
So brought up as I was to believe in God -
It was no shock that I should join His squad.

But my fascination with 'letric buttons and lights
Kept me from most of the schoolyard fights.
And when I first got my Sharp IQ,
I knew that my mobile technology love was true.

So, through two Psions and a PocketPC I find myself safe,
A Symbian user on a web site run by Rafe.
And in eagerness I watch the mobility trend,
But the next device I get will hopefully be a girlfriend :-)

Thank you

Richard Hodges (TANKERx)

Over at My-Symbian.com there is an interesting debate on T9 and the P800 and whether people would be prepared to pay for it. Personally I'm not bothered by its absence - you don't need it with a pen input, but not everyone agrees.
http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2837

This week saw the release of a 3rd party Camera and Vibra API for the Sony Ericsson P800 which means at long last the eternal question of 'Why is there no video camera' & 'When will Camera FX be out on the P800' will end. As yet there have been no announcements of any planned programs but I expect we should start seeing these over the next few months. For the person who has no idea what I'm talking about, yes you!�This API will allow developers with the ways and means to create software that is based around the camera there was an abundance of camera applications for the 7650 a short time after it's released and if you were wondering why the P800 has been different, then wonder no more. http://my-symbian.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4557

The program 'Matefinder' which was released for the Series 60 platform a short time ago which is essentially a Bluetooth Instant messaging program has been put through it's paces by some of the forum members with one user even claiming marriage. To me anyway, if someone is within a 10 meter radius and you want to speak to them then why not use good old fashioned speech?
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9884

Series 60 has got one step closer to total customization this weekend with the Alpha Release of Icon Changer. The application, which is due out this time next month, allows users to change menu items within the Series 60 interface and is exclusive to All About Symbian.

There has been a discussion in the 9210 forum about using a 'Flasher' to do various things to your phone, such as upgrade firmware and modify the UI and startup animations. Basically a flash box gives you access to the ROM (Usually Z drive), which is part of the phones memory where all the OS files are stored. The problem is that whilst this may be legal to sell, the firmware which is property of Nokia isn't legal, and the box can be used for less legitimate things such as changing of the phones IMEI. http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=9961

What are your views and opinions of DCT flashers and the legitimacy of them? Send your answers on a postcard to [email protected]

Now that the 3650 is becoming more generally available things are starting to look a bit busier in the 3650 forums. Tips include how to get MGS installed on to your MMC card and use of 128MB MMC cards (read that and weep 7650'ers!).
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=19

An interesting article on OPL and its future as open source has appeared on the Wireless Development Network. Featured is our very own Ewan (I wonder who let him out - Sophie), as he talks about how it happened.
http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/symbian/rb_47.html

After the finish of the CeBit show in Hanover there have been quite a few picture floating about of weird and wonderful things to drool over, the one that interested me the most was the Memory Stick Duo TV tuner although as I understand it, the one on display was a non working prototype. Similar things have said to have been in the pipeline for the Sony Clie (Palm powered PDA) so hopefully a Duo P800 version will follow suit.

Cadbury's Creme Eggs, How do you use yours?

Greetings and welcome to my first back stop article. Regular readers who know me as SwitchBlade of my rants on AAS will instantly skip this article thinking, "Oh no not that Prat again!", but hopefully some of you will be interested in this article. For those unfamiliar with me, I'm a 9210 owner and have been for the past 18 months. I'd also be a 7650/3650/P800 owner if anyone
wants to give me a free one. Enough of that, on with the article.

Cadbury's creme eggs are chocolates with flavoured cream centres shaped like eggs usually sold at Easter time. That's in April for our non-Christian readership. How does this relate to Symbian I hear you ask? Or at least I'm sensing Sophie threaten me with her penguin counting device if I don't tell you. Well the cream in the centre is runny, kind of how the Symbian OS runs in that hard case round your phone... Ok , I'm not hanging this article on that tenuous link, the slogan Cadburys use is "How do you eat yours?", and the subject I'm looking at is how do you use yours, referring to your Symbian device.

At the moment I'm somewhere below the English Channel on my way to work in France typing this on my 9210, so here's an obvious first use I have as in writing articles, rants, etc. Another use I have at work is games, because sometimes a quiet day can be very very boring, but easily wasted in a game of Civilisation. To communicate I mostly send text messages or e-mails, I occasionally browse the web on my 9210 and sometimes make the odd phone call. "Whoopdeedoo" you cry, as if you really care. Where I'm leading to is this... a lot of people at work and otherwise, look at my device and say, "What do you need that for, all a phone has to do is make calls."

Hmmm, making calls, the function I least use my phone for. The modern phone is a multifunctional communication device, to start with you can send texts and make calls, on some you can fax, on others e-mail, some browse the web, some even enable you to communicate with online text chat systems. Recent advances in technology and the arrival of 3G mean that we are now entering a realm where our devices can do video calls as well as voice. There is more to communication than this.

I'm typing in word, an article that I will later e-mail to the YS editor after checking on my PC. I can, if I wanted, create spreadsheets and graphs on my device to show people, I can hook up to an IR projector and perform slideshows to communicate with my office colleagues, I can record sounds where I am for later replay to friends (usually when they sober up). Other devices enable video recording and photo taking. There is a plethora of uses these devices have and almost all boil down to communicating information with others.

When that new baby is born, no longer do you have to take photos and wait for developing, your phone could take snaps, then you pop outside the hospital quick to upload the pics to the net where friends and family can find them. Communication is more than words, in this example words are hard to describe the newborn baby a photo will describe so well.

"All I want is a phone to make calls." Yeah, that's a primary aim but there's so much more to communication that the devices we use can open up for us. So how do you use yours and do you make the most of the communication experience you can have with the device you own? Whether from a humble Series 3a to the new P800 all Symbian devices offer their own unique abilities to communicate abilities that can be overlooked. How do you use it, and how CAN you use it?

And that's issue 3. I hope you've enjoyed reading and if you have any feedback�

Let me know what you think! A short email to [email protected] with what you liked, what you didn't like, and what you would change, would go a long way to making a better magazine.

-- Sophie

Your Symbian was brought to you by the letters "A", "P" "R" "I" and "L" and the
number "1."

Copyright (c) Your Symbian 2003. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be coped in any form without written permission.

Some trademarks are referred to in this publication; these are for information purposes only. All trademarks remain the property of their respective owners. The views expressed within are not necessarily the view of Your Symbian, but rather the individual authors. The accuracy of the contained information is not guaranteed. And never trust a one-eyed BOFH...