Feb 22
Reviews David
e55, martin fields, mobile, nokia, phone, protector, screen
Martin Fields Screen Protectors
For the last four weeks, I’ve been trying out a screen protector for my phone, sent from MobileFun.co.uk. I’ve been particularly keen to try these out after reading their blog post on all the various screen protectors they sell.
After 18 months of constantly wiping finger prints from my E51’s screen, it was badly scratched. It really is amazing how much damage even paper kitchen towel can do to a plastic screen. So, when I bought my E55 in September 2009, I didn’t remove the plastic slip that covered the screen as part of the original packaging, in a cheapskate way to protect its screen. The packaging cover did a good job of keeping scratches off. Although, after many months of constantly going in and out of my pocket, the cover’s corners began to curl up and pick up fluff. this forced me to peel them back and cut them off so that the peeling didn’t spread. Although the more I did this the more screen was exposed to the elements.
So yes, this pathetic state of affairs meant only one thing, it was time for a real screen protector. MobileFun.co.uk kindly sent me a set of their Martin Fields screen protectors. The first thing that struck me when unpacking them was that not only was there a cover for the main screen, but also for the camera on the back of the phone – very thorough. The packing was a simple moulded plastic affair, with both sets of protects on a backing sheet. The screen protector is cut to shape, and they even thought to cut a hole out for the light sensor so that the phone could still take accurate readings of the ambient light level.
I didn’t find fitting the screen protectors very difficult, but this could have been beginners luck. The most difficult part was keeping my (freshly polished) phone screen free of bits while I got the screen protectors ready! My method was to hold the protector between finger and thumb on the edges (i.e. not to leave finger prints on the adhesive side), and approach the phone at a roughly 45 degree angle, and line up with the ear-piece cut-out. Once initial contact was made, I prevented air bubbles by actually pushing the protecting upwards and downwards so that it gradually flexed onto the screen surface, as shown below.
How to apply a screen protector without getting air bubbles.
You couldn’t really apply this method to the tiny camera lens protector. For that, you just need to line it up by holding as close as possible, and then almost drop it into place. I did get a bit of a finger print on mine, but fortunately not on the area covering the camera aperture.
I can’t fault the visual quality, and would say that the MobileFun blog post had it spot on with their appraisal. The only complaint I had with this one is that it had a couple of chips which show up when the screen is illuminated. After four weeks of use it has shown no wear at all. I am always slipping my phone in and out of my pockets and the protector has shown no sign of curling up at the corner.
One of the other claims for these protectors is that you can wash them and re-apply them, after drying with a hair-dryer. I haven’t tested this claim as it has been working so well I didn’t want to disturb it. When I do try this, I’ll return and update this post.
I tried to do my own photo test to display the visual quality, but it was difficult to make a fair test. Rather than a general image, I went for showing off the pure-white level. So here is my non-scientific comparison of the Martin Fields protector vs a bare screen vs the packaging film I was originally using.
White levels behind screen protectors
If you’re interested in trying them yourself now, follow this link.
 | | Share this post |
Feb 8
Mobile News David
5530, 5th edition, allaboutsymbian, chat, cnet, cnetuk, gravity, lifecasting, nokia, rseven, s60, sms, symbian, touchscreen, Twitter
Writing about Symbian
I’ve been busy on a few writing assignments lately, so I thought I’d do a quick round up!
I’ve had a couple of reviews published on All About Symbian. The first was a co-authored piece about a new cloud service called “Rseven“. This is a sort of lifecasting service, where everything that passes through your phone can be saved onto the Rseven servers. Even if you delete something from your phone, it remains in their servers, but is just excluded from PIM sync. You can even record and upload phone calls, which are then displayed as part of your Rseven calendar. It’s an interesting concept, although I found the website needed a lot of usability work, and my sensitivities for privacy were particularly stinging from the idea of this service.
The second review I had published was for a nice little application called “SMS Chat“. This is a useful application which presents your text messages in the form of a two-way conversation, and has a rather fun interface. Has a bunch of other features too, like scheduling outgoing messages. Also, when I mentioned to the makers about a feature I thought was missing from the app, they went into rapid development mode to get it added in. The only downside, as the comments on my review rightly pointed out, it’s expensive for what it is.
I also have also written a follow up to my Twitter apps for Symbian feature. The comments on my original feature mentioned so many apps and web services I hadn’t heard of, it was clear that I should write a follow up piece. It turned out there are seventeen options for using Twitter on Symbian phones, with a range of 46 individual features. So that meant I had to do a an eye-watering 782 feature checks. I did it though and it’ll be published on All About Symbian on today, read it here.
The nice guys at AllAboutSymbian have also loaned me a Nokia 5530 touch screen phone. This is useful for me in two ways. First it’s a 5th edition S60 phone, I only had 3rd edition phones, so there’s more apps I can review now. Also, I’ve been a touch screen sceptic, so now I can actually get hands-on with one. I have to say, it feels horrible to be spreading finger prints all over its lovely screen all the time 
I’ve also written a review of the best Twitter application for Symbian, Gravity, for CNET UK, which if not published today, I’m hoping it’ll go out soon. You can read it -here- (place-holder for link).
| | Share this post |
Feb 1
Mobile News David
beta, nokia, predictive, s60, series60, sms, symbian, text
Nokia Beta Labs
Today, Nokia beta labs announced something which I, among millions of others, have been waiting for. That was an application to edit your phone’s custom predictive text dictionary.
To some, this may sound a bit boring and dull. To me though, this is a god-send. How many times have you tried to ‘teach’ your phone a new word, only to then go and make a typing error? With this you can easily fix such things. Before, the only way around is was to delete your entire custom dictionary. Which was a course of action only for brave tinkerers and hackers.
The other cool feature is that you can import and export your custom words for transferring to other phones. Although, there’s another potential use of this feature which nobody else has mentioned. It occurred to me that if you could get your address book exported into a .csv file, you could import your entire address book into your custom dictionary. This would be useful especially for typing out strange street names or surnames. I haven’t tested this, and it would be complicated if you need to have one word per line in the import file, for example. Although a little bit of spreadsheet magic or script hacking could do it.
More
| | Share this post |
Jan 31
Mobile News David
allaboutsymbian, app, application, mobile, nokia, s60, series60, symbian, Twitter
Twitter on Symbian
A while ago I set about doing a survey of all the Twitter applications I knew of for Series60 phones. As I explored them I built up a list of features, 44 in all, across eight, in which I included m.twitter.com, giving me a total of 352 feature checks to perform.
Since I’m still inducting myself into the world of journalism, I took this as an opportunity to introduce myself to some developers. Doing that was a really positive experience, you get to have an exchange of views, and in some cases, contribute to the direction of their plans, albeit in small ways.
Strange as it might sound, the downside was that I got to know about up-coming features. It worked out that three of the eight were close to releasing new versions. So not wanting my article to be outdated within a week, I decided to hold it back while they got their testing done. This was fine, but it was something of a mental weight to bear, knowing that the article was just hanging there waiting to be completed. Fate took a hand when the editor of AllAboutSymbian.com (that’s who I was writing this for) e-mailed me one night last week to ask if the article could be published the following day. Since by then, two out of three apps were already updated, and the developers of the third had said not to wait for them, I replied that I could have it ready go.
The comments posted on the article (see my publications page), were as I expected. A steady stream of you didn’t review X or Y application. To clearly show the features of each application, I’d constructed a table, which formed the core of the article. After publication I spotted it had some errors. Frustrating, but it was still over 98% accurate 
So, there’ll be two publications coming out of this project, as I’ll be posting an updated version of the feature table. I’ve already corrected my errors, and have compiled a list of even more Series60 Twitter applications, bringing the total up from eight to seventeen!
Now, forty-four checks per application, and nine more applications to check, so that means I have to do … 
Edit/Update
I did the follow up article for All About Symbian, where I covered seventeen Twitter applications and services for S60 phones. Read it here.
| | Share this post |
Jan 25
Mobile News David
allaboutsymbian, free navigation, google, handsets, local area, map, mobile, money, Nav, navigation applications, nokia, ovi, pedestrians, phone, poi, Publications, rewrite, Sat
Mobile Map Applications
Last week, the big news of the mobile tech world was that Nokia released free navigation on all of its handsets. This means that if you buy a Nokia phone from now on, you will automatically have Sat-Nav, for no extra cost, and the maps can be preloaded from your computer, saving you money on data charges.
Where did I come into this? Well, only two months ago, I’d written an article on AllAboutSymbian.com called “Battle of the Maps” where I compared Ovi Maps against Google Mobile Maps. Of course, with this ground-shifting change from Nokia ,that article became outdated, and a rewrite was called for to reflect the news.
Writing it the first time was a tricky proposition because there are too many variables to write such a piece fairly. I looked at what mapping & navigation applications do, and accordingly split my assessment into five areas, which, IMHO, was a reasonable thing to do. The complication comes with that for each potential type of user, none of those areas could be considered with equal importance, e.g. pedestrians vs drivers. So, I had to make a controversial decision, I gave them all equal importance. That way at least I’d equally displease everyone!
Thanks to the comments left on that article, I soon found the situation was even more complicated. It’s reasonable to say that I was limited to testing these areas only in my local area, and I have no need to travel very far, very often. Although we had reports from around the world at how the things I’d tested for were different from place to place.
Ovi Maps in action with the Michelin guide
The result of my original article was that Google Mobile Maps won with 3.5 points against Ovi Maps with 1.5 points, out of the five areas. With the introduction of free navigation in Ovi Maps, the score was swung to a draw in the rewritten article. This still displeased people, and I see why. My own experience has lead me to prefer Google Mobile Maps because it is just faster. Even the new Ovi Maps 3.3 is somewhat of a resource hog and is slow to load, but then perhaps that is just my phone (an E55). So, even now with all the new features, I’ll be reluctant to rely on Ovi Maps when I know that Google Maps will do what I need with much greater speed. I think Ovi Maps has one trick for pedestrian navigation that Google Maps doesn’t, and that is voice guidance. Even then though, if I’m in a noisy area, I’m not going to be able to hear it, and I don’t walk around with earphones or a hands-free kit.
But this is a complicated and fertile area for discussion and research, and I can think of a way to make a more comprehensive assessment of which is the best tool for which job. I’m not disclosing my exact idea though, as it’s not yet developed. Also, I’m not sure I can really do the research on my own.
So there you are, the new rewrite is listed on my publications page, and you can see it by clicking here.
More
| | Share this post |
Older Entries
Twitter
LinkedIn
Facebook
Google
Flickr
YouTube
RSS