Screenshots for posterity

A screenshot tool for the phone is not exactly something anyone would need, but I will still walk you through this installation – as it’s going to be useful for my blogging needs.

Finding a screen capturing application is as easy as going to the Ovi Store and searching for ‘screen’. (In case you don’t know what Ovi Store is, follow/type ‘store.ovi.com‘ on you phone’s browser and you’ll have the old ‘Download!’ application replaced by this:

After that, and after searching for ‘screen’, you will find that the only free application for screenshoting is .. Best ScreenSnap.

I find it amusing, that this is the only free smartphoneware.com application (the authors of Best * stuff)

You can now proceed installing it: of course, your button will tell “Download” instead of “Launch”, but that’s only because I haven’t found a way to make a screenshot before installing a screenshot application..

The only wart I have with this application (which does the job absolutely perfectly) is that it\s not clear what’s happening when you choose a trigger button: the option look like a regular Symbian multiline input.. but it actually expects you to press the keyboard accelerator you desire:So, NO, I haven’t actually typed ‘CameraShutter2’ in there, I just entered the field and pressed my camera shutter (dunno why it says it’s the second one on my n85).

Oh, and don’t expect any screenshot of the editing field: it’s another chicken and egg problem, you can’t use the screenshot keyboard shortcut while defining another screenshot keyboard shortcut)

There you go, the ‘best’ screen capturing software (found for free) is now installed on your phone.

Oh, and that Ovi Store I keep forgeting about: you have that too doncha? Maybe I’ll rant a bit about it in another post.

I got an N85, but I won’t review it

You may find that in the 2010’s it’s weird to talk about this unknown, non-touch mobile phone such as the n85. This is exactly the reason why I won’t write about it very much, except the next paragraph:

I bought an n85 after my wedding, in 2009, to quickly have access to a GPS device while on the honeymoon trip (you know, fighting about whether turning right or left in a foreign country and foreign city is not recommended if you’re on your honeymoon). The 3 months of included free navigation was exactly what I needed, and then, .. there was Symbian.

I am starting this blog just because I am now far more knowledgeable regarding Symbian than I was a year before, and knowing the S60 3rd edition devices (thanks to http://gsmarena.com ) I found out that a lot of people around me have one. And they all under-use their phones.

So there it is.. I will stop talking about the particular model of my Symbian S60 3rd edition phone (referred also as S60 3.2 or Symbian 9.3), and I will start talking about how I use it, all of which should apply to other (if not all) same OS devices.

I will try to post every couple of days, telling you how to: customize your home screen, how to read your Gmail, how to get on facebook, use the phone as a flashlight, turn it into a router or use tethering, compose drum scores on it, record a whole gig through line-in, browse fast with Opera mini or the more ajax-y Opera mobile, navigating with offline maps, share pictures directly to Dropbox or Picasaweb, use it as a pedometer, a GPS tracker or simply as a GPS tachometer, broadcast FM music to your car’s radio and all the stuff you haven’t used (even copy-paste, task-switching, sending vcards and what not).

I will acknowledge the shortcomings though: S60 3.2 has no touch support, and the particular model I’m having has no digital compass or graphics accelerator. Give me a phone with these onboard (as an addition) and I’ll switch immediately.

Till then, I’ll teach you how to Symbian