Custom app icons for Nokia Belle and Icon Changer

Posted by on January 20, 2012 No comments

So, Nokia Belle OS is coming soon. I am already using a custom firmware for Belle by “The One” in my Nokia N8.

Previously, defining a custom icon for an app needed to be done via Symbian theme designer. You could also use SisContent to manually apply icons. You would need the App UID and a SVG icon for the app. This was cumbersome.

I found a nifty little app called Icon Changer from LanternSoft who make some awesome utility apps for Symbian. What you need is just a PNG file which is easier to create compared to a vector file which needs more learning for creating properly optimized SVG files via Illustrator or InkScape.

I have made some icons for my personal use which I am releasing here. You can use them for for the mentioned app they are made for. Do not re-distribute them without my permission. You can link to this blog for downloading.

Download

SNAG-0000

Nokia N8 – Also a Mini PC

Posted by on January 19, 2012 1 comment

Right now, I am in the middle of shifting my house so I am without Internet at home. The only way to access internet is through 3G Data plan in my Nokia N8.

However, tethering is costly in terms of bandwidth. My Vodafone 3G data plan in India is limited to 1 GB so it is better to use internet in phone. So, I thought about something and tried to use my Nokia N8 with my Samsung P2370MS monitor as a mirrored screen.

IT WORKS

All you need is a HDMI cable & connect your monitor to Nokia N8 via mini hdmi to hdmi convertor supplied with N8.

Everything you see in your N8 will be visible in monitor too. The only issue is that the output is not 1080p which is native resolution of my monitor. I think the resolution via HDMI to monitor was limited to nHD only.

After this, you can use any generic keyboard and mouse via the USB OTG cable supplied with your N8. In my case I am using my Microsoft Wireless Desktop 6000 v3.0. I just plugged in the USB receiver in my N8 and I immediately saw a cursor in my phone & visible in monitor. Mouse movement was choppy but workable. Keyboard was working flawlessly.

The Windows key mapped to “menu” of Nokia Belle OS and showed me all the app. However, I haven’t been able to figure out what key combination to use for showing the task switcher. I tried alt+tab, ctrl+ tab etc but they did not work. I had to use an app for this from Nokia Store called “Task switcher” or something.

Here are some screenshots of the process

This is just another reason among many due to which Nokia and Symbian rocks.

fMobi 2.3 – The best just got better

Posted by on November 9, 2011 4 comments

We just released latest version of fMobi 2.3 on Nokia Store. This new version continues on our work of making fMobi a breeze to use.

With fMobi 2.3 we are the first ones to provide support for Unified Messaging and User actions. This means that now you can write a message to a friend and it will be visible to him next time when he is using either a desktop browser or Facebook app on other platforms or even Facebook Messenger.

Facebook messaging support in fMobi

However, we did not stop here. We wanted to give our paying customers the most value for there purchase, so we also enhanced the album and picture viewer. It is still not perfect so we request users to provide us feedback.

Some of our users gave us feedback so the exit dialog is gone for good.

We have added more notifications

With our next version, we are aiming not on giving new features but on making interaction and experience better. Features can wait but a bad experience cannot be given to our valued customers. In the next 1 or 2 versions we are only going to fix visual and interaction bugs. Once this is stable, we will again start making new features for you.

Here is the changelog for fMobi 2.3

  • We are trying to move to Qt Components everywhere, but it also depends on compatibility with users of Symbian S60 v5. For now we are using the default Qt Component for buttons. The colour etc will change to better reflect fMobi branding.
  • You can now send and receiver messaging with support for new Unified messaging of Facebook.
  • New Picture and Album view.
  • Support for Facebook user actions in newsfeed like “Someone shared a wall photo” etc.
  • Haptic feedback
  • You can now reply friend requests. Accepting a friend request is still not possible from within fMobi due to API restriction so we open a new webpage in your mobile browser for this.
  • Various interface and visual bug fixes.

We request you not to pirate the app. fMobi is available at a very decent price of $2 only and buying it will support us in making this app better. Also, you will buy us a coffee that way. Download now. 

gNewsReader – Google Reader done right on Symbian

Posted by on October 13, 2011 3 comments

How many of you use RSS feeds to keep track of news on the internet? Well, they are still very important considering on a mobile phone the screen size and resources are small so to-the-point information or highlight of a news is preferred. Users can easily read all the news they have subscribed to while going about their daily routine.

I have been using the RSS reader of Opera Mini for 4 years myself due to its text rendering and huge data traffic savings. But this changed once I saw gNewsReader by Yogeshwar Padhyegurjar. I got everything I asked for. Hence I decided to help him with its UI design immediately to provide Symbian users a comparable yet simple and efficient experience to get the news.

gNewsReader is a Google Reader client. This means you will need to setup an account in Google Reader prior to using gNewsReader which I don’t think is a big issue because you are most likely already using a Gmail ID which connects all Google Services.

All you need to do is to start the app in your Symbian phone and Login with your Google account credentials and gNewsReader will automatically sync all unread feeds, stories etc. After this, the interface is self explanatory.

The best part about gNewsReader is ability to send a story to Read it Later. I personally recommend Read It later as you get an awesome Read It later client by Talvinder Bansal called SymPaper in which you can read the story some other time even if you are offline. I am also designing the UI of SymPaper.

This app is made using the User Interface guidelines of Symbian Belle. We are constantly making the app better everyday. If you like this app, I recommend buying it to support us and our work so that we can make it better further.

In case you find any interface related bugs then feel free to either mail me using the contact link at the top of this page. In case it is some technical bug then mention it to Yogeshwar on Twitter

 

 

fMobi, the best Facebook app for Symbian OS

Posted by on October 5, 2011 5 comments

So, those of you who are using a Symbian based Touchscreen phone such as Nokia N8, Nokia E7, Nokia 701 or even Nokia E6 might already know about fMobi. If not, then you should. It is by far the best Facebook app for Nokia phones and you should buy it right now.

Oh! also because I design it so I am a little bit biased towards it. Open-mouthed smile

Here is a small list of features which make fMobi so good.

  • News feed
  • Chat
  • Profile
  • User info
  • Messages
  • Check In / Places
  • Sound notifications
  • Top Friends
  • Search
  • Multiple settings
  • Photo Upload
  • Groups
  • Pages
  • Events
  • Commenting / Liking
  • View comments / likes
  • Albums / Photos
  • Notifications
  • Landscape / Portrait
  • Black / White theme

fMobi is made in Qt and QML. It uses the UI guidelines of Symbian Belle and fits perfectly in the environment. However, we don’t have a Symbian Belle device with us right now so the experience will only get better once we have our hands on actual Symbian Belle devices.

Here are some screenshots of fMobi. These are self explanatory.

 

We are continuously polishing the UI with each passing day. However, Me and Juuso Kosonen, the developer of fMobi don’t want to stop here. We are going to make it the best.

fMobi is also going to be showcased in Qt developer days this year in Munich and San Francisco.

If you have some feedback for its interface or some bug or some feature request, don’t forget to contact me or Juuso on Twitter. You can also mail me. We will try our best to give that feature in fMobi.

You can also look at some other apps for Symbian I am designing at my portfolio page. I can assure you will find them useful to try.

Template – About Application

Posted by on August 30, 2011 No comments

While making my own app designs for Symbian OS, I came across the fact that “About application” page of many apps is nothing but a bunch of links. So I decided to make a template for this for any developer to use out there.

This template is inspired by the About page of @4squick. They have done a commendable job designing the template for there app. Do check it out at www.4squick.com. 

Here is how the template looks like, this is a mockup for an app me and Ravi Vagadia are making for Symbian OS.

About Keychain - Dark   About Keychain - Light

The link to about page should be given in the options menu and not anywhere else.

The about us section can be changed to “Contact Us” with the address of your website or some mail ID. I have just given our blog address as example here.

You are free to modify the text in PSD as you like however, I recommend keeping the layout the way it is. This PSD is given as a “free to use” template and do whatever you want to improvise the design.

Do share it back here in comments though so that others can also use the improvements you make.

You can download the PSD from here.

Make sure to keep the readme.txt attached if you distribute it again & give credits to me and link to this page.

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