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 the mentioned app they are made for. If you want to distribute them then give credits to me and please link to this blog post.
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.
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.
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.
gNewsReader Splash Screen
List of subscriptions
List of feeds items inside a subscription
Reading a story
Sharing stories and other options
About the app
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