Mobile | Saurav Srivastava

gNewsReader – Google Reader done right on Symbian

Posted on October 13, 2011October 13, 2011 by Saurav Srivastava

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.

List of feeds items inside a subscription

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 on October 5, 2011October 5, 2011 by Saurav Srivastava

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.

fMobi 2.0

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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.

Windows Media Centre remote for Nokia touch phones & Vectir

Posted on December 17, 2010March 16, 2011 by Saurav Srivastava

There is a fantastic piece of software written for Windows called Vectir. Using Vectir you can control different media players running on the computer with your Bluetooth or WiFi enabled mobile phone. I have been using Vectir since the days of Nokia N79 & even did a review sometime back. However, things changed once I got my Nokia N8.

I did not like the bundled skins with Vectir graphically. Functionality wise they work nicely but they need some design love. So, I am making a remote profile for Vectir using which you can control Windows Media Centre with your Nokia Touch Screen phones. Here is how to use it.

The developers at Vectir have now bundled my theme with the release of Vectir 2.4. Thanks a lot to them. You can check the blog post & download Vectir 2.4 from here.
Go to Vectir & configure your phone as said on Vectir configuration page. Install the Vectir app in your mobile phone.
Select my profile called WMC for Nokia Touch phones from the list of available profiles which will show up in your phone once connected.
The keys are self-explanatory.

Since most of the Nokia Touch screen phones now are coming with AMOLED screen, I am making another theme for controlling Media Centre with black accent because with black colours the battery usage of AMOLED screens is further reduced. Both the white & black theme will be available.

I have also created the Windows Media Player profile half way. I will be posting it soon, after converting it to black accent.

: Here is the work in progress for the black theme. This is made with Nokia phones having AMOLED screens as black colour is more energy efficient on AMOLED screens then White.

Vectir : The only remote control you will need

Posted on February 3, 2010March 20, 2011 by Saurav Srivastava

When I had my old Sony Ericsson K750i it had a feature using which I could control Windows Media Player or any other compatible media player using my phone over Bluetooth. It was quite a useful feature as I didn’t need to buy a Windows Media Centre remote to control the media players. Besides, its just one less device to deal with as K750i used to do it all.

After buying my Nokia N79, I was missing this feature a lot & was looking desperately for some application which could give me this or similar feature. I tried various application for my N79 but either some of them refused to connect or just didn’t work. Few days ago I tried Vectir & to my surprise, it worked flawlessly with my N79 & Windows 7.

Vectir works by installing the application on your system & installing a small Java based app on your mobile phone. All you have to do is to start the application on your PC and then start the application on your phone. Once the Phone app has started, it will search for your computer, after which you can connect either automatically or if Bluetooth serial port service is not installed in the computer then by setting a COM Port manually.

It also supports connecting via WiFi but this I wasn’t able to test as I don’t have a WiFi card in my desktop.

Once configured, you can also change the keypad shortcuts to your liking. This I liked as now I have almost same keypad shortcuts for both Windows Media Player & Media Centre.

What I like about Vectir is that it doesn’t come in your way when using. You just start the application on your computer & it can continue to work in the background. I would have appreciated if it could run as a service, as once configured, we don’t need to see the configuration part again.

Since Vectir is still quite new & considering Windows 7 was jut released, I hope the developers do decide to include some features like jumplist support in future as the entire right click menu of Vectir tray icon can come in a jumplist.

A more native UI to Windows 7 would also be appreciated though its not as important currently because once running, users will hardly see it again as it runs completely transparent in your system. The entire UI of Vectir is made in WPF & being a .net application, not only it is fast but also secure & efficient on RAM.

Currently Vectir runs with any mobile phone supporting Java based apps whether it is normal keypad based or Touch Screen. It is one app which you should sure try before buying a Media Centre remote for your PC.

You can download a trial and check how good it works for you.