Most of the people who own a symbian device complain of the device being slow & frequently hangups. They do not know how to use smartphone in first place & then curse the wonderful symbian OS. I would like to impart my personal experience with Symbian OS & provide you with some Tips & Tricks which will boost the potential of your smartphone, providing a great experience with Symbian OS.
• Reboot your phone atleast once in a day. This helps in clearing up unused temporary files,clipboard entries etc generated by phone during it's operations. It also helps in freeing up RAM(memory), which is useful for speedy performance of the device.
• By reading above tip most users will be tempted to reboot their device more than one time a day, but please control this urge. The reason behind this is, Smartphones need a huge deal of power from your battery at the time of startup. So if you restart the phone numerous times a day, to free up RAM or disk space then don't curse when your phone shuts down when you are attending a important call. So just reboot the device only one time a day.
• Keep checking Task manager to see the running apps. Exit the applications which you do not need. The Task manager can be brought by pressing the menu key for a while. Running a large number of applications not only slows down your phone, but can also crash your device if your RAM(memory) becomes full.
Watch youtube video regarding multitasking on symbian OS :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQqbpK_uYlM
• This is applicable only when your smartphone gets in hands of non-smartphone users. Some friends of you must be surely having a habit of pressing RED(Call end key) to exit the running application. But they do not know this is Symbian, when you press the red key the app does not exit but runs in background consuming valuable resources of your phone. So you will need to exit any apps via Task manager as explained in the 3rd tip of this guide. Newer S60 v3 device user need not to worry about this as when a user presses red button to exit the app gets terminated instead of going in background.
• When you exit the menu by pressing the right soft key i.e the one above the Call end button, the menu exits on the screen but is active in the background. To exit the menu completely press Left softkey which brings the options & then select EXIT. This completely exits the menu. This helps in freeing up some 100~200 KB RAM, which is of use when running some heavy game which requires every bit of your memory. The downside to this is that you will have to wait a bit when you access the menu for the first time after you have exited it before. This is more noticeable in older devices than the current generation one.
• Smartphone have a great advantage of extending their capabilities by installing a large number of apps written for them. Due to this many users love to install every application which they find for their phone. The users are unaware of some apps which put their entries in device startup, so they start when the phone is booted thus increasing the boot time. Some examples of app which include their entries in startup are Full screen caller, Call recorder, Antivirus application etc. Also some apps which are not properly written results in crashing the device. To prevent this only install apps which are genuine & are properly tested. Avoid using BETA releases, as they can have bugs. The normal user will be annoyed of these bugs. Always install the version that is compatible with your phone. Check in applications compatibility list to see whether your phone supports the app. If phone gives you a warning “Application might not be compatible with phone! Quit install?”. Then do not proceed to install it, there is a severe possibility of your phone hanging or crashing after such installation.
• Symbian phones have a cut/copy-paste feature which is not known to many users.You must have noticed the Pencil Key(Known as EDIT key). So if you need to copy a message you have saved in drafts to notes. First open the message saved in drafts, then press the EDIT button & select all the text by using the navigational key without letting go the EDIT key. Then you will two options above the softkeys i.e copy & paste. Select the desired operation you wish to perform without leaving the EDIT key. After you have done this let go the EDIT button & then go to notes. Keep the EDIT key pressed you will get a option to “Paste” above the right soft key,press it & voila the text you selected is copied. This helps in saving you of lot of typing & also your time. This tip applies to most of the applications. Feel free to try it on other apps.
Watch youtube video regarding copy-pasting on Symbian OS :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SgCrvEShSE
• Symbian OS like any other OS is vulnerable to viruses. The newer versions are more secure than the old. So install only those apps you trust which are virusfree. Refrain from installing applications downloaded from warez sites they mostly are infected by viruses. These viruses can break havoc once they enter your phone. For example slow down the phone, crash phone occassionally, drain battery,render your phone useless. To protect your phone from these viruses always decline bluetooth requests from unknown devices. Bluetooth is the major culprit for spreading such viruses. I do not suggest installing Antivirus application on your phone as they are still not mature enough to detect viruses. Also they slow down your phone considerably as they monitor each & every file you open & apps your run. Instead of this install a antivirus on pc & scan your phone using it. Some newer Antivirus softwares like “Quickheal Total security 2008” support scanning your mobile by connecting it to your pc. No need to install anything on your phone. Do not ignore this tip as the viruses are on an increase.
• You must have seen apps which promises to boost your phone’s RAM a.k.a Ram boosters. Do not install such apps, they do not do what they promise. They will be able to free just some Kb of your Ram & nothing else. I suggest you get a good application like LCG X-Plore which includes file-manager, zip-manager, task-manager etc. Use the task manager to kill the running threads of apps which you do not need. This is the best way to free up your RAM(memory).
• With time symbian phones tend to be slow due to invalid entries resulted from installation of various apps & improper uninstallation. To solve this it is essential to format the phone along with the memory card once in a year. This will ensure that your phone is always fast & less prone to crashing.
• You must have heard about firmware upgrade from mouth of techie friend of your’s. Firmware is a basically a software which is written in hardware. It is embedded in ROM chip. Always search for firmware update every six months. You can upgrade your firmware by taking your phone to your phone’s care centre or via the pc suite which is bundled with the phone on a CD-ROM. The advantage of upgrading firmware is manufacturers often release a firmware update to fix any issues in a particular phone or to improve it’s performance by tweaking some phone’s internals. So after updating the firmware of your device you get to enjoy a fast phone with less bugs & also some value added features. If you plan to update the firmware on your own, follow the updating guide on manufacturers site carefully, so as to prevent any damage to your device.
Symbian Resources :
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www.s60.com
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www.youtube.com/s60online
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www.freesymbiansoft.com/
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www.symbian-freeware.com
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www.mobile9.com
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www.getjar.com/software/Symbian
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http://www.osnews.com/story/17088/To...0-3rd-Edition/
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http://www.mobilefan.net/Symbian.nsf...e-Free/Symbian
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www.soft32.com/c/PDA/Mobile/Symbian/2-48.html
Tips & Tricks for Symbian Users
thanx for sharing...
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