In terms of smartphone operating systems, Symbian is far from our favourite. But it does have some pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve, including the ability to control certain Symbian Nokia phones using a Wiimote.
It’s a clever solution – on the recent Nokia handsets with an HDMI port, whenever you connect the phone to a TV via HDMI, it launches a dedicated multimedia menu for accessing photos, music and videos. But having your phone plugged in to the TV is problematic to control unless you happen to have a super long HDMI cable.
So Nokia have introduced the ability to control the phone using a Bluetooth controller using a free app called ‘Big Screen’. The system will work with a Nintendo Wiimote or a PS3 controller, or a Bluetooth enabled remote control. The phone offers instructions on how to sync to particular devices, and once synced, you can use the controllers D-pad and buttons to select content on your device.
Another cool feature is the ability to turn the the phone’s camera flash into an LED torch by holding down the lock switch for a few seconds. It’s a simple and smart shortcut we’d love to see introduced to other phones.
While we’d still not really recommend Symbian as a smartphone OS in the face of the impressive nature of iOS and Android, it turns out it still has a few features worth getting excited about.