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Today I’ll be reviewing Kinoma’s Kinoma Play for Symbian S60, a multimedia player, podcatcher, radio player, RSS reader, image viewer, video player that supports Youtube, access to online services such as Box, Flickr and a social networking viewer plus much more all in one! As you can see from the image above that Kinoma Play can play media from all of those networks and more!

For those unfamiliar with Kinoma, they’ve been around a while back in days of early mobile media on the Palm OS PDAs like the Tungsten T series of devices and on the smartphones like Treo 650 and Centro with their Kinoma Player 4 EX and Kinoma Producer for the PC and Mac. In the past few years, they have also expanded their support to include Windows Mobile, coming out with Kinoma Play for Windows Mobile devices. With the popularity of this multimedia app on the Windows Mobile platform, they’ve decided to also include the Symbian S60 platform to the mix, offering the same type of multimedia experience found on the Palm and Windows Mobile.

Kinoma Play for the Symbian s60 is not “just” another multimedia player capable of handling audio and video streams, it offers a lot more in one app: a podcatcher offering podcasts for listening, an online radio player playing online radio streams from all over the world, and social networking app plus a lot more all in one app! As you can see from the screenshot above, support includes Youtube, Audible, Live365, Lastfm, Shoutcast and Orb for media streaming; Box and iDisk for online storage access; Picasa and Flickr for image viewing; and even access to flight information! There’s even Google Reader to view and read your RSS feeds! What else can’t it do? I guess it can’t cook your dinner, but then, I’m sure you can find a cooking video stream somewhere

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For those who want to skip over all the detailed review and just want a summary, you can jump to the review summary

Kinoma Play for the Symbian S60 offers the same, vast collection of media streams that owners of Kinoma Player for Palm OS and Kinoma Play for Windows Mobile long enjoyed. Plus, Kinoma Play for Symbian S60 offers a host of other “apps” or more like plugins or extensions that you can install and add to enhance your experience even more! You can add Google Reader to read RSS feeds, Twitter and Facebook for your social networking updates, Lastfm for radio streams, Yelp for local information, Flights for flight information, and the App Store (Mobihand) to get a mobile app store right on your device!

Think of Kinoma Play as your portable app that will “connect” you to all sorts of information, media and to the world! Want to read up on the latest news? Fire up Google Reader and you’ve got it. How about listening to or watching the latest news? Check out the latest news stream from the many news providers available. Need to check up on what’s happening with your friends? Check out the Facebook or Twitter plugin module and read and even update your status from within the app! How about finding out if your flight is delayed? Check out the Flights app. Listen to music through Lastfm, Live365 or others. I’m only scratching the surface of what Kinoma Play can do!

To give you an idea of what the app is like and what it looks like, I’ve created a slideshow of screenshots taken of the app. Enjoy!

Slideshow of Kinoma Play for Symbian S60

Video of Kinoma Play for Symbian S60

Video review of Kinoma Play for Symbian s60 at YouTube

Here are my observations:

I Liked:

Vast selection of audio, video, podcasts and streams

Coming from the Kinoma Player on the Treo 650 which I LOVED (Kinoma Player review here), I was floored by the vast collection of media streams available for viewing and listening! The collection is available for access on Kinoma Play for the Symbian S60 and it seems to have gotten even bigger! There’s got to be something in the Kinoma Guide that will please anyone. There’s lots of stuff I didn’t even knew existed! I’m serious!

Listen to podcasts

Access a vast selection of podcasts available. Make it a Favorite for quick access to your favorite streams and podcasts.

Supports most social media and networking sites

Are you on Twitter and or Facebook? Well, you’ll find that you can also update your status on Twitter and Facebook right from within the app! Yes! I’m serious! And you can also read up and catch up on status updates of your friends or those you’re following too! It’s almost like you never left!

Access to online storage

If you have accounts at Box and iDisk, you’ll be able to log in and access files stored on those online services. If you sign up for Box from Kinoma Play, you’ll get 1 GB of FREE storage! You can stream your media from your Box account to your phone and enjoy the storage and stream.

Google Reader RSS viewer

I didn’t know that Kinoma Play supports Google Reader so I’m sure this is a much welcome addition! Like I said, Kinoma Play may be the one app you may only need since it offers so much! With Google Reader available, you can now read your RSS feeds right in the app itself.

Can change the arrangement of icons on Home screen and change skin

You can customize the look of the Home screen in Kinoma Play. Change the color of the skin. Move the icons around so that they are where you want them to be. With these customization capabilities, you’ll be able be personalize the app the way you want.

I Didn’t Like:

Slow loading

It can take a few seconds to load the app and sometimes, it takes a few seconds for the app to access the stream. I understand that there’s a lot of resources required to load the app and access the streams but it would be nice if the app and streams loaded just a bit faster.

Some audio streams unsupported due to lack of codec available

As demonstrated in my video, Bloomberg’s Live TV stream wasn’t able to play the audio because my Nokia E71 and Kinoma Play doesn’t have the necessary wma codec to play it. This is due to the way the Nokia E71 smartphone is made. It doesn’t support wma streams. Unfortunately, Kinoma Play doesn’t have the necessary codec in the program to play it either. But that’s only one stream. Other Bloomberg streams like the radio and other videos play fine. I just wanted to note this in the review so that you know.

Frequent prompt for network access

It seems that every time the program needs to access the internet for streams or updates, typical of the platform, it will ask me for the access point. This can get very annoying after a while. Again, this is likely due to the Symbian OS settings. I think that I can change the settings in my smartphone.

May be confusing to exit and navigate around

To exit out of the app, you’d have to press on the left blue button (located just below the bottom left of the screen) to bring up the options. Then, press the right directional key two times to go to the Player tab and then select Exit at the bottom of the menu. That took me a bit to figure out at first and with so many screens in the program, I can see that it may be a bit daunting to some people to navigate it around for the first time. But as you get to use it over time, I’m sure it will become very familiar.

Limited features for social networking sites

Although Kinoma Play offers access to social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, there are limited features to the sites. Especially with Facebook, I’m unable to view conversations or do much except read the status updates of friends and update my own status. With Twitter, the new Lists feature isn’t yet supported as are a lot of other features. But then, Kinoma Play isn’t a social networking app so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

Review Summary

Kinoma Play for Symbian S60 is quite an app that does much more than the standard multimedia app that simply streams media over the internet. Kinoma Play offers access to online sites like Facebook, Twitter, Live365, Shoutcast, Flickr, Picasa, Lastfm, YouTube and much more. You can also access streams from your own computer via Orb, or via cloud storage at Box or iDisk. You can even read RSS feeds with Google Reader or stay on top of your flight with Flights. With Kinoma Play, you may never exit out of the app again since most of what we normally do and use our smartphones for is already in the app. I consider it a social multimedia app that does a good job at meshing the social aspects with media streaming together in one app.

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