hmm my 1st tips and tricks thread! guess I was motivated by "mobilemania contest"..... 
anyway I will try to make my monolo's interesting for you guys... please bear up. thanx! Intro:
Ok so everyone on this forum knows what "symbian" is. It is the smartphone OS used (and owned) by most of modern day nokia phones.
some of the most popular phones like 6600,6630 and all N series and E series run on symbian OS.
Buying a symbian phone is not as easy as buying your normal multimedia phone!
here are some tips you will find useful .........
1)OS version:
Ngage: 6.1
6600: 7.0
6630/6680 : 8.0
N70/N90 : 8.1
all new Nseries/ E series / 3250 : 9.1 or symbian 3rd edition
from Ngage to N90, almost 90% apps/games are compatible with each other.....
But not anymore. none of the old apps/games are compatible with 9.1 phones and viceversa. considering that the library of apps/games available for older phones is huge, this might just infuence the choice that you make....
For Example Netfront browser(one of the best html browsers fr symbian phones) is not yet available fr 9.1 yet.........
But in coming months more and more apps will be developed fr 9.1.
2)RAM, RAM!
Just as in PC, Ram is the single most important factor effecting the performace of your cellphone. The more the better......
Fr seeing how much RAM your phone has , download FExplorer, and the when you start it, the figure at top right corner is Free RAM.(download fr free at
www.gosymbian.com)
(Please do not confuse RAM(memory fr running apps) with the internal memory of the phone(C: drive). they are entirely different.)
a sad thing here is nokia is very "kanjoos" when it comes to RAM in the symbian phones.so you frequently recieve messages like " memory full:close some applications" in phones like 6681,6630, which are ram deficient.
Thus "multitasking" which is a basic feature of all smartphones is seriously affected....
For Ex. in 6681- you cannot browse web, listen to music and play a game at the same time....... very sad.
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Free RAM after startup in some symbian phones:
Ngage : 12 MB
6600: 9.5 MB
6630 : 8 MB
N70 : 32 MB
all new symbian phones like N73,N80 have around 20 MB RAM.
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the amount of Ram required by various programs varies, with java apps/games being the worst culprits...
Typical java game : 7 MB ram
opera (original) : 4-5 MB ram
WEB browser on new 9.1 phones : 10 MB ram
so just to test, run any java game on your phone and then keep it in background and go and check the free RAM in Fexplorer. You will be surprised albeit not pleasently......
or better run 3 java games on ur phone and see the result......
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also NOkia dealers and other will not be able to tell you the amount of RAm a phone has,nor will sites like gsmarena/mobile-review.
for that you have to go to dedicated sites like
All About Symbian - News, Reviews, and Software for Symbian, Series 60 (S60) and UIQ phones.
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so as you see RAM and OS version should be the most important things to be kept in mind when you goto buy a new symbian phone........... hope this guide helps, If u have any doubts then please feel free to ask here....
Thanx fr your patience..... aka. 
Buying a new symbian phone? power guide. 
