Ten Apps to Enhance your Symbian S60 (v3) Phones Experience
One of the most popular phone in the market today is based on the Symbian S60 platform, made popular by Nokia. Among these phones are N73, N95, N96, N85, N81 and more. Being an avid user of the S60 platform (thanks to its versatility and expandability), I would like to share some of the apps that I find critical to enhance my experience with phones that are based on this platform.
Note: I’m using the good-old (read: power hungry) Nokia N95-1 as a base for this review. However it should work on most S60 v3 phones out there.
Determining which version of Symbian OS is installed in your phone
First up, how to you determine which Symbian OS version that is installed in your phone?
This is a simple process, go to the Menu -> Tools -> Utilities -> About, and you should see the following screen:
(Note: Your menu layout may vary, just look for the “About” app somewhere in there)
This tells me that my phone is running on Symbian OS S60 version 3 (Feature Pack 1) version of the OS. Most of the apps that I am going to talk about in here is working with this version, so if yours is different, your mileage may vary.
Enough of the platform talk, let’s get down to the Apps shall we?
1. Fontrouter: Anti-alias (“cleartype”) your Fonts!
Depending on the version of your Firmware, you might or might not have font anti-aliasing turned on by default. I realized that there are some anti-aliasing on N95 after I’ve read Gizmodo’s N95 article. The images of the N95 sample that they have comes with a very nice, smooth fonts on the display, while mine is jagged and just plain ugly. After some research, I came across a 3rd party application that does just this, called Fontrouter!
Check out some screenshots from TheNokiaBlog to see the comparison of before and after!
Download Fontrouter at Oasisfeng
(yeah the forum is in Chinese. I grabbed the first link on the forum post and it works like a charm)
2. Take Some Screenshots!
All the screenshots featured in this post is taken directly on my own N95 phone. How did I do it? I used a neat, little app called (duh) “Screenshot”:
If you noticed in the image above, it shows how you can simply use the camera key on your phone to take screenshot of any application that is currently open. For models without a dedicated camera button, there are a few shortcut options that you can use. All screenshots are saved in JPG format by default, saving you precious storage space.
Download Screenshot by Antony Pranata
3. Browse your files easier with Y-Browser
Symbian OS by default comes with its own file browser, called the “File Manager”. While this is good enough for most file moving operations, it is very limited in terms of access. The default file manager does not allow you to see all the files in the system, supposedly protecting from any silly accidents by certain dumb curious users.
However, if you’re the kind who loves adventure and know what you’re doing (or simply a control freak), why don’t you download Y-Browser and fiddle around? Here’s some screenshots:
4. View System Performance, Processes, Tasks and Memory Consumption with Y-Tasks
Looking for a task manager-like tool for your phone? From the same developer as Y-Browser above, here comes Y-Tasks!
The only odd thing about this app is that it will not work on its own. You’ll need to install the plugins of the functions that you wanted (they are all in the download link below, don’t worry) to use. Here’s some screenshot of Y-Tasks:
5. Geo-tag your Photos with Nokia Location Tagger
If your phone have a built-in GPS receiver, you can use it to geo-tag your photos taken with the phone. Geo-tagging means that the device will also record the coordinate of the location where the photo is taken. For certain sites like Picasa and Flickr!, they have special use for geo-tagged photos. This feature is also handy in case you tend to forget where your photos are taken!
To use this app, start the app and then once its locked to the coordinate, begin taking photos. The app will inform everytime it has tagged the photos of the locations! You can also set this app to auto-start everytime the phone is started up for that added convenience (and higher battery depletion rate).
Download Nokia Location Tagger
6. Conversation – get your Nokia Chat (or you can call it iPhone-like SMS) back!
I’ve used an iPhone before this, and I really missed the chat-bubble-like SMSes. It makes texting feels like chatting, it’s fun, and guaranteed to blow your SMS bills skyhigh. Fortunately (or is that an “un-”?), Nokia BetaLabs have an app called “Conversation” that does something similar (although not quite the same). Check it out:
Note: Please read the installation note properly, as this app is not a simple one-click install. You might need to do a few things before you can install this app (it’s well documented, don’t worry), depending on which phone you’re using.
7. Supercharge your Web-browsing with Opera Mini
I honestly don’t know what the folks at Opera has been doing, but this is the most orgasmic mobile browser that I’ve ever used! When I switched to N95 from an iPhone, I terribly miss the web-browsing with Mobile Safari, but after discovering Opera Mini, I get exactly what I want back, and more!
You can sign up for Opera account on their website and later setup a mobile sync within your Opera Mini browser, which will sync your bookmarks across any Opera platform that you’re using (yes, even on your PC/Linux/Mac!). This feature alone already save me a few rounds of aggravation due to lost bookmarks!
8. Twibble for those Twitter Junkies
Twitter have become one of the hottest way to tell the entire world about what you’re doing, what you’re up to, and for the smarter ones, use it for marketing yourself, your service or your blog the easy way. In fact, even this blog is marketed via Twitter!
There’s two ways to twit via your Symbian phone. Either via the web or you can just use Twibble!
The most awesome thing about Twibble is that it can utilize your GPS device and also identify your location! A word of caution though, if you’re Hirano Aya, don’t ever turn on the GPS feature, or you’re so going to get stalked!
9. GMail Mobile
Trying to open the default Google Mail (GMail) from your phone will result the site to revert to its much lighter, faster mobile version (with limited capabilities). The problem is, what if you need to access your e-mail when you don’t have radio coverage? Simple! Why don’t get an app that can store the messages offline for late reading?
To download this app though, you’ll have to open the download link below in your mobile browser. There will be a link that says something like “Get Faster GMail”. You should know what to do next, I hope!
10. Mail For Exchange
Those that is working in a Microsoft-powered corporate environment will appreciate this app. It allows over-the-air synchronizing with your MS Exchange contacts, calendar and tasks, as well as allow direct access to the Global Corporate Directory for some e-mail address searching.
Read more details on Nokia:
Mail For Exchange
Sweet… Thanks for teh tips!
cool stuffs. Thnks alot