Symbian in Motion

Things might have been slow here on SiMo over the past week but don’t despair - I just returned home from vacation and I have a few new toys that I’ll be playing with and discussing quite a bit. In the meantime however, I have recently completed a very large article comparing several push email solutions for S60 that was just published today on the very well-known site All About Symbian. AAS is a site that I’m sure you’re all familiar with but if not it should be added to your reader ASAP! It covers just about every aspect of the Symbian world and is home to some of the most talented staff writers and guest authors within our blogosphere.

Battle of The Pushers: The Search for the Ideal Push Email solution

This article covers five of the most popular push email solutions and discusses them from a personal usage standpoint as opposed to a corporate standpoint. If you’re searching for a good solution or are having second thoughts about your current solution I highly recommend that you check it out.

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Today marks the end of the beta period for TextQuick - an excellent utility by Mind-Flip that received tons of buzz during the beta. TextQuick is a fast-loading communications launcher that sorts your contacts according to the amount of messages you’ve exchanged with them. With your most popular contacts at the top of the list you can access them quickly and then press the fire key to automatically open a new SMS message with that contact as the recipient, or press the send key to initiate a voice call. The beta may now have ended but as they say, with every ending comes a new beginning…

Today the first release version of this great app has become available on Handango, and it comes packing a few great new features! The last update incorporated calling features and the release version 1.4 adds some much-needed configuration options to TextQuick.

The After Sending Message field allows you to chose one of three options for TextQuick’s state once a new message has been opened or a call has been placed. The app can come back to the foreground, remain open in the background or exit automatically. The Name Order option allows you to arrange your contacts by first name, last name or last name, first name.

I have to say that I’ve grown completely dependent on this app and can’t imagine my phone without it! It launches quickly, operates smoothly and most importantly it makes your life easier. My advice? Head over to the TextQuick page on handango and check it out. :)

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Mobile Systems, the company that offers my Office app of choice OfficeSuite 4, is also the developer behind a relatively well known app called QuickWrite. QuickWrite is a utility that I shied away from back in my N80 days in favor of T9 but I had always wished that they would integrate the QuickWrite functionality with T9 rather than TAP because it is a very useful app. If you’re not familiar with it, this app pops up a small box as you type containing suggestions (sorted by frequency or alphabetically) that predict words as you type them. So for example - if “ridiculous” is a word that you type often, with this app you can input that word followed by a space in as little as two key-presses as opposed to 11 key-presses. Pretty cool, huh?

With the release of version 2.50 of this great app, QuickWrite now supports full-keyboard devices including the E90. This is excellent news that I’ve been waiting to hear since I first picked up my E61i several months ago. Since the moment I installed it I have been enjoying it thoroughly and getting accustomed to its functionality. It doesn’t take long to get used to but like any other input method it does take some minor habit adjustments before you start using it as smoothly as possible.

The QuickWrite app itself is very simple - the home screen displays a list of available input methods and as you can see above my device is equipped with the default engine (designated above as AknFEP) and the QuickWrite engine. An asterisk notifies you of which engine is currently active and you can easily switch engines by scrolling and pressing the center key on your directional pad.

Within the Options menu your only real concern is the QuickWrite option entry that will lead you to the app options screen. Here you can make changes to the few settings within the app such as the Dictionary (English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish or Italian) and the sort method. As mentioned above, when QuickWrite pops up the suggestions box you can arrange the suggested words by frequency (the number of times you’ve typed them) or alphabetically.

The remaining settings within the app allow you to determine how many letters you type before QuickWrite begins suggesting words (one, two or three letters), the maximum number of suggestions that each box will contain (two through six words) and the number of rows visible in the pop-up box (two, three, four or six rows). Note that it your number of rows is smaller than your maximum number of suggested words you will have to scroll through the box to see all of the suggestions.

The usability of the app is excellent and unobtrusive. As you type, a small pop-up box appears at the end of the last-entered letter and carries your suggestions within. At any time when the box is present you can press up/down to scroll through the recommendations and press the center d-pad key to select a word. A space will automatically be inserted after each selected word so you can just continue typing. You can also just ignore it and keep typing and QuickWrite will not interfere at all.

QuickWrite isn’t restricted to messaging and email apps by the way. You can take advantage of the simplified QuickWrite input method in many apps.

The last thing to note about QuickWrite is that at any time while typing you can press the character key (Chr, bottom right) to open the QuickWrite menu. Here you will have access to several functions including adding words to the dictionary, switching entry mode, adjusting preferences and of course inputing special characters.

I mentioned earlier that there are a few things that you need to get accustomed to with this app. One example is the function key (blue, bottom left). If you want to enter numbers or a special character such as “!” while the QuickWrite pop-up is present, you must first press the shift key to close the suggestion box. Then you can use the function key regularly until the next time you have an open suggestion box. The second notable item is that the current QuickWrite engine does not automatically capitalize the first letter of a new sentence. This annoyed me at first but I was used to it after an hour or so.

My only real complaint at this point is that QuickWrite isn’t automatically enabled on a reboot. I’m still waiting for a response from Mobile System’s support team as to whether this is functionality is planned in future versions or if it is a problem unique to my device, which is entirely possible. I’ll provide an update in the comments section once I receive word.

There is no question in my mind that this is an excellent app and after only a few short days with it I’m already hooked. I would venture to guess that QuickWrite has already cut about 20% of the time it takes me to type a message and I only expect it to be further reduced as I use it more. Mobile Systems provides a seven day free trial period and I highly suggest you take advantage of it!

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Great news for everyone out there enjoying their time with the great messaging utility TextQuick! Mind-Flip has just released the third build of the TextQuick beta with a few fixes and a new feature that brings TextQuick closer still to being your comms home-base…

That’s right, you can now use TextQuick to initiate calls as well as SMS messages. :)

Head on over to the Mind-Flip site and update your beta and don’t forget to thank Mind-Flip for this awesome open beta by providing your much-needed feedback to the developer directly or below in the comments. Enjoy!

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I’ve come across countless people posting pleas on various forums seeking what seems to me to be some very basic functionality; “I want to be able to quickly access my most frequently-texted contacts!” I think I may have even seen a request for this on the S60 Applications Wishlist (which is looking quite snazzy these days by the way :) ). It makes perfect sense to me and it sounds simple enough, but time continued to pass and no developers stepped forward to address this issue.

Sometimes the most useful apps you’ll find for S60 3rd devices come in very small packages and TextQuick is a perfect example of this. Mind-Flip’s freshman effort for the S60 3rd platform is in my opinion, an absolute necessity for our devices. It is wonderfully simple - as it should be - and it does exactly what it needs to do cleanly and efficiently.

The first time TextQuick opens it performs an analysis of the messages currently stored on your device, making note of the senders and recipients. TextQuick then presents you with your list of contacts ordered according to messaging popularity. Contacts that you exchange messages with most frequently are listed at the top and those with the least frequent correspondence are further down the list. Contacts with whom you have not exchanged any messages are then listed beneath in alphabetical order. There is also a search bar where you can type a contact name (first or last) and the list will drill down as you type.

Scrolling to your desired contact and pressing the select key will cause TextQuick to promptly open a new SMS window with your desired contact in the recipient field and your cursor will be ready to receive your message. It really couldn’t get any easier!

After running this app for the first time, TextQuick makes note of the last recorded message scanned. Subsequent launches prompt TextQuick to scan only for new messages that have been sent or received since the last scan. I find that it opens on my device in just about one second with no new messages present, and my initial scan of roughly 350 messages probably took somewhere between five and seven seconds. Yes, it’s that fast!

Currently TextQuick is available as a free open beta and I really can’t recommend it enough. During the beta, the author only asks that you email him with any feedback that you might have. I’m sure that I’m not in the minority when I say that I use my device for messaging as much as for voice calling, so an app that makes messaging easier quickly jumps up near the top of my list of ‘must-haves’. In fact if I had discovered TextQuick earlier in the day it surely would have been included in my “What’s on a Blogger’s Phone” post. :)

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