Symbian in Motion

Sorry guys, I completely forgot to mirror this post. I’ve been so busy at CTIA (despite the fact that it’s incredibly lackluster). You’ve been waiting for it… I’ve been waiting for it… And now it’s here!

Admit it, as much as you love your Nseries you would gladly trade it in this second for a QWERTY S60 handset that was just as capable spec-wise. It’s ok, so would we. We know it’s coming down the road but we need something to tide us over in the meantime. T9 is terrible as far as text input goes, but there are a few other options. Our favorite by far is Adaptxt. It’s been around for a while on Windows Mobile devices and a few months ago S60 users got their first taste of true predictive goodness. For those who don’t know, Adaptxt is an intuitive text entry system that not only predicts words for you, it learns how you write and predicts the current word as you type, the next word, phrases and even sentences. It really is a fantastic app. The initial release had some issues that lead to the application being pulled for a while, during which time Keypoint tweaked the app to work a lot better with third-party applications among other things. The result is a brand new version arriving just in time for CTIA. The new version is dubbed beta but don’t be fooled, our tests have gone very well for the past few days. What’s more, Adaptxt is a payware application but while the new release is in beta it is available for free during the trial period. Not for the standard seven-day trial mind you, we’re talking a full 90 days of free Adaptxt love. Granted, you’ll know you can’t be without it after 24 hours but hey, free is never a bad thing.

Original post

subscribe to comments made about this post 

Y-Browser, our favourite 3rd party file manager that does so much more has been updated by Dr Jukka to version 0.88. The update includes amongst other things bug fixes, layout changes and improved support and stability for Feature Pack 2 devices.

The main list of changes included in this version are:

- Lots of layout change fixes
- Some bug fixes to improve stability (Especially with FP2 devices)
- File modified time changed from UTC to local time
- Added Command short cut accelerators to the menu items
- Edit-Mark, menu has now two additional options: Mark with wild card & inverse selection
- File association settings added
- Plug-in manager added
- Email folders shown now as well (with Mail folders plug-in)

If you need more info on what Y-Browser does and the benefits of it, check out the review on Symbian in Motion by Zach.

The good news is that the application is signed and ready for installation, which is great in the current climate of Symbian Signed being such a mess. Head on over to the Dr Jukka website to get the additional plugins as desired.

subscribe to comments made about this post

I just got an email letting me know that the latest Widsets beta is now available to the public with some nice new functionality. This is something that I’ve been waiting for actually, as it has been quite a while since I last tried the app / service. I have to admit that I was less than pleased with versions past. Using the app on my N80IE and E61i, I found it to be very slow and it even caused several reboots in the few times I tried to battle through the bogging. Now that Nokia has rained down a few new handsets with more RAM, more processing power and more overall S60 goodness, I’m anxious to give Widsets another go.

If you’ve yet to give Widsets a go, think of it as a widget launching pad. Yes, it is a java app unfortunately but the concept is cool. You start online on the Widsets site where you can search, select and even create your own widgets. Creating a widget is extremely simple, after all they’re simply based on RSS feeds. Once you’ve selected the widgets that interest you, a simple click will bounce them over to your mobile profile and they will automatically appear and sync the next time you launch the app on your mobile. The 2.0 beta version introduces some new functionality that is definitely worth checking out. Namely, widgets can now perform actions such as initiating calls or launching the browser without exiting the Widsets app.

There is one problem right off the bat however. Despite the fact that the SiMo widget has over 9,300 users making it far and away one of the most popular Symbian-centric widgets available, it’s nowhere to be found on the beta site. I also haven’t seen it featured on the Widsets homepage a single time while plenty of less popular Symbian widgets are featured all the time. Granted it still bears the old colors and title from before we switched the name of the blog, but Widsets users still seem to enjoy it (thanks to all who are reading this in Widsets)! Maybe someone on the Widsets team will read this and have a change of heart.

In any event, if you love your Widsets and don’t mind being without the SiMo widget definitely head over to the beta site and give it a go. They appreciate your feedback very much so don’t be shy!

subscribe to comments made about this post

Sittiphol Phanvilai has updated the Mobitubia client to 1.76 for S60 3rd Edition models to fix a bug, one big huge one in fact; that bug is Youtube.com. After they had tweaked their site so that 3rd party Youtube clients would not work any more with their site, (which also included emTube), giving users the “Video Not Found” error.

Now I don’t have a problem with Youtube saying that they don’t want their content to be accessed directly by 3rd party applications, but what other alternative is there? The official Youtube client? Have they actually seen the quality of the playback on that? Now I don’t know about you, but from where I stand, this is just Youtube crippling the progress and evolution of potentially 2 great applications. Why not just work with the developers and make a great application which works?

Do not stand in the way of evolution Youtube, either embrace it or get out of the way. Just like time, evolution waits for no one.

Luckily this latest update for Mobitubia fixes this issue and you can enjoy it still, just go to the official website to download it. The client supports (tested:)

• Nokia N95
  
• Nokia N93
• Nokia N82
• Nokia N75
• Nokia E65
• Nokia E61
• Nokia E61i

*Note, the Nokia N95 8GB is also supported, but if you are running on V15 firmware you do know that you have native Youtube.com support? This means you can watch Youtube videos on the full Youtube .com website. You can try either or both if you prefer.

subscribe to comments made about this post

Handy Weather by Epocware is probably one of the apps that I use most often on my S60 devices, and yet I haven’t ever reviewed it here on SiMo. Odd perhaps, but I suppose my assumption was simply that everyone already knew about it since Epocware advertises the app very well on sites like S60.com and Handango. In any event, there’s really only one thing you need to know. If you want weather data on your S60 device, you want Handy Weather.

As with most Epocware apps, the UI and performance are top-notch with Handy Weather. It’s easy to set up, easy to use, it updates automatically in the background at defined intervals and it packs a terrific feature set. In the latest version 5.01, Epocware has added three new views that give a wider scope than had previously been available.

• Temperature map - Displays a weather chart of the selected zone shown by shades of blue, yellow and green
• Pressure map - Displays pressure space and depression area
• Satellite map - Displays satellite imagery of various parts of the world

I haven’t installed the update yet myself, but I hope they’ve also fixed the bug that prevented the weather screen saver from displaying temperatures in Fahrenheit. Here’s a great video walk through including all of the newest features:

If you’ve already purchased Handy Weather, definitely click through and download the update. If you’re not already a Handy Weather user, enjoy the generous 14-day free trial.

subscribe to comments made about this post