Symbian in Motion

If I had a dollar for every time I begged and pleaded for this functionality in S60, well, I could have paid Psiloc to make this app a long time ago…

Psiloc Connect is an app that needs little introduction. Suffice it to say, you need this app. In my opinion, Access Points (AP) are handled very, very poorly by S60. Each app that makes use of a data connection must have its own default AP defined. This is just silly. As done on other OSes, the device should worry about connecting via the fastest available AP and apps should just call to which ever AP is currently active. Period.

Thanks to Psiloc, your S60 3rd handset can now use data as nature intended - intelligently. Psiloc Connect is a utility that you’ll install, configure and then never look at again. Huh? It’s not because you won’t like it, but rather because once configured it will constantly be doing its job with no user intervention whatsoever. In a nutshell, this app will add a new AP to your device called “Psiloc Connect”. Any app using this AP will first attempt to connect to the internet via available WLAN networks. If no WLAN is available, the new AP will automatically drop back to 3G / EDGE / GPRS. Done!

Do you live in a country where data is expensive? No worries, Psiloc Connect is still an app you need. You can configure it to connect via WLAN - and it will look for ALL of your WLAN networks as opposed to just one - and if no WLAN network is available, the app will not connect. No surprise astronomical bills, no worries.

As for battery life, of course using WiFi will affect your time between charges. The app itself is incredibly light-weight though. The Connect daemon only eats up 42KB in fact.

My advice? Head over to the Psiloc Shop and download this app ASAP. Again, this is how S60 should work. That’s the beauty of S60 though, isn’t it? There are so many phenomenal developers like Psiloc who take the bull by the horns, listen to end-users and crank out awesome apps that pick up where S60 left off. Psiloc offers a free trial as with all of its apps but believe me, once you have a taste there’s no way you’ll be able to go a minute without this app.

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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.

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That’s right people; the app that everyone knows and loves should be released for S60 3rd devices by the end of February! Smart Settings by Mobifun Software was hugely popular for older S60 variants and I expect that it will see similar success with 9.x.

For newcomers to S60 or those who somehow have never heard of this great app, it essentially provides two main functions. The first is a quick app launcher added to your home screen. One of your softkeys becomes a launcher (you can add custom text to display on the softkey) that will display a list of up to nine apps / games / etc. Each app in the list also has a corresponding speed key (1 - 9) assigned to it. So to launch an app, you simply hit your softkey followed by the appropriate speed key number and you’re done. You can also of course scroll through the list if you desire. The other main functions bring added control and customization to lock, unlock and security settings.

There are a few apps on the market that offer similar functionality but no app does it quite like Smart Settings, and no app combines the same features into one neat package. Smart Settings is currently in private beta but Mobifun believes it will be ready for prime time within the next few weeks. Woo hoo!

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I’ve been sitting on this app for a while with the hopes that it would soon reach a state stable enough to be discussed on SiMo. Thankfully, I believe it finally has! You may have read about S60Ticker (Google translated) on some other blogs and original versions were a bit confusing to say the least. Since it initially surfaced however, a good deal of work has gone into the app though and it even received Symbian Signed status making it accessible to the masses. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a big fan of apps that feed content to the Active Standby screen because it really is an underutilized resource.

S60Ticker is a useful (and ultimately flexible) tool that automatically publishes real time content to your Active Standby screen (and / or other screens). By default, it covers SMS but the ticker is configurable in terms of the content it can display (not easy quite yet) along with colors, active duration, position and more. A public SDK is also available if coding is your thing and you want to play with content sources.

I won’t go too deep into it because it’s the kind of thing that you really have to play with to get a full understanding of, but here’s a good example of a setup: S60Ticker is configured to be hidden when inactive. Upon receiving a new SMS, S60Ticker activates and scrolls the sender’s mobile number along with the content of the message for 60 seconds, then the app goes back into sleep mode.

In terms of content, here are some of the options that have been made available:

• SMS
• News feed
• Exchange ticker
• Mobile Banking information
• Weather forecasts
• Current music titles (playlist)

Adjusting the content fed to the ticker is still a bit tricky so we’ll save that for a later time once content adjustments can be made quickly and easily. For the time being, adventurous users with a good technical knowledge can check out the S60Ticker SDK and have a play. For the time being, just having SMS content displayed by this great freeware app will likely suffice. Make note that this is a two-part installation and you’ll need to install the server file first, followed by the GUI file. For some more good info on using the app, read through the author’s site and also check out these posts on the Symbian Web Blog.

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Joikuspot Light Beta does what many S60 users have been anticipating ever since the launch of WMWifiRouter, which allowed Windows Mobile Users to enable their handsets as a WiFi access point. Joikuspot does exactly that, but for Symbian S60 3rd Edition devices.

Essentially acting as a WLAN gateway it can be configured easily by installing the application and running it, it instantly turns your S60 handset into a WiFi access point, which can be used by any other device which has WiFi support to access your handsets net access. The best thing is the support for multiple devices to connect to that one handset.

The application can be downloaded from the Joikuspotlight website, although be aware it is in Beta stage. It is signed so no need to create your own certificate.

Enjoy!

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