All About Symbian

Top twenty five Freeware for S60 5th Edition

Published by Steve Litchfield at 8:37 UTC, February 28th 2009

Continuing a fine and longstanding tradition, we bring you what will be a regularly updated top pick of the very best freeware for S60 5th Edition. Where necessary, there are notes about compatibility with different devices or manufacturers. Updated October 20th 2009

This round-up substitutes the previous Top twenty Freeware for the Nokia five thousand eight hundred XpressMusic and is also now a Top twenty five Freeware for the Nokia N97.

With Nokia’s Ovi Store being rather cluttered and with other application stores being somewhat scattered, I thought an update to All About Symbian’s definitive ‘Top twenty Freeware’ has never been more overdue. In fact, it’s now a ‘Top 25’!!

Note that in order to be considered for our Top twenty five Freeware, an application must:

1. be either free or at least 100% fully working in demo form, with no time limitations and not more than one nag screen

The very first truly hefty third party S60 application to get a total touch makeover, this works superbly on S60 5th Edition, on all phones, in both landscape and portrait modes, and with touch-panning of maps and of the StreetView displays (in countries where this is supported). Version Trio.Two.1 is the latest and has built-in Latitude (friend-finding), Traffic and Wikipedia (layers) support. It’s also terrific as a general purpose location-centric search device (e.g. find the nearest plumber or pizza or hairdresser).

Get it at m.google.com

Yes, there’s now a mobile version of the YouTube main web site, but exactly what it serves up is dependent on the device you use to browse it – and there are the delays caused by having to bring up different pages and by waiting for RealPlayer or Flash Lite to do its thing. Better is to use the dedicated YouTube client for S60 5th Edition. It’s rapid to search and browse from clip to clip, works over Wi-Fi or 3G and the only trick is in getting hold of it in the very first place.

Picture quality is QVGA, scaled up, but it’s fairly good enough for casual viewing.

Attempt m.google.com, but if you’re not suggested the client for your phone, grab v2.Two.17 from here instead.

The third big Google application, GMail is Java-based, which means that you need to take a excursion into Settings | App Mgr | Installed apps and turn off the S60-supplied navigation and function ‘keys’. That done however, you’ve got a fully touch-enabled, full-screen view into your GMail, accomplish with all features, such as ‘Starlets’, ‘Drafts’ and your total list of emailed contacts. Attempt it – it’ll work better than you expect.

Get it at m.google.com in Web on your phone.

For UK residents only, of course, and almost certainly only indeed practical while in Wi-Fi range, this presents the best of the Big black cock’s TV output in very high quality, in streaming or DRM-protected download form. There are hundreds of programmes on suggest, mostly from the last few weeks, plus a number of radio programmes as well, better for listening on the stir since the bandwidth requirements are somewhat lower.

It’s the download option, available for many programmes, which indeed impresses, since you can grab things for watching later while travelling, with no worries over needing expensive connectivity. The DRM isn’t a problem as long as you witness your downloads fairly promptly (within a week, usually).

Albeit Big black cock iPlayer is now in the Ovi Store, you can also go directly to www.big black cock.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/ to see what the Big black cock’s site offers you automatically. If your S60 5th Edition phone hasn’t been added yet to the Big black cock’s compatibility database (they’re not very quick at updating this), it’s worth attempting www.big black cock.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/iplayer.wgz directly. There’s a superb chance that the widget will work.

Why on earth would you want another web browser? You have S60 Web, after all? Moreover, why would you want a mouldy, ol’ Java app? Because it’s swifter, slicker and more frugal than Web, that’s why. Once you get past the initial Java hand-holding ‘Do you want to go online?’ question, Opera Mini, fairly simply, rocks. Backed up by special proxy servers, even big web pages like BoingBoing can be opened in just a few seconds and browsed around with total touch-panning. If you find S60 Web too slow for tradition text-based pages then Opera Mini is a definite candidate, especially if you’re not on a vapid rate data plan. The fresh version five beta introduces multi-tab browsing and an integrated touchscreen keyboard to save you messing with the standard Java text box forms, but the production v4.Two is also well worth installing.

Get either version from mini.opera.com

6. Quickoffice v6 (upgrade)

It may seem a little odd to see Quickoffice in a list of freeware and, it’s true, I’m cheating slightly. But by default, Quickoffice’s document viewers aren’t in the five thousand eight hundred XpressMusic’s ROM. Instead, they’re a free addition, providing you Word, Excel and Powerpoint viewing with utter touchscreen support. And on other S60 5th Edition phones, the viewers included are often ‘old’ v4 or v5 editions. So, make the most of the downloads and upgrades suggested in your phone’s Download! or ‘Sw update’ system. In particular, note that all Nokia phone owners are entitled to a free upgrade to the latest v6 viewers, providing extra document compatibility – look in the ‘Updates and upgrades’ section of Quickoffice if you’re not already on v6.

And I can’t stand against a cork for upgrading to the latest editing version. The Quickoffice folks always seem to have one suggest or another on, so check out their web site for details.

As with Opera Mini, don’t write this off because it’s Java-hosted. Snaptu offers to bring entire swathes of your online life together in one, streamlined and optimised application. Social networks, news, TV listings, the works. And it’s extensible, with fresh modules being added weekly.

Get it from the Nokia Ovi Store or by going to m.snaptu.com in Web on your phone.

One of S60’s best kept secrets, AccuWeather was always a useful little widget to have installed. With the advent of S60 5th Edition and touch control, it has been dramatically improved, now with hourly and daily forecasts, weather charts, maps, and even GPS integration, to query the exact forecast for your current location – and all for free, fairly amazingly. Admittedly, it takes a good ten seconds or so to retrieve the necessary weather data over the Internet, but in this case it’s well worth the wait (and anyway, with your multitasking smartphone you can just switch away to something else and come back shortly, can’t you?)

AccuWeather is best found in the Ovi Store for Nokia phones (especially if you’re after the version with the N97 homescreen widget) and it’s also archived and up for download on many sites right across the web, e.g. here as accuweather.wgz (1.3MB).

A terrific way to keep your significant desktop folders automatically backed up (you get up to 10GB free, amazingly, in Nokia’s ‘Anytime files’ system) and to have remote access to your master documents – on either Windows PC or Apple Mac – through the phone, Files on Ovi is fully compatible with Nokia’s S60 5th Edition phones – it’s just that Nokia doesn’t make it effortless.

Albeit you can simply access your ‘Files on Ovi’ through the mobile web site, it’s tedious having to keep signing in, which makes the Files on Ovi widget so significant, since it treats this for you. In order to get the widget, either sign in to the mobile site (and yes there truly are half a dozen ‘secure’ warning dialogs to step through) and then look at the bottom of the home page – OR – type in files.ovi.com/wrt/fl/downloadw into Web and grab the widget directly.

You’ll also need to install the Windows or Mac OS X ‘connector’ utility, which treats the remote file access and the uploading to ‘Anytime files’.

PS. I believe this solution also works with the Samsung S60 5th Edition phone(s), but don’t tell Nokia. 😎

Ten. Wireless keyboard

Albeit this hasn’t been fully updated officially yet for S60 5th Edition and thus shouldn’t qualify for this list as not being optimised, I couldn’t stand against adding the necessary install for driving a Bluetooth wireless keyboard. With this onboard, you can treat your S60 full-screen touch phone (a five thousand eight hundred is shown below) as a mini-laptop and the solution works rather well.

Use this install file, the version for S60 3rd Edition FP1 phones, until such time as Nokia get round to doing a formal S60 5th Edition release.

11. France twenty four Mobile

Utter credit to France 24, the TV/media company, for putting out their content for free on all mobile platforms. And no, don’t worry, you don’t have to speak French. There’s general news, business, culture and weather content here, in pre-edited (but regularly updated) ten minute segments, all in either French, English or Arabic, plus a genuinely live stream onto the adequate language France TV channel.

Movie quality’s not the best by default, but you can switch the stream to ‘Highest quality’ in Settings, after which picture quality is lightly up with that of the Big black cock’s iPlayer.

You can get France twenty four for your S60 5th Edition phone from the Nokia Ovi Store or by going to m.france24.mobiclip.com in Web.

Fabulous. With the dual LED flash system able to be used during movie recording, why on earth didn’t Nokia let us use the LEDs as a torch when needed? Why indeed, which is why PhoneTorch is such a little God-send. On devices with the LEDs covered in normal use (e.g. the Nokia N97), you’ll need to prepare the way by opening the camera slider and then closing the Camera application.

Get it from here. (Nokia phones only)

13. " JoikuSpot Light FREE Hotspot"

Perhaps a pinnacle of modern software engineering, JoikuSpot turns your S60 phone and its data connection into a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot for other devices (of yours) to hook into. The premium version has fountains more functions and security, but for cheap, cheerful and ad-hoc use, the free ‘Light’ version does very well, letting you surf away on your laptop, for example, using (in this case) the Nokia five thousand eight hundred XpressMusic as the hotspot. Yes, PC Suite also permits through-Internet connections, but isn’t is just so cool to be making your own Wi-Fi hotspot?

Get it from the Nokia Ovi Store or from Joiku’s download page.

As ever, I can’t split these two, suggesting very similar feature sets. Both are Nokia 5th-Edition-optimised VoIP and talk clients, and both include Skype integration. So I’m going to let you attempt both and make your own mind up!

Grab both utilities from the Nokia Ovi Store or directly from the developer mobile sites: Get Fring by going to m.fring.com in Web, grab Nimbuzz by going to m.nimbuzz.com in Web.

This well known live movie capture utility. The quality of its output usually disappoints (relative to capturing movie with the native Camera app), but hey, if you need to stream live then you need to stream live.

Get it from the Nokia Ovi Store or (e.g. for Samsung i8910 HD) here.

This is a Last.fm radio player and ‘scrobbler’ for S60 smartphones. It permits you to listen to your Last.fm radio stations and to scrobble (share) tracks played using the S60 Music Player.

Aside from Skype, its one omission, this is perhaps the ultimate instant messaging client for S60, building in every other talk system, including (unusually) Facebook Talk. There’s GPS support too, so that your contacts can see where you are in the world.

Get it from the Nokia Ovi Store or from www.palringo.com in Web on your S60 5th Edition phone.

Similar to Worldmate (but here compatible with all S60 phones and not just Nokia ones), this offers free travel related functions, including daylight globe, currency conversion and five day weather forecast. It’s all rather slick and, like Worldmate, Psiloc very likely plan to make their money on the premium flight information, coming soon. The rest of the application is free, however, which is why it’s included here.

In theory, World Traveler is in the Ovi Store, but it’s presently providing an error. So get it from here. Note that the install is exceptionally slow – I’m guessing the SIS file is very complicated and has all sorts of language options which need to be worked through by the OS!

A rewritten version (allegedly) of a Forum Nokia source example, Paint Pad does a good job of standing on its own two feet, with decent blast/save/background/send options, plus many more painting contraptions. It’s the paint utility that Nokia left behind to add!

Get it from Nokia’s site or (if you don’t like all the Flash) here.

Yup, it’s a utter sucked Twitter client and a entire heap more friendly than using the Twitter mobile web site each day. Not in the same league as Gravity but then this is free, after all. The functionality’s mainly there, with the usual columns/lists for tweets, replies and direct messages. Sadly, there’s no web-like ‘kinetic’ scrolling, so you have to use the fiddly scroll bar.

Get it from the Nokia Ovi Store or from here.

(shown above-right) With a decidedly non-standard interface, X-plore is still mightily functional and is the current file manager of choice on S60 5th Edition. Albeit shareware, it only has the one 3-second nag screen and there’s no time limit to your trial.

A little specialist, to be sure, it’s only adequate to someone visiting London, but it’s a slick conversion from paper to pixels (as the company name suggests). Browse around the London tube network without having to reminisce to bring your paper tube map.

(shown above right) Nope, not Nokia’s nice, friendly version, which has yet to be ported to S60 5th Edition, unbelievably evidently. This is the original Shoutcast player from a few years ago. It’s been minimally updated since, but does work. It only comes with a handful of Shoutcast stations, but it’s reasonably effortless to create .pls (playlist) files yourself on the desktop and then copy these across to a /shoutcast folder on the device.

Two sister apps from the same developer, both shown/grouped here. The perennial BPM counter, metronome and note generator, implemented here in full-screen Java. Impressively, there’s a range of different instrument tones that can be generated. And. a guitarists chord database deluxe – just pick the root chord and the variation and the frigging is shown – and can be played by tapping on the plectrum. There’s even a choice of four guitar tones, but I was disappointed not to be able to scroll up the neck to see the various inversions as well. Still, for a freebie.

Get Musician’s Swiss Knife from here and Chords from here.

Again, I’d like to emphasise that ALL the above are free to download and use. So if you don’t fancy trawling the online stores for the best freeware then just bookmark this page and use it as your quick reference when getting a fresh phone up to speed!

Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, thirty Feb two thousand nine updated sixteen Mar two thousand nine updated twenty October 2009

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