“Top 20 freeware for Symbian^3 smartphones” |
| Top 20 freeware for Symbian^3 smartphones Posted: 09 Dec 2010 06:54 AM PST Published by Steve Litchfield at 14:47 UTC, December 9th 2010 Summary:14 months ago, I produced my top 20 (or so) freeware applications that S60 5th Edition users (so N97, 5800, etc) really ought to grab and install. That's an age in the smartphone world, both for apps and for the hardware itself - we're genuinely now on the next generation, even if there's good backwards compatibility with most of the items on the original list. With this in mind, here's a Christmas 2010 top 20 freeware for Symbian^3 phones, with special focus on the Nokia N8. Before going any further, I should point out that the rise and rise of Nokia's Ovi app store means that some of the items below have to be grabbed on your phone itself - and if that means that Nokia hasn't 'ticked' a specific app for your model yet then you're out of luck - go nag Nokia's Ovi Store app team to update their databases! In order to be considered for our Top 20 Freeware, an application must:
1. Podcatcher My most used piece of Symbian freeware and, annoyingly, it shouldn't really have been needed at all. Nokia had a perfectly good Podcasting utility and they neglected it to the point where it's possibly now not retrievable. Ah well. Aside from not having Podcasting's multitasking abilities (Podcatcher updates feeds and downloads podcasts one at a time), this is just as useable day to day. With great OPML feed importing and exporting, with a mechanism for searching for podcasts online, with good use of album art and with a 'new shows' tab, Podcatcher has its definite 'pros' though and it's the first thing I install on a modern Symbian device.
Get Podcatcher from here. 2. YouTubeThere's now a native YouTube client for Symbian, v2.4.10, including full functions, on the new Symbian^3 phones. It's very fast to search and browse from clip to clip, works over Wi-Fi or 3G and, where the original footage allows, serves up a pretty high quality (though not native nHD) video stream, certainly good enough for casual viewing.
Get it from m.google.com in Web on your device, since the Ovi Store version is still out of date. 3. SPB TV Originally commercial software, with a small amount of channels thrown in for free, this is now freeware (with a few static ads here and there) and well worth grabbing. About a hundred channels of live TV, of international flavour, all available on demand on your phone? Sounds too good to be true? Not really - and quality's acceptable too. The channels can be somewhat niche, but then that adds a certain charm too - especially at this price point!
Get SPV TV from the Ovi Store. 4. TuneWiki Continuing the media theme, TuneWiki offers a lyric-based guide to your music collection, which is good enough - but its crown jewel is being able to play back Shoutcast Internet radio stations, giving you unlimited streaming content. It plays with high enough quality when in the foreground but it's fair to say that if you switch away and start loading up the processor then the music will stutter a little. Still - you get a lot of app for free, with only unobtrusive banner ads here and there.
Get TuneWiki from the Ovi Store. 5. Google MapsDespite the dominance of Ovi Maps, it's always good to have a backup, if only for finding obscure places that Nokia's ecosystem hasn't heard about yet. Or for peeking around streets using the StreetView feature. Version 4.1.1 is the latest and has built-in Latitude (friend-finding), Satellite, Traffic, Transit lines and Wikipedia (layers) support. No voice navigation, of course - Google's saving that for its Android phones!
Get it at m.google.com in Web on your device. 6. GMailGmail is Java-based, which means that this app isn't quite as slick as most others on this list - entering text, for example, has to be done in a full-screen editor, away from the main interface - a limitation of most Java apps. But look past the clunky text input and you've got a fully touch-enabled, full-screen view into your Gmail, complete with all features, such as 'Stars', 'Drafts' and your full list of emailed contacts. And most importantly, you can search your Gmail directly, to pull out those long forgotten passwords or address details. Try it - it'll work better than you expect.
Get it at m.google.com in Web on your phone. 7. BBC iPlayer Take a few of these caveats on-board: It's for UK residents only, it's only really practical while in Wi-Fi range, and it's not really even an application - it's more a fancy mobile web page. Look past these, though, and this presents the best of the BBC's TV output in a variety of forms. There's a high quality, DRM-protected download form, for some though not all the hundreds of programmes on offer. There's lower quality streaming for the rest, plus a 'live TV' form which offers the lowest quality of all but which really is 'live' and works over a modest 3G connection. There are a number of radio programmes as well, better for listening on the move since the bandwidth requirements are even lower. It's the download option, available for many programmes, which really impresses, since you can grab things for watching later while travelling, with no worries over needing expensive connectivity and with the higher video quality. The DRM isn't a problem as long as you watch your downloads fairly promptly (within a few weeks, usually).
BBC iPlayer is now in the Ovi Store, in theory, but its appearance is somewhat patchy, so you're best off going, in Web on your phone, to www.bbc.co.uk/mobile/iplayer/ - and then bookmarking this for ease of access later. 8. Opera Mini We've featured Opera Mini many times on All About Symbian, of course. It's a completely proxy-based web browser, which means that all the HTML, images and scripting from your chosen web site are collected by Opera's servers, rationalised to strip out everything you don't need, and then compressed to save download times, arriving in the form of pseudo-code understood by the Opera Mini client. The end result is a very fast web experience, even on the most bloated sites.And, with this new version 5.1 beta 2, it's a native Symbian application, meaning that the app starts faster, runs faster and text input can be slicker - or at least as slick as Symbian touchscreen text input ever gets(!)
Get Opera Mini 5.1 for Symbian from m.opera.com in Web on your device. 9. Opera Mobile 10.1Made in the image of Opera Mini - or maybe it was the other way around! - Opera Mobile is more traditional as a web browser, in that it interprets web site HTML and scripting in the client itself, but with the added benefits over Nokia's Web of text selection and a multi-tabbed interface. And, with a nod to Opera Mini's compression technology, Opera Mobile has 'Turbo' mode, in which Opera's servers compress the original site code and content, squirting it through the air for decompression within Opera Mobile itself - see my web browser comparison feature for more on these speed aids.
Get Opera Mobile 10.1 from m.opera.com in Web on your device. 10. Snaptu Although principally designed for smaller-screened feature phones, this information portal utility works surprisingly well even on the large-screened Symbian^3 phones. As with Gmail, don't write this off because it's Java-based. Snaptu brings whole swathes of your online life together in one, streamlined and optimised application. Social networks, news, TV listings, movies, the works. And it's customisable and extensible, with new modules being added weekly.
Get it from the Nokia Ovi Store or by going to m.snaptu.com in Web on your phone. 11. Skype Despite a wealth of competitors and a somewhat murky past, Skype remains the service most people think of in the professional world when they look for VoIP, instant messaging and group conferencing. And its latest version works a treat* on the latest Symbian^3 phones, with a better interface than ever, better behaved background operation, lower resource requirements and better voice quality. * with a few glitches, including not handling the proximity sensor on the N8 - we're sure these will be ironed out soon
Get it from skype.com/m in Web on your device. 12. Wikipedia ReaderThere have been several versions of this over the last year or so, but it's coming along nicely and offers a mobile-optimised view into the full Wikipedia content, online. Indispensable for looking up facts, cheating at pub quizzes (not me, guv) and winning arguments down the pub!
Get this from the Ovi Store. 13. Trill Yup, it's a full blown Twitter client and a whole 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 all there, with the usual columns/lists for tweets, replies and direct messages. There's sideways swiping to switch columns and a generally attractive interface, let down only by not having any kinetic scrolling - it's certainly a slicker option for Twitter than Nokia's own 'Social' tool.
Get it from the Ovi Store. 14. Swype Sworn by lots of people and sworn at by lots of others, Swype is very much an acquired taste - it's a complete keyboard replacement for Symbian that works (in landscape mode only at the moment) by looking at the way you trace your fingers around the various keys rather than just by taps alone. It's an intriguing and clever system though does mean a lot of finger exercise and isn't ideal for all. Still, free and worth a try!
Get it from the Ovi Store. 15. X-plore With a decidedly non-standard interface, X-plore is still mightily functional and is the current file manager of choice on Symbian - it has saved my bacon a number of times when I've had to extract a log file, zap a cache or put a system file back in place. Although shareware, it only has the one 3-second nag screen and there's no time limit to your trial, so it just squeezes in here.
Get it here. 16. Nokia Panorama Surprisingly not even built into the camera-centric Nokia N8, Nokia has supplied Panorama as an add-on (hopefully to be made available for the C7, E7 and C6-01 as well?). Guiding you through the process of snapping a sequence of photos as you spin round, the utility stitches them together rather expertly and the results can be spectacular, as shown below.
Get it from the Ovi Store. 17. Converter Touch Like all the other Offscreen Technologies applications, this is short, sweet and to the point. It's your all-purpose units converter, with a slick type carousel and lovely large buttons for entering numbers. If you only look up units once a week, grab this, to make your life easier! [screenshot note: it's the left one, below, only, and there is a small amount of screen corruption because it doesn't like the ScreenSnap process...]
Get it from the Ovi Store. 18. Timer Touch Offscreen again, with an elegant little timer utility (shown above, right), designed for clocking your kids on sports day or handling your own laps of the local track. Tapping the lap button adds a split/lap time to the middle roller and you can drag this down later on to record the times as needed. Get it from the Ovi Store. 19. Sports TrackerA feature of the Symbian world over the last four years, this GPS-logging utility-on-steroids is now back firmly in the hands of its creators and tied to a superb online portal for uploading your runs, walks and cycle rides. Add in a heart monitor and some online friends who can be relied on to call you out for slacking and this is your ticket to getting fit - really!
Get it from the Ovi Store. 20. Real Golf 2011 HD Finally - it's not an application - it's a game. But it's awesome and it's free and you should grab it if you get the chance. It's appearing as a licensed title in Sw_update and Ovi Suite update for most Nokia N8s - and perhaps some other hardware. Keep your eyes peeled. A full review is coming, but for now note that it's a super golf game with sumptuous console-grade graphics and definitely 'hard enough' gameplay.
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 new phone up to speed! Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 9th December 2010 blog comments powered byThis entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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