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You don’t need an Apple or Android phone to feast on tasty
app treats. Nokia’s Symbian-based operating system will also let you merrily gorge
yourself on an app-a-palooza of downloadable delights. From social networking
widgets to full-on office suites, they’re all available from the Ovi Store, and
many for little or no fee. Be warned, though: not all apps are suited to all
handsets, so remember to check that your model is listed before you commit.
Compatibility aside, here are ten of the best from the Ovi Store’s current crop
of offerings:
Communication
eBuddy Mobile MessengerPrice: FreeAn essential download for virtual socialites everywhere,
eBuddy works with just about every instant-messaging (IM) service on the
planet, including AIM, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Facebook Chat, ICQ and
more. It allows you to stay in touch
with all your chums from the one app, wherever you go, regardless of what IM
client they’re using. There are plenty of other ways of messaging from your Nokia
phone, but eBuddy is fast and simple. It
also uses a slick, re-skin-able tabbed interface. There’s no video chat, sadly,
but you can send pictures taken on a camera phone and set your avatar with a photo
from your handset.Also consider:
Video Chat (Free)
Reference
Elements TouchPrice: FreeThere are, of course, loads of useful reference apps
available on the Ovi store, including several free dictionaries, encyclopaedias
and translators. But few will drive members of the opposite sex wild in quite
the same way as Elements Touch — assuming the members of the opposite sex in
question have a master’s degree in applied chemistry, that is. Elements is a
complete, interactive periodic table in your pocket, perfect for students and
pub quizzes alike. Each element has its own Top Trumps-style fact sheet. Who
knew, for example, that the boiling point of molybdenum was 4,612 degrees centigrade?Also consider:
Wikipedia Reader (Free)
Entertainment
Recordoid Lite Price: FreeThis voice recorder app is designed like an old-fashioned tape deck and has the word ‘droid’ in its name. Yes, Class of 1977 — this
app is aimed at you! In fact, despite its retro appeal and simple operation,
Recordroid is, technically speaking, a pretty nifty app. It can record in AAC,
AMR, MP4 and WAV formats, and has the ability to add geotag and text-based
metadata to your recordings. These can then be emailed, bluetoothed, MMS-ed or
set as your ringtone. The free Lite version has a time limit of 1 minute per
recording — paying £4 for the full app relieves you of this restriction. Also consider:
YouTube (Free)
Game
BlokusPrice: £3If you’re not already familiar with this game in any of its
digital or board game incarnations, you should probably be
aware that it’s ever so slightly addictive. At the start of the game you are
given 21 Tetris-like coloured pieces and the objective of the game is to get
all your pieces onto the board. The player with the highest score, rather
unsurprisingly, wins. There are several game modes available. You can play
against the computer or other human opponents on the same handset. Simple,
strategic and suitable for short mobile sessions, Blokus is easily one of the
best games on the Ovi Store.Also consider:
Cube Touch XXL (Free)
Maps
LocagoPrice: FreeFor anyone who wants something a little cleverer than
your average, everyday map app, Locago provides a suitably Web 2.0 twist to
proceedings. Basically what it does is combine map data with information from
lots of other sources, including photos from Flickr, facts and figures from
Wikipedia, local weather reports and user-generated content. Data sources are
added in ‘layers’ on top of the map itself and you can turn individual layers
on or off. If your Nokia phone has built-in GPS, Locago will work with
this, too, and it’s particularly well suited to touchscreen handsets. The free
version is supported by advertising, but for the princely sum of £1.50, you can eradicate the ads altogether.Also consider:
META friend locator + (£1)
Speech recognition
Vlingo Price: FreeThere was a time when speech recognition cost hundreds of
pounds and required months of training to achieve anything even vaguely
approximating accuracy. Now it’s available on your Nokia handset for zero pence.
Vlingo is a technically impressive speech recognition system with which you can
dictate notes — the full app (£3) lets you dictate limitless text messages, and emails, too. Perhaps the swankiest way of using it is looking up stuff online. Tell Vlingo to “search cinema times” for instance, and you’ll be
presented with a Google page full of relevant results. Vlingo’s accuracy isn’t always
perfect, but it doesn’t require any training and is both practical and perfect
for showing off.Also consider:
Vlingo Plus (£3)
Browser
Opera Mobile Price: FreeAll phones come with some kind of built-in Web browser,
but it’s almost always slow, clunky and low on features. Optimised for
touchscreen Nokias, Opera Mobile is a very nippy way of surfing the Web. You can make it even nippier by switching on the Opera Turbo option, which
compresses content to make it faster to download. Opera Mobile offers miniature
versions of features we’ve grown used to from desktop browsing, such as tabs
and password management. There’s also a highly intuitive ‘long click’ — hold
your finger down a little longer for context-sensitive commands, such as copying
and pasting text or opening a link in a new tab.Also consider:
Skyfire Free Mobile Browser (Free)
Social Networking
Snaptu Price: FreeThere are plenty of dedicated apps available for mobile
Tweeters and Facebookers, but Snaptu has had the bright idea of bringing
your various social networking outlets together under one roof, along
with several other news, weather and sports services and RSS feeds. Open the
app and you’ll see what looks like a selection of sub-apps. In fact, all that
Snaptu is doing is providing a quick and easy way of accessing lots of Web-based data. But it’s a great idea and it works really well in practice. In
addition to the obvious candidates, you’ll find everything from travel updates
to TV listings, pub guides, Sudoku and more.Also consider: Facebook for Nokia (Free)
Productivity
Quickoffice 6 Mobile SuitePrice: £8Your handset may have a rudimentary tool for
taking notes, but the missing link on many smart phones is decent office
software. And by that, we don’t just mean a DOC or XLS file viewer — we mean a
proper document, spreadsheet and presentation creation and editing suite. Like,
for example, QuickOffice 6. Those with smaller handsets may struggle to input
text using the keypad, but if you’re lucky enough to have a smart phone with a
full Qwerty keyboard, you’ll be able to knock up letters, budget sheets
and more. The latest version of Quickoffice can natively save files in Office
2007 formats and even supports Excel charts and zip files.Also consider:
Adobe Reader LE 2.5 (£8)
Utilities
Best TaskManPrice: £1.50The Symbian operating system used on virtually all Nokia
phones is a wonderful thing, but it’s probably fair to say it’s not great
at managing applications. So if you’ve ever seen a ‘memory full’ error message
or want to close, kill or switch from one open app to another, you’ll find Best TaskMan is much more powerful than your phone’s basic, built-in task manager. Admittedly, not everyone will need to know precisely how much RAM
each app is using or what background processes are operating, but if you
want complete control over your Symbian mobile, Best TaskMan is by far the
best (task)man for the job.Also consider:
Best Screen Snap (Free)
