A couple of weeks ago I bought a Nokia N82 from Ebay, a major step up from my previous phone which, though I can’t actually find a product page for, was not unlike this one. So all this time I’ve been feeling a little left out of the mobile social services game, which is all very exciting. So now that I’ve got the new phone I’ve been going application crazy, and I’m going to share my thoughts and favourite apps here.
The phone supports WiFi and I have an unlimited data plan, so I’ve spare no concern whatsoever for data hungry apps – bear that in mind if your provider charges you per megabyte (is that really still a realistic option these days??).
Firstly, two obvious ones: the Google Mail and Google Maps applications are essential. Google Mail provides a fast and data-friendly way to check and write emails on the go. Checking your email will cost you about 1k and opening an email another 1-2k, so it’s totally 3G friendly. Google Maps churns though a bit more data when it downloads map tiles, but don’t go overboard with the zooming and you can keep a maps session under 100k easily enough. The address search functionality provides the same intuitive fuzziness as its online counterpart, and in this area it blows the built-in Nokia maps application out of the water. When we were in Berlin last week I couldn’t find anything in Nokia maps because I couldn’t be bothered getting the special characters right – Google Maps figured out what I was looking for every time. It also syncs with your GPS as you’d expect, and will provide directions for you in the same manner as the web app. In both applications the shortcuts are cleverly chosen and they’ve made excellent use of screen real estate when providing popup information.
I’m also really interested in always-connected applications and the clear and inevitable merge of desktop and mobile, so I wanted apps that will allow me to be productive on my phone and let me communicate with people in a variety of ways. The main methods of communication I’m interested in are Twitter, Skype and IM (GoogleTalk in my case).
Twitter provides a really simple way to use their service. Once you provide your mobile number you can elect to receive SMS updates from people you follow (you don’t have to receive SMS updates from everyone you follow – this provides a really nice level of spam control). You can broadcast your tweets by sending SMS messages to a phone number provided by Twitter, and using clever symantics you can reply and DM people as you need to.
http://twitter.com
For Skype and IM services there are two applications to consider: Fring and Nimbuzz (I don’t consider the S60 Skype application because it sucks). Both are conduits for a number of other services; Skype, GoogleTalk, AIM, Yahoo, MSN are fully supported by both. Both applications will hang around as background tasks once connected so you can do other things on your phone while still remaining available to receive chat and calls. I like the Nimbuzz interface a lot, but Fring is the only app I’ve been able to make a true VOIP call with. Fring only seems to like WiFi connections though, whereas with Nimbuzz I was able to connect via 3G and maintain a GTalk chat with someone. Bit of a shame that, so for the time being I’ll keep both apps installed and choose the appropriate one for my connection.
I’m also an enthusiastic last.fm user so I was stoked to discover that some bright chap had written an audioscrobbler application for S60 phones called Mobbler. Again it just lurks around in the background and keeps a record of what you’ve listened to on your music player, and once you’re connected (as far as I know this is a manual process) it then uploads to last.fm servers. Very very slick application. I listen to a lot of music on my IPod, and while I prefer it to the music player on my phone, I just love the fact that my tracks are being scrobbled. So I’m making a concerted effort to not hate the phone’s player.
On the user-generated content front, I also want to be able to upload my photos and video directly to *some service* from my phone. I *hate* synchronising, I *hate* the Nokia PC Suite. I don’t want to have to deal with that stuff.
Enter Shozu. Create an account with them and you’ll be given the option to add sites to publish content to. Facebook, Flickr, PicasaWeb, Friendster, Blogger, Kodak, LiveJournal, YouTube, PhotoBucket, Seesmic, SmugMug, Twitter, WordPress – to name about 1/3 of all the supported services. The genius thing about this app is that you can nominate a service to be your 1-click photo or 1-click video service. When you take a photo or record video on your phone you’ll immediately be presented with a little prompt – “Upload to [your service]“. Just hit the ‘Yes’ key and the Shozu app queues the media for upload and sends it when you’re connected. Just brilliant.
I’m also looking forward to trying out Jaiku, the location-based chat/networking service. I’ve requested a beta invitation so if/when I get one I’ll give it a go.
Cool! Hope all this gives someone a way to kill a few hours 
