If you use the Internet from your phone but are unlucky enough to pay for your 3G usage you probably like the idea of using a wifi-enabled mobile like the Nokia N95. This works great, but it can be a hassle having to reconnect every time you want to go online in a different place and it is easy to forget and use your 3G instead. If you are in a foreign country this can be a VERY expensive mistake.
Psiloc Connect offers a simple solution with the kind of conection management that you would think your phone would do by default. Certainly, if I were a Nokia developer I would be kicking myself for not thinking of this first.
The app does all the hard work for you - just give it a list of wifi access points (or tell it to discover some) and it will try each in order of strength, only falling back on your 3G connection if the wifi fails. If you are really worried about your phone bill, it can be set to ignore the 3G option and just use wifi.
Psiloc Connect is available here for around 10 euros, with a free 10 day trial.
Whisher is a wifi sharing service that asks its members to share their home wireless connection in return for free access to its network - by sharing you effectively become part of that network, allowing Whisher members in your area to use your link.
The service has a substantial number of hotspots worldwide. including hundreds in the UK but the network only supported connections from a Windows or Mac machine running Whisher’s software.
Until now, anyway. Whisher has just launched a client app that will give access to any wifi-enabled Symbian S60 3rd edition Nokia phone.
The app is free to download for Whisher members and installs as a plugin to the Nokia wifi app. Selecting “1Click Whisher” from the connections menu will bring up a list of local connections with icons indicating if they are Free, Commercial or part of the Wisher network.
If any of you have any experience of using Whisher, please let us know in the comments. Is it any good? Just how common are their hotspots in your area?
Revolutionary or ridiculous? You decide…
Noko Shop is a paint program for Nokia S60 3rd edition phones. Fair enough, you might think, but there isn’t exactly a shortage of those, is there?
True, but Noko Shop has one Unique Selling Point - it can use the Accelerometer present in most new Nokia’s to allow you to ‘draw’ freehand using the handset itself.
It’s a nice idea and while it might be a little tricky to use on a small screen - lilke trying to draw by moving the paper against a fixed pencil - if you were to hook up the phone to an external video output this could really come into its own.
The developer has put this video up on YouTube demonstrating the basic features - check it out and see what you think.
Clever S60 programming nerd over at the Symbian Freak forums have cooked up an app called ROMPatcher which is able to modify the ROM containing the operating system itslef - allowing fundamental changes and interesting tweaks to be made in the way your phone works.
The app uses a technique where a cpy of the ROM is made in the phone’s memory, then modified (’Patched’). The phone then uses the modified version of the ROM - leaving the original untouched and nice and safe, so you can roll back to the pre-patched ROM the next time you restart your phone.
Already, there are a number of patches available including one that enables several hidden menu options on the S60 interface and another that bypasses the Symbian app security - allowing users to run unsigned apps.
It should go without saying that this kind of hack is strictly for advanced users and please, PLEASE take a backup of your data before you go and play around.
If you give this a try, why not let us know how you get on? Are we entering a bold new era of S60 tweakage, or just bricking a load of perfectly good phones?
At long last, Skype has launched a native S60 version of it’s VoIP and IM app.
Oddly, the VoIP bit isn’t quite as you might expect. Unlike the purely Internet-based communication of the desktop Skype client, the S60 client calls a local rate number to initiate the call.
So, er, not VoIP at all then?
Quite why this is the case is a bit of a mystery - Fring has been offering native S60 Skype access via the internet for some time now and you have to wonder who is going to plump for the much less featureful official effort when there is a much more mature alternative on offer.
Its a shame that we will never see real life versions of many of the concept phone designs that come our way.
Granted, some of them are a bit bonkers or impractical, but others seem like they would be fun - a feature that is often missing from the featureless candybars that many manufacturers keep trying to flog us.
The Easy Tiles S60 Concept phone is definitely in the ‘impractical but fun’ category. Designer Tzu-Fu Wang has taken a little bit of Scrabble, a little bit of Lego, shoved them in a bag with the guts of a Symbian mobile and given them a good shake.
The result is this great looking handset that has replaced the outer shell of the phone with removable tiles. The tiles (which can be any colour or have designs printed on them) are completely interchangeable so if you get bored of one look you can snap them off, give them a shuffle and rebuild.
It certainly beats the old Xpress-on covers for versatility, although you have to wonder what would happen if you dropped it or even answered it a little vigorously.
I could see this appealing to manufacturers too - especially when they realise the money to be made in selling extra tiles.
Sure, that BeatEd drum synth a couple of posts down is all very well if you like your rhythms nice, clean and pleasant sounding.
If, however, your drumming skills lean more towards Animal from the Muppets (e.g. you just like hitting things and making a racket) then NiiMe Drums might be more your cup of special brew.
A spin off from the NiiMe motion-sensing project - that aims to take greater advantage of Nokia’s accelerometer technology - NiiMe Drums is out on the 1st of May and looks like great fun.
The developer has posted a YouTube video of the app in action - it goes on a bit (a bit less footage of him fiddling around opening the app would have improved things) but it gets to the point eventually.
So - who fancies coding up an S60 guitar synth so we can form the first mobile phone band?
Actually, don’t do that, we’re pretty sure that there isn’t a warranty in existence that will forgive deliberately hitting your phone with drum sticks and though we’re not Phil Collins or anything, we’re pretty sure it wouldn’t sound very good either.
If you simply must use your phone for percussive thrills however, then this simple drum machine application is well worth a look. Spotted by the folks over at all about symbian, a very clever (and musical) chap called Saku Tiainen developed BeatEd for himself to play guitar along with. After realizing that his creation was really rather good, he gave it a bit of a spruce up and released a full public version which can be found here.
All you need to do is sequence your drum loops using the simple interface, plug your smartphone into an amp via the headphone jack, and away you go. Hit the jump for a full video demo.
Continue reading ‘Use your S60 smartphone as a drum kit’
Sometimes it seems like a lot of software is written just to scratch a particular programmer’s itch.
Whoever wrote VibrateCall seems to have been unusally annoyed by the way you have to hold a phone to your ear when waiting for a call to connect.
With the app running, you can dial a number as normal then just hold the phone in your hand. The phone will vibrate until the call is answered - simple!
Of course, when whoever you are calling answers the phone you will have to start using your ears again, but that doesn’t seem to bother the developer.
oStensibly, this is about safety - there is some wittering about radiation levels being higher during dialling, but little in the way of facts or evidence as to why this is important. Still, it’s only $9.95 - perhaps this will scratch your itch too?
We have mentioned the social music recommendation/web radio site Last.FM a couple of times here on Pocket Picks - most recently the beta of AsPlayer a couple of weeks ago.
AsPlayer collects data about music played on your phone and ‘Scrobbles’ it to Last.FM. The app works fairly well for an early beta, but is unsigned and requires S60 Python to run.
Mobbler has pretty much the same feature set as AsPlayer, but is a native Symbian app which has been helpfully signed by the developer.
Sadly, like AsPlayer, Mobbler lacks the ablity to access Last.FM’s recommendations or streamed music. Any coders out there fancy taking up the challenge?
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