What's on my NGage?

Russell Beattie did this a couple of weeks back, and since I just had someone write me for recommendations for apps for their shiny new Series 60 phone, I did a quick catalog of what's on my phone.

I use a NGage QD. Overall, I like it, but probably not for the reasons that Nokia would like me to like it. As a gaming device, it is not terrible, but suffers in comparison to the Gameboy Advance, DS or PSP. Nintendo's announced Gameboy Advance Micro shows that a cell phone sized gaming system could work -- as long as there are titles to drive it.

As a data-centric phone, though, it has a fairly high bang-for-buck ratio. I bought it because the price was in line with what a student would pay; $99.00 with a one year contract. The screen is nice, the big joypad makes navigating around in web pages really easy. It supports IMAP and POP mail right out of the box. It has support for external memory, which allows you to stick a bunch of applications on the phone. It has bluetooth, and works great with my Mac. It as a lot of application support, since it is a series-60 phone.

I am, however, shopping for a replacement. I will get another series-60 phone, but one with a camera, maybe the N90 or the 6680. I have noticed that prices for used P900's has dropped a bit on ebay as well.

So, here's what's on my phone:

Putty for Series 60 -- just installed this a few days ago. It appears to work quite well.

AgileMessenger -- don't use this much, but it's a free AIM client.

Stowaway Bluetooth Keyboard Driver: The best accessory I have bought for my phone. After getting this, I not longer needed a PDA.

NetFront Web Browser -- It is close whether NetFront or Opera is better. It is probably the most often used application on my phone.

PicoDrive Genesis Emulator: No audio, a little slow, but playable, and it's free.

Helix Media Player (RealPlayer): Plays mp3's, some mpeg-4 and 3gpp content. Of particular note is that it supports rtsp: streaming.

PVPlayer: A commercial video player -- little better mpeg-4 support, but 3gpp support is a little buggy, it loses audio sync with longer files (15 minutes or longer).

Nokia's SyncML Client: Just in case we get SyncML running on Oracle Collab server soon.

Salling Clicker: I bought this right after getting the phone, but rarely use it. I was thinking about ways to do room control via a cell phone, and have decided that for my needs a web or flash interface is probably better. The powerpoint presenter mode is pretty cool, though.


ProfiMail: IMAP mail client for Symbian. I am on the fence about paying for it since I can use Pine via Putty. It's quite full featured.


Wideray Jack Browser: The browser that ships the WideRay. We are in the process of deploying one for testing on campus. It is sort of a a Internet caching applicance; you send content (html, images) and applications to the device via their content manager, where it can be downloaded via bluetooth or IR to PDA's (palm and pocketpc) as well as many cell phones.

--hal