Tracker for S60 given a real Power User Test

[slitchfield]

AAS's Attila Katona is perhaps the ultimate smartphone power user [shouts of "foul" from Asri, but....] and seemed the perfect person to put SmartphoneWare's new Tracker utility for S60 3rd Edition to the test. A whole new interface for your S60 smartphone or the fastest way to confuse a user? Attila seemed to like Tracker a lot - here's his review.

Read on in the full article.

[krisse]

Ooh, animated gifs! Is this a first for AAS?

Very interesting application, it looks like you could get a lot out of it if you're willing to put the time in to get it right.

It is a bit strange that S60 doesn't let people put shortcuts to websites or documents. On the other hand, at least FP1 now lets the user add as many folders and sub-folders as they want, so there's a lot more flexibility built in.

well, FP1 is out of my reach at the moment, on my E70 90% of Tracker's features were pretty much missing essentials. I should be getting that oh so desired E90 any week now, I'll look into differences asap

[krisse]

FP1 only introduces flexibility for folders and sub-folders though, it doesn't allow user-created links to files or URLs. Tracker would still be useful for someone who wants Windows-style flexibility over the contents of their S60 menu structure.

[paulomario77]

Don't know if some of you have noticed this bug but, depending on the "speed contact" that is added to the desktop, opening the speed contact results in a kern-exec 3 crash. The phone must then be rebooted before Tracker can be re-launched.

When a "simple" contact (e.g. a contact having just phone numbers associated with it) is added as a "speed contact", everything works as expected. However, when a more "complex" contact is added (e.g. having birthday, home address and notes set), Tracker crashes upon opening the "speed contact".

N73 here, Firmware v4.0723.2.1.1.

[asri]

Errr... What did I do? :-)

Coming from a UIQ user point of view, Tracker is not a new concept. It is available for UIQ 2 users, and for Series 80 Communicator uses, it's called Power Desk. It really puts more customization options to users.

Accessing many important functions on a single app is godsend i tell you. This kind of application was aplenty on Psions (Extrabars, Macro5, etc) and also on Series 80 like Arjen's excellent iDesk, but still far away for UIQ 3 users... sigh...

Kudos to Smartphoneware for releasing Tracker!

[Jejoma]

Having used Tracker for years on my P800 and P900 it was quite a shock to go back to the UIQ interphase on the P990. What a mess!

Hopefully Tracker will soon be coming out in a UIQ3 version.

[Enfors]

Is it just me, or is there no way to dial a phone number with Tracker? Sure, I can't call a contact, but I can't figure out how to dial a number. I don't know about you guys, but personally I never bother to use Contacts when I'm calling, for example, my wife. It's faster to just dial the number manually. This doesn't seem possible with Tracker.

Kind of ironic, isn't it? Mobile phones finally got so complicated you can't use them to dial numbers anymore :-)

[n0k1a]

The idea of Tracker looks very promising, but there are some things I'd like to see as well (the number dialing thing is one I had not encountered yet, but I too would certainly desire that functionality!).

I'd like something which could truly replace the standby screen. I would want such an app to display the network operator's name, and the day and date as well as the time. That is one thing which has bugged me on the E61, having the profile name overwrite the day and date for any profile other than General. It would also be nice to see the profile name as well, even if it is General.

Oh, and at least for the QWERTY E61, it would be nice to have some app (Tracker looks like the perfect candidate) make it possible to dial numbers which are specified alphabetically or alphanumerically (like 1-800-SYMBIAN, for lack of a better example) without mental gymnastics, as the embedded numeric keys lack the ABC, DEF, etc. labels.

As Tracker is obviously a power user app, it would be very cool if it could display selected technical info (MCC/MNC, cell ID, signal strength in dBm, etc.), such as that accessible with PhoNetInfo, on the active standby screen replacement. Also allowing display of a selected number of text messages and/or emails, as well as open programs, memory and storage stats, etc., all in a very small font on the same screen, would be excellent.

Additionally, I could not find a way to have Tracker display a background picture, such as I always use on the active standby screen. This would be most welcome. Even better would be if it were able to extend to the entire screen, without a border from the current theme as is present on the stock standby screen. Allowing fonts and colors to be changed independently of the current theme, i.e. to make the display more readable on top of the chosen background picture, would make it even better.

All in all, a very cool app, but I'm not sure that it does enough at this point for me to purchase it. If it gets the above suggested additions, it could be a killer app. And FWIW, I have bought several other programs from SmartphoneWare which really have added to my device.

Enfors: you can create a speed dial and place its icon on the desktop - why would you want to start typing the whole number when you can start the call with one click? or if you don't want to every important contacts' icon on the desktop than put there the 'New dial' action which can also save a few button presses. or just pick her name from the Recent page.

n0k1a: Tracker is not a stand-by screen replacement but a menu replacement. which one of the three main screens can you see as the best to replace the stand-by screen? whichever you pick with the addition of the networks operator, the current profile, the day and a background image you would get nothing more just the original stand-by screen again. I also tried to force Tracker to be my main screen but with Active stand-by turned on I get more information about inbox items, calendar and to-do list. I can see how it would be great to have a more customisable stand-by screen but I personally would end up putting the same things on it as I have on the built-in one now - simply because it has pretty much everything stand-by screen should have. and everything else can be reached from the menu replacement.

Enfors part 2
and I do understand the difference between a number and a contact - hopefully my answer to n0k1a is an answer to this issue as well.
so just press Hide and start typing the number which is just as many keypresses as starting a dialing applications and start entering the phone number there.

[mrcreativity]

While I think that Tracker is an amazing application that really enhances the experience of using my E61, I do have one gripe.

Having the application quit when the END key is pressed really annoys me. Another task manager resists the closure, so i suppose it isn't that hard for smartphoneware to allow it to remain open.

I had the same problem with the new version of Best Taskmanager, which is one of the reasons i regret paying for it.

By the way, I haven't experienced any of the errors that the others have mentioned.

[n0k1a]

Attila, you make a good point. It does indeed seem that they are going for a menu replacement, rather than a standby screen replacement.

My thought on this would be that to call something a 'Desk', and with all the references to a desktop PC type of environment, would imply that it would be more than merely a menu enhancement. In the typical GUI-based desktop computer environment (whether it be Windows, MacOS, KDE, the Amiga Workbench, or whatever), the 'desktop' (or 'workbench') is the place where you start when your OS boots up, and the place you return to when you have no active applications in the foreground. It is the place where you typically see the date and time, shortcuts to all of your most important programs and documents, user-selectable background pictures, and many other possible customizations. The other thing which you find on the 'desktop' is one or more entry points into the OS's menu system. This sounds more like the equivalent of the standby screen than the menu to me.

I suppose my usage patterns differ from yours in that I find the existing menu system (3rd Ed, pre-FP1), though not extremely comprehensive, to be quite adequate for getting to all of the lesser-used programs I need. The active standby, on the other hand, leaves me wishing that I could have more icons there, rather than in the menu system. I would also like to see the other enhancements mentioned in my previous post.

It does not seem unreasonable to think that Tracker could serve both of these functions, providing enhancements to the menu and the standby screen. The fact that another reader even mentioned trying to dial a number indicates to me that I am not alone in thinking that this app was intended to serve as more than just a new menu. Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of the menu additions too...I would quite like to be able to create multiple levels of subfolders and have many icons available as well. I'm just saying that that alone is not likely to result in my buying the program, but some additional (and not really unrelated) functionality could virtually guarantee it.

[Vince Moor]

Hi all,

If you are as curious as we are, you can visit our Symbian Review.com site to read our review about the newly released Tracker by Smartphoneware. It is not only informative, but also illustrated with nice screenshots of this application.

If you have any comment or advice regarding this or other posts on Symbian Review.com, you are always welcome to express them on the site pages.

Best Wishes,
Vince