In the second and final part of a two parter, Steve Litchfield again looks outside the Symbian world to ask if the current Android flagship could replace a Symbian-powered smartphone. In the process of answering the question, he analyses (in order) the next eight essential functions which devices like the Nokia N97 perform for him - how easy would it then be for a non-Symbian device like the Google Nexus One to step up to the plate? (In case you missed it, here's part 1, covering the top seven functions)

"Secure database - having a password-encrypted store of passwords, PINs and ID numbers is an essential part of modern life for anyone who cares about ID fraud and security. You can't just use the same password on every service. And what about all those software activation and registration keys? In the Symbian world, I've always sworn by Epocware's Handy Safe Pro, mainly because they offered a PC client that did two way sync to my phones.
 
To both match Handy Safe Pro in the Android world and also (hopefully) handle importing my existing data (comprising over 1000 items), I turned to Splash ID on the Nexus One. It seems to be the leading app of this kind on the platform, although syncing between Nexus and desktop is somewhat clunky, in that as part of the process you have to type in, on the phone, the IP address of the desktop - this will catch out the non-geeks, I suspect! Splash ID is flexible and powerful, although despite having numerous text-based import filters, there seems not to be one for the XML data exported by Handy Safe Pro, meaning that I was stuck. "

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