*Spark is another in a long line of “new home screen” applications that offer you a little bit more than the standard Symbian screens. Be it weather reports, a different way of presenting applications and shortcuts, pushing news via RSS feeds or keeping you in touch with your friends, this is a well worn path. If done correctly, you can create a base of users who'll evangelise on your behalf and you can continue to support – get it wrong and you’ll find a horrible mess of too many icons, a mash of text and instant “urgh” and uninstall from the users. How does *Spark fare? Let's find out.
Sitting in the recent Nokia World keynote, I spotted a familiar logo on the projector screen. The Foursquare logo. “Ooh that’s new,” I thought, “does that mean there’s an official application for Symbian now to join Android and iOS?” The short answer was yes, the client was on display in the Nokia Experience Lounge and the UI, and while having the obvious Symbian cues, also looked close enough to the aforementioned clients. It’s even labelled as “by Foursquare” although officially it is a collaboration with Nokia. Here's my review.
ThinkChange's nUnlock is a nice little utility application and it reminds me of all the little tweaks and hacks that turn up when a phone OS is relatively new and people want to add in certain functionality. While S60 5th Edition is pretty mature, ThinkChange have found what appears to be a small gap in the market for nUnlock to slide into. And I quite like it!
EchoEcho is a new cross-platform "where are you?" application and service, using SMS as its communications medium, to ensure compatibility with most phones. Reviewing it seemed like a job for Ewan Spence and he dived into with glee. Although he reckons it's "an answer in search of a question", both of us reckon it has potential. Comments welcome, no matter if you think it's a slice of genius or a complete dud!
Do you have a monthly, weekly or even daily data limit on your mobile account? I know I do, which is why we leapt at the appearance of Data Monitor as a utility to help keep track of usage. However, with barely more data-gathering functionality than the built-in Log utility and with an intrusive and hard-to-configure, always-on 'ticker', it seems that Data Monitor isn't ready for the prime time just yet, as you can read in David Gilson's review.
David Gilson reviews the free Pixelpipe Send and Share, the new incarnation of the popular uploading service that works independently of Nokia's Share online and thus works more seamlessly, using a wider range of file types and (presumably) on more devices. It's all win, win, win until David points out a few caveats, including less flexible authentication and a greater need to do some of the set up using your desktop's web browser.
Ewan takes a look at 'a new Internet experience' on his smartphone, in this case Webwag Mobile, from the Nokia Ovi Store. A service aggregator, this experience may well be a new one, but the clunkiness of the user interface and poor use of the information entered means that it's not an experience anyone's likely to enjoy or come back to...
With a new Foursquare app available for S60 5th Edition, is it time for an easy route into the location-based game? Ewan has a look in this full review, concluding that, while a great start, a lack of search and discovery functions really hurts the app in real world use.
Ewan Spence takes a look at Locago. A location based mapping application, built in Java. Locago overlays points of interest from sources like Wikipedia, Flickr, and Yahoo!, to help travellers find out more about their surroundings. Despite the quirky interface, Ewan recommends all travellers take a look and show it off to their friends.
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