Review: T-Fileman vs X-plore
Here's a tricky sell. Creating a file manager utility for an OS that has included a File Manager application for the last six years. Yet this is exactly what Lonely Cat Games and Kenvast Software have done, aiming their applications at a more technical, more fussy audience than the general Symbian populace. The users who, when something goes wrong, are happy to dive under the hood, even into 'system' folders and the device's firmware, rather than give up. These then are apps for geeks - and why not?
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X-plore is a familiar name, being a file manager from the days of S60 2nd Edition that's written in raw C++ and has been maintained and continually improved, while T-Fileman is a new title, created especially for the modern Symbian^3 phones and implemented in Qt. As a result, the latter is rather less mature in a number of ways - can it make up for this with a more modern interface?
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Let's look at T-Fileman first, as it's new and fresh. There's a colourful interface with reasonably large fonts used and a strip of command icons along the bottom of the main interface. As with any file manager utility, your first priority should be to head into Settings and turn on the display of system folders and hidden files. After all, the OS's own File manager application displays almost everything else - the whole point of a third party utility is that you get to see 'under the hood' stuff.
And it's here that T-Fileman's first bug hits. Or rather pair of bugs. I was reviewing version 1.00 and the display of 'hidden files' can be selected but then gets forgotten every single time you exit the application. A major headache. Also a problem here is that the 'Skin change' facility is also broken - Kenvast helpfully include the option to go with the 'System theme' (in my case, a more OLED-friendly black/purple) but when this is selected, you lose the ability to 'OK' the dialog or do anything else until you change back one of the built in battery-draining 'bright' themes.
But let's press on. The traditional hierarchical tree view of disks and folders is shown and you can tap any to expand that branch... until you hit the level where you actually want to see what's in a folder. And then tapping does nothing. The rather unintuitive trick is to tap on the blue double headed arrow ('connectivity'? - why?) in the toolbar and this toggles the main display into a file view. You can still change folders in this view by tapping on the '..' entry at the top of each folder, to go back 'up' the tree, but it's shame the folder and file views couldn't be combined, as with every other file manager I think I've ever used.
T-Fileman gains brownie points for a nice file multi-selection system - just tap on the little icon beside each file and the entry turns red. After multi-selecting, you can then copy, move or delete the files as needed (using the toolbar icons). But points are lost again because there's little information available about each file. Long pressing does nothing, single tapping launches a Symbian viewer for that file type if relevant and the only stat you get is file size. I'd have liked to have seen other file attributes.
There's not that much more to T-Fileman, to be honest. A 'Search' function in the folder view promises much but failed to find any filename fragments I tested it with (above, right). And there's a basic sort order selection function. This feels very much like a version 1.00 and I'd be more interested in where Kenvast gets to with the title in three or six months time.
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In contrast, X-plore, is massively mature. In fact, it has probably got to the point where the bolt-on features over the years have started to encroach on the core functionality, but a true geek like myself isn't going to complain. The main display combines folders (which are expanded or collapsed with a tap) and files and there's an innovative context-sensitive long press system, bringing up likely next actions for the item you're pressing, as shown in one of the screenshots.
Files are marked with a single tap, in this case on the right hand side of the screen - it's not obvious what to do, but it does work, and well. Basic file dates are available on request, although actual file system attributes are hived off into a specific menu function.
Although the interface is highly non-standard, it's also very configurable, in terms of UI elements and fonts used - I found that a trip into Configuration to up the UI and fonts paid dividends in terms of finger-touch-friendliness - remember that X-plore dates from the days of non-touch phones and resistive touch, so this isn't surprising.
Nice touches include a view into your Messaging 'received files' folder - this is easy to get to on Symbian^3 but this is a great function for earlier devices, a ZIP archive creator and a 'Send by Bluetooth' function - this will work for any file, regardless of location or type and thus avoids the nanny state mentality of the built-in File manager.
Aside from the general interface quirkiness, there are elements of the old S60 touch'n'select ('double tap') interface in places, and I found it disconcertingly easy when kinetically scrolling the folder tree around to accidentally select a number of files. But such idiosyncrasies are easy to forgive, especially in so geeky an application.
Final nods to the maturity of X-plore, pointers that everything that can possibly be squeezed into a file manager has been implemented, come with the various preview modes. Tap on an image and you'll be shown an inline thumbnail, overlaid on the folder/file tree. Tap on a sound file and you'll be offered a 'play' button. And so on.
Oh, and X-plore's filename search tool actually works (unlike T-Fileman's):
There's even the ultimate techy tool, a hexadecimal viewer, showing the raw bytes in a file, along with their convenient ASCII equivalents. There's not room for this to work well in portrait mode, but it's very cool in landscape.
Pricing for X-plore is from a previous 'age', $10, though in fairness this is only about £6, so won't exactly break the bank. And the 'trial'/shareware version never times out, so you can use it as long as you want for free, with only start and finish nag screens to prompt your guilty conscience. Awkwardly, there doesn't seem to be a way to buy it in the Ovi Store, you'd have to buy it separately from the developers and then side-load via an SIS file - but then (again) this being a geeky file manager, it's extremely unlikely that any prospective purchasers would have an issue with this.
There's little comparison between the two file managers at this stage - there's simply not enough of substance in T-Fileman yet. While that product gets extended, make a beeline for X-plore, if you haven't already, it has been the gold standard in Symbian file managers since about 2006 and, after all, who cares about an interface that's a little different here and there?
Final AAS percentage scores: T-Fileman: 65%, X-plore: 81%
Steve Litchfield, All About Symbian, 14 June 2011
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at