Review: RotateMe
RotateMe is the first of many applications in development by the French author Samir; others include his Nokmote and ShutUp. RotateMe has been in development for the last few months and through the betas it has slowly improved, bugs have been fixed and new features have been added. The current beta (beta 7, for donators only) has reached the end of its development stage and will soon be submitted to Symbian for public signing, but if you can’t wait, you can download the publicly available (unsigned) beta 5 off Samir’s home page. See also my tutorial for instructions on signing apps.
Features include the iPhone-like auto rotate (N95 and other accelerometer-equipped phones only) with a hotkey option for other phones. An easy to use interface allows users to
- Set Sensitivity
- Change Reactivity
- Enable/Disable Auto Start
- Set the Inactivity Delay
- Adjust the Priority
- Activate the System App setting
- Enable/Disable Hidden App, to hide RotateMe from the task list
When using RotateMe for the first time, the app successfully loads itself for system start-up, as set from the main settings menu. Also, the application is successfully hidden from the system task manager while running. The phone successfully rotates from landscape to portrait when the N95 is fully open (portrait) mode - and when the phone itself is in landscape mode it also continues to function without misbehaving. With the auto shutoff when the phone’s keypad is locked, little difference in battery performance is noticed, one major bug fixed from previous betas.
When using RotateMe in applications, the occasional bug appears. When using it while creating a new text message, you can occasionally lose the last character you wrote if you rotate the screen in the middle of the writing the text. The N95's accelerometer originally used to determine if the camera was in landscape or portrait mode when taking a picture, this no longer functions successfully with RotateMe active, meaning that pictures you take in landscape mode are occasionally saved in portrait aspect, this can be irritating, especially if you use your phone's camera regularly.
One other thing I have noticed while using it is that if you have rotated the screen to landscape mode, then open the phone into natural portrait mode, the phone automatically rotates the screen back to the portrait mode. This can be annoying because it means that in order to get the phone back to landscape mode, you have to turn the phone back to its original orientation and then rotate it back to landscape in order to get it back to landscape operation.
These are all minor bugs and should (hopefully) be fixed in the next update.
The inactivity delay function works well. If the phone is inactive for the set amount of time (30, 60, 90 or 120 seconds) then autorotation is successfully disabled. This is good to have and prevents major battery loss. It also then gets enabled when you start using the phone again.
Andrew Galpin, AllAboutSymbian, 27 Jan 2008
Andrew's Apps folder.... Hmmmm.... (Ed)
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at