Ovi Chat 3.1 – The chat app Nokia N8 was missing

Posted by on April 5, 2011 3 comments

If you don’t know, Ovi Chat is the official chat client from Nokia supporting multiple chat networks such as Google talk, Yahoo, Windows Live etc.   

Currently, it is not officially available for Nokia N8 It is now available officially for Nokia N8 and other phones running Symbian^3.

It is good that Nokia is taking time to fix the bugs and optimize it. Currently, I found the following problems with this in my N8   

  • No Facebook chat. Although there are other apps available for this but Nokia included MySpace chat which is a dead service instead of Facebook for some reason beyond my understanding.
  • Runs a little bit slow because it is based on Widget runtime. An app based on Qt/QML would have been better, but I can understand that Nokia opted for WRT for maintaining compatibility with older phones.   
  • The whole interface is two tap based and not single tap which fits more to Symbian^3’s UI. Single tap UI in Ovi Chat 3.1 on Symbian^3 phones.

When launched for the first time it will install a home Screen widget from where you can directly change your status or read any latest chat message to you.

Once the app is running, you can either close it from the task manager or select to hide in the menu. This way, the app will eat less resources and still be running in the background till someone sends you an IM.

Here are some screenshots…

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Here is a chat I was having with my surprised friend Yash (@alsiladka) when I told him about this.

A sample chat

The good thing about Ovi Chat is that it also integrates with the phonebook. You can link any contact on say, Google Talk to anyone in your phone book, Then, you can call that person from within the app.

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Once running, it also shows those contact who are linked and are online from within your Phone Book. So your phonebook becomes one place for contacting anyone by all means possible, whether it is Chat, SMS, Phone/Video call, Facebook or Twitter. 

This is how new message notification shows when the app is hidden in the background.

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On Symbian^3, the app supports right click context menus which open when you long press on a contact or running conversation.

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Overall, other then the speed issue and lack of Portrait and Split screen Qwerty in N8, this chat app is very good and does all the basic tasks. Officially, it is available at the Ovi Store.

Opera Mini 6 and Opera Mobile 11–The best just got better

Posted by on March 22, 2011 1 comment

If you are using Symbian OS on a Touch Screen phone then you most likely hate the inbuilt Nokia browser due to its bad user interface and experience on a touch screen device. Thankfully, Nokia allows us to use any web browser we want on our devices.

Opera has just released Opera Mini 6 and Opera Mobile 11 for Symbian phones.

Opera Mobile 10.1 was already a very fast browser on mobiles phones which when combined with newly released 3G services in India from Vodafone, Airtel etc result in desktop like webpage rendering and loading on your mobile phone. Opera Mobile 11 increases the performance even more.  

Official homepage of Opera Mobile 11 and Opera Mini 6

Opera Mini 6 and Opera Mobile 11 on Touch, non touch and Tablet devices

The new features of Opera Mobile 11 are (taken from All about Symbian)

  • Modernized new user interface
  • New UI optimized for tablet devices
  • Faster framerates when panning and zooming
  • No checkerboard, ever
  • Text stays sharp during zooming
  • Improved text-wrap on zoom
  • Smart-tap, auto-zoom and highlights links if ambiguous link click
  • Incremental zooming for devices w/o multi-touch
  • Buttons for jumping to the top/bottom of the page
  • Haptic feedback (if supported in hardware)
  • Share URL on social networks, email etc
  • Improved Geolocation support
  • Session restore
  • Support native clipboard on Symbian 5th ed and Symbian^3
  • Support for half-screen keyboard on Symbian^3 phones

Full feature list is available here.  

Opera Mini is available as a native Symbian application now which means it has more RAM to access compared to the regular J2ME version. Opera Mobile has always been a native application.

Upon installation, it automatically detects the old version you have installed and saves all previous settings. I had to configure nothing, everything was already there.

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Opera Mini and Mobile now support Multi touch along with text wrapping when text is zoomed. It is now on the same level as iPhone browser.

I can share any webpage link on Facebook and Twitter now from within Opera. This is a really big time saver and I don’t have to copy paste links first to bit.ly mobile and then Gravity.

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Opera now supports split screen text input. In Symbian^3 currently it opens the regular T9 keypad but once PR2.0 comes out, we will have full split screen qwerty for text entry.

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When scrolling through long pages, during scroll a small button shows up clicking which you can scroll to the top of the page or bottom immediately.

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You can download Opera Mini and Mobile for your phones by going to m.opera.com in your device. The website will automatically detect your device and provide you links to download proper versions.

Picsel Smart Office: A better alternative to QuickOffice

Posted by on March 14, 2011 No comments

If you are a user of Nokia phone, chances are that you are using QuickOffice to read your documents & PDFs which came bundled with your phone and you never bothered to look at anything better.

However, it looks like that QuickOffice is no longer paying attention to Symbian OS. There current version is very badly designed for touch screen devices. I wanted an application to read my files so I started looking at alternatives.

While looking for alternatives, I came across Picsel Smart Office. They have done a complete revamp of there application since the last time I used it in my Nokia N79. It is now available for Symbian^3, Android, iPhone, Bada and Windows Mobile.

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By far, it is the only Office suite I have found worth using in my Nokia N8. It reads PDFs as well as Office 2007 compatible files which is what most of us use anyway.

It also supports basic editing although that is tough on a touch screen phone due to the fact that there is no separate keyboard on N8. On Nokia E7, editing will be easy due to more precise keyboard & arrows keys for pointing exactly where you need.

There were some problems I faced though.

  • Multi touch doesn’t work in my N8 yet.
  • Few PowerPoint presentations with animation don’t render properly.
  • I cannot set it as the default viewer for Office documents as QuickOffice is default. I need to open the app first and then open the document from it.
  • The top toolbar should vanish when I am reading a document or PDF giving some more vertical space but still leave an icon overlaying on the top left side to bring it back to the screen.

Picsel Smart Office is better then any other office suite available for Symbian OS right now. I strongly recommend Picsel for reading purpose only unless you have a Nokia E7, Or Nokia N97 like phone with Keyboard.

Something for my sister, Nokia X2-01

Posted by on February 20, 2011 6 comments

So, on her recent trip to Delhi I couldn’t help but notice that my sister is still using the now 4 year old some Nokia phone whose modal number or name I don’t even remember.

I decided to give her a new phone. I started with a Blackberry but then she told me her requirements, which were very less compared to what I was expecting.

  1. Phone calls
  2. Listening to music saved in the phone or FM Radio.
  3. Text messages.
  4. Sometimes E-Mails. She doesn’t have GPRS activated as she has access to a computer anyway when she is in her office or at home. I activated it today for her.
  5. Camera for quick pictures but nothing to brag about. She carries a Sony Cybershot W80 in her handbag all the time anyway so a camera phone wasn’t her requirement.
  6. Good battery life as she is traveling mostly due to her job so access to a wall outlet for charging a phone is limited.
  7. Ability to sync with Outlook.

I started looking & showed her some phone on GSMArena but she said to select the cheapest available phone which can fulfil her requirements. At one time I even finalized Nokia C2-00. Yeah, she needed something that much simple & low end.

But I wanted to give her something good enough for the next few years without making her lifestyle complex. I decided Nokia X2-01 which I purchased from The Mobile Store for Rs 4,000. The shopkeeper thankfully bundled a 2 GB Memory card in the same cost as there was no memory card bundled with the phone.

As always, this isn’t a review of Nokia X2-01. If you want to a review then kindly read the one by GSMArena.

Connecting to the PC was easy. The USB port is hidden behind a rubber cover which is hard to remove. I would recommend using Bluetooth more often then USB cord for this phone.

Upon installation, X2-01 is detected as a Nokia C3. So, I am suspecting that both the phone have same platform. Nokia C3 is like X2-01 but with a different look, WiFi along with a 2 MP camera. Rest all is same.

Now, you must be thinking that it is a dumb phone & I should have opted for something better but think of the requirement my sister has. Why waste money to buy a phone with features she doesn’t use.

It is a simple phone. As simple as it can get. She liked it because now she can type SMS & mails faster then before. She also wanted photo calls, ability to manage contacts and SMS on a computer (via Ovi Suite), contacts backup (via Ovi Sync), and sync capability with her Outlook account on her laptop for contacts, meetings etc.

The phone is slow when it comes to running Java apps and there is no multitasking either. But she can very well listen to music playing in background while doing some lightweight browsing using Opera Mini 5.1. That is where her multitasking needs end.

The text rendering is good. The screen lacks high DPI like other touch screen phones available today but it good for her needs. Text is big enough with ability to increase the font size which she did.

The keyboard is easy to type on. Even I liked typing on this keyboard. There are dedicated music and message buttons, which was good for her.

SMS messages have a threaded conversation view like Nokia N8. Nokia Communities application is installed using which she can chat with friends on Google talk, check Facebook/Orkut etc.

I saved some of her most used contacts on the home screen with a notification bar & some application shortcuts as you can see in the picture above. In most cases her requirements will be limited to the apps you see on that screen above only.

Music playback is good. I was able to sync songs using Windows Media Player with album art supported in the phone. You can stream songs from a web server too. I didn’t check that option but it was there.

So, that is all folks. I found Nokia X2-01 to be a very good basic phone with a dirt cheap price tag.

Windows Media Centre remote for Nokia touch phones & Vectir

Posted by on December 17, 2010 6 comments

There is a fantastic piece of software written for Windows called Vectir. Using Vectir you can control different media players running on the computer with your Bluetooth or WiFi enabled mobile phone. I have been using Vectir since the days of Nokia N79 & even did a review sometime back. However, things changed once I got my Nokia N8.

I did not like the bundled skins with Vectir graphically. Functionality wise they work nicely but they need some design love. So, I am making a remote profile for Vectir using which you can control Windows Media Centre with your Nokia Touch Screen phones. Here is how to use it.

  1. The developers at Vectir have now bundled my theme with the release of Vectir 2.4. Thanks a lot to them. You can check the blog post & download Vectir 2.4 from here.
  2. Go to Vectir & configure your phone as said on Vectir configuration page. Install the Vectir app in your mobile phone.
  3. Select my profile called WMC for Nokia Touch phones from the list of available profiles which will show up in your phone once connected.
  4. The keys are self-explanatory.

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Since most of the Nokia Touch screen phones now are coming with AMOLED screen, I am making another theme for controlling Media Centre with black accent because with black colours the battery usage of AMOLED screens is further reduced. Both the white & black theme will be available.

I have also created the Windows Media Player profile half way. I will be posting it soon, after converting it to black accent.

: Here is the work in progress for the black theme. This is made with Nokia phones having AMOLED screens as black colour is more energy efficient on AMOLED screens then White.

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The new mobile theme is alive

Posted by on November 9, 2010 1 comment

I am happy to announce that this blog is now compatible with smart phones and other smart devices. I just finished creating a custom theme which is similar to the current blog theme in look & feel but adjusts the blog automatically when viewed on a mobile device.

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For this I am using on few WordPress plugins and some tricks.

  1. WordPress Mobile Pack – This plugin automatically detects whether the user is viewing the blog from a mobile phone, smart device or a computer and depending on that it loads the mobile centric theme & layout.
  2. I had to disable Lightbox & Contact form 7 for mobile theme as they were loading JavaScript files which were not required in case of user reading the blog in a mobile phone. I am using a simple Wp-contactform for mobile view.
  3. You can contact me using the contact form whose link is given in the header as an email Icon. You can also find me on twitter, Facebook, Ovi, Flickr & LinkedIn using the links given in the footer.
  4. The theme is tested & working fine in Nokia browser, Android 2.1, iOS 3.0 & Opera Mini/Mobile. I request users to check my blog in as many devices as possible and let me know of any bug you encounter.
  5. The best way to read my blog is to subscribe to the RSS feed in your device using the RSS icon in the header. That will ensure that you get all my latest posts & updates delivered to your device automatically & with proper rendering for the device.

 

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