Nokia N75 Part III: Some applications

Taking a short break from the unlocking - unbranding - upgrading firmware route, I thought I would write a bit about some applications I have tried and their performance.

See, at about the same time I unlocked the phone, I sprung for a data plan with AT&T. Now, I may have some complaints about AT&T's service, but I have to admit that their data plan is very reasonable. I got unlimited data for $15/month. I don't text too much, preferring to IM, but a number of people at work prefer to text, so I added the $5/month 200 text plan. This seemed prudent as the customer service agent informed me that messages were about to bump up to $0.20/message.

Auto Profiles
The first app I started using on my phone has nothing to do with Internet access at all, instead, it has to do with automatically changing the ringing options for the phone. My older Nokia phones had the ability to time the ringing profile such that I could tell the phone to be silent until, say, 3pm. This is really handy when you have class or a meeting. S60 does not have this built in, however, SymbianGuru (not to be confused with the Symbian Guru, Ricky Cadden) has developed AutoProfiles which allows you to do all sorts of settings with your configured profiles.

Let me back up for just one second. On Nokia and s60 phones, a "profile" is a bundle of settings for things like ringtone, vibrate, message alert, keypad tones, and more. Setting up different profiles like Silent, Vibrate, and Outdoor allows one to quickly change the ringtones with the press of two or three buttons: a quick press of the power button brings up the list of profiles, scroll to choose, and then press select. You do not even have to open the flip on the phone.

AutoProfiles takes this one step further. Not only can I schedule times for an automatic switch of the profile, but I can also tell it to trigger from meetings stored in my calendar. With this, I can completely forget about the phone and know that it will not ring while in a meeting because it has automatically switched to my silent profile. In my usage of AutoProfiles, it did not switch back to my previous profile when the meeting ended. I asked the developer about that, but all I got back was a "we'll look into this" kind of answer. Still, this is really handy. $10 but there is usually a 20% discount.

Shozu
From an app that uses no Internet to one that can be a real hog on your data plan: Shozu. Shozu is an app that does a great thing: creates a link between your phone's camera and all those great web-based photo album sites out there. Shozu interfaces with sites like Flickr and Share on Ovi to either automatically or at your discretion send the pictures you take up to those sites. The Flickr aspect is a bit more mature, allowing you to read comments and subscribe to friend's feeds and such. The Ovi aspect is just a "send to the e-mail address" option which works fine, but does not have all the cool stuff. Tags and the like get translated, so that is good. I hope they add a more feature-rich Ovi to this because the actual app by Ovi will not run on the N75, which is lame.

Google Maps
This is pretty great. I have been wanting a GPS add-on for my phone so I can use things like Nokia Maps and Sports Tracker, but in the meantime, I will be using the Google Maps app for my phone. This works by determining your location based upon the mobile phone towers you are using, so there is no GPS required. I have not used it much for directions, but the Traffic overlay is amazing, giving me a quick view of the traffic on the way to work. Definitely worth the price of admission: free!