Well, a good old friend just brought a N95 8GB yesterday, after pestering me for a recommendation between a few models. And after convinced of himself on this choice(against N95, N82, W960i), he went straight to the store the same evening to get one with 2 year contract at SGD658 (~USD454, EUR314), which is a pretty good deal.
One of the reason is the availability of some interesting applications, which are free to download, install, and use in this phone. This phone is running Symbian 9.2 as the base operating system, with Nokia Series 60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 on top of it. There are SDKs for writing native external applications for such phones, so there are good developers out there that have written and shared some of their applications.
So here it is, a short run though of the applications which I think my friend would like to have it installed. These are available free and are trustworthy, so there is no real need to worry about phone virus due to these, but do not expect bug free applications.
Caveat:
1. Some of the applications are quite bo-liao(local lingual for fun but quite useless), and not intended to be purposeful.
2. Backup your phone memory and memory card data with the PC Suite.
3. Some of the applications might have problem
installing without being signed with a developer certificate. If so, then follow instructions here or here to sign the application yourself. It probably take 30 minutes or so to do it.
Moving ball, http://research.nokia.com/projects/activity_monitor
Simply watch a ball moving around when you swing the phone around. Quite addictive to have fun with.
rotateMe, http://www.bysamir.fr/rotateme/
Automatic tilt to portrait and landscape mode in main menu and some
applications. Quite cool for showing off. Need to self sign with developer certificate.
Light sabre, http://graho.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/light-sabre-v14/
Star war sabre. Ezzrrrgg sound when swinging you phone, just pure fun.
Accelerinvaders, http://mosh.nokia.com/collection/3746EC195CEE725DE040050AEE041508
Space invaders clone with left-right tilt motion detection.
Calcium, http://mtvoid.com/calcium/index.html
A more intuitive simple calculator to use.
Screen capture, http://www.antonypranata.com/screenshot/download-screenshot-symbian-os-s60
Do a screen shot of a phone screen. Source code available in sourceforge.
Google map, http://www.google.com/gmm
Google map for mobile, can show your current estimated location, within few kilometers radius. Use it with WLAN to to keep your phone bill sane, unless you have some unlimited data plan.
Mobireader, http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/application.asp?device=SymbianOs
ebook reader. Public domain free ebooks at http://www.mobipocket.com/freebooks/default.aspx
S-tris 2, http://www.elementsgames.com/stris2/downloads.php
Good old teteris clone.
If you managed this far to install the above, below are a few more interesting ones to me, but probably not of much interest to my dear friend:
Mobile Web Server, http://mymobilesite.net/
An apache web server running on your phone. your friend can see your web page, which is hosted on your phone.
Sports Tracker, http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/SportsTracker/
GPS recording of your sports activity route.
Energy profiler, http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/development_process/power_management/nokia_energy_profiler/
Profile your battery usage level, useful to look for power suckers
applications. It is intended to help software developers optimise
their application. A pretty interesting app.
Y-Browser, http://www.drjukka.com/YBrowser.html
File explorer.
FExplorer, http://www.gosymbian.com/FE_beta_download_3ed.html
File explorer. Need to self sign.
Gizmo for S60, http://www.nokia.com/betalabs/gizmo
Until your operator begins to offer 3GPP IP Multimedia Subsystem service, GizmoProject is your best choice for VOIP(over WLAN) on this phone. The voice quality is good. You can do instant messaging with GTalk, MSN Messenger, etc. You can call US toll free numbers for free. Pretty useful.
In additions, there are good Java based and mobile Flash 2.0 applications that can run on this phone. However, as these are not
considered native applications, they will usually incur some performance overhead, like draining more battery power.
…and the wheel is in motion…
Somewhere in late October and early November this year, a certain news exploded within the Nokia N95 community. Apparently N95 has an accelerometer chip built-in, and a pretty powerful one. A N95 accelerometer that can return measurements on accelerations (gravity) and directions, like an electronic gyroscope.
Its principal use in N95 was believed to be mainly for meta-tagging photographs with orientation information, so that a picture can always be displayed in its upright position. This is a pretty common feature seen in modern digital cameras.
This accelerometer, however, would allow for many additional uses. One of which is to automatically orientate the User Interface(UI) displayed when tilt from side to side, a feature that Apple iPhone fans would be familiar. Other uses include Wii-like functionalities in game control.
In late October, this accelerometer in N95 was quietly waiting to burst into limelight. On 28 October 2007, while most enthusiastic bloggers were busy reviewing N95 8GB, a comment was posted to a blogger's N95 8GB review, pointing to "N95 pedometer: http://research.nokia.com/projects/activity_monitor". Over the next few days, bloggers start picking up this seemingly unimportant link, not realising yet what they would be stumbling upon, until they uncovered it.
At almost the same time, on 29 Oct 2007, a video showcasing an application developed by a Symbian developer was released. The application was shown in the video to be able to rotate the UI displayed by tilting N95 from side to side, like iPhone.
For many, there was initial disbelief that there was an accelerometer in N95, and then erupted with ecstasy that N95 really has one in it.
What follows over the next few days, and many days subsequently, were reports of various delight. Starting with the simple, almost useless, yet amazingly addictive Moving ball. Then more applications start appearing, like Inclinometer that sits on car dash board to show the car's tilt, lightsabre effect that star wars fan would have fun with, a space invader clone Accelerinvaders with motion sensing, python extension aXYZ module for python development. And various not-yet-released, but promising applications, like the Activity monitor that monitor steps while exercising, or the eagerly awaited rotateMe application that tilt the UI displayed from side to side, or NokMote that control N95 menus and applications controls through motion, or the shake control application that control music player, etc.
The existence of a N95 accelerometer was actually known much earlier, when there were some accelerometer discussion from July 2007 onwards in Forum Nokia discussion board, and there was even a wiki created on 19 October 2007. But the delightful eruption since early November must have pleasantly caught many by surprise, especially for those in the know, but not knowing the extent of the impact.
In addition to N95, it is believed that N93i as well as the recently announced N82, have the accelerometer built-in. Before these, the Nokia 5500 Sports was probably the only phone featuring an accelerometer.
For N95 owners, this accelerometer device definitely looks like an unexpected early present for the coming holiday season.
Ikea at Ikano
Tree
Balloons
