In a rare quiet period at the day job we sat around discussing our mobile phones, PDAS etc and what software we had on them. Up until a year or so ago I was happy with my old Sony Ericsson W810i and an old iPAQ PDA but when the iPAQ threw in the white towel, pleaded for mercy and got put out of its misery, I started looking at smartphone options.
Now for many years I had Windows Mobile software and any sane man would have gone for a Windows based smartphone. But for some reason, and it had nothing to do with drink, drugs, phases of the moon or a bad conjunction with Mars and Uranus, I went for a Nokia N95 Symbian based phone. Lunacy I know but hey, even a grown man of mature years and not showing signs of dementia can be allowed one mistake surely!
I tucked up my collection of Windows Mobile software into a neat little folder on an external hard drive and looked at what I could put on my N95 and the list to date is:
1: Papyrus from SBSH, a turbo-charged PIM application that is about to be further boosted when V1.5 appears on the streets pretty shortly.
2: SafeWallet, a electronic wallet that sits on the PC and N95 and syncs the two and securely houses my entire life history, financial information, passport and driving licence details, etc. Come to think of it, this came in handy when I hired a car recently and couldn’t remember my PIN number so disregard the mention of dementia earlier!
3: Reminders, again from SBSH, is an, um, phone based reminder system surprisingly enough.
4: Google Maps, never used it and probably never will as it drains the battery quicker than anything I know, but I sort of just have to have it there just in case I get kidnapped, escape and need to find my way back home!
5: Opera Mini, still the leading browser for me for when I am in dentist waiting rooms, airport lounges and that sort of thing. Might be removed once mini Firefox, AKA Fennec bursts on the scene later this year.
6: Twibble, a Twitter client just in case some stunning burst of wisdom needs to be imparted to the waiting masses immediately rather than waiting for me to get home to Tweetdeck.
7: GCal, again gawd knows why this is on it because Papyrus and the inbuilt calendar program is already there. But I like to play with it. Sad I know.
8:Y-Browser, excellent and free file explorer to nuke the files the built in proggie cannot find – and there are quite a few!
9:Inclinometer, another totally useless program that tells me when my car is about to tilt over onto its roof! Apparently some people use it as a spirit level.
10:Screenshot enables me to take snapshots of the N95 screen, good for the beta testing stuff I do when one picture is worth a thousand words and that is important with the N95′s alpha numeric input system.
And that’s it – at least for the time being.
