Some weeks ago I’ve bought a nokia 6600 smart phone, great mobile with symbian OS. Since then I’m playing around with it, discovering how great is this operational system, BlueTooth, IR, Java and the MMC memory card. So I decided to write this article showing 7 cool things you can do with It.

Moblogging:

The word Moblog comes from mobile and blog, this is quite common thing lately, you are on a trip, going to school, well, anywhere you have signal on your mobile, you take a great picture and you don’t want to wait to go home, put in your computer, then you can send the picture to a specific email address, and by that, it will automatically be uploaded to some website you’ve configured. The two famous moblogging hosts are Flickr and TextAmerica. On this websites, you can upload a pictures with tags and title. At TextAmerica, you can upload videos too. Both services are paid, having a free accont with many restrictions. I’m starting my moblog, don’t have many pictures still. To integrate with my website, I have placed a flickr slideshow showing only pictures with “cameraphone” tags, and it works great. If you know more mobloging option, please let me know!

Instant messaging:

For those who can’t stay away from ICQ or more common lately MSN, there is a great program called Agile Messenger, that allows you to connect to MSN, ICQ, Yahoo and AOL thru GPRS. I’m using this software for a while now, it works very well, if you can buy GPRS plans for cheap, you can just leave the program running on your background. It’s great!

Using your cellphone as a webcam:

One I’ve heard about using a symbian phone as webcam, but it was little complicated, and you needed a bunch of different programs, but the guys from Warelex made a program to make it a easy job, using your USB BlueTooth. The program is great, works with any Windows application that can receive video feeds from a web camera including Skype 2.0, MSN and others. You can give it a try or buy it clicking here.

Tune your guitar:

There is a little program called GuitarTuner, it’s an interactive guitar tuner software designed exclusively for the Series 60 platform. The built-in microphone of the device is used to record and analyze any sound that can be heard, and the detected pitch is displayed in real-time. I’ve tested this software, it works, its a little slow, but it’s very handy to have a guitar tuner wherever you go. You can try it here.

Office one your smart phone:

If you deal alot with Microsoft Word, Excell and Powerpoint this if for you. With this program you can open view, edit and print your documents. The only thing is that the way you are going to use such software on a smartphone is not the same as on a PC, laptop or even a traditional PDA. Series 60 smartphones, by their very nature, have small screens and limited input capability. There will be limited amounts of data entry, especially in spreadsheets set up to keep track of records, notes or expenses, but actual amounts of data entered are going to be small. The principal use is going to be viewing files on the move. The PC is never going to be that far away and so the key is to have an easy way to get files on the phone, good viewing functions and edit functions that allow for limited data entry while on the phone. The price is a little expencive too, 50 bucks. But anyway, it’s a good try!!! You can try it HERE.

Watching movies:

This is one of the things I like most on a symbian phone, to be able to watch movies, or small videoclips. There is a good program called SmartMovie, that consists in 3 things, a XviD codec, a video converter, and a player on the phone. It works like this, you convert any video file on your PC into a phone-friendly video file. The file gets quite small, in the size of the phone’s screen. You upload the video into device/memory card. And then Play the video in SmartMovie Player installed on your mobile device. It’s a great software, it plays standard AVI format, allowing you to preview converted files on your PC. Uses popular XviD video codec, which increases compatibility with other video players. Player uses the phone screen in portrait or landscape mode, utilizing the full screen size of the device. PC converter allows you to split video file into multiple segments, so that it fits onto your memory card, if not entire, then cut to more parts - you may watch your favorite video in parts, e.g. while traveling to work/school. Mobile player which supports subtitles - allowing you to watch movies in different languages. Friendly PC converter - preview videos on PC, select parts you want to convert, alter quality. Adjustable quality parameters for video and audio streams, allowing tuning target video to your needs.
You can try this program here.

Playing Nes, Gameboy And Megadrive

Playing games like Frozen Bubble is cool, but nothing compared to playing classics of the consoles on your smartphone. I was playing Sonic, Final Fantasy and other games, its one of the coolest things on symbian OS.

For Nintendo, there is two emulators, YewNes and Vnes, but I choose YewNes, it works pretty well, you can play in full screen mode, it open .zip files, different speed levels, configurable controls and a bunch of other features. The only problem is that it costs $15, not much anyway.

 

 

 

 

For Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis), there is PicoDriver, emulator with a bunch of features, such as: LandScape and Portrait screen mode, configurable controls, Save/Load state, sound and Rom search on full mobile.

 

 

 

 

 

For GameBoy, there is GoBoy, other very good emulator, with features like full sound support, configurable key support, run games directly from Inbox or from Memory Card, play games from .zip and. All emulators are great try.