Thursday, June 12th, 2008 : Tech

It’s not a mystery, I’ve loved Nokia as a cell company for their innovations in mobile technology since they introduced games on cell phones with their 5xxx and 6xxx series models in the early 2000’s. In fact, in the past 8 years, I’ve had Nokia handsets at the ready or on the wish list… Though I’ve settled for a Sony/Ericsson (once) and had an HTC handset for about a year, I always found myself wanting some bad ass piece of awesome that Nokia was about to release, or just had released.

Currently - I tout the N95-3 (US version of the N95) with blazing fast 3G and HSDPA data support, GPS, a 5 megapixel camera, video, removable/upgradable microSDHC card (currently housing an 8GB beast), super long lasting LiIon battery (I have two), a slew of awesome Symbian S60 and Java-based applications - including games, and fancy pants tools that marry the hardware and software seamlessly to bring you an absolute great mobile-computing experience.

From all this, I’ve found that everyone that has a Nokia handset, preferably the N95, should have these apps installed and used liberally:

1. Sports Tracker (available here) - This application uses the accelerometer and GPS to bring you an awesome companion to your workouts. Features include:
   1. GPS tracking of your route
   2. Altitude/Speed/Duration logging
   3. GeoTracking of photos taken during your walk/run/ride/etc
   4. Route saving
   5. Workout Diary - summarizes and logs
   6. Sharing online

   This is when it gets down right f**king cool. A year ago, April, Digital Urban, did a write-up on using the data collected in Sports Tracker for GeoRadness in Google Earth, creating a whole “new” application all together. I’d like to coin this, Life Mappery… All in all Sports Tracker is an application that can be used to track and geotag “You”, which is (again) awesome.

2. ShoZu (available here) - This application is available for a LOT of phones, but the N95’s handy-snappy-FAST GPS + Camera + ShoZu is a friggin’ great combination. Auto-GeoTagging of photos and videos taken, then uploaded to your file sharing app of choice (Flickr), makes for even more awesome. I spent about 20 minutes setting up Tiwtter, Flickr, Twitpic, and the account - including installation of ShoZu on the phone. I immediately adopted the app’s behaviors on my handset as “the way it should’ve been all along”.

   Their developers are definitely people who wanted to make sure their application integrated effortlessly with your phone’s existing interface, just making it “more gooder” than it was before you installed it, and it shows.

3. Nokia Communication Center (available here) - First of all, Nokia’s PC Suite is pretty sweet, but adding this extension to their already awesome PC/MAC interface? Oh boy. This boasts a near real-time interaction with your handset’s messaging (SMS & MMS) - allowing you to read, reply, forward and send new messages to contacts through a robust, but lightweight, desktop-based application.

   You can also manage contacts (edit, add, delete), send emails, and compose an MMS message, if you wish… and quickly!

4. Conversation (available here) - One of the advantage the iPhone has over the Nokia N95 (Symbian S60, really) is threaded SMS messages. Well… Conversations takes care of that, and one-ups it by threading MMS into the mix as well. One of the features I like about this the most is, the ability to mass delete entire threaded conversations without sifting through messages in the normal list view (so you can axe all your GoogleSMS queries at once, etc).

   It embeds itself right into your Contacts feature, as the first sub-menu item. So, all you have to do is select “Contacts” then push right once, and you’re there. I have mine set up as a main shortcut, replacing what was previously “Messaging”. Great thing is, it doesn’t replace messaging, allowing you to use either medium for interaction! Just rad.

5. MOSH (available here) - Short for “MObile SHaring”, MOSH is an online community where people upload, collect, and download tons of great stuff. Mobile themes, ringtones, games, apps, widgets, video, images… You name it. I grabbed my current theme from MOSH’s website, as well as a few great time killing games and some pretty sweet apps that are just plain fun to have. The application is accessible via the web, as well as through the handset, making it for an all-around quick-to-access experience, so you don’t have to kill a load of time loading up your handset with neat stuff.

Of course, there’s also Qik, Google Maps (great for traffic reports), Gmail, Google Search, Fring, and YouTube… I guess the only thing that’s really missing is a way for me to uh… make a cup of coffee with my cell at this point.