10 really essential apps for your Nokia N97
The problem with Nokia’s symbian OS is that, its a lot like linux. with V5, it tries to take the touchscreen market heads on, but its not exactly ready to do that. But if you’re ready to search around a little bit, Nokia’s quirky little OS will be more rewarding than your apple OS will ever be. But then, if you’d rather not go through all the trouble, get yourself an Iphone. Most of this stuff will work on any other symbian v5 touch device, but I tried them out only on my N97. Invest in a good microSD card, this ensures that anytime one of your applications decides to screw up, you can format your memory card.
Opera 5 mini beta!
This has to be the browser of choice (except that only default browser is still needed for certain tasks) This browser is something which makes the N97 at least a little bit comparable to the Iphone’s safari, inspite of its resistive touchscreen. Still doesn’t support RSS feeds (now that’s bad..) But makes browsing a breeze, especially with the touch qwerty keyboard which is simply awesome. Would’ve liked theme support, but then its just in beta.
Update Oct 18, 2009:
You can add RSS support to Opera mini 5 by adding list:feeds to your bookmarks. Having tried out the Opera mini 4.2. version, I realized that scrolling and navigation works better on it. The 4.2 lacks an onscreen keyboard. But, with the N97′s lovely qwerty that wouldn’t be a problem at all. Be advised though, the interface isn’t as flashy as the v5. But if you ask me, its the best browser I’ve seen for the N97
Smartmovie player
There’s 32GB of space lying around, and a fat big screen and I can’t watch avi files. So here’s the solution. Get the smartmovie player. There’s nothing like it to watch clear avi files on that N97′s big screen. Top audio rendering makes it even better than watching a movie on some laptops.
Pixelpipe
Symbian has this seemingly useless share online feature which posts to ovi and Nokia Mblog. I don’t remember many of my friends posting pictures to Mblog and commenting on them. So, I decide to get the share online feature extended to flickr, facebook and even my email. Just shoot and share. But, get pixelpipe, signup and install plugin first.
Nimbuzz/Palringo/Fring
Depending on what interface you like, you can get either of these applications to make sure that you stay online on gtalk, yahoo, AIM, MSN all day, and all night if you want. You need to sign up for all these three services, and all of them will let you talk over IP, so if you have wifi = free internet calling with your mobile phone! I guess Fring has ads, which the other two are freeware.
Gravity
Another pay app, that you simply cannot ignore. If you’re a big fan of twitter that is. But if you don’t a complete twitter application and just need a simple widget for your homescreen, try out Stew. It doesn’t really let you be a power user, but it lets you tweet and read tweets (for free). If you need a full fledged free app, then its got to be tweet60, which does quite a decent job.
Nokia Messaging
Push email with html support on awesome interface? This is it. Somehow feel that Nokia messaging email’s interface is way better than anything else Nokia has put on the N97. Too bad I need to download this.
Widgets
Nokia communities. Another one from the betalabs. This one improves your original facebook (well, not exactly…because most of the features are still under development) I personally prefer using this one, over the regular nokia communities widget(well, I do change back to the default widget).
While on the subject of widgets, if you happen get a white N97, get the white Nokia accuweather homescreen widget to make sure it matches the interface. Plus, the best thing about the white Nokia accuweather homescreen is that it gives you the current real feel temperature, instead of the real feel high for the day. Now that’s some improvement.
Jbtaskman
You’re going to have to sign this application, just because you bought a symbian v5 device, someone tell the author that this is the best taskmanager ever. Or if you might consider the less powerful pay app, the Handy taskman.
A file manager?
Xplore would have to be it. I’m not signing the v5 app for Y-explorer, nor do I want use the ad enabled Yexplorer signed. The default file manager does pretty much a decent job, unless you want to meddle around too much with your mobile phone like I do.
Google maps
http://m.google.com/maps Nokia maps just leaves me the middle of nowhere once I get out of the city, which is sad considering I really love navigating with Nokia, So just to ensure that you always know where you are, get google maps application.
One more tip, if you don’t know this already: click on the top of the screen, near the battery meter, to get quick access to connectivity options! easily turn off and on bluetooth!!!