Epocware announced that all of their apps are now optimized for the latest, touch-enabled version of the Symbian S60 platform. We’re talking about S60 5th Edition that is used in such devices as the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and the newly unveiled, full QWERTY-keyboard equipped Nokia N97 smartphone.
Among the apps that are optimized for the platform are Handy Shell, Handy Safe, Handy Weather, Handy Calendar, as well as a number of the company’s SlovoEd-powered dictionaries.
And that’s about all we can say about it. You can check the full catalog of available apps from this page at Epocware’s website.
Epocware is out with another “Pro” version of their existing application. Following Handy Alarm, they have released the Professional Edition of Handy Safe for Symbian S60 smartphones. The application uses password protection and a strong 448-bit data encryption (Blowfish) to keep your data private and secure.
Some of the Handy Safe Pro special features include:
- Store passwords, user names, credit card information, codes, accounts (private and corporate email, Internet, shopping, bank), software keys, web pages, addresses and contact information, travel info, insurance policies, and much more
- 35 unique information forms to store everything on your smartphone
- Custom templates to store specific information according to your needs
- URLs are treated as hyperlinks
- Subfolders support
- Possibility to restore items in case of accidental deleting
- Autolock option when Handy Safe is in background or if you don’t use Handy Safe for a certain period of time
The application also comes with a desktop PC companion which allows easy access to your smartphone information on PC, and which utilizes specially designed synchronization mechanism…
Interested? Handy Safe Pro is available for $44.95 via download from Epocware’s website from where you can also get any additional information you may need.
Epocware is out with the advanced version of their Handy Alarm app for Symbian S60-based smartphones. The new Handy Alarm Pro builds on top of Epocware’s earlier product, adding six types of alarms and five kinds of reminders supplemented with multiple-setting configurations and options to make all possible alarm features available on the phone.
From the press release:
Handy Alarm Pro provides user-friendly interface with intuitive control, making multiple options and alarm settings available at a glance. For every user’s need, alarms can be set to ring once, daily, weekly or monthly, as well as fixed to ring only on working days. The user can choose an alarm song and vibration for each alarm and reminder, and a text note may be added to any alarm or reminder.
All alarms and reminders include advanced snooze capabilities, and users can set different ring tones, volume and vibration for every single alarm and reminder…
Enough said. More information is available on Epocware’s website from where you can also purchase Handy Alarm Pro for $19.95.
Epocware has released Handy Calendar 2.0, their advanced calendar and time management tool for Symbian S60 3rd Edition smartphones. The program goes well beyond the built-in Calendar application and supplements it with more advanced calendar features, such as total overview of appointments and tasks in three different view modes, Timetable view, Skins, Cut/Copy/Paste entries in all views, Import of birthdays directly from Contacts, and more.
Handy Calendar 2.0 highlights or why should you go beyond default Calendar app:
- Enhanced views of Month, Week, Day, and Tasks
- Zoom-in views
- Notes support for all entry types
- Repeating option for entries: Monthly by day, Yearly by day, and Working days
- Busy bar to estimate how busy the day is
- Advanced entry viewing for displaying all attributes at once, allowing users to open URLs, send emails or make phone calls
- All entries can be synchronized with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Outlook
If you own a Symbian S60 based smartphone, Handy Calendar 2.0 is one of those must-have apps. Once you get used to all the advanced functionality, you won’t be able to live without it. It is available for $29.95 (24.95 EUR) via download from Epocware’s website.
With all the hype surrounding user interfaces following the iPhone launch, it doesn’t surprises many companies are launching their custom UI solutions. We’ve already seen quite a few similar Windows Mobile apps and today we’re presenting you an application that aims to enhance the active standby screen of a Symbian S60 smartphones.
Developed by Epocware, Handy Shell allows a user to customize home screen according to his/her wishes. Three views are available and so are five plugin options. In addition, the application takes over all functions of the S60 menu key, “while adding extra options or disabling the unnecessary ones.”
The idea is to provide a user with all necessary information, and also include shortcuts to most frequently used applications and contacts, at a glance.
Handy Shell offers three options of “Today” screen for S60 smartphones. The “Today” view shows overall information about phone settings, ongoing calendar events, missed calls and SMS messages, new e-mails, weather forecast and even provides shortcuts to necessary applications using five types of Plugins. All Plugins can be moved around the screen, easily customized, or activated and deactivated. The “Applications” view provides fast access to twelve most needed applications. The “Contacts” view shows twelve favorite contacts with speed dial and SMS actions.
In addition, Handy Shell includes a “Weather” Plugin with five-day weather forecast for the Today screen and a one-year subscription to the Handy Weather service. Handy Weather is the easiest and most reliable way of accessing local, as well as distant, weather information in Celsius and Fahrenheit all in a mobile environment. The detailed five-day weather forecasts are supported by satellite weather maps and include four layouts: morning, day, evening and night.
Honestly, I can’t imagine many people paying $44.95 (39.95 EUR) to customize their S60 home screens this way, though I may be wrong.
With modern feature phones becoming more powerful these days, it doesn’t surprise to see many of the original smartphone application makers developing J2ME version of their apps. We’ve seen this happening with Epocware, which brought its popular dictionaries to feature phones, and now Mobipocket is trying to do the same thing with its mobile ebook reader.
Mobipocket Reader for Java phones is still in the “alpha” stage, hence you may notice a number of bugs and (in)stability issues. The application was developed for Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) feature phone, but should also work on other Java-enabled handsets.
It’s a good news that Mobipocket is trying to reach the mass market, even though at this stage I would suggest only the adventurous among you should try out Mobipocket Reader. At least until the app hits the “beta” status. Here’s the link which leads you to the page where you can find out more about the app and also download it.
[Via: jkOnTheRun]
Mark Guim from the Nokia Blog is curious to know what other Nokia (NYSE: NOK) users install on their devices and is encouraging everyone who owns a blog to get the word out. With Nokia seeding mobile phones to bloggers whose field of expertise is something other than mobile these sort of top 10 lists do a lot for helping them figure out where to get started. These are his top 10, here are my top 7:
- Handy Taskman. You can read my full review here, but essentially it is an application switcher and launcher for S60 that will make you jump up for joy and scratch your head as to why this isn’t how things work out of the box. Once you install this application and touch another S60 device without it you will feel strange and get frustrated.
- Opera Mini 4.1. Yes I know the browser built into the latest version of S60 is awesome, but this takes it up a notch. For people who don’t have flat rate data or for people who have ADD and want websites to load as fast as humanely possible, Opera Mini should be the only browser you live in.
- GMail Mobile. Love using GMail? Threaded conversations, staring, all of that is fine and dandy, but what makes this application extremely powerful for me is that fact that I can search through over 4 GB of email remotely, with no lag, for that needle in a haystack piece of data I need. Can’t recommend this application enough. TIP: If you have more than one email account you can download GMail Mobile and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Mail Mobile, same application, different name due to copyright issues, no need to log in and out of one application.
- Google Maps. Don’t have GPS? No problem, Google’s triangulation will tell you where you are. Google’s vast points of interest library is so impressive it can practically be called epic.
- MobiTubia. A pretty front end for YouTube so you don’t have to visit the website, I start my day in bed looking at the top videos over the past 24 hours. Out on the go and want to hear a specific song? Just search for it and chances are you can find the music video.
- Walking Hotspot. Turn your S60 device into a WiFi access point that you can connect up to 5 devices to. Useful when you simply need to use your laptop to get something done and sent out to your friends or boss.
- Shazam iD. If I’m in a cafe listening to a song I want to download later on, but have no clue what it is I’ll launch this application and point my mobile’s microphone to the closest speaker.
What’s this? Are you telling me you only use 7 applications Stefan?
To tell you the truth, the answer is yes. I love coming home and picking the best photos I’ve taken and then editing them before throwing the results online. I don’t want every picture I snap to pop up online because frankly … I do take a lot of photos that I only want to share with my closest friends and that is when the age old communication method known as email works just fine and dandy. I don’t want to look at my friends’ photos on a 2.4 inch screen (N82) either and I have no doubt in my mind this will change whenever I can get an iPhone like device with a T9 keypad running S60.
I enjoy coming home after an event or wild party and watching all the video I’ve taken and deleting all the useless bits to get straight to the meat of why I was shoting the video in the first place. Sure QiK is cool and I have it installed, but I can honestly live without it since there isn’t anything going on in my life that is so important it has to be broadcast live nor do I want to put someone on the spot by saying “Yep, you’re being broadcast on the internet, live, unedited, try not to be a twit.”
VoIP sounds cool on paper, Fring, Nimbuzz, the J2ME Skype application, I have all those installed, but I still prefer communicating via text. A phone call requires me interrupting someone and taking time out of their day to get something accomplished. There are some people here in Finland who text you before they call you asking if you have time to talk, I love that and I’ve started doing it as well. In today’s attention scarce economy I don’t want to have to stop my flow of work to talk about something that can be handled over email or even in a 160 character text message.
I use my mobile mainly for browsing the internet and communicating via sms, I technically don’t need a device as high end as a Nokia N82 to do those two things, but the thing is I enjoy knowing I have a high spec camera with me at all times and I can shoot video if need be.
What about you, what applications are critical to your daily routine or simply can’t live without?
Paragon Software/Epocware dictionaries are no longer Symbian and Windows Mobile thing only. The mobile software developer announced that it is bringing its award-winning apps to BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) smartphones, as well as select Java ME enabled feature phones — to reach new customers and expand into new markets.
Now, virtually all mobile phone users will be able to have dictionary in their pocket, no matter where they are. Paragon’s offering include dictionary lines from such world-famous linguistic companies as Merriam-Webster, Inc., Oxford University Press, Ernst Klett Sprachen GmbH, Chambers Harrap Publishers LTD and Brockhaus Duden Neue Medien GmbH.
Read the full article »
Today UIQ Technology announced the winners of its UIQ Open developer competition, which the platform developer ran from October until the end of December 2007. A jury of experts has spent the past few weeks intensively evaluating the submissions submitted from all around the world. Two winning applications were selected in each of the five categories. And the winners are:
Read the full article »
As Steve Litchfield always likes to say “filed under articles I wanted to write,” he reviews Handy Weather for S60. One of my favorite S60 applications, I only discovered it at this years Mobile World Congress while sitting next to Jonathan Greene from atmaspheric|endevors and looking at that awesome screensaver pictured above.
One thing Steve forgot to mention in his review, and one reason why I love this application so much, is the fact that I can set the screensaver to lock my phone no matter what I’m doing. Without Handy Weather installed the only way my N82 locked its keypad was if I went to the standby screen, now it doesn’t matter what application I’m in, I can set my phone to lock automatically when the screensaver kicks in.
It makes paying for Handy KeyLock seem a bit … useless really, just spend the money on Handy Weather!
