Russell Beattie

Camera/Video: Even though I don't have an icon for this on the top level, I figured I would write about it here since it's permanently attached to my right soft button from the standby screen. The Camera has a pretty good selection of options on the 6680, including brightness, contrast, sequence mode, digital zoom, timer, different resolutions and picture sizes, flash options, night mode and more. The Video mode can take up to an hour of video and decent resolution. The camera is definitely the killer app of this phone.

Log: You can get to a subset of this folder by clicking the green call key from the standby screen, but by using this icon you get more functionality, including a summary of calls and data usage. Because of that I keep this icon on the top and in a convenient spot. The default focus when you enter the top menu is actually the middle icon, so this is up and to the left (two clicks).

Calendar: I should use the calendar more (which is why it's on the top level), especially now that there's a summary the day's appointments on the standby screen, but honesty I don't use the calendar much except for anniversary reminders (I've got to find a decent sync solution for my Mac) and when I need to set an alarm to wake up or something. It's a pretty basic calendar, but has several views and does the job.

Gallery: The newest version of the Gallery is great - all your media appears in a clean list regardless of their storage location (phone or memory card). This is where you go to view and manage your media files - to listen to music, send pictures and videos to your computer via bluetooth or via email. It probably should be moved somewhere a bit closer to the top since I use it so much, but it's been in that corner in one form or another since my 7650, so I'm sort of hesitant to move it around.

Messaging: This is where you send and receive SMS, MMS and Email messages. I have this as my left soft button as well, but I end up switching back and forth to it from other apps so much that I've kept the app icon anyways. I wish this app used the screen real estate a bit more efficiently, especially for the email bit, but it does the job. You end up spending a lot of time in this app (texting, etc.) and when you're messing with apps as this is where Bluetooth-transferrred files arrive as well.

Web: This is the Nokia internal web browser which is finally named "Web" and not something insane like "Services" or what not. This is also the WAP/WAP2 browser and the default that's started up via messages with links and other apps (you can't change this) so it stays right in the middle, despite the fact that I normally use either NetFront or Opera to do any real web browsing.

Netfront: My first third party app in this list (don't worry, there's more). I go back and forth between NetFront and Opera for day-to-day web browsing. I think in the latest round that NetFront has won, it seems to render pages faster and better, and pays enough attention to the CSS to give you a feel for a page without completely destroying it. Many times I keep both browsers in the top level so I can go back and forth, but for now NetFront is on top. [ Link ]

Notes: When I need to write something down quick and I don't have a pen, I pull up this app and use T9 to type. This is good for phone numbers as well, so you don't have to try to manage the contacts app while someone is just giving you all their contact info quickly. Since you can cut/paste by holding down the pen key, this works well. Also, if you want to send your buddy nearby a message via Bluetooth, you can use this app to do it (rather than via standard messaging - which needs SMS).

Agile Messenger: The best Instant Messaging client for the Series 60 phone hands-down. It allows you to log into all the major services, has an easy-to-use tabbed interface where you can have multiple conversations easily, can run in the background without sucking up all your battery, and also has some neat functionality like push-to-talk-like audio messages - just hold down the joypad to talk and then if the person you're chatting with has Agile, they'll hear the message in about 15 seconds, otherwise a normal IM client will get a link to a web page where the voice message is played as wave file. Works great. [ Link ]

Profimail: This is the best email client for the Series 60 phone. It maximizes the use of screen real-estate by ignoring Nokia's guidelines and that's a good thing - you can see many more messages at a time as a result. It's been constantly updated and has an impressive feature list including secure connections, IMAP, HTML message viewing and more. If you're really going to use your smart phone for email, this is the app to have. [ Link ]

Image Print: This app can send images to any Bluetooth enabled printer (I've never seen one, but I'm sure I will some day). Not just one picture at a time, but you can also choose how many images per page. The app also allows you to print with a USB connection as well, but this would require a "PictBridge" capable printer. It also allows you to "print" to your MMC memory as well, again, for printers that support this sort of thing.

Image Mgr: This is a basic image manager, but with some nice eye candy to show off your photos to your friends. It has a funky UI which shows images fading off into the distance and also has an "Image Show" option which displays your images full screen in landscape mode. You can sort of do this with Gallery, but this app does it faster and with more pizzaz. If you want to show off a bunch of photos to a friend, start this app up.

Video editor: This is a full-on video-editing app on your phone. It allows you to cut and paste sections of various videos and put them together with basic effects like b&w conversion, slow motion, and you can add audio tracks as well. I can't imagine working through all this on the phone since I have iMovie on my Mac which could handle the relatively small .3gp movie files with ease, but if you wanted to create something on the move, you can.

Movie Director: This is an interesting app that automagically creates what are essentially little music videos from the images or video you've taken with your phone. Called "muvees", it basically adds a music track, backgrounds and the Ken Burns effect. It has custom settings or a Quick muvee option which allows you to choose the general look and feel of the resulting video from a set of downloadable templates. Easy to make, fun to send to people who are amazed you can do this sort of thing on your phone. [ Link ]

Mobile Theatre: This came with the 6680 and it seems like another 3gp/Real movie playback app in addition to the Real Player. Why do you need two different video players? Well the Real Player for whatever reason doesn't support fast forward or reverse and this app does. Why doesn't Real or Nokia just fix the other movie playback app? God knows.

Virgin Radio: I wrote about this app not too long ago - you can get it for free from Virgin Radio UK and it's simply a music streaming app for 3G networks. It works just like it should: You turn it on and it asks you to connect to the network, after a few seconds it gives you a choice of Virgin music channels to listen to, and within 15-20 seconds, you start hearing streaming music. Simple and easy, but very cool. [ Link ]

Ogg Player: This is a free Ogg and MP3 Player for Series 60 phones. It's got a much nicer interface than the integrated music app for playing music (browsing your music files is just nicer). This is one of those great examples of open source apps. The default skin is gorgeous (it supports skins!) and the functionality great. I don't have any .ogg files, but if I want to listen to any audio on my phone, I use this app. [ Link ]

SmartMovie: This is a commercial app which plays back full-screen .avi, DiVX or XVid encoded videos from your memory card. It works great! I recently bought DivX Pro, and it's pretty simple to grab a movie off the web - movie trailers from Quicktime for example (great for quick demos!) - convert them to DiVX encoded AVIs and play them on the phone full-screen. If you've got the apps and/or the patience you can rip your DVDs, etc. as well which will shrink down to a reasonable level and look and sound great via this player. [ Link ]

Virtual Radio: This is another streaming radio service, but for all those shoutcast stations out there! You turn it on, it asks you to connect, it gets a list of stations, which you can choose from and *poof* you're listening to streaming music. Very cool. I haven't used it for long periods of time or done anything like jogging with it, but if it manages the buffer okay, it seems like it'd be really great. [ Link ]

To-Do: Like I wrote above, I don't actually use the to do list much. This mostly has to do with how disorganized I am and the lack of ability to make different lists. When I used a PC I was able to sync with Outlook and all the to-do items from that did come over which I found useful for a bit, but in general if I need to remember stuff, I write it free-form in the Notes app instead. However, now that the to-do list shows up on the front screen in the Active Standby mode, I may start to use the lists again, it definitely would help my ability to remember things.

Calculator: The best thing about this calculator is it uses a tape-like metaphor, which is honestly better than just about any other calculator app I have handy, including the one on my Mac or Windows desktops! I constantly use this app for things like adding check totals together before depositing them into ATMs or figuring out the amount to tip or things like that. Essential app.

Converter: This was vital as well, but when I was living in Europe and wanted to work out money conversions or couldn't remember exactly how much a kilogram was or a kilometer or something. Very handy still when talking with people from other countries who want to know the temperature in Celcius, etc.

Recorder: This app has two flaws, first and most important, it has a hard limit of 1 minute. I have no idea why since the video app lost that arbitrary cap long ago. This should be able to record audio for as long as you have space on your memory card, just like the video recorder. Secondly, it only saves audio in .amr format, which doesn't allow you to do cool things like create on-the-go mobile Podcasts or anything. Still, when I'm driving, sometimes I pull this app up so I can take audio notes of things I don't want to forget, so it's not completely useless.

Quickpoint: Part of the QuickOffice suite that comes with the 6680, this app allows you to view PowerPoint presentations on your phone. The commercial version actually allows you to edit it as well. I have to say, this works only marginally well. PowerPoint slides usually don't include the fonts, so the rendering is usally bitmapped font in their place, Also, it's slooooow. Opening up a 4-slide test with minimal graphics takes a long time, though I will say the outline opened pretty quickly, which I think is the real use of this app. If you were cranking on a last minute presentation and needed to change something small (in the commercial version) or you needed to get at the meat of a presentation someone emailed to you while mobile, this would do the trick. [ Link ]

Quicksheet: Also part of the QuickOffice suite that comes with the 6680. I have to say it's pretty cool to use a spreadsheet on your phone. It actually works pretty well - though the import took a little bit of time (I wonder what it was doing?) the resulting spreadsheet is pretty usable. You can navigate from cell to cell easy enough and adjust column widths, though it doesn't do anything more interesting like sorting columns so I wouldn't want to try anything super-complex, but to just view a basic spreadsheet this works. [ Link ]

Quickword: Part of the QuickOffice suite that comes with the 6680. This works, not great - the fonts are nothing like what you'd see in a real document, but for the most part you're reading a Word Doc on your phone without the crud, which is a minor miracle in and of itself. The commercial version might be worth getting if you were going to do any editing on the go using the Bluetooth Keyboard, for example. The Notes app just won't cut it for any real data entry, so this would be a good solution. [ Link ]

Adobe PDF: This app is pretty useless for me right now, actually. Maybe it's my grey-market phone, but it gives me memory errors on trying to load any real-world PDF document. It also has a pretty limited range of zoom levels when you can get a document open, and is in general not particularly usable. This app is sort of a placeholder for when Adobe gets around to developing an mobile PDF reader that's actually useful. [ Link ]

FExplorer: This app is essential. Not only does it do the basic task of allowing you to navigate and manage files on your phone and memory card, it also has other important functions as well. You can access files that are stored in your message inbox which is handy for saving files your phone doesn't understand how to open or to forward on files that you've been sent via MMS. You can also snap screen captures, view process information, compress unused memory and restart the phone. [ Link ]

Opera: Like I wrote above, I go back and forth between this web browser and NetFront. I think they're both pretty great, though Opera definitely wins out in usability, right now NetFront is marginally better. That said, I wouldn't be without this app - if something doesn't work on Nokia's internal browser or NetFront, I pull it up in Opera. [ Link ]

SlovoEd: There are a bunch of language translation dictionaries out there - it must be low-hanging fruit I guess. But SlovoEd's Spanish to English dictionary is pretty great and has been used in real-world, honest to goodness, I really need to know this word in another language situations by yours truly. The best thing is that because T9 predicts your word, you can actually find what you're looking for faster than many other systems. [ Link ]

TaskSpy: This is a handy app for wacking errant Symbian apps that won't close or seeing if there's some nasty processes sucking up extra memory that you don't know about. It also has a Windows-like Task Manager graph of resource use. Great for programmers. [ Link ]

PuTTY: This is an open-source SSH client for Symbian phones. I wouldn't want to do a ton with it considering you're typing on a keypad, but in general it works great to log into your system and see what's up. I've never had to use it in anger (restarting a server or anything) but it's nice to know it's there if I need it. [ Link ]

ProfiExplorer: This app comes with ProfiMail, it's not as functional as FExplorer, but it has a nice tree-view menu which packs a lot of information into a small space and sometimes it's just nicer to use to manage files. [ Link ]

Nokia Sensor: This is a neat (though probably useless) app from Nokia where you can create a custom profile page on your phone which, when the app is running in the foreground or background, gets sent to other phones running the same app on their Nokia Series 60 Version 2 phone over Bluetooth. It's sort of locale social networking. I bet you it'd be a neat app if we all ran Series 60 phones. :-) [ Link ]

Nokia LifeBlog: This is another neat app from Nokia, but one that's much more useful. It allows you to see your text messages, pictures and video in a timeline, and lets you sync to your PC and/or post photos over the air to TypePad or Flickr using the Atom API. The Windows App companion to this app sorta sucks in a big way, but this app is definitely convenient to have around as it looks great, is quite useful for managing pictures, and posting to Flickr is quicker and easier than via MMS or email. [ Link ]

PicoBlogger: This is a very cool app that I only recently discovered. I had read about it, but hadn't tried it until now. It allows you to "moblog" your photos, video, etc. to the PicoStation.com website (no setup involved) or to any other blogging system (including all the biggies like Blogger, TypePad and Flickr) by using industry standard web service APIs. The semi-neat thing is it'll intercept your photos as you take them and prompt you to post them online immediately. I say semi-neat because sometimes I want to take several quick shots and don't want to have to say "no" after each of them, but still, for many non-pro users, this is a neat app to have around. [ Link ]

MobiPocket Reader: This app is sort of goofy to have installed. I doubt I'll be paying money for eBooks from their small website, but the cool thing is you can do it all from your phone. So if in a pinch if I want to get online from my phone, buy an eBook to read download it immediately and start reading, this is the app to have just in case. [ Link ]

eReader: This company was called PeanutPress until Palm bought it, then sold it to Motricity which changed the name to eReader and expanded the apps which read the eBooks. If there was going to be an eBook system that I invested a lot of money in, this would be it. In fact, I still have a few eBooks that I bought in 2002 from these guys, but I can't figure out where to put the ebooks on my memory card to read. So really, I'm not even sure if this app actually works on the 6680 or not. Another placeholder waiting for an updated version. [ Link ]

Yellow FTP: Great app that I've had for years. This is the app that gave me the "epiphany" about mobility - that smart phones are really little connected computers in our pockets. This is a full-on FTP client which allows you to connect to a server via FTP (sftp isn't supported it seems) and upload/download files wirelessly. The first time I did that I realized that I was using an honest to goodness computer in my hand. It's too bad this app doesn't seem to have been updated in years, it could really use a UI refresh and sftp support. [ Link ]

YEdit: This is a neat little app for creating/editing html files right on your phone. It's meant to be used with YFTP so that web admins can tweak their site on the go, I think. Not the most useful app in the world without a Bluetooth Keypad, but still it's pretty neat. [ Link ]

Python: This is the 1.0 version of Nokia's Python Scripting runtime. Though it's been out for several months now, I haven't seen any really cool scripts yet that I would *need* this on my phone to run, so it's still mostly just a hacker's toy. The *next* version of Python S60 is going to rock - with phone and addressbook access, 2D drawing API and more, so get started now. [ Link ]

Flash Lite: This is another runtime, but for Flash Lite files instead of Python scripts. Again, I haven't seen many must-have Flash Lite movies floating around out there yet, so this is mostly just an app to have for developers at the moment. The stuff I've seen is really compelling (go to Flash Lite Exchange to see examples), so it shouldn't be too long before there's a lot more Flash Lite content out there to see. [ Link ]

Psiloc Screen Capture: This is a last minute addition to this list. As I was putting together this post, I realized that many applications weren't being captured correctly by FExplorer's screen capturing function, so I went on the hunt for an app that would work on the 6680, and capture clean images. Some of the screen cap programs out there produce really fuzzy jpegs. But Psiloc's app is great - it will auto-save so you don't have to confirm each time, and it worked on just about every app I had except some of the games which take over the button presses and screen. The only complaint is that it defaulted the save folder to my phone's memory and not the MMC. [ Link ]

Super GoBoy: My favorite app on the phone, this version of GoBoy from WildPalm allows you to play GameBoy Color ROMs that you have stored on your memory card. I've got a ton of them and they're all way better than any Java game you can download right now. The coolest thing about this version is the sound support, which works great. Nothing like full-on Tetris DX with mind-numbing Russian music playing in the background, or any of the Super Mario games as well. Kick ass app. [ Link ]

Frozen Bubble: This is another one of those incredible open source apps which puts many of the commercial vendors to shame. It's a version of Bustamove where you have to connect the bubbles to clear the levels. It looks and sounds great, is easy to play and never, ever, ever, ends. Me, my wife and my 3yo all play this game, it's just awesome. [ Link ]

SkyForce: I haven't ever actually bought the full version of this game, I must admit. But I like having the demo on my phone to show people what an action packed video game dedicated to the Series 60 platform can look like. It just looks and sounds soooo good and really gives the viewer an idea of the possibilities that are out there for mobile gaming. [ Link ]

vNes: The Vampent Nintendo Entertainment System Emulator. Before I got on my latest emulation kick, I hadn't given much thought to NES games as they were written two decades ago and meant for 8 bit consoles. But then I discovered Super Mario ROMs and I changed my mind completely. This NES emulator for Series 60 phones completely rocks! It uses the original ROMs, has full-on sound, adjustable screen resolutions, saves, etc. and is completley playable. Very cool. [ Link ]

vSun: The Vampent SNES Emulator. Unlike vNES above, the Super Nintendo emulator just doesn't cut it. You can play the games, but they're just too slow to really enjoy them. That said, the games do start up, look good and are somewhat playable, so it's worth it to have the emulator around. Maybe some games are more playable than others as well, I tested Super Mario World and it could definitely do with a speed boost. [ Link ]

Card Deck: I had this same app on my 6600, yet I still don't have a clue how to play any of these games. It came included on the phone and is a basic card-game app with various types of solitaire to play. The problem is that it's all sideways, none of the rules don't seem to make sense and the help is obtuse.

Snake EX: Of course Nokia has to include Snake on its phones! This isn't as nice as the N-Gage Snakes game which is 3D and really fun, but still it's a nice simple, colorful version of the snakes game we all know and love.