It's s60.... There are thousands of apps out there for it... How many of them are useful or good is debateable.. But then again, you could say the same of the app store
Useful apps for any OS is very very debateable. Only long term users of any smartphone or PDA in the past 12yrs can attest to duplicate apps that offer no usefulness above one another. I see this commonly on Palm OS 3.6-4.1/4.1.5.
Lets seee.
1) Mail for Exchange & RoadSync. Both are ActiveSync/MS Exchange apps for email/calendar synching in push mode. 1 offers synching subfolders, the other doesn't. The other offers contact synching with pictures on Exchange amonst other useful functions & more stability. VERY useful function from 1 app over the other so usefulness of BOTH are considered non overlapping. A
2) Joiku SPot Light - free based app that turns the phones/provider APN to an WLAN Access Point (your phone) via WLAN. Much faster tethering than Bluetooth - no bottlenecks (yes BT 2.0+ has a bottleneck even though 2Mbps is fastest transport - overhead of the hopping protocol). I've had 2 laptops & 3 iphones tether on WLAN at VERY fast speeds using my Nokia E71 over Rogers internet APN. I was also browsing and only for me on the phone was slow while the iPhones where checking email/browsing sites/synching MobileMe, and the laptops both replicating in Notes>Domino 30MB dbs'.
3) CISCO VoIP & Avaya PBX applications for corporate office lines over WLAN encrypted work network to have the office phone ring on the phone.
- 3rd party apps like Fring and 3 others offer VOIP for a users' personal VOIP service (Vonage, etc) to be used. Another allows for free Nokia phone to Nokia phone over WLAN for VOIP no 3rd party provider needed and the APP & service is FREEE! NO ADDS.
NOTE: FRING has started ads in banner style for some users - economy pinch is hurting them, eventually for all. This will affect iPhone users' using FRING shortly.
4) Notes Traveller - Nokia struct a deal with IBM which this app will allow Domino replication & SameTime IM colloboration for corporate users who's admins support this.
5. Symella - think bittorent for mobile phones.
6. Mobile phone server - turn your S60 phone into a web server: over WLAN or VPN (even for FTP services) - yes some ppl need this as they don't have a PC or their PC is in HW repair or HDD recovery where failed backups to a server (corporate server) didn't occur.
7. NOkia Maps, Route66, WayFinder, etc etc - ALL allowing local maps to be downloaded to your phones memory or (bettery) storage card and allow for turn by turn services to be used over WLAN or APN where the only data is quick lookup over APN (can be turned OFF by user on PHONE or APPS), or data used on APN for Turn by TURN functions. Sure GoogleMaps is available in J2ME or native C++ code for S60 but when you see how limited its services are in comparison you'll understand what you've been missing. Nokia's Maps uses Navteq corp services/data/api's etc.
8. QuickOffice & PDF support for editing office documents (even PowerPoint if limited some editing is capable here- same goes for Palm OS, WM, or LinuxFoundation, Andriod again lagging for the moment).
9. Nokia Mail Beta/Nokia Messenger (new name), ProfiMail, etc etc - roughly 10 personal email applications (yes the built in sucks. Support for HTML is there but as in 'open attachment' form. Nokia is very smart what it doesn't change on the OS so that it doesn't snub out 3rd party developers). Nokia Mail has a great & clean simple interface for IMAP/POP3 synching over SSL or not. ProfiMail 3.0 supports the same and allows the app to follow your phones existing Theme - a very nice touch really astethic - but also for better reliable IMAP idle and new folder (more like tags support) for GMAIL. ProfiMail as an app, although only at v3 has been around for almost 10yrs the life of S60!!
10. ** Apps allowing the ability to record incoming/outgoing phone calls - even VM calls - in silent mode and starts up upon phone boot and saves to phone mem/storage card. VERY sneaky. I'm not naming the apps - their legal and 1 is free in shared user license - but in my country its illegal to use the recording against somebody in a court of law.
That a few of what I use just off the top of my head.
Symbian Foundation will unify the best of all Symbian based OS' (S60 & UIQ are just 2/5 or 6 of the OS' - 2 are specific to the Japanese/Korean markets and supported/created by providers there such as NTT DoCoMo which is apart of the Symbian Foundation). This hopefully be able to simplify the menu structure, Kanji or other script like penstroke inputs will be better supported over wider range of hardware choices. Don't knock a phones OS without understanding what its limits are or what its capable of.
Sure S60 or Symbian is not for everybody - but remember to keep an open mind, surely over time the current iPhone design will become boring.
Looking at the linked video, it took 4.3 seconds from the button press to the home screen. It won't take but a few days of this to piss off anyone who buys it.
What button press? Which video? There are several on youtube already, so I'm unsure which you're refering too. If its for the 5800 XM "Tube" sure thats a little slow, but this N97 has a lot of functions refined. I'm still thinking its running on a cpu that is HALF the mhz speed of both the iPhone & BB Bold. The Nokia N96 (another S60, non-touchscreen) is horrible bloated with speed issues and already 4 FW updates since October launch. This N97 in prototype form already beats it in speed for many actions.
@CADer; GOD no! Palm is not and has never been Symbian OS based in any shape or form. Only Palm OS or WM on the Treo lineup in recent years. Their OS is pathetic and VERY old/long in the tooth. They could've went with ALP (a linux os) some 4-5yr ago but dropped it wasting 100's of millions, then tried again, again abondoning. I'm surprised their still a going-concern really.
fanboism is reaching new levels of stupidity here!