As regular readers here know, I've been a bit out of pocket for a week or two with my wife in the hospital. She's on the mend now and doing very well, but being at the hospital and on the run so much put some demands on mobile phone usage that are a bit different that the normal day.

First, I'm not happy with the Symbian OS memory management. Thoroughly unimpressed to be honest. I can't tell you how many times I got a message telling me memory was full and to close applications. After much searching, I've found the only way to really do this is power the phone off, remove the battery for 30 seconds, then restart it. This is not consumer friendly memory management folks.

But I've loaded some applications that I want to share. These work with other phones as well.

First up is Fring. I'd not installed it previously because an application that only works on a very limited set of devices isn't terribly interesting to me. But a press release and a lot of chatter online led me to give it a whirl. Here's what some other folks had to say.

David Beckmeyer, aka Mr Blog, says

Without SIP support, Fring is just not interesting
I've put Fring on my phone twice. Once a few months back, and again today.

Both times, I removed the app to free up the phone memory and bandwidth soon afterwards.
...

If it supported SIP calls, the whole thing gets a lot more interesting. As it is, it's cute, and impressive in some ways, but not particularly useful. [Read full post]

I have to agree that SIP would make it more interesting. More on my thoughts below.

Stuart had this to say

Fring - Fringing Talking - Beyond Skype
I've just been playing with Fring. I wrote a post some months ago Fringing Interesting. It was a quick glance at Andy's blog today that told me to take another look.

Download and install was simple and easy to do. At first I couldn't get Fring to connect to my Skype Account or Google Talk. Their support department suggested that demand may have been a problem. Anyways tonight on my lousy home Indian broadband it connected. Initial call quality better than my recent calls with Truphone. And I've been swearing by Truphone. See my previous post. In a day in this world everything can change.

I had loaded Truphone some time back, but not used it. After using it a couple of times, I just find it doesn't do anything useful for me.[Read full post]

Stuart seems impressed enough in this post to give me warm fuzzies, but he came back later with N80, Truphone, Fring + Notes and had this to add -

Fring:
I've continued playing with Fring. Not easy to do as the Fring Skype gateway is a little erratic. I think I also need some form of connection meter or something. I see buddies online. It just isn't delivering chat messages etc. I hope their system is scalable.

On the... needs a solution side. I'm a member of some multi-chats. Fring breaks these up and delivers by person when they come in. I've logged on or rebooted my phone and the "Fringing" thing doesn't stop "Fringing" as these messages catch up. Thus there are some of the usual synch issues with using Skype with more than one client. I have no idea what happens to history. Be nice to know.

This mirrors more closely to my experience. As I said above, I'm unimpressed with Nokia's memory management in the Symbian OS. Fring seems to wildly exacerbate the problem on my N80i. Worse, once I got Fring working, the entire phone operation slowed to a crawl. I mean so slow that pressing the shutter button to activate the camera slowed the thing so severely that the camera took 34 seconds to activate to take a picture. Could be Fring. Could be a conflict. Could be something else. Uninstalling Fring immediately brought the phone back to good working health, so Fring's gone.

I also looked at the value and realized it just isn't there for me. Skype and Gtalk over WiFI work ok. Not great, but reasonable quality. I use GPRS, not 3G, so there's no intrinsic value. Fring could be a mobile Skype tool that ensures Skype never builds a mobile client. I'd be ok with that. The Gtalk component is already easily addressed with the built-in Gizmo client in my view. Another program to do more of the same.

But as someone, not sure if it was David, Stuart or someone else observed, I'm already easily able to talk to the people I really want to talk to on low-cost mobile minutes or Gizmo. It's a great enabler to talk to people on Skype, but I already have easy access to the people I want to talk to. Not a compelling winner no matter how I slice it. Even if the memory issue is resolved, it's not likely I'll use Fring because it just doesn't enable me to do anything today. I agree with David, SIP support would perhaps make it interesting again.

Truphone has gotten a lot of good buzz from a lot of people. I haven't been one because I don't really need what they provide. But I wanted to try it out. I found it cumbersome to set up, unwieldy, and promptly deleted it. I'm not convinced I ever did get it working right, but you know, if it's a pain to set up and get working, I don't have time to waste on it. I sorts of follow two rules. First software has to pass the blink test and get my attention. Then, if I install it, it hs to prove useful within a week or it goes in the dumpster. Truphone is more geared to international travelers. It really didnt' pass my blink test, but then utterly failed to add value in a week. It's gone.

Stuart is a big fan, and I'd encourage you to read his thoughts -

N80, Truphone, Fring + Notes
Truphone:
I really did hear it! James Brody of Truphone confirmed in a blog comment that they use the more efficient voice AMR-NB codec (vs G711).

It is gratifying to see that all the effort that we put into getting the AMR-NB codec configuration in Truphone is really appreciated. The difference in RTP payload between AMR-NB and the more widely used G.711 codec is about a quarter (AMR-NB consuming around 18-20 kbps worst case versus around 80 kbps for G.711). The end result is that Truphone offers excellent voice quality in situations where others croak!

While I am a complete advocate for wideband codecs they aren't much good when the bandwidth isn't there. I can confirm that Truphone has worked when my PC can't even get email and Skype cannot log in.

He's a fan. I'm not. Your mileage may vary. Don't disregard Truphone on my opinion. There are lots or happy folk using it.

Shozu is a photo uploading and management application. I have to say I love one more than any software tool I've found in the last year. It works with a wide variety of devices. Given the N-series orientation toward photography, it's a great fit.

I first discovered it through Jonathan Greene. He's also involved in the Nokia Blogger Relations program and has done some absolutely stellar writeups, Jonathan has tipped me to several things I would have missed.

If Jonathan hadn't already given me reason to try Shozu, Roland Tanglo certain does

ShoZu + Nokia N Series phone + flickr + WiFi = least painful way to get photos online today
Ah the mobile photo chain of pain. Although I whinge :-) constantly about the state of software on Nokia N series phones, Ican't recommend any other phones if you are serious about about puttingyour mobile phone photos online (uploading them to your PC through theUSB and Bluetooth chain of pain is very unpleasant as Igor describesand really is not worth it!) and want the minimum amount of pain. ShoZuhas its problems (like an issue with thumbnails on Series 60 V3 phones Which I am unclear as to whose "bug" it is: ShoZu's or Nokia's) but byand large it just works. Get an N Series phone with wifi, a flickr account, install ShoZu and upload photos automagically for free when you are in your fav WiFi hotspots. Until the iPhone comes out this is as good as it gets; Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola etc either have lousy cameras and/or software or only work with the less than optimal Java version of ShoZu. [read full post]

My experience with Shozu is that it makes the sharing of both photos and videos, to multiple sites, absolutely simple and painless. Instant value within minutes. That will sell me every time.

So on the new things I've tried out, and used as heavily as I could during a two week period when I lived on the mobile phone, I'm one for three. The other two hold promise down the road. Fring shows potential for the future of mobile integration. Truphone is well received today if you're in the target audience that hits the sweet spot.


Technorati Tags: Nokia, N80i, Nokia N-series, Fring, Truphone, Shozu