Within the last year it seems that the number of JAVA applications for cell-phones have exploded. Today it is possible to expand the phone with more games, and the option of checking e-mail, gmail and a lot more.
I’ve tried out just a few of these apps, to see what they could do for a simple phone like my Nokia 6610i, but most of this should be relevant for a large array of phones.
When I first got my phone a few years a go, it seemed that the java capabilities in the phone could only be used for the already built in games, and some simple games and apps which was too expensive in my mind. After becoming aware of websites like getjar.com, it seems to me that this has changed. From getjar and other websites, it is possible to download loads of apps, some free other demos or shareware, to the pc or directly to phone, without expenses other than the bandwidth for downloading.
I’ve tried out a small sample of the apps on my Nokia 6610i, just to get an idea. To keep expenses low I downloaded the applications to the pc and transferred them by infrared connection. This is made pretty easy by the Nokia software; after the connection was made I was automatically asked if I wanted any Java app uploaded to the phone when I selected it for download.
My main priorities were an instant messaging client, as I figured it is probably cheaper than sms and e-mail since it is always nice to have.
Even though Getjar make it possible to only see the apps compatible with your phone, it seemed that half the applications I tried out did not work or was to large a file.
At first I tried out eMSNlite, this turned out to be a real pleasant experience; I was on my messenger account within seconds. I know there is a lot other IM clients out there but for Messenger fans this one seemed to do the trick.
The first mail app I tried was the simple one, a shareware called “Email“. When it is not registered it has a nagging delay screen. What I liked about this app was it no-nonsense simplicity and the low memory usage.
Flurrymail
Flurrymail is not just a Java app but a whole service, I must say I was a little skeptic at first, it just seemed to good. The service is free, and once signed up, you can add multiple e-mail accounts and news-feed (RSS) to the subscription. These are accessed through the flurrymail java-app. The website, and the client app for the phone looks very nice and cleans-shaven.
When installing I had the problem, that the file was too big (apparently the phone has a limit on how large the java apps can be), but after signing up I was offered an address, from which I could download it directly to the phone. It refused to work with the first e-mail I gave (even though it should work with pop3 and Imap) but accepted my Gmail. At the time of writing it still has not found my old e-mail (they say it takes some time and the 2000+ mails in the account could be the problem), but it have sent a mail to myself without any problems.
There is however two things which bother me, first of all the privacy issue, I don’t like giving up my cell phone number and e-mail account passwords to an unfamiliar website. Adding to that I can’t figure out how they plan to make money. The second thing which bother me, is that I have a hard time figuring out how much memory it would occupy on the phone, and how much bandwidth it would use especially in this case with a ridiculous amount of unread mail. But if none of these turn out to be a problem this could be really great.
Movamail
Movamail is another e-mail service which boasted that they save bandwidth by compressing the data. The app worked on the phone but I have not tried setting it up with an account. This also seemed like a really nice service.
All in all there should be really great possibilities for upgrading the old phone. It would be nice to hear from others which have experience with JAVA- apps. So don’t hesitate to make a comment.
I also tried out some games here is the list of compatible Games
- Aqualife X: Kingdom of love
- Black Metal
- Yikiyo
A list of the Java apps I found to be non-compatible with Nokia 6610i
- DynamoKid
- Mobile Fighter
- Alien War
- Whoosh
June 21st, 2006
As an update to the previous post, on syncing cell phone calendars, it has been brought to my attention, that newer phones has some further possibilities of syncing with Yahoo and Google Calendars.
Users who prefer the Yahoo, has the possibility to download the Java app Yahoo GO which offer a wide degree of integration with Yahoo, including Calendar, contacts and e-mail. There are however series limitations to the number of phones it works on. Put in another way it only works with Nokia series 60 phones (9 different models all in all).
For Google users the opening of the Calendar API has resulted in the creation of GCALSYNC, a java app which is capable of syncing a cell phone with Google Calendar. However, this app is still in beta and only supports a limited number of phones (and not my Nokia 6610i, but a lot more than Yahoo Go).
If one has an advanced phone this might be a the way to go. Although in my mind a lot more complicated than if everybody could agree on using syncml.
June 20th, 2006
An overview of how simple standard cell phones can be synchronized with calendar apps
Most current cell phones contain an embedded calendar. Even though this seems like a useful feature it has little value in my eyes if it can’t sync with external calendars like Sunbird, Outlook and Google Calendar, since it is just too unhandy to constantly edit events and Todos on the cell phone. But on the other hand a handheld calendar which syncs with my calendar on the pc’s seems very attractive to me.
There are of course a lot of cell phones, differentiating in any number of ways. But there still seems to be some similarities when. This will be based with my experience with my Nokia 6610i an older Sony Ericsson T68i and a Siemens M55, but I believe that this apply to a wider array of phones.
Syncing a cell-phone an external calendar can basically go on in two different ways. Either the cell-phone can connect directly with the computer, or they can both act as clients to an internet server.
Syncing directly with the computer
Synchronising thru a direct connection is free (once any needed hardware is obtained). But require that you are close to the computer, and that this is running with the right software setup.
The way to do this is often via cable or wireless connection, where the most common are the ageing IRDA standard and BLUETOOTH.
The IRDA standard is an infrared connection. The advantage is that these are often supported by older hardware, but the connections are often slow, and require the phone to be within very short range of the pc pointing exactly right. On the phones I’ve tried i has been fairly easy to establish a connection with Windows XP and the software made available by the manufacturer. The only hitch is that in every case (the 6610i and the T68i) the connection did not function until I had limited the connection speed to 115 kbps. This is done by entering the System in the Windows control Panel (classical view) and selecting the hardware tab, and then opening the device manager. In the device manage you find the infrared connection, and there it should be fairly easy to find the max. allowed connection speed. I sometimes use this kind of connection to get the pics on my cell phone downloaded or backing up the contacts list. But in my mind the infrared connection is to complicated and slow for daily sync’ing with the calendar app.
With BLUETOOTH one overcomes some of the weaknesses the infrared connection has. If one has a BLUETOOTH enabled phone (like the T68I), and a computer with either an internal or an external BLUETOOTH adapter it makes faster, and more solid connection than the infrared connection. A BLUETOOTH connection also works within a lot wider range (up to 100 meters depending on equipment).
My complaints about the direct connection is that one is locked to on specific computer, that the software from the phone manufacturer often only supports Outlook and that it often takes a lot of clicks every time they sync. Another objection which concerns me but might not concern all, is the software often only is available in Windows versions.
Syncing indirectly via a server
As stated above the other way to go, is to synchronize using an external server which both the PC and the Cell phone syncs with. In order for this to work, the phone needs access to the internet in order to sync with the server, the best options I know of is either 3G or GPRS, which are both non-dialup connection types, where the expenditure is on the bandwidth usage. 3G is the newest and fastest of the two, but the phones are still pretty expensive, and I have not had access to an enabled phone so I can’t say a lot. The other way to go is GPRS, all the phones mentioned here were GPRS enabled, and it seemed pretty easy to get it working by help from the network provider’s website.
Compared to the direct connection this also means that there will be an additional expenditure every time the calendar is sync’ed, since the network providers charge for bandwidth usage. But during my trials it did not seem that this was very much.
The phones I’ve tried all were able to act as a syncml client sync’ing with a syncml server. It takes about 5 minutes to set the phone up to sync via syncml, and a sync takes about 15-20 seconds. With this setup it is possible to sync with the home compute, using the free funambol ad-on for outlook, or any of the other syncml clients/ad-ons.
It does seem, that syncml servers are hard to find. One possibility is to set one up on the home computer, software for this can be downloaded from funambol. But then the home computer has to be running in order to sync, and access to the Calendar is only possible from the home computer or the phone. All in all on get the same as with the direct connection, but at a a little bit higher price.
If one has a web hosting account it should be possible to set up a server syncml on this. I have found two free software solutions for this. For those who master php, it is possible to incorporate Nicolas Bougues syncml tools in a webapplication, or just use it as a simple server. An other way to go is to install egroupware groupware server on the server. I have not made any of these work but this is probably due to the fact that my hosting account has php safe_mode set to on. But i plan to purchase another one and try them again. I plan to make a post about this later.
The last possibility, I know of, is to make a free account at a web site like ScheduleWorld, they provide free access to a syncml server, a very nice webinterface, and an advanced java-calendar app, and it syncs with Google Calendar. With this server it does not take very long to get the syncing up an running, but the disadvantage is that they plan to put in ads via events in the calendar.
All in all I prefer the sync’ing through a server, but this is of course not the only way to go. Right now I personally use ScheduleWorld, but I the day I get a server up and running on my hosting account I will probably be using it.
If you feel that, anything in the above is inaccurate or wrong, or there is something you need deepened, or your have any other reason, don’t hesitate to make a comment.
June 19th, 2006
