Spice up your Symbian handset

If you use any high-end handset from Nokia, chances are that you are using a Symbian Series 60-powered device. This ubiquitous piece of phone operating software is on close to 100 million devices today.

But while Series 60 has made the phone userinterface very easy to use, it also has a simple software development kit, and several third party developers have made small bits of software that can really spice up your handset. You will, however, need a working data connection from your service provider. The first application is Google’s Gmail for Symbian.

This very light application locks in your Gmail address with your handset and allows you to check your mail on the go. Does this completely replace an enterprise mail solution you might have? No, because Gmail cannot process large attachments as yet, but having the ability to check your personal mail on the go is not a bad thing.

Yahoo! is not going to be left behind in the race; the new Yahoo! Go 2.0 application for Symbian offers the company’s core internet applications in a very easy-to-surf package that also eases up data usage. But there are also a host of other applications made by small developers that are free and that can make your mobile experience a lot better.

One such application is Calcium, a calculator that is actually easier to use than the inbuilt solution. Another nice application is ShoZu, an easyto-use tool that makes uploading your pictures a snap, and is a lot easier to use than Nokia’s M-Blog application.

There is a host of travel and entertainment-related tools that you can easily download. Google Maps for Mobile, for example, is heavy on data usage, but can easily save tons of time if you are lost. Several other freeware applications exist for world weather and there are also lots of games that you can download. However, when downloading applications for your mobile phone, be sure to check out their veracity; malicious programs can often be disguised as respectable ones. So, only download from sites you trust.

ROLLCAGE PROTECTION

The new Lenovo T61 Thinkpad laptop is quite ordinary to look at; it has the same ThinkPad DNA all over it. But Lenovo’s T-series is quite unique.

It comes with Magnesium rollcage, stress protection for the LCD screen and active protection for the hard drive. This is a machine built for the road warrior, with its other features such as extended battery life and better Wi-Fi reception.

The problem with this machine is two-fold: the first is with Windows Vista’s resource-hungry nature. That’s not the laptop’s fault, admittedly, but you need at least two gigabytes of RAM. The second is that the machines are not that light to carry around. But, that said, it is a very good machine, built for the rough and tumble of life.

The T61 range starts at Rs 88,200 and a well-specified machine will set you back at least Rs 1.05 lakh.