Nokia N96 App Review – Nokia Step Counter

Name: Nokia Step Counter (beta) v0.25

Description: Counts your steps and gives corresponding statistics

Summary: This is a nice little application. It looks great and is easy to use. Like the title says, it counts your steps and breaks them down into the following statistics:

Energy (calories burnt)
Distance
Time
Amount of steps

The above are displayed in the first screen. You can then scroll up or down to the other 2 screens which are: A line graph that displays amount of steps on the vertical axis and the time they were recorded on the horizontal axis. And lastly, a bar chart that highlights the intensity of the steps and the time they were recorded.

If you run the step counter each day, your statistics are recorded in the diary calendar where you can view your information for each day the application was used. There is a progress option that summarises your total step count and your daily step count. It also displays stats of energy used and distance.

This application can be set to start at boot time if you wanted to record your steps every day and will run in the background. You can also set a step target and change how the stats are measured i.e. Metric, Imperial or Nautical.

Lastly, in the user menu, you can enter your age, gender, height, weight and step length. This information, I assume, will be used to calculate your energy (calorie) burning.

The whole thing works using the accelerometer. With your phone in your pocket, it will count the amount of steps you take by using the motion of your thigh. Clever stuff.

If you couldn’t give a stuff about calorie burning, exercise and health, then this application is not for you, but you could use it to measure distances you have walked or run if you felt the urge! It’s not something that I’ll have running everyday but it is an interesting application, especially for fitness people.

   

Rating: 8/10

Forum discussion:  Applications – Nokia Step Counter

Download: Nokia Step Counter

Enjoy!

Nokia N96 App Review – cClock

Name:  cClock v1.21

Description:  Power saver that displays the time and other selected information

Summary:  cClock is a popular application. Many people like to use their phones for the time, and cClock enables this without having to press any buttons. Once selected as the power saver, it will display the information you have selected as soon as it kicks in. There are tons of options to tweak the information displayed and then options to change the appearance of them, far too many to mention in fact, but include:

 Time, Date,  Battery,  Signal and Events.

Once you change an option you can preview it easily through ‘options’ which saves you having to wait for it to kick in to see what your change looks like. One option I do like is having the battery and signal displayed in percentage as opposed to bars.

Also included is a stop watch. Very simple to use if you ever need one. I will now be able to time my boiled eggs to perfection!

  

Rating:  7/10 Great idea, but I would like to see more fonts included. I wont be swapping this application for my Tag Heur though!

Forum discussion: Applications – cClock

Download:  cClock

Enjoy!

 

Nokia N96 App Review – Phone Locator

Name:  Phone Locator v0.70

Description:  Tracks your phones location and trail using GPS

Summary:  Since my wife’s N96 was stolen on Boxing day, I’ve been on the lookout for ways to trace handsets. Phone locator does just that. It’s an interesting application that was originally made to track the designer’s motorcycle tour around the Alps in 2007. Phone Locator uses your devices GPS to detect its location and uploads the information to the website where you can log in to view it. It also records the trail of the phone and the times the updates were received.

There are plenty of settings on this application that revolve around how the updates are to be sent. Some settings have an impact on battery life because the GPS is always active, but there are options to overcome this:

  

 • Turn on ‘battery saver’! ‘battery saver’ turns off the GPS when the phone is stationary or the GPS signal is too low to get a fix. The GPS is turned back on when the phone connects to a different cell tower. This works best in metropolitan areas where the cells are small.

• Update less frequently! A big drain on the battery is the data context that is used to send data to the server. For example, if the application is set to ‘update every time I move’ it will drain the battery quicker than if it is set to update every 30 minutes.

 

After installation you are directed to the website where you can register your account. You can then log into the website on your pc and see where your phone is currently and where it has been at earlier times. You can choose to be ‘public’ where your location and trails are viewable to others or you can be ‘private’, and your location is only viewable when logged into your account.

Phone locator can be set to run at boot time so you can just forget about it. If you lose your phone, or it is stolen, you are then able to view its location providing a gps signal is or was available. It also runs in the background and doesn’t show up in running applications when closed.

You can also add other phones to your account that have the application installed to view family and friends locations and trails if you so wished.

I hope I never have to use this to try and trace a lost or stolen phone but I have it running just in case!

Please remember that data sent will incur charges to your phone bill unless you have an unlimited data plan with your provider.

Forum Discussion: Applications – Phone Locator

Rating:  9/10

Download: Phone Locator

Enjoy!

Nokia N96 App Review – Health Calculator

Name: Health Calculator v1.0

Description: Calculates BMI (Body Mass Index) & BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate)

Summary: Health is a big issue these days, and most people struggle to understand exactly how to lose weight or gain muscle. Now, I’m not about to write an article on how to do that, but this little application will give you a very basic idea about your current weight.

What it does is calculate 2 things for you. Firstly, it gives you your BMI (Body Mass Index) and secondly, your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate). BMI is a calculation that uses your weight and height to determine if you are overweight. The BMI weight ranges, as set out by the World Health Organisation (WHO), are outlined below.

• If your BMI is less than 18.4, you’re underweight for your height.
• If your BMI is between 18.5 and 24.9, you’re an ideal weight for your height.
• If your BMI is between 25 and 29.9, you’re over the ideal weight for your height.
• If your BMI is between 30 and 39.9, you’re obese.
• If your BMI is over 40, you’re very obese.

The above information isn’t on the application which is a shame as the numbers you get might not mean much to people, although it will summarise and tell you if you are overweight etc.

You use energy no matter what you’re doing, even when sleeping, so the BMR calculator will calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR); the number of calories you would burn if you stayed in bed all day! You need to burn off the calories you take in to stay the same weight, burn more to lose weight or if you take in more than you burn off you will gain weight.

I’ve provided this information to complement the application so that the numbers you get will mean something. As a guide, men take in 2500 calories per day and women 2000.

If you weight train and have a muscular physique, then the BMI calculation is not going to be accurate because it can’t take muscle mass into consideration.  I’m going to use that as the basis for me being on the verge of overweight according to my results in the screenshots!  Muscle weighs more than fat.

You can use this for your own benefit or test it out on others to either encourage a healthier lifestyle or simply for taking the Mick!

Rating: 6/10. This calculation is nothing new and can be found all over the web, but it’s handy to have one on your phone! More information on the meanings of the calculations should be included in the application but at least I have explained it for you!

Forum discussion: Applications – Health Calculator

Download: Health Calculator

Enjoy!

Nokia N96 Theme Review – Green Deluxe

Creator: Valepunto

Theme Name: Green Deluxe

Summary: Unless you are very young, a decent theme is hard to come by in my opinion. I’m not a fan of tacky images that are the feature of many themes, instead, I like something a bit more plain or classy. Usually, I’ll just go for a straight black theme but this one really caught my eye.

Black is a colour that goes well with most bright colours and Valepunto has come up with a superb theme that gives you a great shade of green on top of my favourite black! The idle screen, as you can see, has a dotted wave type pattern that looks great on the N96.

Icons can be chosen as default (which I always prefer) or custom depending on the download you chose. You can view the custom icons on the download page.

This theme is free and there are other great themes by Valepunto at his website, but, from what I can make out, a small donation is required for his latest work.

Discuss this and other great themes over at the themes forum

Rating: 9/10

Download: Green Deluxe by Valepunto

Nokia N96 App Review – Virtual Radio

Name: VirtualRadio (VRadio) v101(0)

Description: Web radio station player.

Summary: The N96 comes with a built-in web radio player that you can access via your music folder. I have always had problems getting it to stream over my O2 network.

Sometimes the buffering fails, sometimes it connects and plays, but it will always cut out after 30 seconds or so, even with a strong 3G signal. If I am lucky, it will come back on for around a minute and then disappear altogether.

I have tried many a station and always get the same results. However, when this application is used over Wi-Fi it is faultless. It connects very quickly and you can even add your favourite stations into it. When I try to connect to a station I have added via my network, I always get the error ‘unable to connect to station’.

So, when I came across Virtual Radio I thought I would give it a stab. The free version comes with a small amount of advertising, but that really isn’t an issue. The layout is very simple and consists of only 4 options:

• Play
• Stop
• Channel groups
• Channels

All the stations are pre-defined and unfortunately you can’t add your own, although the website does offer you the option to apply for it to be added. There are plenty of stations and genres to choose from, so finding something to suite your musical taste shouldn’t be a problem. According to the website, they have only chosen stations with a low bandwidth (32kbps) to optimise user experience. Unfortunately, anyone who knows about audio quality in kbps will know that 32 isn’t going to sound like BBC Radio 1, and it doesn’t! The quality of sound is reduced, but the streams are listenable and load fast.

Just when I thought I had found the answer to my web audio streaming, the same thing starts to happen as the built in streamer. The constant ‘cutting out’ every minute or so makes it unusable. Of course, there is always the possibility of sinister goings on at o2. They blatantly admit that streaming isn’t supported in their web packages due to their fair usage policy. But then again, YouTube streaming works fine so the jury is out on this one!

If it wasn’t for the interruptions in sound then I would use this application, even with the reduction in sound quality. As it stands, for me, it’s not usable. It would be useful for other N96 users to test this application and discuss their findings over at the forum here

Rating: 5/10 (because it cuts out for me). 7/10 If you can get it to work!

Download: VirtualRadio

Nokia N96 Game Review – Marble Maze

Title: Marble Maze v1.170(2) by Cahoona Games

Objective: Marble Maze is a Labyrinth game which uses the built in accelerometer to guide your ball to the target. Yet again, it was unplayable on the N96 before now because of the new coding present in its accelerometer. This has been a serious downfall with the N96. We have all had to wait very patiently for the games and applications using the accelerometer to be re-written, but they are coming… Slowly!

Summary: I had played this on a friends iPhone ages ago and thought it was impressive, so I was very glad to hear that a version for the N96 was now released. It’s a simple game and that’s just the way I like them! I’m not much of a gamer and being very ‘old skool’ I like my games with only one way to go and not with a thousand different options to confuse the hell out me!

It’s highly addictive and can be very frustrating if you find yourself being stuck on a particular level. All you need to do is navigate your ball around the maze by tilting your phone, avoiding the holes, and get it to the chequered flag. The game then moves to the next level and as you progress, the levels get increasingly harder. The time taken to complete each level is recorded, so there is also the option of trying to do it in the quickest time possible.

Read more

Nokia N96 App Review – ShakeSMS

Name: ShakeSMS v1.04

Description: Enables you to view a new text message by simply shaking your device, as opposed to pressing buttons.

Summary: ShakeSMS is another in the series of applications being made compatible for the N96 and other newer devices.

Its purpose is simple and effective, making it even quicker to view an incoming text message. Simply shaking the phone will unlock it and open the message. Another shake and the phone will go back to the previous screen and lock again.

Once you have read your message you can also set the application to reply or delete a message by tilting it in the selected direction. You can also set it to do nothing if you so wish.

Here are some of the options available:

• Sensitivity
• Shake-New SMS (view SMS & Unlock or View SMS only)
• Screen Left, Right, Forward & Back gives you the choice of – Reply SMS, Back & Lock, Delete SMS, SMS list, Do Nothing
• Autostart (Yes, No & Hide)

Quite a nifty application but I wouldn’t say it is a must-have.

ShakeSMS is freeware but does require signing.

Rating: 7/10

Download: ShakeSMS v1.04

Enjoy!

Nokia N96 App Review – FlipSilent

Name: FlipSilent v1.06

Description: Turns incoming sounds silent by turning the phone on its face.

Summary: Slowly, these older accelerometer-based applications are having their codes re-written for compatibility with the the new S60 sensor framework which is present in newer devices such as the N96.

FlipSilent is a popular application that mutes ring tones and alarms on your phone by simply turning it on its face.  There is no need to press any buttons or use the slider to make this work, simply turning it on its face will mute the ring tone or alarm. When you turn it back over, the previous profile will be returned, or not, depending on your set-up.

There are various settings to get it running for your preference, including:

• FlipOver-Profile (changes your profile to the selected once flipped)
• FlipOver-Call (either mutes or hangs up the call once flipped)
• FlipOver-Alarm (turns the alarm to snooze or stops it)
• FlipBack-Profile (selects the required profile once the phone is turned back over)
• AutoStart (important feature of selecting whether or not to have the application start automatically when the phone is booted up)

If you decide to have this on all the time you need to make sure you never place your phone face down or have it face down on your thigh in your pocket when sitting at your desk!  If you do, you will not hear any incoming calls or alarms!

FlipSilent is freeware but does require signing.

Rating: 8/10 – Very handy

Download: FlipSilent v1.06

Enjoy!

Nokia N96 App Review – Light Control

Name: Light Control v1.30

Description: Controls device keypad, screen and LED lights

Summary: Light Control does exactly what it says on the tin, controls lights!   Designed for saving power and helping you find things in the dark!

I consider this a very handy application that allows you to control every aspect of your devices illuminations. The main functions include:

• Primary screen on & off
• Brightness
• Primary keyboard lights on & off
• Secondary keyboard lights on & off
• Light timeout
• Flashlight

I use this application frequently but mainly for the flashlight. The other functions are purely for power saving. The flashlight has 3 options:

• Use flash lamp (switches on the duel LED lights of the N96 to make a powerful torch)
• Switch on (turns the main screen into pure white light)
• SOS (gives an SOS signal using the main screen!)

Whilst this application comes highly recommended there are some improvements that could be made. Mainly, I would like to see a shortcut for accessing the flashlight. As it stands you have to launch the application, got to options, scroll to flashlight then select one of the 3 options.

The application must be running in the background for it to take effect and requires you to start it up when needed.  Light control is free but does require signing.

Rating: 8/10

Download Light Control v 1.33

Enjoy!

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