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Useful Applications for Smartphone? 80

Posted by Cliff from the when-is-a-phone-not-a-phone dept.
merlinbasenji asks: "I've recently purchased an Audiovox SMT5600 Smartphone for Cingular, and I'm looking for suggestions for good applications like: calendars, browsers, games, email client, etc. Anyone have a favorite, or had a bad experience with specific applications?"
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Useful Applications for Smartphone? More

Useful Applications for Smartphone?

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  • Don't use the phone program (Score:3, Funny)

    by PunkOfLinux ( 870955 ) <mewshi@mewshi.com> on Monday March 20, 2006 @09:47PM (#14961400) Homepage
    The phone program is EVIL!! Whenever you press the buttons on the phone, it makes this beeping noise. Then, when you hit the right button, it makes the noise again and it COSTS YOU MONEY...
  • Pacman!
    • If your phone is any good (such as Series 60 phones, like the recent Nokia ones) you can run Mame (=arcade pacman), nes, snes, zx spectrum, c64 emulation, plus loads of platform specific ones written in J2me or C++ etc.

  • My cost on this bad boy... (Score:5, Funny)

    by knewter ( 62953 ) on Monday March 20, 2006 @10:03PM (#14961469)
    TCPMP is a great media player that can handle DivX. Then there's some Windows app that downsamples video files to fit the screen rather well. Pick up a 1Gig miniSD card online for $60 and the phone is extremely more useful. Then use Yahoo!Music to pull a gig of music onto the device at will - that part is rather convenient. I've got a single Family Guy episode on there right now, just because I don't really use it as well as it could be.

    And this is totally OT, but...

    I managed to snag a new one of these for $20 and a three hour conversation with Cingular, because they were trying to sell me a Star Wars sound-injector (lots of demand, I guess, for sounding like you're friends with Chewbacca) with the prefurb I was ordering (they would add it to my basket after I verified my order without any notification they were doing so, and that pissed me off). Anyway, I worked my way up the ladder to the resolutions department.

    Me: There is no chance I will use this device. Let me order the prefurb without sending me the $40 Chewbacca toy.

    Cingular/ATT: I can't sell you the prefurb without sending that item. But you can return it!

    Me: I'd like to do that, preemptively.

    CATT: Oh, you'll have to send it back to us once we ship it out.

    Me: ...

    CATT: Sir?

    Me: Seriously, you're going to cost yourself greater than $20 to sell me a $20 refurb phone, and waste man hours handling a return?

    CATT: It's how the bundle works, sir.

    Me: I'd feel morally reprehensible doing business with you if you're that stupid. I'll buy a Sprint phone.

    CATT: No, no no! Tell you what, I'll send you a NEW one for the same price, so you don't have to return the Star Wars thingie.

    Me: ...

    CATT: Sir?

    Me: Nevermind, I can do business with idiots. Thanks. Send it on.
    • I've had PocketPC-Phones for a while, and I agree - TCPMP(aka BetaPlayer) is definitely the best video player.

      For encoding, there's a great prog called "pocket-DVD Studio". It will grab a DVD or File, and DIVX it. It works fast-@1hr per dvd. Most movies are ~200MB. It'll crop letterboxes, allow you to pick the output resolution/bitrate/audio, and tell you the final file-size before it even starts. afaik, nothing else does the trick. Stay away from pocketdivxencoder-It's corrupted a few of my files.
      • for web-browser try Opera Mobile (shareware with a lot of functions) or Opera Mini (free, less functionality, but pages are highly compressed by proxy. needs mobile java).

  • Coverage? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by tepples ( 727027 )

    Problem is that the only providers with decent coverage in some areas of the United States *cough* Verizon *cough* insist on locking all phones on their network such that they run only applications purchased from the provider's overpriced store, and you can't test applications on phones connected to their network unless you are an established company.

    • I've never had any problems even remotely similar to that with my Verizon Treo 650.

      As another poster suggested, TCPMP is GREAT. I use it on my Treo, and I've heard the PocketPC version (for the original poster) is also excellent.

      Also in the category of "stuff you can do with a huge memory card", look into either Mapopolis or TomTom plus a Bluetooth GPS receiver. Like TCPMP, there are both PocketPC and PalmOS versions. TomTom seems to be getting more popular these days than Mapopolis.

      Unfortunately, one of

      • Every single one of the apps listed above was installed to my Treo 650 without paying Verizon a single cent.

        Then what's all this I've been reading about "Get It Now" and "Get Around Get It Now"?

        • Irrelevant to the Palm platform. Verizon locks down downloads to most "regular" phones, but the Treos are wide open.
        • Irrelevant to any of the phones covered by this article/discusssion. Both Treos and PocketPC platforms have no dependency on Get It Now!, and in fact don't even support Get It Now!.
  • You can use your smartphone to annoy telemarketers. Just write a program that analyzes the power per unit time of the conversation to detect pauses. When the telemarketer pauses, the program plays an interjection like "yeah" or "uh huh" or "I don't understand". When your phone rings and you answer it and hear a telemarketer, press the "spam" button and put the phone away, secure in the knowledge that your program will waste a minute or so of the spammer's time.
    • It's easier than that. When the spammer calls wait till they tell you what they want and say "Ah! Right! Now, I don't want it but there's a guy here who really does, I'll just go get him". Put the phone on the table. That's it.

      You *can* wait until they start saying "hello? hello?" and make up some BS line about him being somewhere else, but that would involve effort.

      Dave
    • When the telemarketer pauses, the program plays an interjection like "yeah" or "uh huh" or "I don't understand".
      Or even "where's the tea?"
    • That's a great idea...until the telemarketer asks if you'd like to buy their crap and your phone says "yeah".

      In some places companies can charge you via your phone account, so that it will show up on your next phone bill.

  • Essentials "for a busy professional" (Score:5, Informative)

    by abelikoff ( 412709 ) on Monday March 20, 2006 @10:29PM (#14961574) Homepage
    Congratulations on your new phone! Here's my list, although I am still using a PDA (must wait for another 6 months to get away from the Verzion yoke)
    • Pocket Informant - for PIM functionality
    • Ilium eWallet - indispensable for passwords.
    • Resco File Explorer - for decent file manager and file encryption
    • Haali Reader - for books.
    • Essentials on my 5600 (actually branded an Orange SPV C500 - they're all HTC Typhoons underneath it all)
      * Torch - simple program that turns screen on full brightness with white background so you can use it as a torch. Assign a speeddial to it. Free.
      * Autokeylock - does what it says, also gives you handy clock display screensaver. Free.
      * Citytime pocket alarms - easier to use than the dreadful inbuilt alarm, allows different alarms for different days of the week
      * One great feature that's built in is aut
  • If you have to travel to Germany you may consider having a english-german dictionary on your mobile phone. You may try http://www.sf.net/projects/mobidict [sf.net] (disclaimer: I am the author of the software)

    If you want some more ideas: http://www.getjar.com/ [getjar.com]

  • Password Management (Score:5, Informative)

    by binaryspiral ( 784263 ) on Monday March 20, 2006 @10:45PM (#14961623)
    I have to maintain an insane number of passwords and systems - Flexwallet 2006 triple encrypts the database file that stores my passwords. It also includes a PC app that it syncs with.

    Highly recommended.

  • This topic is like a nightmare exam (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's like you're sitting there, the question seems to be in plain English, but you can't think of an answer. You can hear the clock ticking away the precious seconds, and all you can think is 'remote control ... oh, no infra-red' and 'phone ... oh, no battery life'.

    There's 10 minutes left to go, and your sheet of paper is empty and you've organised your pens and pencils neatly on the desk. A bit of paper has a drawing of a smartphone, but it doesn't look very intelligent to you.

    Then, it hits you!

    Yes!

    A blunt
  • I JUST got a PPC-6700 and am looking for ssh software...

    I can't vouch for it, and I haven't used it yet. (How's that for a review?) So mostly I'm wondering if anybody else has tried it before I drop $50 on it.

    http://choung.net/mToken/ [choung.net]

    There are a few free ones out there (how's the putty port?) but this one seems to be pretty full featured. I really would like to be able to use keys and have some sort of bookmark capability.
    • We use mToken on some WinCE devices as the office after reviewing I don't know how many terminal applications. It seems to work well, and was the only one we found that sends the xterm mouse events when you click on the screen (which we needed for our app).
    • PocketPuTTY works quite well on my Windows Mobile 2003 device. It may not have the features that other SSH clients have, but its absurdly quick and easy to use. A combination of a PPC with PocketPuTTY, a bluetooth keyboard, and a screen session on a Linux box somewhere is surprisingly useful.
    • I got a PPC-6700--one of the reasons I wanted it was ssh.

      I have to say, in general, the offerings are pretty disappointing. PocketPutty can't save sessions, so you're typing in a lot of the same information every time you want to connect. Also, I didn't see an immediately obvious way to send ESC events (for example).

      mToken is pretty nice, though pricey. "Scripting" is completely unintuitive, but if you work at it, I understand you can get single-button CTRL-A events sent (for use with Screen). It suppor
      • So it's not a native PocketPC application but midpssh [xk72.com] is GNU-free and has lots of ssh options including public key authentication. The only down side is the less-than-native-looking interface that you get from running J2ME, but the terminal is top notch. Definitely the best ssh application that I've found for the platform.
    • One more thing--don't expect the source to PocketPutty. Although the author's webpage promises the source soon, it's been that way for awhile.
    • This doesn't help you, but for any readers running PalmOS based smartphones, pssh ROCKS.
  • I just noticed that Samsung released a cellphone with both Bluetooth and WiFi. I'd love to see a phone that lets me use it as a VoIP handset (or even allows me to transition a cell-based call to a VoIP one "somehow").

    For me, that's going to be the big factor in the next phone upgrade -- multiple protocols beyond the cell network.

    Of course, for most people this is going to start off as being a useless application, but I can see huge things ahead for the first phones that have this ability (and the software
    • The hardware and software big wigs are working to make this a reality. This is targeted to GSM/GSPR network carriers world-wide. Concept: You run phone call controling software on the smartphone that can talk to a "Smart Base Station Controler". The phone figures out the most stable link back to the base station via WiFi or GSM/GSPR cell network. The phone call is established and also rings back to you. Fun part, when you are getting out of your car, have a GSM cell network conversation, and step into

  • Apps on my treo... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by MagicMike ( 7992 ) on Monday March 20, 2006 @11:19PM (#14961730) Homepage
    pssh
    tcpmp - plays movies
    ptunes - mp3s and such
    audible.com's player for ebooks
    plucker for free ebooks
    eatwatch so I don't swell up
    chatter - best email client
    tomtom navigator - don't leave home without the gps fob...
    verichat for chatting
    fileprog - a better file browser
    an unzip utility so I can download from the web
    my subway/train schedule
    card export - turns the phone into a usb mass-storage device
    LJP - a nintendo emulator (also gameboy and sega and tgfx etc)
    niggle - a free scrabble emulator

    I guess that's it.

  • Jabber Messenger for Smartphones (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @12:04AM (#14961874)
    I use imov Messenger [movsoftware.com] on my Audiovox Smartphone. Its Googletalk, MSN, AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo Messenger all in one. Also works with any Jabber based system (Googletalk is Jabber based).

  • If you had bought the sidekick... (Score:5, Funny)

    by neo ( 4625 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @12:13AM (#14961904)
    I'd say the ssh client on it kicks major butt. Had to configure sshd to accept the protocal but after that it was like using unix from 20 years ago... nice and slow... every keystroke a thing of beauty as the commands were only two or three characters each. I can even read my mail in PINE {sniff snif}.... now I'm all weepy... thanks...

  • A few of my favorites (Score:3, Informative)

    by Doomstalk ( 629173 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @12:16AM (#14961918)
    Agile Messenger (all your IM needs rolled into one)
    Opera for Smartphones
    RJShortcut
    NewsBreak (RSS Reader)
    SmartIRC
    RepliGo
    Smartione (not a typo)

  • My wish list (Score:5, Funny)

    by kbielefe ( 606566 ) * <karl.bielefeldt@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @01:21AM (#14962075)
    Here is my wish list for smart phone applications:
    • Fast forward button for when I am put on hold
    • Lie detector
    • interest simulator to intelligently insert "mm hmms" and so forth during long one-sided conversations
    • Fast forward button for those conversations
    • excuse generator, like baby crying, doorbell, etc.
    • button next to my car horn that will play pre-recorded "colorful epithet" into phone of driver in front of me before hanging it up

    • You may be modded funny but some of those are good ideas!

      The accuracy of a voice based lie detector would be questionable (and probably depend on just how powerful a computer the phone is), but you could even train it to people you talk to regularly ("view their past lies and near-lies and mark what was a lie and what wasn't). Video phones could add another level of accuracy with the equivalent increase in required power to take advantage of it.

      To make the interest simulator really good might take some

  • There's this really useful one that lets you talk to people, just by entering their special code. It uses voice too once you're on-line to the person, so you don't have to worry about typing.

  • A scripting language, Hecl (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DavidNWelton ( 142216 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @03:06AM (#14962309) Homepage
    In a bit of blatant self promotion...

    The Hecl Programming Language: http://www.hecl.org/ [hecl.org]

    It's an open source scripting language that's compact enough to run on cell phones. If you're the adventurous/hacker type, it's still in the early stages of development, but is far along enough to write real apps, such as this shopping list system:

    http://www.dedasys.com/shopping_list/ [dedasys.com]

    It's a great time to get involved in the project because it's in its early stages, and there is a lot of fun to be had!

  • Things smartphones don't do. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Tuesday March 21, 2006 @03:23AM (#14962336) Homepage
    Here is a list of things that any phone more advanced than a Nokia 5160 could concievably do (especially with Symbian or other smart phone OSes), but which don't ship from the manufucturer, and are thus relegated to half-written, poorly integrated shareware apps that don't work on different smart phones running the same OS:

      * Answering machine. Who needs voice mail on the provider side? Your phone probably has memory onboard + expansion slot memory. It has enough brains to record voice memos, do voice dialing, and play MP3s as ringtones. How hard is this to implement? Plus there's no monthly fee!

      * Time-of-day call ignore. Are you in a meeting for a certain time? Have lectures or classes? Doctors appointment? Your phone should automatically go into a silent mode (and kick over to the answering machine). Why let yourself be the point of failure?

      * Selective disturb. Studying, working on a project, or otherwise engaged, but don't want to drop off the face of the earth? Make it so that only certain call groups can contact you, just in case.

      * Privacy mode. Automatically reject calls from caller-id blocked numbers or long-distance (based on an area code list) numbers, or from people in certain groups.

      * Smart synchronization with Palm or WinCE PDAs. Most smart phones have bluetooth, but so far I have yet to find a way to sychronize the smartphone with the PDA in any useful way. Don't we have vcards and other standards for this?

      * Smart synchronization with a PC. Even just a stupid Windows client + some documentation would be fine. I can write something that'll let my Linux desktop sync if it's documented! This could be as simple as dumping the data from the internal memory to the expansion memory in a parsable format, and then restoring it the same way -- the PC could have a program to read the memory card and deal with the data.

      * Some kind of automation system. I have run across lots of little situations where I need to do something to a lot of contacts (move them into a group, delete duplicates, etc), and have found there's no batch interface. You have to deal with everything one click at a time.

    All of this stuff is pretty simple to do, and would elevate a smartphone from a fancy phone with a colour display and better ringtones. No Symbian OS phone I know supports time-based silencing, call ignore lists, answering machine, selective disturb, or sychronizes well. You can fake some of that with custom ring tones, but that's a hack.

    The most disapointing feature of mobile phones are the SDKs; you can't write this stuff if you want to, in many cases (and the Java support is terrible). Why make something programable if the only thing it'll do is load the code that shipped with it?

    • Here is a list of things that any phone more advanced than a Nokia 5160 could concievably do (especially with Symbian or other smart phone OSes), but which don't ship from the manufucturer, and are thus relegated to half-written, poorly integrated shareware apps that don't work on different smart phones running the same OS:

      * Answering machine. Who needs voice mail on the provider side? Your phone probably has memory onboard + expansion slot memory. It has enough brains to record voice memos,
    • "* Answering machine. Who needs voice mail on the provider side? Your phone probably has memory onboard + expansion slot memory. It has enough brains to record voice memos, do voice dialing, and play MP3s as ringtones. How hard is this to implement? Plus there's no monthly fee!"
      Voicemail is included as a part of every phone plan I've ever seen. Most importantly, having the answering machine in the phone is Just Plan Stupid. What if the phone is turned off or in an area where coverage is blocked? I would
    • Quite apart from the fact that civilized countries have free voicemail included with their service, a quick google search for answering machines popped up:
      • SmartAnswer [smartphoneware.com] seems popular.
      • This one [symbiangear.com]... uh... exists.
      • This [hpc.net] is an SMS answering machine. Hangs up calls and sends an SMS to the caller.
    • I've had 3 replies so far. All of them are from people who didn't read my post or understand what I was saying.

      1) Voicemail's not free for everyone. There is no real security in having voicemail (or any private data) on your service provider's equipment, either, as the recent Google vs. DOJ should show. Why shouldn't my phone do it, regardless of what the providers offer?

      2) These are obvious features; once you go beyond a simple phone that just does DTMF based on a keypad, you would think this would beco
      • Voicemail's not free for everyone. [...] Why shouldn't my phone do it, regardless of what the providers offer?

        Many phones do have built-in answering machines, even antique non-smartphones like the LG VX4000. They record into the same memory used for voice memos.

    • * Time-of-day call ignore. Are you in a meeting for a certain time? Have lectures or classes? Doctors appointment? Your phone should automatically go into a silent mode (and kick over to the answering machine). Why let yourself be the point of failure?

      The SMT5600 has a Meeting mode where it will switch in and out of silent mode based on there being a meeting on the calendar.

    • Answering machine
      Good idea, except what if your phone can't get a signal, or runs out of battery life, or is just plain off? This is something I'd prefer a dedicated "Always On" provider to handle for me.

      Time-of-day call ignore
      Now this is something I agree with. It could intergrate with the calendar/appointment functionality most phones have already. You could also (optionally) have a special response that the caller - "I'm in class now, but I'll be finished by 5. Leave a message or call back then."

      Smar
  • Opera mini - awesome program and free!!
  • I'm in the market for a new phone. I know I need to get at a bare minimum a GSM phone to get on Cingular/Old AT&T.

    What I'd like to find out is if there are any phones/devices out there that will hop on wireless networks (esp Free as in beer) to get out to the web? I want to be able to surf/check email/IM etc. and of course I want to avoid paying outrageous sums of money to said phone companies. Does this make sense?
  • I don't have a PDA phone just an A900. It has a web browser, calendar, a few games, Sprint Powervison, and a few games. Coverage has been pretty good for me and I really like the small size.
    Google Local rocks. The only thing I wish is that it would interface with the phones GPS.
  • I have that exact phone and have been very happy with it. Here are the 3rd-party apps I use: - Smart Database Viewer, because it doesn't come with Pocket Excel - Smartphonenotes - notes that synch with Outlook notes - Pocket DVD-Studio for ripping DVDs to smartphone-usable format. There's also Mobile Media Maker that's cheaper but has fewer options and can only do smartphone output, not Pocket PC. - gStart - Start menu replacement - Total Commander - file explorer with actual features (contrast with built
    • Sorry about that...

      I have that exact phone and have been very happy with it. Here are the 3rd-party apps I use:

      - Smart Database Viewer, because it doesn't come with Pocket Excel
      - Smartphonenotes - notes that synch with Outlook notes
      - Pocket DVD-Studio for ripping DVDs to smartphone-usable format. There's also Mobile Media Maker that's cheaper but has fewer options and can only do smartphone output, not Pocket PC.
      - gStart - Start menu replacement
      - Total Commander - file explorer with actual features (contra
  • On my Windows Mobile 2003SE I use:

    - CAB Installer [windowscenet.de]: you can select where install programs
    - GSPlayer [vector.co.jp]: Simply audio player for Pocket PC
    - Mozilla Minimo [mozilla.org]: web browser
    - Opera for windows mobile [opera.com]: web browser
    - TCPMP [corecodec.org]: media player
    - Total Commander [ghisler.com]: file manager
    - Vbar [vieka.com]: task manager
    - WiFiFoFum2 [memphistw.org]: the best WiFi scanner and war driving software for Pocket PC
    - PocketPuTTY [duxy.net]: ssh access
    - .NET VNC [sourceforge.net]: VNC viewer

    I will suggest also a daily visit :) to this great website: FreeCABs [freecabs.de] (Your Link to Free PPC So
  • I no longer own it, but when I had a pdQ Smartphone with an SSH client loaded, I was once able to log into the switches and router in the data center when there were issues installing hosts on the switches. I was roaming around a street fair 15 miles away from the data center at the time. Not what I would call ideal, but it got the job done. It beat having to leave the fair, drive to the data center and fix the problem there, not the least of which it would have taken me more time to do the latter.

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