Cool P800 Applications

There are two modes to use the P800, flip on or flip off, depending on how much you'd like the the device to be a phone or an organiser. When trying to emulate an organiser, the biggest application missing from the P800 is a desktop, with shortcuts to other functions and applications, and a screen lock (closing the flip locked the screen - but that doesn't work in flip off mode). Tracker by Symbianware fills this gap perfectly.

Tracker allows the user to add icons to a desktop, linking to their favourite application, function or file. Functions include speed dial and speed SMS/MMS, with the default icon being the users picture from the address book. Applications are quicker to open, as there is no need to scroll through the lengthy application list. Tracker supports multiple desktops, with different icon lists and layout, which could for example, be used for contacts, applications and games.

One of the available desktops is the today view. This displays a compact list of the days appointments and reminders, tasks from the task list and unread messages (SMS, MMS and email). This can be customised, and provides a neat summary of the output of a number of different applications saving time. Another essential missing item from the P800.

Skins can be applied to Tracker, changing the layout, number of desks and look and feel. There are a number of Windows XP, Mac OS X and Linux skins to mimic your favourite operating system, along with a swag of custom designs. The choices are endless, but if your still not satisfied, its possible to create your own.

Tracker's integration with the P800 is extremely clean. It seamlessly accesses the address book, calendar, tasks list and messages. It can be setup to start automatically on power on, and trap movement of the jog dial and the cam / net buttons. These buttons can be setup to lock / unlock the screen, go to the previous application or switch to tracker.

Opera is an alternative to the built in Web Browser. I think the single biggest advantage this application has over the built in one, is that it runs over bluetooth. This allows me to browse the net for free using my ADSL internet connection, instead of the extremely expensive GPRS prices. Bluetooth is faster too.

Opera displays pages almost identically to that of a web browser on a computer. In this mode, the browser often struggles to squeeze the content a page within the width of the screen, resulting in the text flowing off the side of the screen - requiring horizontal scrolling. To work around this problem, Opera has a 'Fit to Page' mode, which displays the content of the entire website within the screen width. This throws away most table layout, which unfortunately is often used to format text, resulting in a paragraph of table values that can't be deciphered. The application also throws away background colours. It does not work well for 2 or 3 column sites, where lots of navigation / adds appear in the left column, as the columns are stacked on top of each other vertically, and the middle column (usually content) appears at about the middle of the document, requiring lots and lots of scrolling to reach to it. That said, the function works well on some sites, and certainly beats scrolling horizontally backwards and forwards to read a single line of text.

To the right are two pictures of this site viewed by my P800. The top screen capture is in full screen mode, normal view. The second image is in 'Fit To Page' mode. The table of contents is squashed up the top, but it still works, and its much easier to glean the text from the site.

It would be nice for Opera to support a horizontal mode, where the device could be turned on its side to utilise a wider screen (like some of the full screen games available). On most websites, this would fix the horizontal scrolling problem and reduce the need for the 'Fit To Page' function. As I understand, the P800 does not support the rendering of text rotated 90 degrees, so Opera would need to build their own text rendering engine, instead of utilising the optimised built in functions.

This cool application is a RSS (RDF Site Summary) reader or new reader. RSS is used by many websites to syndicate news items. The format does not store the entire article, just the title and a short summary. This is not a native C++ application, and requires AppForge Booster (a Visual Basic interpreter) to also be installed on the phone. Unfortunately there isn't an alternative RSS reader available.

The screen grab to the left shows a list of titles form 'Wired News'. Scrolling through these titles displays each of the descriptions for the articles. Clicking on the description starts the built in web browser, to retrieve the entire article.

Cabot 2.0 supports offline storage of RSS files and the colour scheme to be changed. I'm still yet to come up with a good solution to automatically download and copy the latest RSS files from a PC via bluetooth to my P800 so I can read them offline later.

OggPlay is an audio player for 'Ogg' files. Ogg files are similar to MP3s, except they are half the size for the same sound quality. For devices like the P800, where expandable memory is limited to 128Mb (restriction within Memory Stick), the size reduction is welcomed. The other advantage of the Ogg file format over MP3 is that its under the GNU General Public License - so essentially free.

This media player also has better features for management of playlists over standard, as well as repeat and random modes. Unfortunately this application does not play MP3s - but that is by design, instead of a flaw within the application. Now to convert all of my MP3s to Oggs.

OggPlay supports skins. This allows the look and feel to be customised. There are a few skins available, but nowhere near as many as Tracker skins. One of my favourites was an 'OggAmp' a complete copy of WinAmp. I was never able to download it, as the people at WinAmp weren't particularly happy about its existence, and insisted it be removed.

Strategic Assault by Xen Games is a real time strategy game, like Command and Conquer or Warcraft. Each player starts with a base, and must construct other buildings to train units. Strategic buildings (like gold mines) must be captured to collect resources for training more units. The objective is to destroy the other player's base.

Its possible to build light and heavy tanks, rocket launchers, helicopters, gun boats, hovercrafts and plasma towers. These units all have different attack, defence and life attributes, and can be grouped together to aid movement. The game contains 15 missions, as well as an additional 15 missions available in the Forest Fire expansion pack.

The interface for real time strategy games is well suited to the P800, as they are easy to control with a only pointing device (stylus). The P800 only has a jog wheel and two buttons, resulting in even simple games like Tetris using additional on-screen buttons, making them cumbersome to play. First person games like V-Rally and Doom are impressive in terms of graphics, but impossible to control using a stylus making them much more suited to devices like the Nokia N-Gage. I'd like to see more real time strategy games as well thought out as Strategic Assault for the P800.