[Update]: Skyfire for E71 available now!

Very promising and awaited mobile web browser Skyfire, which is in its beta testing phase, soon should be available for Nokia S60 devices (N and E series)! In today’s announcement E71 has been mentioned as one of supported devices..

“Nokia users, we support more phones on the Symbian Series 60 (3rd edition) platform. We’ve added the Nokia E62, E71, N75, N80, N81 and N82 phones to the existing roster, which included the Nokia E61i, E61, N73, N76, and N95 phones.”

Unfortunately previous and current beta tests are still closed for US users only. As my US carrier card is no longer valid I won’t be able to test it in Europe :/

[Update]: As you may see in readers comments, for the post before an update, test version of Skyfire is available not only for US testers! All you need to do is register your profile on Skyfire web page, input any mobile number (I tried successfully with my outdated US pre-paid card) and download it to your PC. After installation and first start up Skyfire crashed my phone actually, but now seems to work fine.

If you have Skyfire on your E71 please let me know what version it is? Mine shows 0.61.0.6746 so I think it is not yet announced 0.8 release. How about yours?

What can’t your E71 live without?

We all get our phones with default applications installed by Nokia or some 3rd party partners. We all then have Real Player, Sports Tracker or bar code reader in it. However, the power of Symbian, as a real operating system, is that you can quickly and easily add applications which make the phone customized for your needs. This week I have read an interesting article about top ten freeware applications for N82 posted on the Nokia N82 blog. It prompted me to take a look at my E71 after a few months of usage and check what I installed. What are the apps I can’t live without?

Because of hardware disparities such as lack of built-in accelerometer, the top ten for E71 will be different. You won’t find ShakeLock on my mobile. Due to compatibility differences, you won’t see me playing any of N-Gage games either. However, E71 with its full keyboard is open for other possibilities. That’s why you can see me in a bus chatting with Nimbuzz instead of texting. I have Gmail and as well as WidSets on my phone, but I definitely wouldn’t put those programs in my personal top ten. OK, so I’ve created my own E71 top ten, not only freeware apps.

1. FM radio (native)
2. Web Browser (native)
3. Quick Office (mostly Excel)
4. Media Player (& podcasting)
5. Sports Tracker
6. Nimbuzz (Skype client)
7. Nokia Maps
8. Splash ID
9. Location Tagger
10. Screenshot (for blogging purposes)

Now, some comments from my side. As you may see, I took into consideration default applications but I didn’t t include native calendar, alarm clock or e-mail application as those really are a must be in a modern phone. Anyway I’m interested if you use other software instead of those original features. For example Nokia Email or Microsoft Exchange? I’m very curious which of those applications you use as well. Actually I hope you will post your own favs or even top tens in here! I believe this could help all of us customize our phones by finding  yet unknown applications lost in constellations of Symbian software.