The s60 3rd Feature Pack 2 seems to be the next best OS available for SmartPhones of the like of the Nokia NSeries - that is phones that are packed with multiple processors, stand alone graphic processors and huge amounts of RAM (128 in the case of the N95-2). With Feature Pack 2 you get features in your phone that were until recently available only through expensive 3rd Party software. Moreover it increases the User Interface of the phone making it more efficient and usable.
First of all, with FP2, the MultiTasking ability of the phone has been more concentrated upon which I believe will make it more competitive against other mobile OS and also bridging the gap between SmartPhone and Computer(which Nokia seems to love doing..remember “This is what Computers have become!”). From FP2 onwards the Multi Tasking Menu can be activated from the options menu as well. Before, this was possible only by an extended press on the menu button.
More intuitive UI has been another priority of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 with the addition of a labelled middle softkey, for more work with less clicks. Another UI update is the Active Idle Toolbar, which now also has a option for being Vertically placed. This results in better screen space utilisation for the active app.
The Messaging application is much more smarter than before. You just select create a message and bearer(SMS,MMS,Email) is selected automatically. If the final message has only text, it’s SMS. If there are other media components included to message, such as pictures or video, message type is MMS. Small, but it’s nice.
Functions that until now were available only through 3rd Party Software which have been built-in into the OS now are as follows:
- There is RSS/Atom feed support so selected news feed can scroll on the bottom of the idle screen. This is similar to the Nokia Gallery’s scroller.
- FSCaller’s full screen caller image has now been included as a built-in feature. This makes caller identification easier. Besides it looks cooler!
- Personal pictures can be used to personalize your theme. There is a neat slideshow screensaver.,which allows you to select your favorite pics from the gallery. Also the wallpaper has similar slideshow functionality. I don’t remember the name of the app that used to support this.
- Users of S60 are very aware of BestProfiles in which you can set time limits and alarms for your profiles to change. This also has been embedded into FP2, you can set a timer for profiles, so the phone for silent for one hour and then it goes back to general profile automatically. Very use full.
- Web Browsers are the most used application in S60, as browsing is extremely popular and everyone loves to download media files. Currently if you download a music or video file, you have to wait until file is completely downloaded and only then can you open and play it. FP2 supports progressive downloading from browser which allows for instant playback during downloading. Sort of like streaming links. I’ve never seen these features, especially the streaming download, in a SmartPhone app before! It’s more like it was brought from the DAP software for Windows!!
- As if that wasn’t enough Downloading function has also other improvements. When for example a mp3 is downloaded, you’ll get a “Save as” option so it’s easy to set it as ringing tone. And if it’s a picture download you can set it as wallpaper straight away. Cool eH?
All these features make for a great mobile computing experience, I only hope they bundle in a high capacity battery along as well - high power apps such as these will have little mileage when it comes to battery consumption!
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