Gravity is still the best Twitter client for Nokia / Symbian S60 phones. A recent update (it gets a ton of alpha / beta updates all the time, and they're super simple to upgrade to directly from within the app) added direct posting to Flickr.

I finally tried out Nokia Sports Tracker. Here's a screenshot of my workout:

Yes, screenshot. Nokia, in their ever loving wisdom, don't have embeds. You can download a version of your "workout" in KML, but you can't embed your route. Update added this suggestion to Get Satisfaction.

This is a really interesting service that works well - it's got a great S60 app for your phone with various different modes, and pretty much updates your location in real time both on a map on your phone, as well as beaming it online.

The one issue is that it absolutely *drained* the battery on my N95. We actually spent 6 hours biking around for the Vancouver Bike the Blossoms event, and it would have been great to have a log of the whole event. I charged the phone the night before, so I have no idea why it got so completely drained. Oh, right, and there are the usual Nokia-can't-really-make-web-apps issues, like the fact that I can't share a link to a map of the Vancouver area, showing that there are a dozen or so people using it in this area.

Dave Olson caved and got an iPhone, so the Nokia N78 he was testing for Roland has now made its way to me (my previous phone has been the Nokia N80). Thanks to both for making it available to me.

Here is the Nokia N78 on Nokia's website for full tech specs etc.

First reactions:

• much slimmer! almost half the height of the N80
• not a slider ... I had gotten used to the convenient / easy lock and unlock that the slider activates. Guess I'll be download AutoLock again.
• wow, the keypad on this is incredibly annoying! bye bye high speed texting ... I feel like my fat German peasant fingers have to use the edge of my fingernail to use them
• speaker and sound is awesome. Regular headphone jack, yay! FM tuner, very cool, I'm going to make a lot of use of this. Dedicated volume buttons, also great. There is much more music functionality to explore here...
• comes with FM antenna headset thingie with remote volume and playback controls, as I said, music quality is very good, although the ear plugs are slightly small for my ears
• lightly tapping the back button seems to not close the app you are in, but bring you back to the menu. The menu / app switching seems easier, but at the same time confusing. Why not make the funny asterisk symbol the same as the Nokia "menu" button that is on all their phones?
• the camera is much fancier -- only slightly more megapixels, but all sorts of autofocus features that make it feel more like a "real" digital camera; the flash is three times the size of the N80's
• video much improved -- now at 640x480, with excellent focus and sound quality
• USB data connection -- yay! not using standard USB mini connection -- boo!
• can the USB connection also do charging? don't know, it did come with a charger
• comes with a 2GB even-smaller-format memory card (I've given up on remembering the names for different formats ... I have three or four different "mobile" memory cards, plus SD for my camera...)
• there is Share Online which lets you connect to Flickr, Ovi, and some other stuff out of the box. Not quite set up yet.
• GPS! Haven't wandered around outside to test yet, but first impression is that it is very slow to get a GPS lock. After installing Google Maps app, the cell tower only location put me in the middle of Howe Sound (I'm on Bowen at the moment) -- I actually still consider that pretty good. Definitely going to be doing more experimenting with this.

My other "first reaction" is that it's clear that I've been a Symbian S60 user for a long time: there are certain apps that I always download / setup. I'll be cataloging those in another post, in part for my own use so I can go to one page and quickly download all the apps that I want on every phone. Like my experience in setting up a fresh install / new Mac, this would seem to indicate a certain level of maturity in S60. Or perhaps a clear line of what they will include and won't with the base OS, so there are distinct areas where third party apps flourish.

For those on the Mac, the N78 is not supported by default. You'll need to download the N78 iSync plugin from Nokia Europe (thanks to Carniumology404 for being the first hit for that).

Back to installing apps...