onS60

Adobe Reader LE 2.5 - The Mobile Acrobat

The ubiquitous nature of Adobe Acrobat documents makes a good reader an essential part of any road warrior's application armory. Richard Bloor asks if Adobe Reader LE 2.5 from Quickoffice fits the bill.

The challenge with taking Adobe Acrobat documents mobile is two fold: offering the ability to display the widest range of PDF versions and making the resulting document readable on a small screen.

At the heart of Adobe Reader LE 2.5 is a rendering and memory management engine developed by Adobe: to which Quickoffice has added the user interface. As a result, it is a little unsurprising (but no less pleasing to find) that Adobe Reader LE 2.5 managed to open every single Acrobat document thrown at it, including those in the latest PDF format (1.7). This ability also extended to very large documents, such as the 21Mb Adobe InDesign manual. Furthermore these large documents were opened as quickly as much smaller documents.

The 21 Mb Adobe InDesign manual opened on a Nokia E90.

When a document is first opened in Adobe Reader LE 2.5 it is displayed in its original layout, as it would look on a PC or when printed.

The initial view of "The 360 Degree Leader" on a Nokia E61i, one of the PDF business book summaries available through Quickmanager.

This initial view, on most devices, is effectively unreadable. So it is necessary to zoom in before the document can be read. The zoom feature - dubbed ZoomView™ - works in the same way as zoom in the Quickoffice suite. That is, once the zoom option has been selected the up and down scroll keys zoom the display in and out until the desired zoom level is found. Initially this is a little confusing, as most S60 applications offer a menu based zoom in/zoom out option, perhaps with a "select %" option, for zooming. Once the mechanism becomes familiar, however, it is much more convenient than the conventional approach; requiring significantly less clicks to find the ideal level of zoom.

ZoomView™ makes it easy to find a readable view.

While zooming, the Options menu provides more conventional zoom in/zoom out items. There are also options to select a specific zoom percentage and, when in the page layout view, zoom to the full page or page width.

Conventional zoom options are also available in ZoomView™.

In the original document layout view, efficient reading is likely to be elusive (unless the document is presented in columns of just the right width for the device's screen) as significant amounts of horizontal scrolling will be required. The exclusive Reflow mode overcomes this problem by rendering text to the width of the screen, thereby eliminating any horizontal scrolling. Unfortunately, even if you have found a comfortable zoom level in the layout view, you are likely to have to zoom again in the reflowed version to find a comfortable reading magnification.

Moving to Reflow mode may require a new zoom level to be selected.

In addition to fitting the text, Reflow mode scales images to fit the display width.

Images fitted to width on a Nokia E90 in flip closed mode.

Adobe Reader LE automatically adjusts to use the appropriate screen orientation (portrait or landscape) for the screen it is displayed on. For example, on the N93 (where the orientation depends on the screen's position) the orientation is set automatically to match the screen's position. In addition, when a document is in the page layout view it can be rotated, however reflowed text can only be viewed in the screen's native orientation.

Another challenge with reading a document on a smartphone is macro navigation, moving from page to page or section to section (as opposed to micro navigation: scrolling to see the next portion of a page). To enable macro navigation Adobe Reader LE offers options to jump to the first or last pages of the document or to any specific page by number. While the page number feature can be useful, it does make the assumption that the reader knows the specific page on which the portion of the document they want is. The most useful application of the go to page feature is in moving from a table of contents to a specific section as, unfortunately, Adobe Reader LE does not allow navigation on embedded links (such as page number links in menus).

When the position of content is unknown the bookmarks feature comes to the rescue. When opened it display the list of bookmarks contained in the document. Bookmarks are initially shown collapsed at the top level. Bookmarks with lower level items are indicated with a plus (+) sign and the details are opened from the Options menu or using the right scroll key, expanded bookmarks are then closed from the menu or using the left scroll key. Selecting a bookmark opens the document at the bookmarked page.

Bookmarks aid navigation.

While a very useful feature, many PDFs are not bookmarked. If there are no bookmarks in the document the Bookmarks option is not shown on the options menu.

If bookmarks are unavailable or specific words in the document need to be found there is a search feature. This allows a string to be located. The search provides options to match case and search above or below the current location.

Initiating a search on a Nokia E90.

Once a search has started the Options menu provides access to the "Find next" option as well as one to start a new search.

In addition to these features Adobe Reader LE 2.5 includes the ability to open password protected and encrypted files, using up to 128-bit encryption, and view document properties enabling details such as subject, keywords, date created, last modified, file size, author, and title to be seen.

Overall Adobe Reader LE 2.5 does an excellent job of rendering almost every imaginable PDF file. The rendering appears accurate, with no obvious differences between the rendering on Adobe Reader LE and the PC based Acrobat Reader. This includes documents with complex images and those that utilize shading and transparency. The fourteen fonts supplied with Adobe Reader LE also help ensure accurate rendering. The options for displaying documents allow the original format to be viewed and documents to be reformatted to a reflowed form where comfortable reading is possible.

So Adobe Reader LE 2.5 can open almost any PDF document, has useful options for viewing and reading those documents, and offers several ways to navigate and find specific parts of those documents. The final aspect of usability is therefore performance. This was generally good across a range of S60 devices. Adobe Reader LE 2.5 was tested on a Nokia N93, Nokia E61i, and Nokia E90. On all these devices text was scrolled with an almost immediate response. In addition, the size of the document made no noticeable difference to the speed at which Adobe Reader LE 2.5 could jump between pages or search text: moving between pages was as swift on the 21 Mb Adobe InDesign manual, a document of some 700 pages, as it was on documents of just a few pages.

Images, however, did cause the page rendering to slow somewhat. Scrolling through an image could be slightly erratic, as the application clearly buffers image information. So scrolling an image could initially be quite quick, but would eventually reach a point where a small delay was noticeable as the next section of image was rendered.

Generally, Adobe Reader LE 2.5 performed well and behaved as expected. Only two real issues could be noted. The first is unlikely to affect too many documents. In the Adobe InDesign manual attempting to open the bookmarks caused the document to close. For smaller documents the bookmarks worked well and provided a useful navigation option.

The second issue might be an irritation to some users. In the ZoomView™ feature the level of zoom progresses in useful increments from 100% through 125, 150, and then to 200% however the next jump is to 500%, then 1000%. This can result in having to use the "Zoom to %" option to locate an ideal zoom level. Progression at increments of 50 or 100% above 200% might be somewhat more usable.

It is also worth noting that Acrobat documents can be opened into Adobe Reader LE directly from the latest version of Quickoffice (v5.0) as well as from Adobe Reader LE itself. This is handy when there is the need to view two PDFs simultaneously, as only one document can be opened in Adobe Reader at a time.

Finally, it is worth noting that - in addition to supplying Adobe Reader LE 2.5 - Quickoffice also supplies PDF content in the form of Soundview executive book summaries. These summaries, which can be purchased through Quickmanager, offer a 4 or 5 page summaries of popular management and business books.

Soundview executive book summaries are available from Quickmanager.

Adobe Reader LE 2.5 is hard to fault. The only apparent fault was its inability to cope with bookmarks in a large PDF. When large means 20Mb, it is unlikely to be a problem for many documents accessed while mobile. It rendered every document tested. The page layout options and the Reflow mode combined with ZoomView™ means a comfortable viewing situation can be found for any document, even if the zoom scale does inflate a little too quickly once past 200%. The ability to navigate to a specific page or bookmark coupled with a powerful search makes navigating documents straightforward.

For anyone who has only the occasional need to view a PDF file while mobile the PDF viewer shipped with their S60 device might suffice. This is assuming they can cope with the frustration of finding the built in S60 will not open the latest PDF file versions, and do not mind the manic scrolling needed to read the document. For everyone else Adobe Reader LE is a must.

Adobe Reader LE is available for all S60 3rd Edition devices. It can be purchased using Quickmanager, found in most recent versions of Quickoffice, from the Quickoffice Web site, or channels such as Handango. It costs $19.95.

Psiloc Simplifies S60 Customization

Polish developer Psiloc has introduced an innovative new approach to device customization called SoftVariant. It enables S60 devices to be customized automatically, from information stored on a memory card.

While many large operators get specific builds of S60 devices, it is easy to forget that smaller operators make up the bulk of the 200+ operators selling Symbian smartphones. For these operators the cost of factory customization can mean that the devices they sell are vanilla versions, no different from off-network, SIM free devices.

It is undoubtedly this market that Psiloc is hoping to capture with SoftVariant. Although SoftVariant could clearly be of use to any organization that wants to deliver devices with identical set-up to multiple users. Typically this may also include enterprises, SIM free retailers and distributors, or even marketing companies looking for a unique promotion opportunity on new devices.

Part service, part product, SoftVariant is designed to allow the easy customization of an S60 3rd Edition device from a package written to the in-box memory card. Psiloc claims that SoftVariant can customized almost any aspect of an S60 device, including:

• Themes (display colors, ringtones, highlights, and style icons) with immediate activation on installation.
• Installation of applications, both Java™ME and native Symbian.
• Creation of contact list and contact groups.
• Addition, activation, and personalization of device profiles.
• Creations of WLAN hotspot configurations.
• Setting of the Web Browser for S60 homepage and bookmarks.
• Creation of email and Internet account settings.
• The ability to exclude or limit access to some applications.
• Distribution of content such as videos, music, and images.

Psiloc provides a downloadable demonstration of SoftVariant on the product's dedicated Web site: http://softvariant.psiloc.com. Following the process, a case of performing a factory reset and storing the files in the demo download onto a suitable memory card, SoftVariant quickly customized a Nokia E61i with a theme and a copy of Psiloc's Font Magnifier. The process tool less than a minute.

The SoftVariant demo adds and activates a theme and installs Font Magnifier.

SoftVariant certainly helps maintain Psiloc's reputation for innovative Symbian software. The potential for the service is significant and the company could be onto a winner, with several hundred potential customers worldwide.

S60 WordPress Blogging Client Arriving Monday

Telewaving has announced that as of Monday (January 14) it will be making a beta of its native Symbian C++ blogging application available for download.

Developed principally for the S60 powered Nokia N95, Wavelog will allow users to post content to WordPress powered blogs, according to a notice posted in the company's web site (www.telewaving.com). Telewaving claims WaveLog will enable the posting of text, images, audio, or video over any available network connection. In addition, content can be held to transfer later if a suitable connection is not available.

Wavelog is capable of posting to both blogs hosted on wordpress.com as well as independent blog sites powered by the software available from wordpress.org.More information on how the application will work can be found on the Telewaving.com blog, (www.telewaving.com/wp/). WaveLog should be available for download on Monday at: www.telewaving.com.

Monitoring The Environment, S60 Style

In the latest IEEE Pervasive Computing special edition on Urban Computing, Eiman Kanjo and Peter Lanshoff of University of Cambridge put the Nokia N95 to use monitoring pollution.

Bicycle couriers in Cambridge are now providing researchers with real time, location based information on the levels of pollution in and around the city. Linking Nokia N95's to a small unit capable of measuring carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen dioxide and recording the phones location researchers are able to monitor pollution levels.

Results of this pollution monitoring can be seen here >>

Future enhancements planned include the ability to monitor carbon dioxide as well as the level of traffic noise using the microphone in an S60 device.

Via IEEE

Quickoffice 5.0: More than Office 2007 support

Quickoffice Inc. is launching the latest version of Quickoffice for S60 today. The headline feature is support for Microsoft Office 2007 documents. However, Paul Moreton vice president of product management at Quickoffice Inc. explains that the latest version offers much more.

One of the challenges for smartphone owners, looking for mobile productivity, is keeping in step with file format changes in the desktop product they and their colleagues use to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. It is no less of a challenge for developers, particularly where they are building applications for platforms that compete with Microsoft's own offerings.

The release of Quickoffice 5.0 solves this problem for users of S60 devices; with the ability to view Office 2007 Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files and features for editing Word and Excel files. (PowerPoint 2007 editing will be added in a future update.)

While Office 2007 will be the major attraction for many, there are a number of other improvements that will make Quickoffice 5.0 of interest to those not yet seeing Office 2007 documents.

"An issue for a small company like ours is that we get used to the way our application works. This familiarity means that certain feature that seem intuitive to us, may not be for our users," says Paul. "For Quickoffice 5.0 we were fortunate to get feedback from a series of usability studies. As a result we have made a number of improvements that make Quickoffice easier to use." To illustrate these improvements, Paul notes that in the old version of Quickoffice a new document could only be created when the user was browsing the phone's memory or its memory card. "The usability feedback told us this was not intuitive," says Paul. "So in Quickoffice 5.0 there is now a 'New Document' item on the main browser page. We also changed the names of the items users can create to document, spreadsheet and presentation, from Quickword, Quicksheet, and Quickpoint as these names did not necessarily mean much to most users. There have been a lot of similar usability improvements that came about as a result of the study, although most of them are really just minor tweaks. I believe it has been a very valuable exercise and Quickoffice is the better for it."

Documents can now be created from the main browser.

Other examples of the usability improvements include:

• Additional shortcut keys, for users with full keyboard devices, which follow the standard Microsoft conventions.
• Improved access to font and paragraph formatting features.
• Marquee scrolling of long file names, in the file manager and in the status bar for open files.

Changing a font size is now 5 clicks faster and the paragraph formatting options are easier to find.

The usability improvements in Quickoffice 5.0 are subtle. Too often usability "improvements" in desktop software can be frustrating for experienced users, who might spend weeks figuring out where once familiar features have been "hidden". The changes in Quickoffice certainly do not fall into this category; they are not so great that experienced users will find them frustrating, while at the same time are significant enough to offer new users a more intuitive experience.

Integration with Adobe Reader 2.5 has also been added. PDF documents are displayed in the Quickoffice file manager and can be opened directly into Adobe Reader 2.5.

Users with Adobe Reader 2.5 can now open PDFs directly from Quickoffice.

Printing support has also been brought back into the upgraded version. On S60 devices with printing support - which means Nokia Eseries devices - the platform version of Quickoffice offers printing, however any users who upgraded to Quickoffice 4.5 lost this feature. Quickoffice 5.0 now restores printing - where it is supported by the device.

Quickoffice 5.0 offers printing support on the Nokia Eseries devices.

There have also been several improvements in Quickmanager. One issue with software purchased from Quickmanager was that an upgrade of the device's firmware would remove any upgrades or applications install by the user. With the new version of Quickmanager users who expect to upgrade their firmware can buy an application or upgrade through Quickmanager but then choose to download it to their PC and receive a registration code by email (rather than the software being delivered OTA, then installed and registered silently.)

"Giving users a copy of their software so they could install it again after a firmware upgrade was only part of the reason for the change," says Paul. "We have many users who are still on metered data tariffs. Understandably these users are cautious about over the air downloads. Given the Quickoffice upgrade is a 3MB download, many users prefer the ability to download off-line, so they can manage their data traffic usage better."

The use of after market upgrades is firmly part of Quickoffice's strategy. "Rolling features into the S60 platform has a lead time," says Paul. "The software has to be fully integrated into the platform some time before new phones are released. So, for example, when S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 2 phones start shipping users will see some of the features of 5.0, such as the improved usability and updated Quickmanager, but some features will require an upgrade. Upgrades also allow us to deliver new features to our users as early as possible, so they can maintain the investment they have made in their phone; it's an important part of the value we offer our users."

While Quickoffice 5.0 becomes available today (at a full price of $69.95) Paul noted that Quickoffice 4.5 will be retained as a purchase and upgrade option for the time being. "Office 2007 has not yet achieved critical mass, so we felt not all our users would necessarily need the 5.0 upgrade," says Paul. "But clearly we are now able to offer Office 2007 support to those who need it."

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To upgrade your device to Quickoffice 5.0 select Quickmanager from the main browser or select the right tab in the drive browser. Then select "Updates & Upgrades" and choose "Quickoffice 5.0 upgrade". It is then simply a matter of following the purchase and download instruction. It is worth noting that Quickmanager uses the same secure SSL connection your desktop browser would use when transmitting your credit card details, so Quickmanager is a safe purchase option.

Also see www.quickoffice.com for more information.

Mobile Office Adds Encrypted Document Support

SEPT-Solutions, the leading provider of OpenDocument software for mobile devices, has announced a new version of its award-winning “Mobile Office” application. This updates the version for S60 3rd Edition as well as UIQ3 to version 1.2.

This new version adds the ability to open password protected and encrypted ODF files. SEPT-Solutions claims this to be the first such implemetation for smartphones. This enhanced security support makes ODF on smartphones significantly more attractive for enterprises as similar security features are as yet not available on those applications providing Microsoft Office document support on smartphones.

Mobile Office 1.2 is also fully compatible with the Nokia N95 multimedia computer and the Nokia E90 Communicator. In addition to the security support. In addition there are a number of other ODF document support imptovements. The full list of improvements includes:

• Fully compatible with the Nokia N95 multimedia computer and the Nokia E90 Communicator.
• Support of password encrypted ODF files.
• New tabs for C:\ and E:\ in the file browser providing faster startup and a better overview.
• Goto keyboard shortcuts - * for the start of a document, # for the end.
• Keyboard shortcut to toggle between screen sizes, the 0 key.
• Enhanced formatting support for ODF lists, including:
• Continue-numbering.
• Startvalue.
• List-header.

The ISO certified OpenDocument format is used by many well known desktop applications such as OpenOffice, StarOffice, Lotus Symphony, and KOffice as their default file format. With Mobile Office, user can read those files while mobile without the need to convert them to other formats which can compromise on formatting and ODF features.

Part of SEPT-Solutions long term plan is to provide editing for ODF documents as well. While there is still no word on the release of this feature, Mobile Office provides excellent support to those organisation looking for mobile support for their cost effective ODF document editing software.

You can find more information and download Mobile Office from the product's website: www.sept-solutions.de/English/office.php

Cortado: Pushing Email To Print

ThinPrint started its activities in the mobile industry offering enterprise tools to print documents from handheld devices in 2000. Cortado, a division of ThinPrint, now offers those features, along with a wide range of other mobile productivity services, to small companies and individuals. I explore the services with Dirk Löwenberg, Business Director Cortado Services at ThinPrint.

About two years ago ThinPrint realized that there was an increasing demand for its printing solution from small enterprises and individuals. ThinPrint's technology was at that time exclusively the domain of enterprises. As a result ThinPrint set up a hosted service offering printing, faxing, and PC based viewing of emails, email attachments, and files resident on a mobile device.

With the hosted environment in place ThinPrint realized it had the opportunity to host other services. "We could see that our printing technology was being used heavily to print emails and email attachments," says Dirk. "So hosting an email service seemed a natural step."

To differentiate the mobile products from the printing infrastructure solutions, the new hosted services along with the established enterprise solutions were moved to a separate brand - Cortado - with infrastructure solutions remaining under the ThinPrint brand.

Cortado offers email hosting in two distinct versions. A free email service offers user either Web based access to emails or the ability to upload email to their device using POP3 or IMAP Idle. Users select their own address on the @cortado.com domain. For devices with the ability to use IMAP Idle the free service offers a basic push capability. Users can continue to use an existing email address in conjunction with Cortado Free, as a polling option can collect email from one existing POP3 address. Alternatively users could also forward email to their Cortado address, if their current email provider offers this option. To further protect the investment in an existing email address, Cortado Free can send email marked with an alternative reply address. To prevent spoofing this feature requires the use of an activation code.

With many ISPs and some Webmail providers offering IMAP Idle features Dirk sees Cortado Free serving two purposes. "First, unlike many ISPs, we highlight Cortado Free as a mobile email service," says Dirk. "In addition, we feel it is a great way to introduce users to our premium services for mobile faxing and printing as well as our fee based hosted Microsoft Exchange service."

The Exchange based service offers user the ability to use ActiveSync. Principally marketed to users with S60 devices from Nokia (in addition to Palm and Windows Mobile users) it provides full push of email, contacts, calendar, and tasks through Nokia's Mail for Exchange client. In addition, it works equally well with Exchange ActiveSync (from DataViz) provided with the Sony Ericsson P1i (although on UIQ devices users cannot get the premium printing services.)

The hosted Exchange email can also be accessed via POP3 or IMAP Idle for devices without ActiveSync clients. However, for those devices Cortado offers Intellisync as an alternative push email option. The option to use Intellisync is also a potential alternative to the ActiveSync client on S60 devices as it provides users with advanced device management features, such as remote device wiping, in addition to PIM synchronization and push email.

Email services started as a way to add additional value to the hosting service that was principally designed to provide mobile printing solutions. It is not therefore surprising to find that these printing services are now also an option for the hosted Exchange services.

The printing service started life as just that, a way to send emails, email attachments, or documents stored elsewhere on a device to an Infrared or Bluetooth capable printer. "Customer feedback soon told us that printing was only one of the features our users needed," says Dirk. "So we added the ability to send documents via Fax, create short fax messages, and a print-to-screen mechanism that allows documents to be beamed to a laptop PC and viewed on screen."

These services are offered through an S60 application, but with each feature (print, fax, and print-to screen) charged for on a monthly basis. An additional print client is required on any PC used for the print-to-screen function. Combining the print services with a paid Cortado email account offers additional features, including the ability to preview email attachments without downloading the original file. This view feature requires less data to download the viewable file than the original and enable the viewing of files with no associated viewing or editing application on the mobile device.

In the future Dirk expects Cortado to offer additional free services supported by advertising. Also the Cortado Enterprise products have recently added the ability to browse corporate file systems or a hosted Web file storage service. Browsed file can then be forward files via email or fax without first downloading them to a mobile device. Dirk indicated that this service would probably be made available as a hosted service: allowing individuals and small businesses to access and forward files stored on third party web storage services.

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Cortado Free is (unsurprisingly) available free of charge. The hosted Exchange service is available in four options ranging in price from $5.98 to $11.98 per month. A free 30 day trail is available for all hosted Exchange services. The print, fax, and print-to-screen services are available for $8.98 per month each. A free 10 day trial is available for all S60 devices from Nokia except the Nokia E90 for which a 60 day trial is available.

For more information on Cortado email and premium printing services visit www.cortado.com.

MOSH Mobile Client Comes To Beta Labs

Nokia Beta Labs has announced the availability of a S60 client enabling access to MOSH. While it is little more than a browser front end Nokia is hinting at it becoming a rich client over time.

MOSH has been designed by Nokia to be a device agnostic, user-driven distribution channel for mobile applications and other mobile content. While it can be used from a desktop Web browser, it is really intended to be used on mobile devices. Currently users have accessed MOSH via their devices browser and that does not change much with the MOSH client.

While the MOSH client allows you to upload and share various types of content (applications, games, audio, images, and video) it still does it through the Web Browser for S60. The client simply provides an entry point to various key MOSH pages, upload, search, browse, and your statistics.

One nice feature is that the installation provides is the option to add MOSH to the idle screens application shortcuts. This is a trick not yet employed by many developers (but likely to be more common from now on perhaps?)

The fact that the client simply drives out to the Web Browser for S60 creates the application's biggest current shortcoming. If you select a feature then navigate away from the first page returning to the MOSH client is a little awkward. If you stay on or return to the first page you can return to the client by selecting Close, navigate away from this page and you need to select Exit. It's not a big issue but while it fits with browser style functionality it is counter intuitive if you think of the MOSH client purely as an application.

The whole point of Nokia's Beta Lab is to get application "out there" and involve the users in guiding the next generation of the application. However, while the MOSH client may be of interest to MOSH fans, it is perhaps a little too beta at this stage offering not much more than the pure Web version.

I'll await version 2 with interest.

The MOSH client can be downloaded from www.nokia.com/betalabs/mosh and MOSH accessed at either mosh.nokia.com or mosh.nokia.mobi and don't forget to check out the SymbianOne MOSH account.

VoiceMode: Breaking The Text Input Barrier

Entering text on a smartphone can be a painful experience for all but the most hardened txters. For the rest of us VoiceSignal's latest recognition product may be the answer. Richard Bloor put VoiceMode through its paces.

{mosaddphp:mega.php}Smartphone makers are constantly looking for new ways to make text entry simple and effective. Generally this focuses on keyboard design and various predictive text applications. The solution to simple text entry, however, may not be a question of how best to type text into a smartphone; it might be more a case of how best to say what you want typed.

VoiceSignal has a track record of creating effective voice recognition applications for smartphones (and feature phones too). Until recently these applications were only available as built-in phone features and, at least on Symbian devices, limited to command and control applications, such as voice dialing.

That has changed with the introduction of VoiceMode. This is VoiceSignal's first recognition product available as an add-on application, in this case for S60 3rd Edition devices. VoiceMode provides continuous speech-to-text recognition capabilities. As such it promises to eliminate the need to tap out text on a numeric keypad, at least for short messages.

Once installed VoiceMode needs to be adapted before it can be used. VoiceSignal recommends this adaption training is performed in a quiet room. The process involves repeating a number of simple phrases, seventy five in all. It is possible to continue training beyond the initial seventy five phrases, but VoiceMode seems to work fine on just the basic training.

There is a second setup task that can be performed. This is to import names from your device's contacts database. This process adds up to 2500 names to VoiceMode's dictionary and assists in ensuring accurate recognition for those names.

Once the setup has been completed VoiceMode can be turned on. The first time this is done VoiceMode asks for licensing details. The choices are: a one day trial or license code entry. VoiceMode is only available officially through Nokia Software Market, which does not offer a trial download. So, you will already have a license key at this stage. Hopefully, VoiceSignal will eventually get VoiceMode into more channels and a trial download will be available.

Once running VoiceMode displays a flag whenever a field it can enter text into is active. The recognition process is activated by pressing the green "talk" key. When this is done, after a short delay, a banner displays at the bottom of the screen stating "TALK NOW".

My tests suggested that the recognition of the first word is more accurate if dictation is not started until the banner is displayed. The text required can now be dictated by talking in, as VoiceSignal recommends, a "calm, clear, and even voice". The complete message should also be broken down into small phrases, rather than dictated in one go.

During dictation it is possible to insert a range of common punctuation using key words, such as "comma", "hyphen", and "ampersand". It is also possible to insert two smilies ("happy-face" and "sad-face"). In addition, common abbreviations are substituted for the spoken version, for example "Mister" becomes "Mr". This feature also does the same with common SMS expressions, so "laughed out loud" recognizes as "LOL". The area where normal speech may not achieve the desired result is with numbers. For example "one thousand, four hundred, and ten" might be transcribed as "1 thousand 4 hundred and 10" so if the desired result was 1410 you actually need to say the numbers, "one four one zero" or "one four ten", but this is only necessary for numbers over 99. Dates do not present any problems.

Once the dictation of a phrase is complete the green key is released and the recognized text entered in the field. The last word recognized is now highlighted in red.

If a recognition error has occured the scroll keys can be used to navigate to the incorrect word. Then, by pressing the select key, a list of correction options is displayed. These options include words VoiceMode thinks could have been spoken and the option to spell the word if none of the suggestions are correct.

The correction process does more than simply correct the dictated text, VoiceMode also adapts its recognition process, so over time it becomes more accurate.

I tested VoiceSignal's VSuite back in 2006 and was impressed by the accuracy of its speaker independent voice dialing recognition in a range of environments. VoiceMode has a significantly harder job, there being a far wider vocabulary of words to recognize. However, VoiceMode takes this challenge in its stride. Recognition accuracy can be a little erratic at first, but after a few uses - and through a combination of recognition error corrections and learning the most appropriate way to talk - the recognition is impressive. It performs well in a range of environments, working well in a car traveling at motorway speeds (I was not the driver), restaurants, and city streets. This performance is even more impressive when compared to desktop voice recognition applications. These often take up hundreds of megabytes of disk space, while VoiceMode uses just a few megabytes.

While VoiceMode may be diminutive compared to similar PC applications it is relatively large by smartphone application standards. Loading VoiceMode uses approximately 7Mb of RAM, with approximately 200kb of additional memory used whenever a field VoiceMode can be used to dictate into is active. Despite this relatively large memory footprint, I found several business orientated applications could be run in parallel with VoiceMode with no memory issues on a Nokia N93. As VoiceMode worked happily on an N93 it should work acceptably on almost any S60 3rd Edition device, as the devices with the lowest available free RAM memory offer about 18Mb while the N93 offers 22Mb.Many recent devices have much more free memory available to execute applications.

However, to minimize memory used VoiceMode currently limits the number of words that can be dictated into any field to around 100. This is more than adequate for most SMS messages, but can be limiting for longer replies to emails. Considering many applications - that on the face of it probably do much less work than VoiceMode - can take up several megabytes of memory I do wonder if VoiceSignal has been a little too conservative in the current limitation. That said, VoiceSignal have a new version in development that will allow up to 500 words to be dictated with out a significant increase in memory usage. This will almost certainly make VoiceMode useful for replying to almost any email. However, this stops short of making VoiceMode a general purpose text entry system, which could for example be used to update a Word document in Quickoffice.

(With a little lateral thinking it is possible to use VoiceMode to dictate a document of more than 100 words. Using an application such as Kylom's excellent Projekt, in which the text can be entered in discrete units, VoiceMode can be used to dictate and edit a long document that is saved to text for any final formatting.)

VoiceMode is currently certified for only a small number of S60 3rd Edition devices, namely the Nokia N73, Nokia E62, Nokia E61, Nokia 5500, and Nokia 3250. I was able to test VoiceMode only on the as yet unsupported Nokia N80, Nokia E61i, and Nokia N93. On the N80 VoiceMode installed, but crashed the device each time I tried to start it, while on the E61i and N93 it worked well. I found a couple of minor issues on the E61i and N93; the Web Browser for S60 does not open with VoiceMode on, VoiceMode sometimes fails to issue an error message when it can no longer accepted text into a field, and the "pencil" button did not provide a quick link to the VoiceMode control panel, but these were relatively easy issues to work around. So, if you do not have one of the certified devices it would pay to wait until the software can be downloaded and tested before you buy. (There is a copy of the American English version of VoiceMode hosted on MOSH, although this does not look like an official posting so it may not be maintained.)

So can you throw away your keyboard? Well almost. VoiceMode is certainly accurate and much faster than tapping away on a tiny phone keypad or thumb board. Once you get accustomed to using it (which is not very long) it quickly becomes frustrating on those occasions when you can not use it to dictate a message (which mainly means when you would not want to be overheard). This is an application I will be installing on any new S60 device without any hesitation. If there is one drawback it is that you will want to use VoiceMode for all your text entry, however, given what VoiceMode can do today, I'm sure that will not be too far away.

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You can find the British English version of VoiceMode here on Nokia Software Market.

Careful Selection, Predictable Result

Information Week has just published a "Smartphone Browser Shootout". The result was somewhat predictable, given the careful selection of the “competition”. Information Week ignored all Symbian based devices, although the Nokia N75 met all the article’s criterion for device selection. Perhaps this was to avoid the unpleasant prospect of comparing two implementations of a Safari based browser. A case of not wanting to show that a European company could do a better job? Ironically much of the Web Browser for S60 development is done in the US, just up the road from Information Week, in Boston.