ActiveFile site offline, program mirrored on Mobile Castle

UPDATE: The ActiveFile site is back online.

ActiveFile is an excellent file manager for Symbian. It can do much more than Nokia's own file browser.

ActiveFile lets you see the system folders that Nokia's own file manager tries to hide fom you. ActiveFile can send protected files over bluetooth, and has a screenshot function, task manager, battery and memory monitors, phone restarter, and lets you send fake SMSs to your own phone inbox. It also has an SMS backup and restore feature, but I couldn't get that to work on any of my phones.

The bad news: its website has been unavailable for a while, showing "404 not found" errors.

The good news: ActiveFile is also available on Mobile Castle.

ActiveFile does a lot of things that X-plore (another great file manager) won't do. The same applies the other way 'round: ActiveFile and X-plore complement each other, so make sure to install both programs on your phone.

You need to hack your phone or "sign" ActiveFile with a developer certificate for full functionality. There's also an "open signed" version, but the developer version can do a lot more. To unleash the full potential of ActiveFile, set your copy of Symbian free.

• ActiveFile signed (extremely limited capabilities), open signed online (limited capabilities), and unsigned (full capabilities)
• ActiveFile v1.40.186 on Mobile Castle

UPDATE: The ActiveFile site is back online.

ApDLauncher: a faster way to your Nokia's programs and settings

The number of shortcuts on your Nokia standby screen is limited. For anything that you can't fit into the six or seven shortcut icons and the two configurable softkeys you'll have to open the menu and navigate into the folders.

Or you can use ApDLauncher. This program puts Nokia's programs and settings screens into a series of cascading menus, so you don't need to navigate deep down into your folders to launch them.

ApDLauncher v1.2.56 is geared towards Symbian S60 3rd ed. Feature Pack 2. It works on Feature Pack 1 too, but the shortcuts to Feature Pack 2-specific applications won't launch anything.

ApDLauncher might save you a few clicks, but quick access to ApDLauncher takes a shortcut on your standby screen. I'm not sure if it's worth a shortcut, because in its current state of development ApDLauncher has some serious limitations. You can't make your own menus, you can't move entries from one menu to another, and you can't add shortcuts to the programs you've installed yourself. Maybe that will be added to future versions of ApDLauncher?

Another free launcher is tutLaunch. This doesn't have cascading menus, and it won't launch some mobile Java programs, but tutLaunch lets you add your own choice of programs to the launch menu. It's a great program for combining your multimedia programs or settings panels under one shortcut, because these applications are usually not written in Java.

• ApDLauncher v1.2.56 at Mobile Castle
• tutLaunch

PhoNetInfo: everything you always wanted to know about your phone but were afraid to ask

PhoNetInfo tells you just about everything there is to know about your phone and the network it's connected to.

Numbers like IMEI, IMSI, your firmware version, the network signal strength, your Wi-Fi and bluetooth MAC addresses, the technical specs of your phone camera, your phone processor speed, how much RAM your phone really has and how much of it is free, and much, much, much more.

PhoNetInfo also lists the running tasks on your phone, including those that are hidden from Symbian's built-in task manager.

The latest version has less bugs, and you can copy all info displayed by PhoNetInfo to Symbian's clipboard.

PhoNetInfo can restart your phone for you, which takes less button push actions than switching your phone off and on. Restart worked on my Feature Pack 1 phones, but not on my Feature Pack 2 Nokia N78.

• PhoNetInfo

Second PowerMP3 beta test version

PowerMP3 from Mobifactor plays mp3, ogg, aac, and mp4 files. It has a sleeptimer, an "exclude" option for small files and files of low bitrate (so you can exclude your ringtones from your music library), and it displays album art.

PowerMP3 sorts your music by mp3 tag the way Symbian's own player does, and it lets you play folders the way LCG Jukebox does. It also reads m3u playlists. PowerMP3 is the closest to WinAmp you can get on a Symbian phone. The old beta version shuts itself down after one song, but the new beta keeps playing, so it is a real functional music player now (except for the equaliser, which still doesn't work in this beta test version).

The Symbian UIQ version of PowerMP3 is quite expensive, so don't expect the final version of PowerMP3 to be free. But the the current beta test version doesn't cost anything and it's already better than Symbian's built-in music player. Let's hope Mobifactor didn't build a time bomb into the beta test version.

• PowerMP3 beta 2 from Mobifactor
• PowerMP3 beta 2 at Mobile Castle