New improved version of phone book, call recorder and threaded SMS program Youlu

Youlu Address Book is more than an address book. It's also an SMS program, call recorder, and "vibrate on answer" application. A name like "Youlu Contacts" would fit this versatile program much better.

If you trust Youlu's server with your private data it can backup your contacts, messages, and calender to its server. This not only gets your phone book back when your phone gets lost or broken, but it's also useful for synchronising your data between phones. But even without Youlu's online backup there are still plenty of reasons to use this very useful program.

Youlu Adress Book does the things you expect from an address book (make phone calls, edit your contacts, send SMSs). The latest version reads the contacts on your SIM card too, and it lets you edit the pictures associated with your contacts. Youlu lets you tie ringtones to contacts if they're stored in the standard sounds folders on your phone. It doesn't see sound files in other folders, which is great if you want to set a ringtone without having to scroll through the thousands of MP3s that you may have stored in your music folder.

The SMS tab shows your messages as threaded conversations. The latest version of Youlu sees all your messages, even if you move them into custom folders. Even better, Youlu lets you choose whether you want to group conversations by contact or by folder. And unlike some other SMS programs, messages that you send with Youlu appear in the built-in SMS application of your phone too.

Some minor things to fix:

The phone book manager doesn't have all the fields from Symbian's built-in address book. Anniversaries, SIP (VoIP) numbers, and notes are among the missing entries.

The FreeCallSprite-like "vibrate on answer" function didn't work when I tried it.

The call recorder works if you activate it with the central navigation button, but the "record with camera button" option made Youlu crash on my phone.

Hitting the red hangup button sends the program to the background instead of closing it, and when Youlu runs in the background it won't show up in the task manager when you long-press the menu key. Exiting the program still requires a trip to the menu in the settings tab. Maybe a future version of Youlu can let us configure the behaviour of the red button and make the program appear the task manager when sent to the background?

If Youlu fixes the few remaining issues it will be very tempting to ditch my phone's built-in phone book and SMS client and use Youlu instead. Especially if it gets an offline backup function to store contacts, messages, and calender entries in a file on my own memory card and computer instead of on Youlu's server.

• Youlu UPDATE: This link is dead. And so is Symbian.

Last time I checked, the official site still offered version 1.0.1 of the program. But version 1.0.2 (which is much better) is available on Ziddu:

• Youlu 1.0.2 (english version) on Ziddu UPDATE: This link is dead. And so is Symbian.

No recording tone: record phone calls without the beep

When you record a phone call, it's polite (and sometimes legally required) to let the other end know you're recording the conversation.

But Nokia is overdoing it. When you record a call with your mobile phone's built-in recorder (or another recording program) your phone will play a beep every fifteen seconds. This gets annoying real quick.

Some recording programs let you remove the beep, but if you have a new phone with new firmware not only the beep is removed, but there are gaps in the recording where the beep used to be.

But you can have beepless recording without gaps.

If you've hacked your phone and installed ROMPatcher, you can run wadowice's ROMPatcher patches that really removes the beep. When you activate the patch, there'll be nore more beeps no matter what program you use to record your calls.

I got best results when I combined the ROMPatcher patch with Ultimate Voice Recorder. I left the beep on in the settings of Ultimate Voice Recorder (to prevent the program from inserting gaps), because the patch suppressed them anyway. It also works with Total Recall. Unfortunately Ultimate Voice Recorder and Total Recall are not free. For free beepless call recording just run the ROMPatcher patch together with your phone's built-in recorder, but keep in mind that Nokia's recorder application stops recording when you move to the call screen, for example when you need to punch some numbers in. If you know of another free call recorder that works with the No Recording Tone patches, please leave a comment or click the contact link on the bottom of this page.

• Remove Recording Tone patches at symbian underground
• Remove Recording Tone patches at the Symbian Freak forum (signup/login required) UPDATE: This link is dead. And so is Symbian.

XSmart: filter your calls by blacklist and whitelist

XSmart rejects calls and messages that you don't want to receive. You can filter by blacklist and whitelist, or simply reject calls or messages or both from unknown numbers. The program comes from China, but there's an english version on Mobile Castle. Unfortunately the help file has not been translated.

When you uninstall XSmart, it leaves a folder called "XShine" with log files and settings behind in the built-in memory of your phone, even if you've installed the program on your memory card.

XSmart may be useful, but MCleaner does the same and more and is a lot easier to use.

• XSmart v1.33.2 english translation on Mobile Castle
• XSmart site (chinese)

MCleaner blocks and filters calls and messages

MCleaner lets you reject calls, SMSs, and MMSs. When people on your blacklist try to call you, you can send them a busy tone, mute the ringtone, reject the call with an SMS, or divert the call to any number you like. All blocks and filters can be scheduled, so you can block incoming calls when you're asleep or reject all calls from your boss outside business hours.

You can filter calls by blacklist and whitelist. MCleaner uses your Symbian phone book to make it easy to import contacts to the lists of allowed and forbidden callers.

A nice touch is the option to filter messages by keyword. You can blacklist all SMSs that contain the word "work" and whitelist all messages with the keyword "beer."

MCleaner is a chinese program, but Shashank1976 made an english translation. Small bug: the first entry in the basic settings screen escaped translation. Another tiny issue: when you uninstall MCleaner it leaves some configuration data behind in your system folder.

• MCleaner v2.01 (english version) on Mobile Castle

LowCaller: VoIP without an internet connection

Mobile operators usually charge ridiculously high rates for international calls.

If you have a live mobile internet connection you have plenty of VoIP options available, like Nimbuzz, fring, Talkonaut, and Skype Lite. But what if your mobile internet connection is too slow, your mobile operator doesn't allow VoIP on its GPRS or 3G network, or there's no Wi-Fi available here and now?

Then you route your international call through a local number. There are plenty of companies that offer free or cheap international calls through a local number, and the price of a local call plus the charge for an international call from anyone but your mobile operator often works out a lot cheaper than a direct international call with your mobile operator.

One of the companies that offers cheap international calls through local numbers is Betamax, which runs voipcheap.com, voipbuster.com, and other cheap VoIP services which can be accessed through a local number.

You can program the local access number into the contacts list of your phone, but there's another way to route your international mobile calls through a mobile number: LowCaller.

LowCaller runs in the background on your phone. When you make an outbound call, it can route the call through a local number. This doesn't always work out cheaper (it doesn't make sense to route local calls through LowCaller), so make sure you configure the program to ask you whether to route the call or not.

Unfortunately the list of local access numbers is limited. They're only available in Austria, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, and the UK. There may be local access numbers from other companies that are not owned by Betamax, but because LowCaller doesn't work with the competition its usefulness is way less than it could be.

Fortunately there's Mobile Calling Card Dialer. This program is intended for calling cards, but you can use it with any service that routes calls through a (local) phone number, so it's much more flexible than LowCaller.

• LowCaller
• Mobile Calling Card Dialer, an alternative to LowCaller

Mobile Calling Card Dialer saves pushing a bunch of buttons

Update: This app died, just like Symbian.

Calling from your mobile phone can be expensive, especially when roaming. Prepaid calling cards can save you lot of money, but you have to punch many, many, many buttons on your phone to stop your mobile operator from extorting their ridiculous roaming rates from you.

Enter Mobile Caling Card Dialer from self-proclaimed wannabee mobile geek Hamidou Diallo.

Mobile Calling Card Dialer is an application in mobile Java that simply does its not too demanding job. Let the program save the details of your calling cards and you no longer need to feed them into your phone again and again everytime you want to make a cheap call on the move.

• The Mobile Calling Card Dialer site

Direct links to the installer files so you can back 'em up and don't need to do an online on-the-fly install:

• Mobile Calling Card Dialer 2.0 .jar file
• Mobile Calling Card Dialer 2.0 .jad file

Update: This app died, just like Symbian.

Auto Call Back: reduce call costs by calling back without picking up

Imagine: you and your girlfriend are on different mobile phone plans. It's very expensive for her to call you, but very cheap for you to call her.

To save costs, she could call you, end the call before you pick up, and wait until you notice the missed call and call her back.

Auto Call Back is a Symbian program that makes this a lot easier. It lets you select a group of numbers that are automatically called back. When one of these numbers calls, Auto Call Back will drop the call before it costs any money, then automatically calls back.

Different tariffs? Expensive fixed line to mobile calls but cheap calls the other way 'round? With Auto Call Back you communicate by the cheapest method.

Auto Call Back needs to be signed through Symbian Signed Online or with your own certificate. Or simply hack your phone and never be bothered by signing issues again.

• Download Auto Call Back from the official site. You'll get a .zip file full of source code and other stuff you don't really need. Somewhere among the files is a .sis file, and this is what you need to install. If your advertisment blocker doesn't allow content from fastclick.net you won't reach the download page.

• Direct link to the Auto Call Back program files from the official site.

• Auto Call Back on DotSIS, with just the .sis installer and none of the unnecessary source code etc.

FreeCallSprite updated: call a number and make your phone shake when the other end answers

Call a number and wait. When the other end answers, your phone will shake. You can also make it blink or make noise through the speakers. With FreeCallSprite you don't have to hold your phone against your ear while waiting for the other end to pick up.

The new version fixes a bunch of bugs, works better with your contacts list, speaks more languages, and searches for numbers faster.

FreeCallSprite needs to be signed with a devcert. No devcert needed if you hack your phone.

• FreeCallSprite from junnikokuki

StopCall: call filter to keep the unwanted out of your phone

Need to keep unwanted callers out? There are Symbian blacklist programs like Mobiegenie and Anfy CallFilter, and now there's a new app on the block to bounce the undesired: StopCall.

StopCall uses a blacklist (maybe a whitelist feature will be added later?), requires that you have Python installed on your phone, and there are a few bugs waiting to be killed, but it's a promising start for a brand new free application.

So try it, and leave some feedback on the symbian-freak forum so the developer can improve the program.

• StopCall on symbian-freak
• StopCall discussion on the symbian-freak forum
• StopCall direct download link