The themes they are a-changin': Theme Scheduler schedules profiles and wallpapers too

Theme Scheduler changes the theme of your mobile phone on schedule. You can also link themes to your current active profile, so that your phone changes theme when you change profile.

This can be useful if you often switch between silent, offline, and loud profiles, and you want a visual indication of the type of active profile all over your phone's user interface instead of just a bit of text on your standby screen. For example, you can use a red theme for normal profiles to warn you that your phone may make noise, a green theme for silent profiles, and a white or dull grey theme to indicate that your phone is offline.

Theme Scheduler can now also schedule your wallpaper, so you can automate switching your phone from a serious corporate style during business hours to a sexy look at night, or add an extra visual cue for the silent, noisy, offline, or online status of your phone.

Theme Scheduler comes in two versions: signed and unsigned. The unsigned version is free, but you'll have to run it through the Symbian Signed bureaucracy before you can install it on your phone, or sign it with your own certificate, or hack your phone to set it free from the claws of Symbian Signed. There's also a signed version of Theme Scheduler, but publisher IDs cost money, so the signed version is bundled with adtronic.

Adtronic is a horribly intrusive application that pollutes your phone with advertisements (even when Theme Scheduler is not running!), so better get the unsigned version of Theme Scheduler. Signing the program or hacking your phone takes a bit of extra work, but allowing adtronic to infect your phone is much, much, much worse.

• Theme Scheduler by Jukka Silvennoinen

If you like Theme Scheduler, you may also want to try Profile Scheduler.

PowerMP3 adds eye candy, FolderPlay learns to pause, YouTube mobile website supports uploads, UTube downloader back online

PowerMP3

Symbian music player PowerMP3 plays mp3, ogg, aac, and mp4 files, and m3u playlists too. It has a sleeptimer, album art display (including the possibility to download album art), and several ways to keep your ringtones out of your music library. PowerMP3 sorts your music by mp3 tags and folder structure.

For all practical purposes PowerMP3 is still in beta testing, but that doesn't stop its maker from selling registration codes for US$25 apiece. The registration process doesn't always work as it should, and since the latest update doesn't add anything useful you may just as well use (or keep using) the last free beta version instead.

The latest version of PowerMP3 comes with extra skins and themes, a new icon (which doesn't look good on dark backgrounds), and PowerMP3 now speaks brazilian portuguese.

But just because PowerMP3 is able to talk brazilian portuguese doesn't mean it is good at playing playlists with brazilian or portuguese songs, or french music, or any other track that has tildas, accents etc. in its file name. PowerMP3 has a very annoying bug that's been left unfixed for ages: songs with characters like ã, é, ç, etc. in their names don't show up in your imported m3u playlists.

If you install PowerMP3 on top of another version and it doesn't work, uninstall the old version first. If the old version won't go away, switch your phone off and back on.

• PowerMP3 from MobiFactor (commercial version) UPDATE: this link expired
• PowerMP3 v1.17b (no registration needed) at Mobile Castle UPDATE: this link expired
• PowerMP3 1.16 (last free version) at MobiFactor UPDATE: this link expired
• PowerMP3 1.16 (last free version) at Mobile Castle UPDATE: this link expired
• older versions of PowerMP3


FolderPlay

Symbian S60 music player FolderPlay looks like a file manager. If you navigate to a folder with music, it plays all songs in that folder, but subfolders are still a problem. If you play a folder with songs and subfolders, it only plays the tracks in the first subfolder and ignores the rest.

FolderPlay plays MP3, AAC, WAV, FLAC, APE, AC3, OGG, and other files, but not WMA.

The latest FolderPlay update fixes bugs in pause and resume, and an APE playback problem was repaired.

There are other ways to play music organised by folders. Music Launcher is similar to FolderPlay, but MusicLauncher does it better if you stick with MP3. PowerMP3 and TTPod sort your music by tags and by folder structure, and there's a folder structure workaround for the built-in Symbian music player.

• FolderPlay


YouTube

The mobile YouTube website m.youtube.com doesn't look different at first glance, but if you log into your YouTube account you'll find that the new mobile YouTube site now supports video uploading, commenting, and other features that used to be available on the full YouTube site only.

• m.youtube.com

Instead of using your browser, you can also watch YouTube videos with Symbian program YouTube for mobile.


UTube

Want to download and save YouTube videos on your phone?

The official YouTube program and mobile website don't support it, but website and mobile Java application UTube does, and you can choose between three video formats (mp4, flv, and 3gp) and different quality settings.

UTube doesn't do much. It just loads its site your mobile phone web browser, which lets you download YouTube videos to your phone. Videos are downloaded to the standard downloads folder of your phone. UTube doesn't have a YouTube search function, so you have to type or copy/paste the full YouTube video URL into the UTube downloader. This means lots of typing or workarounds like saving the page as a temporary bookmark to copy the URL. Instead of installing UTube you could just as well save the UTube downloader site as a bookmark, since all the program does is launch your browser anyway.

UTube moved to a new web address, and the mobile Java application was updated to work with the new URL.

• aztube.co.cc, the UTube downloader website UPDATE: this link expired
• UTube v2.10 beta at Mobile Castle UPDATE: this link expired

BrightLight turns your phone into a flashlight: for touchscreen and non-touch phones

Are you lost in the dark?

When you launch BrightLight, it switches the flash led of your phone camera on.

BrightLight is designed for touchscreen Nokias, but it also works on non-touchscreen phones. On my non-touch Nokia N78 only part of the user interface of BrightLight shows, but that doesn't stop the program from switching the light on.

To exit the program on a non-touch phone, just push the right softkey or the red hangup button. This will exit BrightLight and switch off the camera light.

• BrightLight (direct download link)

BrightLight doesn't work on every phone with a led flash. For example, it failed to run on my old Nokia 6120 Classic. If BrightLight doesn't work on your phone, or if you want to use your display as a torch instead of your camera led, try Light Control.

Warning: Keeping the light on for too long may damage the led on some phones. Use at your own risk. I'm not responsible for what you do with your phone.

UPDATE: Now there's a version of BrightLight for non-touch phones too.

MyNotes and ActiveFile fix bugs, but users of Contacts Transfer be warned

MyNotes

Symbian's built-in Notes application does its job, but MyNotes does more. With MyNotes you can protect your notes with a password, encrypt them, and organise them into folders. MyNotes used to choke on passwords that contain a zero, but the latest update fixes this bug.

MyNotes is a mobile Java program, so it doesn't launch as fast as Symbian's built-in notes application. But that's a small price to pay for password protection, encryption, and filing your notes into folders.

• MyNotes


ActiveFile

A new beta test version of file manager ActiveFile appeared on the ActiveFile website, but was quickly removed. For details about ActiveFile, check this review.

What's new (according to the changelog)?

The beta test version comes as a single installer for all versions of Symbian S60, and numerous bugs were fixed.

What's new (according to my own test, which is far from complete)?

The SMS backup and restore function has improved. The "backup options" entry in the menu of the SMS backup tool works now, so you don't have to click all the way to the settings menu to change your SMS backup/restore settings. And the "ignore duplicate" setting (which you can set to yes or no) doesn't forget your choice anymore.

The "fake SMS" feature has a new bug. When I created fake messages with the beta test version, ActiveFile got the dates wrong. August 10 became July 9, September 11 became August 10, etcetera. If you want to set a certain date for your message, you'll have to increase the day and month by one. This means you can't fake an SMS for the last day of the month, because ActiveFile won't accept the 32nd of August. If you set the first day of the month (or the first month of the year) and hit "create," ActiveFile crashes without creating the message, since one minus one produces an invalid date. On the bright side, ActiveFile can fake outgoing messages in addition to inbound SMSs, a feature you won't find (yet) in Free-iSMS or Fake Messages.

What's not new?

SMS backup files can be stored on your phone's built-in memory or on your memory card, but ActiveFile won't let you choose in which folder you'd like the backup to be stored. It doesn't even tell you the location of the backup file, which makes it unnecessarily difficult to copy the backup to your computer, store it online, or send it to another Symbian phone to merge different messaging folders.

You can move, copy, and send the SMS backup files manually if you know where they are. If you choose to store SMS backups in "internal memory" the backup files are stored in C:\Data\Others. If you choose "memory card" the files end up in E:\Others.

A bug that has not been fixed, and which may cause very unpleasant surprises: when you delete SMS backups from within ActiveFile's SMS backup screen it will also delete phone book backups created by Contacts Transfer if they're on the same drive. To be on the safe site, tell ActiveFile and Contacts Transfer to use different drives to store their backups until ActiveFile is fixed.

Other bugs may have been repaired (or introduced), but I'll wait for future updates to look into that. For managing my files I still prefer X-plore, and KillMe and JBak TaskMan are better than ActiveFile's built-in task manager. What really sets ActiveFile apart from other file and task managers is its nondestructive SMS backup and restore option and the Fake Message creator. These features work, even though there is plenty of room for bug fixes and other improvements.

• ActiveFile from Alie Tan
• ActiveFile v1.43.1 beta at Mobile Castle