Updated: Instant messenger Slick, push email program System Seven, and feed reader FlyScreen

Slick

Instant messaging program Slick connects to GoogleTalk and other Jabber networks, and to MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, and AIM. Slick does file transfer but not voice chat.

Slick was updated twice lately. The first update fixed a bug that bit Feature Pack 2 phones (hitting the enter key wouldn't sent your messages), but another bug appeared: you couldn't change your Yahoo login details anymore. This was repaired in the second update.

You can use Slick for free while beta testing lasts. But there are so many free instant messengers around that it's hard to believe that Slick will ever cost money.

• Slick


System Seven

Mobile push email client System Seven comes with preloaded settings for some popular email services like GMail, which makes it easier to set up your email accounts. System Seven can sync your contacts, calendar, and mail with MS Exchange Server.

The latest update fixes a problem with the * (star) key, which failed to launch the symbol entry menu. And now it can handle multiple accounts with the same username.

System Seven is still in beta testing, and there's plenty left to fix before the program may become usable on Symbian phones. System Seven eats lots of RAM, which slows down everything else on your phone. Your battery also takes a serious hit.

The program installs itself on your phone's built-in memory. If your phone doesn't have loads of built-in memory, forget about System Seven, because it stores your email including attachments on your phone's built-in memory, and you can't tell it to use your memory card instead.

When System Seven runs for the first time, it sends an SMS to +447624802625 without asking you first. It also snatches an active standby shortcut for itself without asking you first, and it does so before you accept the license agreement. Uninstalling System Seven does not necessarily restore the original active standby shortcut.

Before you can download System Seven, you'll need to sign up first. Even if you want to read the FAQ on the System Seven trial site you'll have to register, because the FAQ is part of a closed user forum. You can test System Seven for free while beta testing lasts, but you'll probably need to pay when the program is ready.

• System Seven


FlyScreen

FlyScreen is an RSS feed reader with Twitter, Facebook updates, a Google search box, and it shows the weather forecast too. If you leave FlyScreen running in the background you'll always have your updated feeds at your fingertips. If you don't want to keep FlyScreen running in the background you'll have to dig deep into the settings menu to find the exit, or fire up the task manager and use the delete button.

The program does little more than displaying links to websites, and even launches your web browser when you try to edit your collection of feeds. The FlyScreen site made the Symbian browser on my phone display a certificate error.

New in FlyScreen: previews of articles. When you click a title in a feed, FlyScreen shows a snippet of the story. But if you want to read the entire entry FlyScreen still needs to launch your phone's browser to display the content.

Not new in FlyScreen: FlyScreen won't let you merge RSS feeds into a single feed, and it calls all your custom feeds "Custom RSS" in the header without an option to choose a name yourself. The RSS feed box only fills part of your phone screen, with lots of empty space around. And switching tabs often sends you back to your menu or standby screen by accident.

A very annoying "feature" of FlyScreen is that it always remembers the last used access point, even if you don't want it to. The settings menu doesn't have an "always ask me which connection to use" option.

On the bright side, FlyScreen correcty displays the RSS feed of this blog.

FlyScreen wants you to create an account with your phone number as your username, and they want your email address too. If you don't want to get too personal with the makers of FlyScreen you can enter a fake email address and some numbers that look like a phone number.

• FlyScreen

Free your phone: HelloOX2 Symbian hack got better

Do you want Nokia to control what you can and cannot do with your mobile phone? Or Samsung? Or would you rather decide yourself?

The bad news: By default, Symbian comes with a lot of excessive restrictions, and the official Symbian policy is that you can't (and shouldn't) have the freedom to do with your phone what you want.

Most (if not all) Symbian phones won't let you install unsigned software, even if the unsigned programs are perfectly legitimate. There's a workaround called Open Signed Online, but this is still in beta testing and in its present state it's inadequate. Symbian also won't let you change the user interface beyond what Nokia (or Samsung, or SonyEricsson) thinks is good for you. Just try to change the name under a program icon or remove "share online" from your active standby and you'll see what I mean. And you can't silence the artificial camera shutter sound if you happen to have the wrong regional firmware edition, even if such shutter sound is not required in your country. The list of restrictions imposed by Symbian (and Nokia, and Samsung, and SonyEricsson) is long, and most of these restrictions are downright ridiculous.

The good news: If you hack your phone you can get rid of most of these restrictions. And rightly so. After all, it's your phone.

Setting your phone free is a cat and mouse game. Some smart people make the tools that let you set your phone free, Nokia strikes back with firmware updates that put the shackles back on, the hackers find a new way to put control back in your hands, and so on.

The latest episode in this comedy is called HelloOX2.

HelloOX by bugb is a way to hack Symbian on phones with firmware that resists the old HelloCarbide method. And now it got even better: HelloOX2 v2.01 plays well on the Nokia E52 and E90, in addition to the long list of phones that are supported by earlier editions of HelloOX and older hacking methods.

Keep in mind that liberating the E52 and E90 is still tricky, because ROMPatcher doesn't work on these phones yet. Check the list of hackable and unhackable phones for the latest info.

HelloOX needs to be signed with a "17 capabilities" certificate before you can install it. The authors of HelloOX2 sell a signed version for US$5, but of course you can also get the free (unsigned) version and sign it yourself.

UPDATE: The first release of HelloOX2 v2.01 had a bug: it would install ROMPatcher without asking you first. The links below point to "HelloOX2 v2.01 fixed," which asks you if you want to install ROMPatcher or not.

• HelloOX2 site (free version in .rar file from a file farm with forced countdown counter)
• HelloOX2 v2.01 fixed, unsigned (zip file, no forced wait)
• HelloOX2 v2.01 fixed, unsigned on Mobile Castle
• HelloOX2 discussion at Symbian Freak (login/signup required), the place for technical support questions
• how to get a free developer certificate

• list of Symbian phones and firmware versions that can (and cannot) be hacked
• all Symbian hacking methods (and a list of things you can do with a hacked phone)

Music player Kugou still won't shut up

Music player Kugou for mobile phones running on Symbian plays mp3, aac, wma, flac, and other audio files. The program displays all your tracks in a big list without filtering by artist, genre, or other mp3 tags. It can sort your files by artist or title, but if you have hundreds of songs on your memory card such primitive sorting is not enough.

The latest edition of KuGou has been translated into english by frenz, but there are still lots of buttons and menus and other parts in chinese. If you don't want KuGou to go online when you launch it, hit the right softkey.

Kugou used to be unable to list my music on my phones (it displayed all tracks as E! instead), but this bug is fixed now.

It's very hard to close Kugou. Trying to exit the program on my phones with the close button or the red hangup key pops up an error message (feature not supported), and Kugou refuses to quit. I had to shut down Kugou with KillMe to make it go away.

Warning: if you uninstall Kugou from your phone, several of its folders are left behind. To remove Kugou completely you have to use a file manager to clean up after the uninstaller.

My advice: forget about KuGou. Use PowerMP3 or TTPod instead. Even the built-in music player of your phone is better than KuGou, especially with this folder structure workaround.

• Kugou 2.10 translated by frenz from frenzShare (signup/login required to download) UPDATE: this link expired
• Kugou 2.10 translated by frenz on Mobile Castle (open for everybody) UPDATE: this link expired

AUGUST 20, 2009 UPDATE:
• Kugou 2.10 translated by CnD Team on Mobile Castle UPDATE: this link expired

Y-Browser took language classes, FileHide fails at hiding files

Y-Browser

Symbian file manager Y-Browser doesn't hide the system folders of your phone, so if you've set your phone free you can open those folders and modify their contents. And you can add plugins to Y-Browser to make it display text files, handle ZIP files, and more.

The latest update to Y-Browser makes it speak azerbaijani, catalan, and farsi, and its italian and slovenian language skills are improved. Of course Y-Browser also works in english. It currently supports 37 languages.

Y-Browser comes in two versions: signed and unsigned. Both versions are free, but you'll have to run the unsigned version 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. The signed version is bundled with adtronic, an intrusive piece of adware that pollutes your phone with advertisements (even when Y-Browser is not running!), so better get the unsigned version. 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.

• Y-Browser

ActiveFile and X-plore do wat Y-Browser does, and more. And you don't need to install plugins to make 'em do it.


FileHide

Most file managers for Symbian have an option to hide files, but you usually have to dig quite deep into the user interface to do so.

FileHide hides your files, and it does nothing else. This could make hiding files a lot easier than having to dig down several layers of menus and other distractions in multi-purpose programs. With FileHide you just have to select the file and hit "Go" to hide or unhide it. You can set a password too, so that other people cannot hide or unhide your files with FileHide when they catch hold of your phone.

Well, in theory that's how FileHide works. In real life things are different, which makes FileHide useless on most modern Symbian phones/

FileHide doesn't encrypt your files, it only hides them from Symbian's built-in file manager. Programs like X-plore and ActiveFile can see and unhide files hidden by FileHide, even if you've set a password in FileHide.

And because FileHide is a mobile Java program instead of a native Symbian application, your phone will pop up numerous security warnings. The many security warnings that you need to click away when using FileHide negate the advantage of the uncluttered interface. The total number of key presses required to hide or unhide a file with FileHide is larger than for real Symbian file managers, which totally defeats the purpose of FileHide.

• FileHide from zimbleTech
• FileHide at GetJar