Free mobile maps and navigation: Metro adds and updates cities, Mobile GMaps easier to touch, We-Travel crawls forward, Locify navigates the roads

Métro

Public transport navigator Métro (subways, trains, trams, buses, and ferry lines of over 400 cities) added three new cities (Verona, Ajaccio, Montluçon), and comes with updated public transport info for London, New York, Lisbon, Chicago, Budapest, Seattle, Berlin, Hong Kong, Rome, San Francisco, Madrid, Washington, Prague, Moscow, Manchester, Manila, Rotterdam, Seoul, and other cities.

The program itself is tweaked a bit as well, but there's still plenty of room for improvement. The competition doesn't sleep, and now that Google Maps is experimenting with public transport info on top of its maps it's a good idea to give Métro a few new features. The user interface could use a facelift as well.

Launching Métro for the first time takes forever, because it will search your phone for stored public transport info. Once you've selected a transit network Métro will launch faster.

When you change network, the search (and wait) repeats. To change the public transport network you'll need to select "network" in the options submenu of the options menu. This is rather counterintuitive, since most people think of connectivity like Wi-Fi, GSM, or UMTS when they see "network" on their phone. Métro would be a little easier to use if "network" would be called "cities" instead, and if the option to change it wouldn't be buried so deep down in a submenu.

The search screen could be better as well. Changing days and hours with the left and right side of the central navigation button makes it all too easy to change them by accident if you try to move to the next entry box. Selecting a station or bus stop shouldn't require a trip to the options menu, and the option should not be called "select," because this uninformative word doesn't tell you what you can select when you select it.

The "places of interest" list isn't searchable, so it requires endless scrolling to find a place of interest. It would be nice if Métro would display maps as well, with lines and stops indicated and clickable. If Métro could be made to talk to your GPS, it could tell you where your nearest public transport options are.

But even in its current state Métro is a very useful program. It stores all public transport info right on your phone so you can navigate the routes and times without a live mobile internet connection. That's a great way to avoid expensive data roaming bills, and it ensures that you have public transport info at your fingertips in places without network coverage, such as deep down in subway stations or remote bus stops in the middle of nowhere. Giving you a choice between the fastest route or the trip with the minimum number of connections is a nice touch too.

• Métro from metro.nanika.net



Mobile GMaps

Mobile Java map application Mobile GMaps shows online maps from Yahoo, Windows Live, Ask.com, and OpenStreetMap. You can make your own maps, and you can download maps (including maps from Google Maps) on your computer and store them on your phone to avoid paying for mobile data traffic to view maps on the road. Mobile GMaps can overlay maps with satellite, aerial, and subway maps.

Mobile GMaps used to display online Google Maps too, but Google threw some legal threats at them. You can still download maps from Google Maps and use them in Mobile GMaps offline.

Mobile GMaps works with internal and external GPSs, but you can't use the program for turn-by-turn (voice) navigation.

The latest update fixes some bugs, and Mobile GMaps is now much easier to use on touchscreen phones.

• Mobile GMaps homepage
• MGMaps Map Downloader
• MGaps forum



We-Travel

We-Travel is one of the few (only?) navigation programs that has free maps and free voice navigation. It stores its maps on your phone, so you can navigate without keeping an expensive, battery-draining active mobile internet connection running. You can use We-Travel to navigate by car, bike, or foot.

Building a working version of We-Travel on your phone is a complicated job: you have to install the program, maps, voice, and icon set separately. There's a new help file in pdf format, the We-Travel website has a wiki which explains how to to install We-Travel on your phone, and you can use a batch file to collect all the files you need to install We-Travel on your phone (you'll need to use a computer for that), but setting up We-Travel requires quite a bit of technical literacy.

And then you need maps. We-Travel's map generator is not for human consumption, so better get some maps from the We-Travel maps download page. Maps come from OpenStreetMap, and there are some maps from Garmin available that were extracted by We-Travel users. You can download and store as many maps as you like, but unfortunately We-Travel can only load one map at the time, which makes navigation across different countries somewhat difficult. You can work around this limitation by changing maps at every border, but you need to figure out where to cross the border by yourself and make We-Travel calculate a route for every country you drive through.

We-Travel is a mobile Java program, so make sure to open your phone's application manager to give We-Travel read/write permissions, otherwise your phone will drive you crazt with security warnings when you use We-Travel. For voice navigation with We-Travel you'll need to switch warning tones on. The warning tones of your phone are usually a nuisance, so it's a good idea to make a profile with warning tones enabled. This way you can easily toggle warning tones on and off with the power button of your phone, which is a lot easier than navigating down to the profile settings screen everytime you want to toggle the warning tones.

• We-Travel.co.cc



Locify

Locify shows maps, aerial photos and satellite images from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and OpenStreetMaps. Locify also reads locally stored maps (GoogleMaps 2 Trekbuddy is the easiest way to preload maps to your phone), and it sports location based Wikipedia search, events, weather info, and pictures from Panoramio work OK.

Locify used to have compass navigation only (which was useless for most purposes), but now it comes with road navigation too. It's nowhere near as good as navigating with expensive programs like Route 66, Garmin, or Nokia Maps, but navigation with Locify is free. You don't need to update the program to add road navigation. Just hit Options->Add->Service From List->Road Navigation.

If you're downloading Locify for the first time and the download page says it won't work on your phone model, just try it anyway. Locify will probably work if your phone is not too old.

• Locify
• GoogleMaps 2 Trekbuddy (the easiest way to preload maps to your memory card)

Watch wider movies with YouTube for Symbian (or MobiTubia, but not Xenozu) and download 'em with YourTube (or UTube)

YouTube for Symbian

YouTube for Symbian is a very simple YouTube video player for mobile phones. You can search and play movies, but you can't log into your YouTube account, which means that YouTube for Symbian won't show any adult movies on your phone. You'll need to visit YouTube's mobile website with your phone's built-in web browser for that.

On first launch YouTube for Symbian makes you choose your location from a short list of countries. It doesn't matter which country you pick, so just choose any country you like if your own country is not on the list.

You can erase your search history and other private data that YouTube collects, but that option is hidden in the help menu.

New in YouTube for Symbian: full screen movies on phones with wide screens like the Nokia 5800 XM, Nokia N97, and Samsung Omnia HD.

YouTube for Symbian comes as an on-the-fly installer, but you can download the program as a .sis file from Mobile Castle. This may help if you can't download the YouTube player because your IP address is not on Google's list of supported countries.


• YouTube mobile site (on the fly installer, download only works with the default web browser of your phone)
• YouTube v2.2.17 on Mobile Castle (downloadable .sis file for everybody, works with all mobile and non-mobile web browsers)

If you don't like YouTube's official player, you can use MobiTubia. Alternative YouTube player Xenozu lets you bookmark videos, but the program is a mess. You have to edit your phone's RealPlayer settings before you can use Xenozu, the terms and conditions screen pops up everytime you start the program, and there's no exit button so you'll have to use the red hangup button.

• MobiTubia
• Xenozu v1.0.5 at Mobile Castle


YourTube YouTube video downloader

YouTube for Symbian won't let you download movies for offline viewing. Enter YouTube video downloader YourTube. It lets you choose between three video formats (mp4, flv, and 3gp), and different quality settings as well. The latest release fixes bugs, YouTube is a mobile Java program, so when you save a movie your phone will pop up a couple of security warnings.

UPDATE: The old versions of YourTube stopped working, and the new version turned into disfunctional crippleware that requires money to unlock.

• YourTube

UTube is another YouTube video downloader, but it's no match for YourTube.

UPDATE: It used to be no match for YourTube, but YourTube went commercial so there seems to be a future for UTube after all.

• UTube

Palringo looks slicker

Instant messenger program Palringo connects to MSN (Windows Live), AOL (AIM), Yahoo, Google Talk, ICQ, Jabber, Facebook Chat, and the niche networks QQ, Gadu-Gadu, and MobileMe (iChat). Palringo also runs a collection of chatrooms.

You can send voice messages, but Palringo doesn't do real VoIP calls like Nimbuzz, fring, and Talkonaut. Palringo doesn't connect to Skype, not even to Skype's instant messaging network.

The latest edition of Palringo has fewer bugs, and its user interface is easier to navigate (especially if you have a touchscreen phone). You can now share your location with Palringo, but only with people who use Palringo too.

• Palringo (download through SMS link)
• Palringo direct download page

Last free version of Bluetooth File Transfer Lite, new beta test version of Jbak TaskMan

Bluetooth File Transfer Lite

Bluetooth File Transfer Lite from Medieval Software is a file manager which can send and grab files over bluetooth, similar to an ftp client. In addition, Bluetooth File Transfer Lite can pack and extract files in the zip, tar, jar, nth, and thm compression formats.

Similar to Nokia phones without a pencil key (and in contrast to file managers like X-plore and ActiveFile) you can select and deselect files with the # key in Bluetooth File Transfer Lite.

The built-in text viewer doesn't know how to break lines so they fit on the screen without horizontal scrolling, but the built-in picture viewer has a very smooth zoom function. You can get out of the full screen picture mode by pressing the 1 or 0 key, which is not very clearly indicated in the program.

Bluetooth File Transfer Lite is written in mobile Java, so it takes some time to start on a Symbian phone. You also have to go to the application manager to allow Bluetooth File Transfer Lite to read and write data, or else your phone will pop up a blizzard of security warnings.

Bluetooth File Transfer Lite v.1.41 is free, but Medieval Software plans to ask money for future versions.

• Bluetooth File Transfer Lite from Medieval Software
• Bluetooth File Transfer Lite at GetJar
• Bluetooth File Transfer Lite v.1.41 at Mobile Castle



Jbak TaskMan

There's yet another test version of Jbak TaskMan. This program shows the running tasks on your phone, including hidden tasks that won't show up in Symbian's built-in task manager. Jbak TaskMan also displays memory status, disk usage, and detailed task info. When the program is running, long-pressing the menu button launches Jbak TaskMan instead of Symbian's built-in task manager.

The new test version fixes a few bugs, lets you set the font size in pixels, and the menus appear faster. And now Jbak TaskMan has a flashlight too. When you activate it, your screen turns bright white, but BrightLight and Light Control are better at turning your phone into a torch.

Jbak TaskMan v1.00 R16 is not available from Jbak's own site, but if you want to test it you can get it from Mobile Castle.

• Jbak TaskMan site (latest full version and some test versions)
• Jbak TaskMan v1.00 R16 (test version, unsigned) at Mobile Castle