Best free and priced apps for the S60 platform

While I have a Kindle and read almost all of my books now in electronic format, I still subscribe to a couple of paper magazines. My favorite is Laptop magazine and I wrote up a blog post on my ZDNet page about a very helpful 3rd party application article in the latest issue. One major operating system that was not covered in the magazine, again related to the lack of US presence, was the S60 platform. As you know, I am a HUGE S60 and Nokia fan and thought it would be valuable for readers to have some recommendations for free and paid applications too.

Free apps

Opera Mini: Even with the outstanding S60 webkit-based web browser found on S60 devices, I still like to load up Opera Mini because of its speed and ability to share bookmarks across all platforms with Opera Mini support. The latest version, 4.2, offers some customization features and the shortcuts will have you skipping along the internet to your heart’s content.

fring: VoIP functionality is one of the pieces of the S60 platform that I find to be more strongly supported than in any other mobile operating system. I have been using fring for a long time and continue to enjoy using it on all my S60 devices today. They now have Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm integration to make it an even more powerful client. I started using it primarily to connect to friends via Skype and Windows Live Messenger.

Google Maps: I use Nokia Maps from time to time, but tend to have fewer true navigation needs and just need to find something quickly more often. For this I simply use the S60 Google Maps for Mobile client that even supports the new Google Latitude social location capability.

Podcasting: I spend a lot of time listening to media content on my S60 devices during my 2+ hour commute and when running my daughters around to their sporting activities. 85% of that content is actually mobile podcasts that I download directly to my devices with the Nokia Podcasting application. The Nokia Podcasting application is one of my favorite native clients on the S60 platform that sees a lot of use and one that I find invaluable.

Mobbler: Since I have a rather small music collection, I like to have a way to stream music from the internet. I don’t use the radio clients that much on my S60 devices, although maybe I should try these more often. Instead I like the Mobbler client that brings my Last.fm content to my S60 devices. The client has seen some rather major improvements over the last couple of months and is quite good at the moment.

Priced apps

RoadSync 4.0: I have an Exchange server at work and sync all of my devices to it through the Exchange ActiveSync protocol. I am working on a full review of RoadSync version 4.0 that WILL go live this week and it is the application that has my highest recommendation for the S60 platform. RoadSync has now clearly surpassed the free Mail For Exchange client from Nokia and gives you an Exchange experience almost as good as what you find on Windows Mobile, which is saying a lot for Exchange on a device.

Spb Wallet: I posted my review of Spb Wallet 2.0 on the S60 platform so you can clearly see why I find this application valuable for keeping all of my data with me and secure on my devices.

Handy Taskman: The S60 operating system is very powerful and also supportive of a ton of native and 3rd party applications. I find the best way to quickly get to the application you want is through using Handy Taskman and a simple press and hold of a designated button on your device. This is the first utility I recommend you purchase for your S60 device and think Nokia should have it as a default function in the operating system itself.

Here are some applications I use on other mobile platforms that I want to see on S60 too:

• Evernote
• Pandora
• Facebook
• ShopSavvy

I know in one of my contest posts I asked about your favorite 3rd party apps and plan to look through all of those entries and find some nuggets too.

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