The first was a simple 79kb file called “Power Dictaphone”.

There were so many good voice recorders for my 7610 but why did I prefer this one?

• Unlimited recording. Only recently has 3rd edition S60 phones been able to record past 1 minute. e.g. My N93 still has this hindrance. No chance at recording lectures.
• Recording in .WAV. The AMR files most Nokia phones still record in sounds horrible. It’s like a really, really bad phone call. It took up quite a bit of memory back in my 7610 days. 512mb card helped.
• 3 pencil button press activation. Now, although the new voice recorder in the N95 covers both of the above, what’s most annoying still is that I have go through menu after menu or even short cuts and still I have to navigate down to the record button. Pwr dictaphone could record just simply by pressing the edit pencil button 3 times.  You could, if I recall correctly, set any key to start recording. Extremely convenient.
• RAM friendly: My 7610 only ever had about 8mb free ram at best. It was convenient that Power Dictaphone only took under 100kb to work. Current solutios to Power Dictaphone take at least a couple of MB.
• Automatic start up:  My Only alternative to Power Dictaphone at the moment is Alon MP3 dictaphone (that made the port over to 3rd edition).My main problem with it is that if I need to restart the phone, I forget to have this running in the background so when the opportunity comes and I have to wait to start it up.

Second: Nokia Album.

Relatively large, freeware application from Nokia.  When this application was available, most cameras didn’t even have 1mp. This meant that thousands of images could be stored on what’s a relatively small 512mb card.

It was fairly common not to be transferring pictures to the computer so often and leaving them on the phone. The only problem was that the standard gallery was soo slow. How on earth could you go through that many pictures?

Solution? Nokia Album. This automatically organised your pictures into:

• Month/Day grouping. If you remember a particular day, just go to that date and every picture you took will be in that particular album.

• Location based grouping: If you travel, your camera will take a stamp of what country you’re in and it will save your picture to that particular country.

• Your own set category:  Much like the album that the 3rd edition has now. Make a folder, stick the pictures in.

It also had plenty of other great features:

• Super fast zooming/scrolling. Album worked by indexing all the your photos. They don’t show up immediately if you transferred pics from a computer but once they appear zooming and then scrolling was really fast. Not something to shout about now, but back then, dealing with large images, you could bake bread by the time the 7610 finished scrolling to the left.
• Multi criteria search. I haven’t used the app in a while, but I remember it was really easy to find what pictures/videos I was looking for by setting what media type I want to look for, date within it was created and possible file names.
• I feel there was a lot more to it, but I don’t remember what else it did right now.

With huge file sizes on multi mega pixel cameras and mb hungry VGA videos, it’s more of a necessity now to transfer pictures over to the computer. However, with larger memory cards (2GB+) it becomes a little more feasible to carry 500+ full size 5MP pics at a time and it would be great to have a media organiser better than the current Nokia Gallery.

Are there any applications you enjoyed but never made the port over to 3rd Edition S60?

Undoubtedly one of S60 5th Edition’s saving graces, this app:

• seamlessly integrates all of twitters features giving you an overall functionality not yet possible with other twitter apps for maemo.
• Making tweets, sending replies and direct messages is so simple, especially since you can be notified of DM/replies with sound alerts.
• I love how simple it is to tweet pictures too (and from several picture services), draft saving as well as the being able to make twitter searches.
• You can even browse update and comment on facebook statuses and to top it off, a really decent google reader.

2. Ultimate Voice Recorder

This isn’t a highly publicized app, but I’ve loved it ever since it was on my older S60 devices. What’s great about this voice recorder is that:

• you can quickly activate it in the background. You don’t have to open up the app and press record, you just tap a certain preset key (red key on N97) three times.
• it runs in the background. Most voice recorder apps, if you switch windows they stop recording.
• you can activate it even if the phone is locked
• makes it easy to take down notes in a call/lecture
• You can even set it to auto record all calls
• Calls that are recorded get saved as that caller’s name with the time and duration of call
• This app can be set to autostart. You’ll get a tape recorder icon to show its live, but otherwise you won’t see it in multitasker.

3. BBC iPlayer

BBC’s famous catch up service for your missed TV/Radio programmes.

• Stream content (at great frame rate, Over WiFi and selected networks)
• download (for later watching offline)
• even watch programmes live as they’re being broadcast to your TV.
• Easy mobile friendly navigation
• It’s Free

4. Midomi Music Identifier

Like Shazam but much better . Heard a track you just can’t figure the name to? Maybe you know how it goes and can sing or hum it?

• Midomi can recognize the actual track, you singing or even just humming.
• It’ll let you know the song, give you a sample of the real track (and even other people singing) and show you the album it belongs to.
• It’ll show you lyrics as well as music videos of that track
• It’s Free (At the moment)

5. Nimbuzz

- Perfect Mobile Chat client. There’s “Pidgin Messenger” for Maemo but

• I find Nimbuzz much better, especially since I can just import my nimbuzz account and have all my chat contacts from services I’ve previously integrated.
• You can make skype calls on it too.
• You can make/join chat rooms
• Nimbuzz is free
• [Note: N900 does have integrated IM with its messaging App]

6. Vlingo

-The N900 lacks voice commands of any sort. Not even standard S60 style contact dialling/app.

• Vlingo lets users create messages via voice
• search web via voice
• call contacts via voice
• Create written notes via voice
• Open apps via voice
• even make facebook  updates via voice.
• Oddly the web browser is nicer over vlingo because you can quickly hide the hideous S60 web toolbar and go fullscreen.
• Vlingo is free, (upgradeable if you want to send more than a few messages/emails via voice)

7. Sports Tracker

- Want to keep track of how many miles you’re jogging/cycling around your town, as well as the actual tracked route that you’re taking with stats such as speed/height/steps?

• Sports tracker stores all your “workouts” so you can keep check on your progress.
• It’s also a cool app to use if you go to unfamiliar places.
• Sports tracker will mark down positions you go to and you can check that later with an overlayed map on Google earth.
• Sports tracker is free

What Symbian apps would you like to see porting over to Maemo?