The neat thing about modern mobile phones is that you can install additional applications on them. This article introduces three excellent mobile phone applications that have made my life a lot easier, and my cutting edge Nokia phone (currently E71) even better. In fact these have proven to be real life savers, are made by one of the most respected software companies and are offered for free. Check out Google’s GMail and Maps for mobile, and Opera Mini! I have tested these applications on several Nokia Symbian S60 mobile phones, but they are Java based applications and therefore support various other devices as well.

Modern Nokia smartphones have an excellent web browser, which is based on the Linux Konqueror (KHTML) browser and the Apple WebKit - therefore the Nokia’s built in browser is a close cousin of the Apple Safari and can handle a majority of current websites - even some very complex websites are usable with this great browser. The problem is however that many websites are extremely large in terms of download size. This is not an issue if you are within a high-speed network coverage (EDGE, 3G, 3.5G), but in the rural areas where you have only 2G and potentially a weak network signal, the loading of content intensive websites can become very slow and difficult. Another issue is the cost of data transfer (depending on your operator plan), which can be huge for example when roaming in foreign country networks.

The Opera Mini browser by the Norvegian Opera Software ASA introduces a neat method to overcome this problem. The Opera Mini utilizes a content reduction proxy which fetches the data, compresses resulting in a much smaller amount of data needed to be transfered to the mobile phone. Opera Mini manages to achieve excellent browsing speed even in 2G and poor network conditions. It supports a majority of websites, and I have succesfully used the Mini for administering this site, handling Internet auctions and other complex tasks. Excellent piece of work and highly recommended.

The most recent and advanced Nokia phones have a built-in GPS positioning and navigation software Nokia Maps. While the Google Maps and Nokia Maps serve mostly for the same purpose the Google’s application has an extremely powerful search features that can really help you on the road. No matter what you are looking for, the Google Maps for mobile will find it! You can search just about anything: “boat rental Miami“, “restaurant Frankfurt” or “hotel Helsinki“, and you will always get plenty of results. The Google Maps can also discover some lesser known and smaller sights or interesting places you can find in the countryside. It can also find liqueur stores, farmacies, hospitals…you name it! When you are on the road, the Google Maps is a great application to have in your pocket, even if you have a car navigator installed.

And to continue with Google’s neat services, let’s talk about Gmail for mobile. GMail of course is the largest and most versatile free email service on the market. It supports POP/IMAP protocols and therefore can be easily configured to any email client, including the native email client of Nokia S60 phones, but the GMail for mobile application is a real powerhouse to manage your email. GMail for mobile provides a user interface very similar to GMail’s web version and shows email discussions as threads. But the real power comes in the search functions, as GMail for mobile can search the whole archives of your GMail account, which is something that no other email client can efficiently do. It also conveniently searches for matches in your contacts when you are typing a new email. GMail for mobile is a great piece of work and it will greatly improve your user experience of GMail when going mobile, no matter if you are using the web version or the phone’s email client.

So there you go - three applications that make your smartphone even smarter and your digital life easier. The majority of advanced users most likely knew these already, but there are a lot of consumers buying fancy phones without utilizing or even understading the power and features they have.