How to: Exploring Nokia Beta Labs

Nokia Beta Labs is a good chance to play now with the applications that will be formally added to your smartphone in six months time. Have you got what it takes to be a software test pilot?

Operating System: Symbian S60
Difficulty: Advanced

Despite the hundreds (if not thousands) of third party applications for S60 smartphones, it’s often the freebies from Nokia that are most exciting of all. Some of these are able to tie more tightly into the OS and into the phone hardware than third party code and are able to achieve new things that are genuinely innovative. And Nokia Beta Labs is where a lot of Nokia’s code started off. Nokia Maps. Share Online. Widsets. They all started here, on this community test site, before being formally launched.

Step 1: Automatic updates
First things first. Nokia Beta Labs is at www.nokia.com/betalabs, easy to remember for popping back to check what’s new. If you use Google Reader or any other RSS client, note that by subscribing to the RSS feed here you’ll pick up new Beta Labs blog posts automatically.

Step 2: Feedback to the Beta Labs team
The idea behind Nokia Beta Labs is not just to dish out early freebies, but to genuinely engage users. Beside each application in the main list is a ‘Give feedback’ link. After using each beta application, you’re encouraged to say what you liked and what you didn’t like, reporting bugs and issues. Armed with this feedback, Nokia’s programmers can improve the product and (usually) release an updated beta version that works better. And so on, until the application ‘graduates’!

Step 3: Prizes, lovely prizes!
As an incentive to get involved, as if early access to new applications wasn’t enough, the Beta Labs team vote each month on who has been the most active and helpful contributor – he or she then gets a prize, usually an accessory or novelty. Still cool, though!

Step 4: A gamut of new, free betas
Click on the ‘Applications’ tab, if you haven’t already. At the time of writing there were almost 20 items in this list, some for Windows (but with a Nokia slant, e.g. the new Music client) and some for S60 itself. Because some apps need special hardware (e.g. an accelerometer, as found on the N95 and N82), there are often tight compatibility requirements – click on the ‘Check’ link to pop up whether your phone is supported.

Step 5: Feeling brave?
Of special interest for each application is its status. Note the tri-part bar in the middle of each line. Left/orange means ‘Early release, many issues’, Middle/yellow means ‘Some known issues’ and Right/green means ‘Should work great in target devices’. Obviously, knowingly heading for and downloading an application that’s still ‘orange’ means that you’re going to encounter some things which don’t work properly yet, perhaps even crashes and error messages. How brave do you feel?

Step 6: Downloading
Clicking on the ‘Download’ banner pops up the actual downloads – as is usual with Symbian OS, each of these is a SIS (or SISx) file, i.e. a properly ‘signed’ application, so installation (either on-device or via PC Suite) should be smooth. Even if the beta application itself is not exactly bug free yet.

Step 7: Back up… just in case
All of which might sound rather dangerous. But don’t worry, bugs in individual applications are extremely unlikely to harm your phone or its data in any way. Still, it would be remiss of us to take this opportunity to remind you again of the importance of backing up/syncing your smartphone. Just in case, you understand.

Step 8: Sports Tracker
The benefits of bothering with Nokia Beta Labs are in being able to use some rather wonderful software. Sports Tracker ties into the built-in GPS in your phone and logs your bike rides, your jogs, your walks, amassing statistics on how fast you went, how far, and tracking your progress on the earth’s surface in a way that you can later overlay onto the likes of Google Earth. It even automatically gathers up any photos or video you take en route and interested friends can see these media items superimposed on your ‘track’ using the Sports Tracker web site or a special ‘widget’ that you can embed in your blog or web site.

Step 9: Step Counter
Along similar lines, Nokia Step Counter sits in the background all day, using the accelerometer to log your movements. Each evening, you can review how many steps you’ve taken and how active a lifestyle you lead.

Step 10: Mobile Web Server
Mobile Web Server introduces a radical and thought-provoking concept, that of running a web site ON your phone. Well, almost. The idea is that your smartphone runs a basic web server and offers up its content (such as Contacts, Calendar items, SMS, photos) to anyone (that you give permission) via a standard web browser, anywhere in the world. It’s a cool way of blogging your activities without effort.

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