Nokia Situations heralds the start of a new type of app technology: Context-awareness. With the ability to use the sensors in your Nokia, context-aware apps are said to be the future, and after using Nokia Situations for the week we can understand why. Even though Nokia Situations only scratches the surface of what's possible, it's still one of the most useful apps we've seen in years. Join us after the break to find out why...
Not only can you set profiles to turn on and off by time, you can also set them to change depending on your location. This means you'll be able to use the GPS chip to determine when you arrive in the office, for instance, turning the profile from silent to general, or vice versa.
You can also use the other radio technologies in your Nokia to change profiles – so your device will change when it's in range of a particular Wi-Fi network or Bluetooth device. You can even change it by calendar event – so you can set your Nokia to be silent in a meeting, months in advance.
You can use the same set of conditions to set up different situations – including the launching of apps. Set your calendar to launch as soon as you're in range of your office Wi-Fi, for instance, or the weather app to launch when you wake up in the morning.
Nokia Situations also lets you keep track of network cells, so you can set your phone to silent while you travel.
Along with setting up a situation to inform us about the weather every morning, we also created a situation to give us the latest sport updates. You can set bookmarks to launch along with applications, so you can set your favourite website to launch at certain times, or when in range of particular Wi-Fi networks. This came in particularly handy with the football scores - launching the BBC's Premier League results page at 5pm every Saturday. It's great if you forget to check - unlocking your phone to find all the results there in front of you.
We found the situations switched flawlessly – with weather updates greeting us at 8:30am, and BBC Sport displayed on the dot at 9:00am. The new situation doesn't unlock the screen, but you can set it to vibrate gently, and you can have it change back to your old profile pretty much as soon as it's launched your chosen application.
We particularly like the fact that profiles can be set to overlap, making it easy to switch the phone to 'Silent' and 'Power Saving' mode in the evening, 'Offline' throughout the early hours, and then back to 'General' again in the morning. From holding the phone, you wouldn't know anything had changed, but it's an easy way of conserving power without having to cut back on the features you need the most, at times you're likely to use them.
Although Nokia Situations doesn't show off the full extent of context awareness, it is a great start, and a brilliant app to have on your Nokia. Letting you switch flawlessly between work and play – even changing themes on the go – we love it.
Details:
Price: Free
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