Review and Contest: Handy Taskman, what little Handy Application would you like to see?

Until 3 weeks ago the first application I would install on all my S60 devices was GMail. How convenient that little Java application is can not be put into words. I don’t remember what my motivation to trial out HandyTaskman was, but the ensuing love affair since then can no longer remain silent. I heart this application so much that I emailed Epocware’s Public Relations people and requested 3 licences to give to you guys, more on that after the jump.

What is HandyTaskman?

HandyTaskman is a replacement to S60’s application switcher. When one does a long press of the Symbian key (ying yang) you’re usually presented with this interface:

This is nothing to go gaga over. There is a list of icons that represent the applications you have running. You can go up and down this list and you can only see 3 icons at any given time. Boring. Check out what HandyTaskman looks like (different phone, different theme):

There are two columns. On the right, from top to bottom, we have the time and date, free RAM, free Phone memory and under that there is usually an indicator for free memory on your memory card; at the time my microSD card was removed.

In the left hand column we have a list of the applications open. See how it says “Open” on top? Tapping your dpad to the right reveals a new menu:

Here is a list of all the applications that you recently launched, aptly named “Recent.” Wading through folders to find that program you like to open on a frequent basis is no longer a problem. Spending precious minutes of your life arranging icons so you know where things are is something you never have to do again. Where HandyTaskman gets horribly addictive is when you hit a letter on your devices’ keypad:

Built in search is what made me fall in love with this application. I repeat: I no longer care where my icons are and I no longer care about customizing what shortcuts I have on my active idle screen. If I want Bluetooth I simply type in the letter b and see everything that matches. This application completely changed my S60 experiance.

What stinks?

It can’t be all fun and games. This application has 2 issues that really bug me. First and the most obvious bug, if I invoke HandyTaskman (long press of the Symbian key) and immediately type in two letters to begin my search query, the application reverses their order.

Example: If I want to launch GMail I would open up HandyTaskman and type in “G” and “M” otherwise known as the 4 and 6 keys on T9 keypads. This is what results:

I’ve been able to replicate this bug on all my S60 devices. Epocware, please take notice.

Few things that are not bugs, but more like feature requests: stop making me hit a key multiple times to get the letter I want.

Example: Say I want to open the Bluetooth application. I initiate HandyTaskman and have to hit the “2″ key on my keypad twice. I would prefer if I could type in 2 and 5 and have HandyTaskman be smart enough to know that I probably meant B and L.

An S60 application that does this is SkyeQuiKey, but it only works on the active idle screen. Bummer. If I could combine SkyQuiKey and HandTaskman into one mega-crazy-lovechild, I would. Sadly SkyQuiKey only has a 24 hour free trial and that isn’t enough time for me to test it. Zach swears by it, read his review here.

A small niggle, developers work hard or pay someone to create beautiful icons. Can you guys figure out some way to display those icons in the search results?

It isn’t implicit that one can start typing to find an application, something like a search box to make it more obvious that can be turned off via an option menu would be nice.

What else can it do?

Ever had an application that refused to die? Why don’t you just kill it? That’s right. You can forcefully close applications with the kill command, even if Nokia or your operator intended for them to run in the background at all times. Another thing that is useful is “Close all.” With one key press you can terminate all the applications running on your device. These are not features you’re going to use often, but nice to know that you can pull it off if need be.

Where can I get this?

You can get HandyTaskman at Epocware’s site here.

Or scan this QR code on your phone (any S60 3rd Edition or higher device) for the SIS file:

They have a 14 day free trial, plenty of time to see if you like this application.

You mentioned contest?

HandyTaskman is one of those applications that changes the way you do something in a very small way, yet it has a large impact on the user experiance. I like these kind of applications. In todays day and age people like to create programs that do many things, often compensating on quality, when in reality most users want something that can do one task remarkably well. Calcium is another example of this, an elegant S60 calculator.

The contest is very simple. Tell me what small thing you would want to change on your S60 device to improve your user experiance. What would you add, what would you do different, be creative. We’re running this for one week and I would hope that the developers at Epocware read each and every comment to take into consideration what IntoMobile readers would like to see on their devices and what future applications should be developed.

The top 3 ideas, I’m the sole judge, will get a free lisence for HandyTaskman.

It is ~ 17:00 here in Finland,� November 19, this contest will last one week until November 26.

I’ll remind you guys every day about this content in ultra brief blog posts with comments turned off, I want all the creative juices to flow into here.

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