Smartroaming on the E61

The Nokia E61 has very rapidly become my favorite device. It’s got a great (if a tad stiff) keyboard, connectivity galore, tons of memory for apps and a fantastic web browser! There’s a great feature built in which let’s you set up access groups, which means you can define a sort-through order for connections to assure for example that a WIFI access point is checked before cellular data. Many apps can take advantage of this but for some reason a few like Mail for Exchange cannot.

As I was browsing the Nokia support forums for other users who may have noticed this slight inconvenience, I found a note suggesting a browse through the catalogs (the built in download library) app for the Smartroaming app. As it turns out this is the very same application, I can previously noted with my N91, but had forgotten about… Birdstep Smartroaming solves the problem by allowing you to configure a stack of connection options (or multiple sets) which show up as single access points so any app can access them. Based on your preferences you can be assured that your device is cruising at high speed.

I’ll have to run through this for a bit while the demo is still open to be sure before purchase, but so far it’s quite excellent. Moving through Exchange and IMAP email is vastly improved on WIFI. I’m sure there’s a nice battery tax to pay, but I charge at night, in the car and even at my desk at work so it’s not going to kill me to run the battery a bit harder in the day.

Technorati Tags: Birdstep, e-series, Nokia, E61, Smartroaming