06 January 2009

Protect Your Privacy!
Advanced Phone Lock for 5th Ed
[commercial]

Commercial applications are one thing that I'm usually not writing about, but unfortunately software for 5th edition rise softly, sparsely, like rare flowers in the forest and any application that is really useful and fully compatible with 5th edition of S60 platform is a big news.

I am one of those lucky bastards who own Nokia 5800 and I know it’s hard to test thousands of available 3rd ed applications just to check if it works or no so I’ll do it for you and continue with highlighting software that I found interesting and compatible.

In mean time better do not try to install applications, games and especially themes that aren’t tested and confirmed as compatible. Themes are especially problematic and some of them will brick your phone and such an issue is only fixable in nearest service centre or with patched phoenix soft but it is completely different story.

So far I found three themes capable to kill your phone completely although they are offered as 5th edition compatible, so please be careful and think twice before installing stuff from untrusted sources but don’t be afraid to get anything from Symbian Freak as any application, game or theme is heavily tested before publishing here.

Anyway, Advanced Phone Lock is an integrated locker service which allows you to lock any application from your smartphone. Nobody can use the locked applications without to know the password.

You can lock any important application which stores sensitive data for you like credit card numbers, financial data, passwords, images, sms messages or anything else important for you.

The service is also able to lock the phone and keypad. When the phone is locked, you or somebody else have to enter the password in order to unlock and continue to use the phone as normally. The same password is used for any lock/unlock action in order to have an easy use.

Application is available as 14 days free trial and I been testing it for the last few days and I can confirm that it works just fine and the only thing that I don’t like about is its graphic that looks terrible if you ask me, this is great software and it needs better graphic, design two splash screens shouldn’t be such a huge problem!?

Applications Lock key features

• you can select and lock as many as applications you wish.
• allows you to set the lock mode. If set on 'When shown', the password to unlock the application is asked every time when you or somebody else try to use the locked application. If set on 'Use autolock', the password to unlock the application is asked only the first time. The password will be asked later only after the inactivity time you have set in the settings.
• automatically closes/exits the application if you cancel to enter the password in the lock form. This saves memory for the normal phone usage.
• disable the lock if charging. This helps when you drive the car and you have plugged the phone in the car's charger. If you plug-in the charger and enter the password, the applications will no more be locked as long as the charger is plugged-in. You can use the phone as normally and you will not be disturbed by the lock service while you are driving. When you plug-out the charger, the applications will automatically be locked again.
• all applications lock settings can be changed (enabled/disabled).

Phone Lock key features

• able to lock after the phone is powered-on (lock at boot).
• you can set an autolock period after which the phone is automatically locked (1-30 minutes).
• the phone can be locked by the long press of a key (hotkey). You can define the hotkey long press period between 1 to 10 seconds and choose the hotkey from a list.
• locks the phone if the case (slider or cover) is closed or opened.
• able to lock the keypad also when the phone is locked.
• disable the phone lock if charging. This works similar like for the applications lock described above.
• all phone lock settings can be changed (enabled/disabled). *