Best social networking experience on the E71

Best social networking experience on the E71

October 4, 2009 1 By Jakob

The Nokia E71 – arguably one of the best smartphones ever made – is an excellent piece of hardware for you to stay updated with social networks and news. But which software should you choose for social networking pleasure??

Earlier this year I wrote a bit about some of the best Twitter apps out there for Nokia E71 and other S60-based smartphones. Meanwhile a few new entrants have stirred up competition and are attacking some of my favourites on their home turf.

As you may have read, my personal favourite among Twitter apps for the E71 is Gravity and since my posts in April this year, Gravity has tweaked its features significantly and most importantly a number of Facebook features are being tested. That would mean that Gravity is breaking out of its Twitter-only market and into the much larger market of being a mobile Facebook application.

This review really was prompted by talks with Thomas Østerfeldt earlier today. He seemed to use Snaptu as his favourite social networking tool. I’ll have a look below at what he could possibly get out of that.

Snaptu – A Different Mobile Web” – that’s what they say on the website for this new kid on the block. Snaptu is currently at version 1.2.3 and features an impressive number of apps like Twitter, Facebook, Google Calendar, Orkut, Flickr, AccuWeather, Picasa, and others.

That’s all fine, but a number of these so-called apps are nothing more than bookmarks to the webpages of those services. That’s the only disappointment that I’ve encountered with Snaptu. I really like the concept of a social networking control center, but with the bookmark-style “apps” Snaptu doesn’t deliver on its promise.

Of the apps that are genuine apps I’m quite impressed with the selection it holds. My personal favourites are indeed Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr. Also Accuweather is a real app that does what the traditional AccuWeather app does – only with nicer navigation. Finally you can add a number of newsfeeds, guides and games of which some are likely to be real apps and some just links to websites.

As mentioned above my personal tool of choice for Twitter and Facebook is Gravity. I’ve tried to see how Snaptu stacks up against Gravity on those two social networks. Bottom line is that Snaptu holds comparable feature set for Twitter and more features for Facebook. Still, the better and more intuitive design of Gravity means that I still prefer Gravity and will choose other applications – like probably Snaptu – for social networking and other sites which are not Facebook or Twitter.

Should you want to view the comparison chart, you can find it here – just remember that only Gravity and Snaptu have been updated, and in Snaptu’s case, keep in mind that I’ve only touched on the features in the Twitter and Facebook apps.