I have had a Nokia E51 for a while now and think it is a great phone. Email and Nokia maps are excellent plus all the usual stuff. The only thing it lacks is a GPS. I got it as a business phone on a T-Mobile FlexT contract that gives me ‘unlimited’ Web and Walk. I don’t therefore have to worry about data costs. I have though become a buit more adventurous and adding in applications for podcasts, Google Maps and Fring.
I did a bit of research on Podcasting on the Nokia and discovered that Nokia do have a Podcasting Application that will work on the E51. However, the E51 does not appear on this list of officially supported phones. No problem. navigate to http://europe.nokia.com/A41121131 Download the application and install it using PC Suite. All done. Getting the BBC Podcast loaded was a bit more tricky. I eventually found a blog http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/radiolabs/2008/04/opml_feed_of_podcasts.shtml referring to an OPML feed of podcasts. Opening the podcast directory and adding in the OPML URL loaded it into the directory.
So now I have podcasts on my phone! I must say I only download them while I am at home on my WiFi network. The Application itself is pretty good; the only problem I have found is that you cannot skip through a podcast to miss a bit out.
I have also loaded the new Google Maps application. This is a great supplement to the Nokia Maps application as it will give you your approximate location based on the Mobile towers you are talking to. Simply point your phone to http://maps.google.co.uk/gmm and just install it.
My Final Application of note is Fring (http://www.fring.com). This application will allow you to use Skype, MSN etc on your phone. Again it just does what it says and works great. It picks up your contacts off Skype, MSN etc automatically. One word of warning though. It seems that T-Mobile block it when connecting via 3G. When using a WiFi connection it works just fine.