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Epocware Wants Your Feedback, Giving Away 1300$ In Software

By Dotsisx on November 22, 2009

One thing we appreciate on Symbian-Guru is software and hardware companies that are constantly seeking their user feedback and looking for ways to improve their products. Epocware, the well known software developer, have taken this to another level with their new contest that we’re launching today. They would like you to give them feedback regarding any of their software for S60, be it S60 3rd Edition or Symbian^1.

In order to participate, you can download the full Handy Tools pack or try any of their other applications for 2 weeks, then you have to choose one of them and write a 150-200 words review in the comments section below this post. The review can include your favorite features, how you use the application, what should be improved, or even what didn’t work and what you disliked about the software. Basically, write what you want but you just have to be genuinely honest about your review, because it may influence how these applications evolve in the future.

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As a thank you, Epocware will give every participant a 40% discount code for their software. But there’s more, the 10 best reviews get a free Handy Tools Pack which is a 129.95$ value per pack (or a 231.95$ if purchased separately) and includes 13 stellar software such as Ricky’s beloved Handy Shell, my own favorite Handy Profiles and the supreme Handy Taskman and Handy Weather, not to mention Handy Calendar, Handy Expense, Handy Safe Pro and many others. That’s a 1300$ worth of software for free, all if you decide to help them improve their products. Sweet deal, isn’t it? So get your reviewer pencils sharpened and let the writing begin!

Contest Rules

  1. Only one entry (application review) per person. Make sure you choose your application carefully and write an honest feedback.
  2. Comments below 50-70 words will be automatically deleted from this thread in order to clean it up from irrelevant material to the contest.
  3. The contest is open until the 10th of December, so you have time to download, test and write the review carefully.
  4. While writing your comment, leave an email address you can be joined on.
  5. Winners will be chosen by the Symbian-Guru team and Epocware, and notified through email.
  6. All participants will receive via email their 40% discount code.
  7. The contest is open to anyone, everywhere on the planet.

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Dotsisx

Dotsisx, aka Rita El Khoury, joined Symbian-Guru.com in September of 2007, and has been writing awesome content ever since. Rita often explores the normal user aspect of Symbian-powered devices, and offers in-depth thoughts on various topics. You can follow Dotsisx on Twitter at @Khouryrt

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  • Spacks2
    Handy Weather. This application is very useful especially if you are a frequent traveler and you are concerned about the weather conditions of where you are now, and where you will be in the next hours or days. The graphic illustration of weather conditions of different cities all over the world is clear and accurate. But there is still room for improvement. For instance, an animated/flash display of dropping waters when it's raining; dark (darker or small) moving clouds to show visibility conditions, etc. will say volumes in a single image rather much words like sunny, rainy, showers. This doesn’t mean that these descriptive words shall be removed, no, they are necessary but the animated image will easier and faster to grasp. Secondly, the current condition of weather is in most cases always "UNAVAILABLE" for most capital cities. This needs to be improved. Lastly, extending the forecast to cover a period of one week is better than the current 5 days forecast. A forecast more than 7 days too, will not be attractive because it will make the whole information bulky and meaningless. 7-day forecast is the ideal period.
  • Dento
    I will choose Handy Calendar since Personal Information Managers are crap in Symbian^1,

    1. We badly need multiple catagories. each catagory has its own icon and color and give the user the freedom to personalize it,

    2. Tasks now are either Completed or Active. what if its 50% completed? Can i have options to set the proportion?

    3. Can we have an option to collect multiple tasks in one project? I mean i can create a (project) and add tasks and when i complete all the tasks then the the project is marked as Completed. This will be great.

    4. I dont know if this can be done someday but i will write it. since Handy Calendar recognize Contacts (with blue label) can i have an option to search for (All entries related to specific person). lets say i have many appointments and tasks for (Someone)..can it search for (Someone) and show all his entries in one list? this can be achieved by the built in Search application but it will show the entries in the built in Calendar,

    5. Import and Export back up file will be great,

    6. It will be very slick and nice if contacts thumbnails are shown when the entry linked to contact. this will help if i have more than 500 contacts.

    7. Not so important but when i choose location for the entry can it show the saved landmarks in the Maps?

    Thanks for the offer but i dont need it because i already bought all your software except Keylock and Calculator (i dont need them) and i like to give the chance for other people to win.
  • The most exciting software from Epocware is Handy Taskman imho so I'll try to tell you what I like about it and what I dislike.
    Managing task with Handy product is fast and easy, the integration with Symbian OS is good also on touchscreen devices with a cool user interface.
    Too poor is the information that I can get about tasks and CPU load.
    I will be glad if in the next version of this good software I can see how much CPU is eating one task like we see in the Windows Mobile taskmanager.
    It should be useful also to get a full CPU load that sum all the CPU load of each task in only one value.
    I think that this should be useful for both developers and users and it will makes the real difference between the integrated symbian task manager and this product.
    Another useful addition should be the possibility to check how much CPU and how much memory we consumed in a specific period of time of a max one day or few hours with a graph that displays the memory usage and the cpu usage.
    This process is obiusly heavyer but an option that permit to enable it and disable it will do the tricks.

    Hope to see something moving in this sense with Handy Taskman.
    Best Regards,
    Davide.
  • I'm interested in Handy Profiles and maybe some other apps. A great oppurtunity to find out, thanks for posting!
  • baoiiee
    Handy Shell is great, but it's not perfect; there's always room for improvement! First thing I noticed was the inability to disable Hand Task or Handy Shell; there should be an option as people may prefer other Task Managers or temporarily disable the whole application. I've also noticed that Handy Shell is customizable, though not in the way that I would've liked; left and right soft keys should be changeable, rather than leaving everything to the right soft key.
    Since not everyone uses Hand Weather, there should be an option to have more than one row of shortcuts, making use of the space. Having different themes would also be good, say “Work” or “Home”; each with its own settings, shortcuts and contacts.
    An issue I've found is that, if you were to press the red key to exit from the system menu, then later return with menu key, it does not return to the root of the menu but rather where you left off. This can be rather annoying since it is not the default behaviour.
    Handy Shell is great addition to the boring Symbian home screen, though with some improvements it would be a lot more appealing.
  • Dento
    The (must have) one for me is the Handy Expense.

    and i have these suggestions:

    1. The killer feature is to have a PC Companion like Handy Safe where i can synchronize the expenses and lists and add new expenses,

    2. More than just Business and Personal Categories, more freedom is welcome,

    3. Best Expense show the total amount of the (list) in the bottom of the screen and therefore i dont need to select menu>total.

    4. Expenses are something private and password protection is an essential feature at the start up of the application,

    5. The data base in Handy Shopper has folders to organize the items. if Handy Expense has Data base to organize the expenses types in folders then its more than welcome, its difficult to arrange hundreds of expenses items in flat mode. this can be used to categorize the expenses items for reports too Ex.report by expense type category,

    6. I want to export my Expenses types. if i change my phone or format it i will import it and dont need to rewrite it manually,

    7.I want to choose the fields i see when i enter new expense according to my use. i use the same currency for 99% of may payments and i dont add notes so why i see this fields?

    8. When am on list no.1 i need to go back then down then press OK to see list no.2..!!!...why i cant simply switch lists by just pressing right and left?

    9. Colors for each category font in report is welcome,

    10. Again Handy Shopper saves the items i bought in (Recent list). only when i can set the price of items in Handy Shopper...we can have great integration between Shopper and Expense if i can export the Shopper (Recent list) and import it using Expense.

    Thanks for the good work guys.
    Keep it up.

    Best regards
  • I chose the famous Handy Shell. I have tried its earlier version but not convinced enough to buy it so I decided to give it a second chance. I'll list my observations and opinions:

    1. The clock's font is really bad and there is no apparent way to change it.
    2. There isn't an option to fall back to the good old analog clock.
    3. I use Turkish as my phone's language and Handy Shell's Turkish version is horrible at best.
    4. Customization options are very limited and hidden in the sub menus. It should be both more(much much more) customizable and doing so should be easy.
    5. I expected sliding gestures as in many other phones to switch between screens.
    6. Support for multiple home screen layouts would be great.
    7. The installer should create the Handy folder under the "Applications" main folder instead of creating it in the menu root.
    8. Feeds or even custom widgets should be addable to the home screen.

    To sum up, Handy Shell is actually a good thought to improve the very basic Symbian home screen but fails to do so due to lack of customizability and usability.

    I did not want to post an upsetting comment here but I will not buy or use Handy Shell in this version and I hope that this comment will give the developers a lead to make it a killer app. for Symbian.
  • Beta
    I chose my favorite Handy Shell, first of all I appreciate the hard work done to make the standby screen more practical and customizable than the normal one. I’m very satisfied with the new version but have some suggestions, I’ll summarize my points:

    1- The clock is great with its big digits, although it would be nice to choose the analog one or adjust the font.
    2- The shortcut bar is great feature but needs to allow more rows to be added if needed.
    3- The way to show new missed calls or messages as pop up when just moving over it is really great.
    4- The ability to move the plugins is nice touch for more satisfaction.
    5- The new cube is so fun to use, many thanks for such an addition.
    6- The speed search as key pressed is a major advantage, although I would like it to choose the highlighting color.
    7- The weather integration is wonderful.
    8- The contacts view is nice.
    9- The application view is great, but I hope to have the option of icons with small text under it instead of just icons.
    10- The built in task manager is great and simple as it should be.

    The above points are the most features I like with some enhancements I would like to see in the future, BUT a major BUG that I think you must take care of, and it’s not much reported before is this:

    1- When I had the shell as the current standby, and I receive a call the phone switch to call standby by default, as I answer the handy shell pops up again and send the phone call to background with all its options of loudspeaker, mute, hold …etc. It’s very annoying to have to choose the phone from background tasks again every time I need a phone options.

    Please this bug is very annoying, I wish you had it fixed soon because I loved this app very much.
    Thanks for your interest in our feedback.
  • mbr
    I tend to use a calculator quite often in my phones, so I decided to give Handy Calculator a go.

    1st try - 5800XM: Handy Calculator is totally unusable on this device, because there is no way to enter numbers! The application was clearly not developed with touch-only devices in mind. The missing pen key for changing the available functions is nicely mapped to the green call key though. But still, a calculator without numbers is a useless.

    2nd try - N95: After the 5800XM failure I tried the app on the old faithful N95. It worked like charm. The feature I really like is the ability to select the add/sub/mul/div function with the d-pad. The same feature is also found in the free Calcium which I have used a lot. But Handy Calculator goes even further, it allows the use of memory with MR/M+/MC commands which really add to the value. Those commands are also selected with d-pad, with the pen key changing the mode.

    Handy Calculator is so far the best calculator application I've used. One improvement I would suggest is to add support for parentheses which would allow more advanced calculations. If those were supported then the memory slot support wouldn't be needed any more.
  • miguelangelgonzalezdiez
    I've tried Handy Shell.It's a great app.I only have two questions: Is it possible to integrate Mail for Exchange in the today view? I tried to send an email to a contact from the contacts view, but it is not possible, a problem with an API?From contacts (in the phone menu) you can send all type of messages...
  • The app that I chose for the review is Handy Calendar. First I will say the good things and then the bad things that I found using Handy Calendar.

    The good ones:

    -Birthday import: Is a great feature, really handy, because I add the birthdays to my contacts trough outlook and then I sync my contacts.
    -Can insert contacts, notes, messages and locations into meetings. Useful when you need to call someone that will be in the meeting but you forgot who is. I just 3 click away.
    -Time bar: Is a really quick way to view my free time and make an appointment fast.
    -Cut and paste to move an appointment: Never was so easy to change the meeting time. Just cut and paste it.
    -Zoom. Is great to handle a lot of appointments

    The ones that need improvements:

    -Zoom: Can be improved, zooming not only the fonts.
    -Installation folder: The first time is hard to find where was installed. Only a few minutes after I figure out that was installed in a new folder in the main menu. Why not make that folder inside the default new programs menu, or just don’t use that folder for standalone apps. Almost all user expect to find the app icon where all other apps are installed the first time.
    -Holidays: Could be really useful have an option to add or sync from somewhere from internet the holydays and tag it in the calendar.
    -Overlapping meetings: When I have 2 or 3 meetings at the same time is not easy to view it as the built-in E71 calendar does. A more clear way to see the meetings is a must.
    -Custom icons or categories: Add icons o categories (office, personal, hobby, family, etc) with colors to the appointments.
    That’s all my good and must be improved points. Thanks from Chile. Pablo
  • Stan
    In english
    ----------
    I would like to review Handy Blacklist.
    This application allows to filter calls very simply.
    It has great features but also have some sources of improvements.

    The good :
    - Customizing is done via a black list or sereval white lists.
    - These lists can be constituted via recent calls, contacts, contact groups or manually
    - There is a journalization of rejected calls
    - It is possible to parameter a time to block, to avoid forgetting that a blacklist is set
    - It is possible to reject unknown calls from phone directory or hidden calls
    - Three rejetcs are possible : simple, via SMS or call transfer
    - The SMS can be customized to be sent only to contacts to phone directory and/or only to the first rejected call

    The sources of improvements :
    - It would be good to differenciate between calls, SMS or MMS
    - It would good to parameter a start time and a finish time
    - It would be cool to allow the combination of the white lists

    In french :
    -----------
    Je vais faire un commentaire sur le logiciel que j'ai testé, à savoir Handy Blacklist.
    Cette application permet de réaliser simplement des filtrages d'appels
    Elle a de très bons côtés mais aussi de possibles sources d'améliorations.

    Les bonnes choses :
    - Le paramétrage se fait via une liste noire et plusieurs listes blanches
    - Les listes peuvent être constituées à partir des appels récents, des contacts, des groupes de contacts ou manuellement
    - Il y a une journalisation des appels rejetés
    - Il est possible de paramétrer un durée de blocage de façon à ne pas oublier d'enlever un filtre
    - Il est possible de rejeter les appels inconnus du répertoire et les appels masqués
    - Trois types de rejets sont possibles : rejet simple, rejet avec envoi d'un SMS ou tranfert d'appels vers un autre numéro
    - Le SMS d'information du rejet est paramétrable et peut n'être envoyé qu'aux contacts du répertoire et/ou seulement au premier appel rejeté

    Sources d'améliorations :
    - Il serait bien de distinguer les SMS, MMS et appels dans le filtrage
    - Il serait bien de définir à l'avance une plage horaire de filtrage au lieu d'une durée
    - Il serait bien de pouvoir combiner plusieurs listes blanches

    Regards
  • Thanks everyone for participating - I've passed your contact info along to our friends at Epocware, who will be contacting you to setup your free Handy Tools license pack.
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