From time to time, one can find easter eggs among the offerings in Nokias OVI Store. This time it’s a free application from 1000Chi software called the Mobile Download Accelerator.
The installation file of the application is 569 kb whereas the install size is around 720 kb and for that you’ll get an application that accelerates your downloads as well as offering a smart File Manager which displays the files you’ve downloaded sorted by types of content.
When you install the application, you’ll notice that the default setting is for downloads to be stored on the C: drive, but that the user can choose to store the downloads in their drive of choice. Out of the box it will monitor downloads you do in the built in web browser, popping up to ask you if you want to add the download to the queue and the Access Point to use. To turn of the pop up notification and the prompts you must start the application, but it becomes quite invisible once you’ve configured the different settings.
The application mainly has two different views, one being the File Manager (default) and the other one being Tasks which you can switch between by pressing right or left on the D-pad. The interface of the application is quite consistent meaning that the Search bar on the top is visible in the two different views and the icons on the bottom lighting up indicate which view you currently are in.
Depending on which view you are in, the right softkey will bring up different options. In the File Manager you get to refresh the list of files displayed, help, about, setting and exit. In the task view you get to start downloads or delete files from the queue.
Settings lets you choose default Access Points, location in which downloads should be stored, maximum of simultaneous downloads (max 3) and block size. Here you can also turn off things such as notification sounds and the integration with the built in web browser.
To sum up the experience of this application I can say that I’m quite surprised at how fast files are downloaded and as you can see in one of the previous screenshots I was able to get around 184 kb in download speed. (On a 1Mb connection). The application doesn’t really need to be started as it’s ready to go, once installed. There are some minor quirks but that is mainly because it’s a feature I guess. When I tried to download the Symbian-guru OPML File the application didn’t kick in, this was also the case in general for files less than 100 kb. Then again for such small sized files you really don’t need to accelerate the download speed, but it would be nice if it did put the downloads into the queue so you have your downloads in one place instead of several others. The ability to continue your previous downloads is a very smart function that is highly missed e.g. in the built in browser (sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t).
The application is available for free from the OVI Store and supports both Symbian-powered handsets running the 3rd and 5th Edition of Symbian.
Have you been pumping down those download muscles of yours or are you still using the built in download functions?
