::compiled from All About Symbian
Now, you may have noticed that all UIQ 3 applications (e.g. on the
Sony Ericsson P990i) lack an 'Exit' function on their menu, a design
decision which probably sounded great on the drawing board but which
falls rather flat when implemented on smartphones like the P990i with
only 15MB or so of free RAM, all of which is soon used up. So you end
up having applications closed for you before you'd finished with them,
with Symbian OS making the decisions about which ones are for the chop
and which ones can be left for now.Swiss Manager Pro offers a
way to have a lot more control, essentially making using the P990i a
lot more practical. With an always on-screen icon showing free RAM
graphically (colour-coded - green for OK, red for low, with a blue
overlay to indicate processor loading(!)), with a display of RAM at the
top of its own list of running programs, with automatic flushing of
non-protected applications when you close the flip and with manual
closing of any that you particularly want to exit, there's a whole heap
of control and efficiency that's not there with the bare UIQ 3 Task
Manager.
Another
deficiency of UIQ 3's Task Manager is that not all running programs are
shown, just shortcuts to some recently started applications. Now the
two lists may well be similar, but the full list is hidden away on the
'Open' tab, which is inconvenient for power users - and power users is
what many P990i owners are going to have to be, if they're to find ways
round the RAM problems. Swiss Manager Pro's list of running
applications is full and on its opening screen. Even better, tap its
floating icon (always there on screen, whatever you're doing on your
smartphone) and a quick version of the list is popped up on the screen
for lightning quick task switching.
You
may remember the free SMan for UIQ 2 smartphones - Swiss Manager Pro
has many of the same functions and clearly seems inspired by its
predecessor. There's an icon to toggle protection of specific
applications that you never want to be flushed out of memory (e.g.
Calendar, Contacts, Messaging, and so on). There's a full file manager
built-in, or at least as full as you'll get given the restrictions
imposed by Symbian OS 9 on third party applications, so you don't get
to browse system files, but it still shows a whole lot more of the
folder structure than the built-in effort, which is limited to Sony
Ericsson's multimedia file system (essentially just the contents of the
'Media files' folder on each disk).
Finally,
there's the obligatory display of system information, including how
long since you last booted your smartphone (or had it rebooted for you,
to 'improve performance') and CPU speed.It all adds up to a
compelling utility. There's a free version, simply dubbed 'Swiss
Manager', but this lacks the floating access 'clock' icon that's so
useful for getting to the utility's running task list with a single
tap. If I were to buy a UIQ 3 smartphone tomorrow then Swiss Manager
Pro would probably be the first application I'd buy for it. Used
properly, it can alleviate many of the symptoms of lack of RAM and make
your M600i or P990i user experience much smoother.