MyPhone review

Andrew Spode Miller

We review MyPhone, a Symbian shell to make touchscreen Symbian devices look more like the iPhone

Published on Jul 13, 2009

There's no denying that the iPhone is of the calibre that every manufacturer is trying to beat and that plenty of users wish they could afford. MMMOOO is cashing in on this fact and creating ways for you emulate that iPhone feel without shelling out for the privilege.

MyPhone is that program and comes in a variety of flavours designed to work with almost every mobile phone. The version we tested is designed to work with touchscreens such as the N97 and is written in Flash.

It is launched from the applications menu and you are presented with what looks like the iPhone interface. Much like the iPhone you can drag your finger to move between the pages of icons, but the animation is no where near as smooth as you'd expect to see on the genuine article.

MyPhone is essentially a replacement shell – a launcher for the standard applications that are built into your device but with the icons and UI of the iPhone. The Music button takes you to the Nokia music player and clicking Contacts would simply take you to the standard contact manager. Icons can be moved around and deleted by simply holding your finger on the icon for a couple of seconds.

Where MyPhone really falls down is when it comes to adding 3rd party applications that you might have installed. To do this, you have to know the path of the executable. In order to get this path you would need to have a 3rd party task manager installed. Even with the correct tools, it's slow and cumbersome – not exactly the iPhone philosophy.

There are a couple of extra built in applications, such as the Sketch Pad, which is rather poor line-based (rather than pixel) drawing program and a weather application that pulls in the weather for your location. Other than this, it is simply a launcher in iPhone clothing.

Considering how customizable the N97 interface is, MyPhone offers little or no functionality improvements over sticking with the original. It's the digital equivalent of buying a “GTI” sticker to put on the back of your 1.1 Fiesta – it doesn't speed things up, but it might fool your friends. If you really want the iPhone experience, buy an iPhone.