The Flyscreen Standby Widget

Description:

It is a new application which lets you import the feeds you want as well as having widgets that handles feeds from popular websites such as Engadget, BBC sport, Facebook, Twitter and many more.

The application is available for handsets running Symbian OS 3rd Edition and is presented as being easy to use, offering more information for lesser clicks. After going through the usual application installation, you can set up the application easily from your phone or by using their website Myflyscreen.com. Obviously you have to create an account to manage widgets but once you’ve done it it’s really easy to get the feeds you want.

Application in use

Navigation in the application is simple with right and left clicks on the D-pad selecting screens, where each screen is a widget that shows a list of feeds. A neat detail here is the white dots which indicates how many screens you have. Up and down on the D-pad navigates on the feed list itself while using the center D-pad selects the item you want to display. When selecting an item it automatically loads the built in browser so you can read the content in its whole. This is however not always the case as for instance on the Twitter widget you can do most of the actions from within Flyscreen. On the main screen the left softkey brings up search using Google, and the right softkey is used to update the application, edit widgets and edit application settings. When choosing to “open settings” you can use the left softkey to customize the application further such as setting the autostart to on. It is also from here you exit the application.



Final thoughts

Flyscreen is overall decent when it comes to speed but has some small glitches. It’s a decent RSS reader but mainly uses the browser to launch the items. For those using the built in feed function, they’re better off keeping that. Feeds can be displayed inside the application but this is not consistent, for Twitter and AccuWeather this works fine, while for BBC UK (default) it doesn’t. It doesn’t quite live up to expectation of a good RSS reader or a Twitter client but it does offer another alternative way to do things.