SkyeQuiKey from Skyestream

This is a review of SkyeQuiKey from Skyestream.

Review Conditions

I installed version 1.03 of SkyeQuiKey on a Nokia E71, which is a S60 3rd Edition FP 1 device.

Installation

Installation is quite simple. I installed the .sis file using the Nokia PC Suite. The software takes about 1.6 mb of RAM at startup. That was verified using Handy Taskman.

First View

I wasn’t sure what to expect from SkyeQuiKey. It didn’t seem like a replacement for the OS shell, like Handy Shell. After installation, the application is actually not visible, except that it’s running in the Memory. It does not have to be invoked to use it. It’s just sitting there, waiting for the user to press keys on the keypad. And then you realize what SkyeQuiKey is supposed to do and how well it does it.

According to the website, “SkyeQuiKey is an ‘instant key-and-find’ application using Skyestream’s quikFind technology” and I can “Quickly find of Contacts, Applications, Bookmarks and Other Data on device”. It does exactly that, and quite well.

Configuring the application is pretty straightforward. There are just a few configurations to be done. When I first saw the configuration for the left and the right soft keys, I thought it would re-map the left and right press of the D-Pad permanently. With that expectation I concluded that it didn’t seem to work on my device and assumed that they were designed with the numeric keypad in mind.

Later on I found that, rather non-intuitively, the re-map works only on contacts that come up in the search results of SkyeQuiKey.

Main Features

Type anything on the keypad, on the home screen and SkyeQuiKey will search it for you. That’s the main feature of this application. It will find your contacts and applications that are installed as well as built in. SkyeQuiKey indexes every application in the mobile. I could pick any application I want in just a few key presses. This is particularly useful in the hierarchical folder structure of s60. I hate having to navigate multiple folders to start an application.

 

 Search on SkyeQuiKey is quite powerful. Unlike the native Nokia E71 search which only looks for the names of contacts, SkyeQuiKey searches all text. I am searching for a text ‘STUDENT’ which is in the company field of those contacts and they are shown in the search results. This is extremely useful.

On the searched item, several operations can be done, like sending a message or making a call.

I could also view the Contact’s complete details after it comes up in the SkyeQuiKey search. The ‘View’ option takes us to the native Contacts application. But the not-so-good part is that you are taken out of SkyeQuiKey when you View the Contact. Pressing the back button takes you to the main menu of Contacts and not the SkyeQuiKey list. This is not a consistent implementation.

Special items are searches like ‘new’ will bring up options to create new messages of various types. I could also type ‘draft’ and go to the draft folder.

Handling

When SkyeQuiKey is running and I pressed the Home function, it was annoying to note that that I always got the home screen without the text on the left and right soft keys. Similarly, when I unlock the keypad, I get the home screen without the text on the left and right soft keys. In this mode, SkyeQuiKey did not kick in. Only the default Nokia search function worked. Sometimes there is no response to key presses.

 

Consistently, I needed to press the Home function key twice to get the full home screen to get the text over the soft keys and use SkyeQuiKey.

The idea is that I could just type anything on the home screen and SkyeQuiKey would intelligently search and bring up the contact or application. If I have search a contact, I expect that I should just start typing the person name on the home screen and it comes up. But the frustrating thing is that the first key press brings up the ‘history’ in SkyeQuiKey. So the first character has to be pressed twice to search.

If I have to search for “App. Manager”, I’d have to type “aapp manager” because the first ‘a” is to open up the SkyeQuiKey program. I checked if disabling the history in the configuration lets me type the query without having to type the first letter twice. But alas, the application doesn’t allow for that. The first key press is always to invoke the application. I guess this is a limitation for qwerty devices.

I later then found an explanation for this limitation in the instruction manual in section 5.2. This could have been implemented better.

The history items could have been in a separate tab, like in Handy Taskman where open and recent apps are in different tabs.

Weaknesses

Some of the issues I specified in the above section need to be addressed. But they won’t be a problem for owners of S60 phones with numeric keypads.

Conclusion

SkyeQuiKey is quite seamlessly integrated with the OS. But it seems to have been designed for S60 phones with numeric keypads. For phones with qwerty keypads, its still needs some fine tuning. Besides in the latest E71, the availability of native Contact search on the Home screen reduces the utility and novelty of SkyeQuiKey a bit. Nevertheless it’s definitely worth a look for phones with numeric keypads.

You can download a trial version or buy this application at Handango.