SmartConnect by Birdstep (or just ‘SmartConnect‘ from here on in) is a free connection manager for Nokia smartphones that aims to make using Wi-Fi access points a little easier. The problem with using Wi-Fi on your Nokia is that you have to find and connect to every access point, then remember to select it again from the list of possible access points the next time you are within range. If you move around a lot – and like to browse the web at high speed without troubling your 3G bill – this can, frankly, be a pain.

SmartConnect can help by letting you collect access points you have used previously into ‘Connection Groups’. Each connection group will appear on the ‘Select access point’ menu when you try to make an Internet connection. The idea is that when your phone asks you how you want to connect to the ‘net, you just tell it to use a connection group and SmartConnect will try each of the access points in that group in turn – stopping at the one with the best connection.

It’s up to you how you arrange your access points – having a ‘near home’, ‘near work’ group and ‘other’ worked well for us, but you may have your own methods. You can also put the phone’s default 3G access point in any or all of the connection groups – this will give the phone a default fallback to try if none of the other named wifi points are within range or responding at a decent speed.

The system works pretty well – grouping your known access points together stops Smart Connect having to search through every possible connection every time you want to get online (you don’t need to check your work hotspot when you are in you back garden, for example) although it would be useful to have an option to search for any possible open wifi points whenever you are somewhere new.

If you manually detect a new hotspot using the WLAN Scanner from your Nokia’s home screen, SmartConnect will ask if you want to add it to a Connection Group, though, which is a nice touch.

If you use a lot of wifi hotspots, SmartConnect will definitely help you manage your connections and save you some time. A few more network discovery options would help this app shine, but as it stands it is certainly worth a look.

Details
Size: 0.689867MB
Price: Free
Download: SmartConnect

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