ICC Cricket World Cup 2011: Best 3 apps for Symbian^3 (and some other Symbian) devices [Compared]

To our luck, all quarter finals (except 1) and both semi-finals are scheduled on working days. It has often been remarked by commentators during matches that cities like Mirpur and Dhaka are on a literal holiday for the duration of the world cup. Whoever finalized the schedule probably lives in either of the two cities!

Anyway, the rest of us will have to find alternate ways of keeping ourselves updated with the score. Mobile apps are one way for some of us. Sometime back, we had taken a look at the best apps for iOS devices, for keeping up with the world cup. Today is the turn of Symbian^3 (Example- Nokia N8) and some older Symbian versions. Here are some of the apps you can download on the compatible Symbian phone, from the Ovi Store, and get regular score updates, and a lot more…

Mobile ESPN: Free
The download size of this app is about 800kb, which does not take a lot of time if you use Wi-Fi or 3G to download. This app is available to download for free from Ovi Store. The moment you open this app, you immediately notice that this app only works in landscape mode. The interface is pretty slick, and offers a lot without looking cluttered. The colour combination of black and red works well. On the home screen, you get the options like news, videos, photos, match scores, team profiles and rankings. Since this is the official ESPNStar app, the news updates are extremely frequent. What is the most amazing is the videos section. The sheer number of videos available for viewing is amazing, mostly because a lot of the videos are from their TV channels. Interviews, post-match analysis and even discussions are available for viewing. The videos are sometimes as long as 15 minutes, and on a Wi-Fi network, we faced absolutely no buffer stoppages. The quick loading of videos is a good thing, which will reduce the delay if you use the mobile network service providers’ GPRS/EDGE network as well. The photos section is divided by the day at the world cup number. Action from on and off the field is available here. Click on the Matches option, and you reach a screen with three tabs live, recent and upcoming. The live scores are available here, the scoreboards of recently played matches can be viewed as well, and you can also check out which matches are up in the next few days. The team profile section is pretty nifty. Users will be able to access team and individual player profiles here- all the stats. The Ranking section shows the current ODI and Test rankings for all nations playing at the world cup.

The app also has a widget which can be tagged on to any of the available home screens. Symbian^3’s widget size limitation restricts the widget, which still does its best of showing as much info as possible, in shuffle mode. When a match is not on, it keeps shuffling between the results of previously played matches and the upcoming match with date and time. When a match is in progress, the entire focus is on the score update.

CricketNext: Free
Slightly bigger in sheer download size than the Mobile ESPN app, this 1MB application has its own advantages. Before I move on to those, let me state that this app does not work in landscape mode, completely opposite to the behaviour of the Mobile ESPN app! However, open the app and you will first see the header of the latest big story with the corresponding image. A couple of seconds later, the home screen will load, with the results of the last 5 matches played at the cricket world cup. The very top of the screen has a slim box, which keeps shuffling between the latest news, features and opinion based articles. The bottom of the screen has the main tabs- news, photo, video and back home. The news section, as the name says, has the latest updates from the world cup. This section is updated pretty regularly. The photos section has the pictures sorted on the individual match basis. The videos section has a lot of video content from the TV channels of the parent company- CNN-IBN. The videos include interviews, news and expert analysis. The video quality pretty okay, and load times are good, but marginally slower than the Mobile ESPN app, on the same Wi-Fi connection.

Despite the slightly bigger download and install size, the CricketNext app does not have a widget. Users will need to access the app for the latest updates, rather than finding them on the home screen.

Yahoo Cricket: Free
Smallest download size, about 500kb, and least frills on offer. The Yahoo Cricket app is matter to fact- just provide the latest scores when a match is in progress. Also, you can access the scoreboards of the last 5 played matches. Apart from that, no news, videos or picture gallery is on offer.

The widget for Yahoo Cricket has the same characteristics. When a match is in progress, it is up and about in full glory, with immediate score updates. However, when a match is not in progress, it just shows a red cricket ball and a lot of white space! 

Now that we have taken a look at the features, characteristics and performance of the three applications, here is a table which helps you understand which app has what, while missing out on what else.

All we can say is, may the best team win!

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Vishal Mathur

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