Mobimate’s WorldMate Professional application continues to be updated regularly and remains in the best sellers chart. The eight modules of the application all complement each other, and add up to being something a bit more than the sum of their parts. WorldMate works on two levels. On installing, the majority of the functions are freely available. Updating to the pro version (which is $50 for a twelve month licence) will give you access to the latest additions to WorldMate ‘Professional’, namely the ability to manage your flight schedules, look up new flights and airline timetables, and to set up alerts when flights are delayed or cancelled.

By telling WorldMate which flights you are booked on for your next trip, you will, if they are delayed or cancelled, get an alert sent to the application as soon as is practical. This is a perfect example of an application that is utterly useless 99.95% of the time, yet the one time it does work is when you realize you’ll be adding your flights for the rest of the annual subscription period, and, more than likely, be renewing it for subsequent years.

WorldMate offers me the convenience, no matter which airline I am flying or where I am in the world, by pro-actively popping up an alert to tell me when I switch the phone back on as I step off the plane. According to WorldMate, this is the first mobile alert system on the Nokia platform, discounting the SMS service offered by some airlines, such as British Airways, but it has two big advantages over the services offered by the airlines.

The first is that it is easily available internationally – BA can only send me alerts when I am not roaming, and American Airlines will only let me send alert texts to a US number, not my UK number that I roam with. WorldMate is always with me. The second is that it’s not reliant on the airlines having an alert system because it ties in with the much bigger commerical flight databases. This means that when I am flying on smaller airlines (such as ScotAirways) or the budget airlines (that typically don’t have alert services to keep costs down e.g. Easyjet and Ryanair), I still have the alert service available.

Thanks to access to this database, WorldMate can also offer a number of other flight-related services. There is a rather elegant timetable look up, where I can suggest my arrival and departure airports and see the flights and airlines that work that route, with the relevant take off and landing times. So all the flight functionality is something that I would be happy with as a standalone application, but there are also features that are available to all users, both the ‘professional’ and the ‘free’ versions of WorldMate, and if the premium services aren’t your cup of tea, the other functions still make this an exciting tool to have on your handset.

The world clock function again might seem a simple idea, but trying to remember just when to call home to read the bedtime story is something that must be done. Get it wrong by an hour…and you’re in deep trouble. Of course it’s also useful when making international calls and appointments.

Currency exchange is also a useful function, especially as it looks up the most current rates online. The Weather Center provides a rough summary for the next few days (i.e. the general condition and temperature). It is exactly the sort of information you would hear on local news, except that it’s available instantly in a more digestible format. There’s also an interesting World Map view, with the recent addition of cloud cover/satellite shots of your present location.

Picking up the trial of WorldMate and going through the different views in the comfort of your sitting room or office is not going to give you a good impression of how useful it really is when you’re on the road. What you should be thinking is ‘How would this help me when I am travelling?’ And ‘Why is it so popular and why is the user base still growing?’ Because, as I said at the start of the review, it works. It works well. And with the addition of the Flight Schedules, the dropping of data prices, paired with faster connectivity, and the availability of traveling data bundles (certainly across Europe and the UK) is enough for me to push WorldMate Professional into the rarified atmosphere of a MegaApp, and give it a score of 90.

[Reviewed by Ewan Spence from All About Symbian.com]