Added to edit: Please note that I have resumed communication with Oxygen Software and I have been provided with a serial number as well requests for more information about the problems I describe below in order to fix them. I will update this article when I have more news.

I have used Oxygen Phone Manager for more than a year. Although it does have some interesting points, I have had the worst possible experience with the developers and their license philosophy.

The software is very buggy, and the developers refuse to deal with the problem, making it even worse. I had a problem with SMS sending which resulted in garbled output in my language (there are many other bugs really, but this was extremely serious), and I was pleading with them to fix it for 8 months. The problem is very simple to fix; they only had to fix their character conversion tables, but instead of doing nothing they made it worse. My outgoing messages are now unreadable.

Summary: Oxygen is buggy.

So what, you’ll think, bugs are a common curse. That’s right, but only Oxygen does not allow you to update the software after one year. My license has now expired. I can't get bug fixes because the license does not allow it. I am stuck with a buggy version unless I fork out more money to Oxygen! The licensing system is really awful. You can't use it on more phones unless you buy more licenses. Now, every time I run Oxygen, I am nagged with a message asking me to pay more money to Oxygen to renew my license again. If I press Enter (OK) instead of Cancel, I’ll get spam in my mailbox.

Summary: Oxygen has the worst licensing system you’ll ever find.

Although Oxygen has a rich feature set in its specs, is not as good as the free Nokia PC Suite. PC Suite has a full working syncrhonizing system that quickly and reliably synchs your mobile with Outlook. Oxygen needs a 4 minute procedure for the same thing, and it's not reliable. I have lost all my contacts once because I pressed the wrong buttons. Oxygen does not offer an explorer-like view of your phone contents, such as Nokia does. It has a bizzare system to upload files. Most of the additional Oxygen features are really useless: no one needs a ringtone manager anymore since we live in the era of MP3 and midi reproduction. Nor do we need a “logo manager”, we just make a logo with our photo editor and upload it to the phone with Nokia PC Suite.

Summary: The business user is well advised to avoid Oxygen and stick to PC Suite.

To top the problem, the developers attempt to misinform the public by giving away free licenses for people who set up pages or write reviews on CNET and elsewhere. Here is such a “review”: http://pages.intnet.mu/shakeel/mobilezone.html Keep in mind that some of the positive reviews you read, even here, may have resulted in free licenses. (I have paid for mine).

Therefore, instead of paying for an ever-buggy application that will only work for one phone, without updates after a year, get the free Nokia PC Suite.

Good Points
Supports some outdated Nokia features which Nokia PC Suite doesn’t

Bad Points
Very buggy, and you can get no bug fixes after one year!
You can use one phone only.
Licensing system causes fake reviews to show on the net.
Not as reliable as Nokia PC Suite.
Not as automated as Nokia PC Suite.
After one year you get nag messages and spam