While Sony Ericsson owners are blessed with well-made (and free) PC phone managers such as flOat’s Mobile Agent, it amazes me no end how the millions of Nokia owners (as well as Symbian phone owners) seem shortchanged by comparison.

Sure there’s Nokia’s own PC Suite, but this has lately become a clunky battery of programs that has eaten system resources, worked quirkily, and generally behaved more as a liability rather than as an asset.

There are also third-party suites such as MOBILedit, and even stalled freeware projects such as FiveTree’s frustrated attempt at creating a universal phone manager. I’ve tried them all, and they have proven wanting in many fronts, either from an utter lack of features or simply from utterly annoying interfaces.

And then there’s Oxygen Phone Manager II. And in my opinion, there’s simply nothing quite like it at all.

This Russian masterpiece does everything that I want a phone suite to do, such as:

• Real-time SMS send and receive
• PC archiving of SMS messages
• Export of message archives to spreadsheet file formats
• Infrared, cable and Bluetooth support
• MMS management, including PC archiving of MMS messages and files
• Phonebook management
• Memory card management
• Phone app management
• Control over special phone features such as FM Stations lists and MP3 playlists

Kitchen sync

Oxygen probably has the biggest base of compatible phones in its roster, spanning practically all data-capable Nokia phones, as well as phones from Samsung and Symbian-based phones from Panasonic, Sony Ericsson, Motorola and even BenQ. If your phone has a data or infrared port, chances are good that Oxygen can cover it. It even managed to do the “impossible,