FlashSMS
FlashSMS was, by its own description, the first Symbian Series 60 application able to send flash SMS without needing any additional service. There was nothing to configure: write the message, choose the recipient, send.
Archive notice. Symbian Toys was an independent hobbyist software project for the Symbian Series 60 platform, which Nokia discontinued in 2013. These pages preserve the project's own documentation as it was published. The software is no longer distributed here, and no support was ever offered for it. Device and platform names appear for identification only; the project was never affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any device manufacturer.
What a flash message is
The page explained it in one sentence, and the explanation has aged well: flash messages are a particular kind of SMS that are shown immediately on the recipient's display and, after a keypress, disappear without being stored in the phone's memory.
In protocol terms this is the lowest message class in the GSM specification — a message the handset is expected to present at once rather than file away. Networks and operator services of the era offered it, sometimes for a fee, and the practical significance of a handset application that could originate one directly was that it removed the intermediary entirely.
Behaviour and cost
Two things were made explicit, and both were the kind of clarification that saves an author a great deal of email. A flash message is not free: the network operator charges the normal per-message cost, exactly as it would for an ordinary SMS. And the message not being stored is a property of the receiving handset's handling, not a guarantee about anything else — it disappears from the display, which is not the same as never having existed.
Optional features
The base program sent a message to a single recipient typed in by hand. Phone book integration and multiple recipients were the two optional additions, activated for users who contributed to the project. As with the rest of the catalogue, the activation was tied to the handset and remained valid for later versions, so nobody paid twice for the same feature. Those arrangements are recorded on the FlashSMS FAQ; the mechanism itself is long gone and nothing on this archive collects payment of any kind.
Ports that never shipped
UIQ and Series 80 versions were proposed on the same conditional basis as the UnlockMe! ports — work would begin once donations for those specific projects reached a minimum. Neither port was released, and the FAQ page still carried the offer when the site was archived.
Release record
A single distribution file is evidenced in the archived download records, listed on the release archive page. Source was published in 2021 as the FlashSMS source repository.
Why "without any additional service" was the claim
The wording on the original page is precise and easy to skim past. Flash messages were not new in 2006 — the message class had been in the GSM specifications from the beginning, and operators and web gateways had been offering to originate them for years, usually as a paid feature and always as an intermediary. What did not exist on the platform was a handset application that composed and sent one directly, with the message leaving the user's own phone over their own connection.
That is the difference between typing a message into somebody else's web form and typing it into your own phone, and it is the whole reason the program existed. Nothing had to be configured because there was nothing to configure: no gateway address, no account, no credentials.
What it looked like in use
The interface was deliberately minimal. Compose the text, choose a recipient, send. In the base version the recipient was typed in by hand; phone book access and multiple recipients were the two optional additions, which is a good indication of where the effort actually was — sending the message was the easy part, and integrating with the platform's contacts database was not.
Reading this today
The flash message class survives in the specifications and is still used, mostly by networks themselves for balance notifications and service alerts, which is why an unexpected full-screen message from an operator still behaves this way on a modern handset. What has gone is the space FlashSMS occupied: a platform open enough that an individual developer could publish an application which originated a message class the messaging application did not expose. Common questions are answered on the FlashSMS FAQ.