Sony Ericsson W950i

Introduction

And now it’s time for UIQ to play with the big boys. Because, while the P800 might have been their first effort, which was improved on through the rest of the P series right up to the P990, while the M600 had the slim form factor and messaging capability that would attract that certain purchaser in the IT department, the W950i is the first UIQ smartphone to be clearly and defiantly aimed at the consumer market. When the man on the street goes out to but a phone that plays music, like that iPod thing(!), they’re going to be steered to this.

Of course, that’s the Symbian fan’s view – there’s another massive collision in the W950i. Sony Ericsson have been pushing music phones (through the Walkman brand) for a number of years as well, so this is the culmination of a long product upgrade cycle. There are going to be more people looking at this and going “wow, they’ve upgraded the internal storage to 4GB and added a bundle of applications for model number six” and not give two hoots about the Operating System and politics behind it.

What they are going to see is one of the slimmest Walkman phones ever sold (a mere 15mm); it’s got more fashion seeping out of the mystic purple casing that Kate Moss; it’s featherweight light; has a flat-touch keypad, and it just reeks of style. Put simply, I have not seen a more gorgeous phone on any Symbian device in a long time. Make no mistake, this device is going to have increased sales simply because of how it looks on the store shelf.

I really like this phone, but it’s not perfect. Some of the design choices (such as the lack of camera or Wi-Fi) leave a power user such as myself a bit lost, but there are rational reasons why they have been made. On the other hand some of the choices made are just plain stupid, and detract from a very well focused smartphone, as I shall explain.

Hardware Controls

The number pad has grown on me. It’s not completely flat; there are some raised bumps (almost like Braille marks) for each key so you can locate the keys without looking (something a perfectly flat keypad could never manage). Given that this bump is in the centre of the key, while the number is on the left of the ‘strike area’ (and letters on the right) it makes more sense to type blind than watching your fingers, as you tend to focus on the numbers and miss hitting the centre. Great for a few words or phone numbers, but for any reasonable amount of input you will be using the touch screen’s Jot character recognition, or relying on your Contacts database for email addresses. It really doesn’t improve with use.

As well as the standard keys on the number pad, the front of the machine also sports a dedicated ‘Walkman’ button which will bring up the music player application no matter what application you are in, and a ‘C’ (for clear) button on the other side. When you are in the Walkman application, above the number pad lights up a triumvirate of “rewind, play/pause and fast forward” icons. This brings up the first gotcha of the W950. These aren’t dedicated keys – they are simply using the adjacent 1, 2 and 3 number keys, and only in the Walkman application.

And that means when you are not in Walkman application, the only music control open to you is the pause button on the right hand side of the W950. Compare this to the dedicated playback controls on the N91 and it feels like something was missed in the design stage (note that you do have a remote control on the headphone cord, but more on that later). Under the pause button, you have a rocker control for the volume – and this is so infuriating for two reasons. The first is that it doesn’t directly control the volume! You tap either up or down, wait half a second or so for a volume dialog to come up on screen, and then you have to press the key again to change the volume. First of all, I’ve pressed down, just turn it down – and if you are going to insist on showing me the dialog, at least have the courtesy of remembering which key I pressed and act on it, don’t make me press it twice when I’m struggling to turn down an MP3 that is unexpectedly loud.

Oh and the other problem with the volume rocker? It’s directly opposite the thumb wheel. When you press the thumbwheel in to confirm a dialog, the natural hand motion is to squeeze on the opposite side of the device – which is exactly where the volume control is. Okay, after a week or so you remember not to squeeze, but it’s really annoying.

Yes, we only have a scroll wheel. Where the Pxxx devices had a five way rocker (roll up, roll down, forward, backward and in), the W950 has a simple ‘scroll up, scroll down and in’ thumb wheel, which is actually a lot easier for a new user to understand. To aid navigation, just below the thumbwheel is a ‘back’ button (which is also duplicated on screen in pretty much every single application), which is actually a very simple device, but incredibly useful – it steps you back through an application, to the launch screen, and then back to the home/today screen through multiple presses. A long press and hold will jump you straight back to the home screen (or activate the key lock if you are on the home screen). Finally, something that’s intuitive, simple to understand, that just works! Praise be!

Once you add on the UIQ3 interface (of which I’ll dissect in part two of this review), I do wonder if anyone in Sony Ericsson actually sat down to do any real world user interface testing, or whether they simply took some elements from previous UIQ phones, some elements from previous Walkman phones, and threw them all together hoping that they would work. For all of the smooth styling and looks, it drives like a Sherman tank. Firmware updates (which can be done over the Internet by the end user) need to address the issues they can as a matter of priority. There is just too much delay, fudging and guesswork in too many controls.

I look at the Apple announcement of the iPhone, where the interface was given priority – and using the W950 it’s not hard to see why they’ll use this as a primary marketing message.

The Walkman Player

And so onto the Walkman features. It’s hard to miss, with the name engraved on the side, three Walkman logos on the casing, and a short-cut to the application both on the casing and on the top line of the standby screen. So there’s no problem getting to it.

It’s when you get to it that it starts to be a bit confusing and a touch frustrating…

Finding the Music

When you press the Walkman button on screen or on the hardware, you’re taken to a display of the current (or last played) track. There are no onscreen playback controls (remember that 1, 2, and 3 now act as the controls), but you do have a progress bar for the individual track, which you can reposition using the stylus (tucked away at the back of the machine) to drag the desired position. Album Art (if available) is on display, and playback options such as shuffle, continuous play and graphic equaliser are alongside. Apart from the progress bar, all these on-screen buttons are just too fiddly to use without the stylus – your thumb is not going to be able to manage. For a portable device, to require the stylus to be removed, delicately tapping the screen, and then replaced, seems at odds with the nature of a smartphone (for example, used when out jogging).

Flanking the bottom of the screen are two ‘ranking’ systems. On the left is a ‘star’ rating from 0 to 5, and on the right is the ‘mood’ of the track, a colour coded, easy to access form of playlist. You can mark up tracks as ‘Happy,’ ‘Sad,’ ‘Energetic’ or ‘Chilled’ (although you can relabel these yourself – it’s just too delightful to assign yellow as ‘Cheesey’!). Under the moods choice under “My Music” you’ll be able to select a mood of music. Both of these are great ideas, but in practice they are pretty much eye candy.

I’ve already rated most of my music in iTunes. Why can’t it read those ratings? Or the ratings in Windows Media Player? There’s no direct equivalent of ‘moods’ in any of my desktop PC applications, so isn’t adding this information a waste of time? Personally I find these ratings as a wasted effort. I’ve a playlist called favourites that I can manage on my PC that is then drag and dropped over to the phone. All I need to do is just grab the last tunes added and put them in my ‘favourites’ playlist created on the W950.

Oh, there’s no way to list the last tracks added, or sort them by date… (aaaahhrgh!!! Fx: pulls hair out). Given that this device is something where music will chop and change, this should be an automatic playlist option. The W950 already has a number of Auto Play lists, namely Top Rated (see comments on ranking tracks on the device), Most Played, Least Played, Last Played and Bookmarks. How hard would it be to add in a “Last Added” auto playlist?

Beyond this though, navigating your album list is a good one handed experience, apart from one gotcha. Remember that calling up the Walkman app takes you to the current track? Well, hitting the back key takes you to the home screen. All well and good, but to get to the playlists, album and track listings, you need to press the “My Music” on screen button. There’s no hardware button control, so time to use your thumb (yes you can get away with your thumb along the bottom icons). It would make more sense to me to have the back key jump up to the main Walkman navigation before returning to the home screen.

Once you get there though, it’s the thumbwheel‘s call to action, as you scroll through a top level of play lists, albums, tracks or artists. You then get an alphabetical list of the contents, and can drill down again (and again if needed) to return to the ‘play this song’ screen. If scrolling not your thing (and once I reached about 150 tracks over 20 albums it was no longer my thing) you’ll be relying on the search feature. Which is a bit useless.

When I have to search through these lists (for example, under the ‘all tracks’ option), I expect all the text to be searched. If the search string is ‘Love’ then I would hope that the search would pick up the following songs…

• Love Me Do
• All You Need Is Love
• Smell the Glove

…in other words, wherever the string ‘love’ appears in a song title, it would be presented to me. The W950 unfortunately doesn’t do this. It will only search each song title starting at the first letter. So you only see “Love me Do.” Now while this makes for a much faster search, it makes it a lot harder to find tracks, especially if your MP3 file’s ID3 tags are not perfect. Again, it seems that real world testing has been skipped – at the very least this could be a preference (search optimised for either speed or accuracy) for the user to decide.

All in all, the finer details of the Walkman application leave me feeling that the code can be improved significantly in future firmware updates.

Transferring the Music

I’ve covered this in depth in one of my first W950 articles, but in brief, the bundled PC application to transfer MP3s (Disc2Phone) is one of the best transfer solutions I’ve come across in a long time. It’s simple to use, tightly focussed on what it needs to do, and a lot of thought has been put into how a new user will use it. The smartphone UI designers could learn thing or two from it.

If having more control over your uploads is for you, then the W950 can switch its connection option to be a simple USB Mass Storage Device, where you can drag and drop your files into the internal 4GB flash memory (unfortunately the W950 does not come with space for an external memory card). Just like the N91, you’re asked to refresh your list of music files when you detach the USB cable. It’s just as annoying here as it was on the N91.

Listening to the Music

Early this week I ran a blind audio test with the W950, measuring it against the aforementioned N91 and the iPod Shuffle, and the general conclusion of the editorial team at All About Symbian was that the devices are no longer the limiting factor to the listener. The noise of the environment you are in, the quality of your headphones, and the compression and artefacts in the MP3 (or AAC or WMA) files will all have a bigger effect than the audio signal the W950 produces.

One of the things that upset me is the complete lack of gapless playback in the modern MP3 playback. Gapless playback means that when one music file finishes, the second plays immediately… with no gaps. While this might seem a small thing if you listen to your regular three minute slice of processed pop, if you’re listening to a live concert recording… or a suite of classical music… or even Chronicles of the Black Sword by Hawkwind [yay – Ed], these little stutters of a few seconds of silence can get annoyng very quickly.

I don’t think there is any excuse for this. The application knows what song is up next – it can look at the playlist, or the next track in the album, and get it ready. Hundreds of thousands of computer operations can happen each second, there must be a solution to this. Sony can manage it on their minidisk system, and that’s a physical spinning medium along the lines of a CD – with Flash storage there’s not even that excuse.

The W950 does not come with a standard 3.5mm headphone socket, so you must use the attached break out box. This plugs into the base of the machine, adding about half an inch to the length, and the cable itself is about three feet long. Two feet along the cable is the one piece of kit that redeems the interface of the W950 – the remote control. With a central play/pause button, and a ring control around the outside for both volume, skip forward and backwards, and scan forwards and backwards, it provides almost instantaneous control of your music, with no delays for dialogs to pop up on the screen, no need to search through dialog boxes, or hunt for the controls in your pocket (although if this controller can manage it, that means there’s no reason the rest of the device can’t react as fast).

I just wish it was further up the cable. Being only two feet away from the pocket the device is awkward. Add another foot to get to the 3.5mm port to add your own headphones (which add their own cable length to the mix) means that you’ll be wrestling a bit of a python with all the cables (see below). Luckily there is a stereo Bluetooth headset profile if you‘ve got the right equipment.

Summing Up The Walkman

What’s most annoying to me is that the W950 is so close to being a really excellent music player. It talks to a desktop computer with ease (and using USB Mass Storage means pretty much anything can talk to it in some form). The audio quality is very good, especially with the right encoding and headphones. Most importantly I can have my Atomic Rooster albums at full volume and not worry about missing a call because the W950 will break into the music and let me know.

It’s just the small things that niggle me and damage the user experience so that the application stops being something hiding in the background that just works, and becomes something that needs you to make a conscious effort to think about what you want to accomplish. Luckily most of the problems are in software, so it should be something Sony Ericsson can address.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Sony_Ericsson_W950i_part_1.php

Nokia N93i

I should stress right at the outset that the Nokia N93i isn’t strictly an upgrade to the N93. The N93i is an evolution of the original design, to be sure, and the main point is that it’s much slimmer and more visually appealing, thus attracting people who would have dismissed the original bulk of the N93. It remains to be seen how long the N93 stays available for, but I’d guess that the two can coexist happily for a while. The N93i is the one most newcomers will buy, but there are quite a few compromises made in the N93i design that might annoy anyone determined to buy the ‘flagship’ S60 smartphone. For more on the pros and cons, read on….

First impressions of the N93i are excellent, with the large mirror-backed screen prominent and attractive, with a silver surround that’s unfortunately not carried down into the base unit, which remains black(ish) – the two-tone silver/black looks a little odd. The camera housing still dominates the top of the N93i, but it’s been restyled since the N93 and is slightly thinner.

Using a combination of newer screen technology (the small exterior display is now OLED) and clever concave sculpting (see the diagram, right) the majority of the N93i is a good 5mm thinner than the N93. This is a huge difference and obviously THE main selling point of the newer model when picking it from a line-up. With the slimmer form comes lower weight too, 17g less than the N93, at 163g. Holding and opening up the N93i doesn’t overwhelm you with its bulk, unlike the original N93. The combination of mirror top and svelte form factor transforms the device into something more instantly desirable.

Other physical improvements made in the N93i include:

• a joystick rather than d-pad for the side (camera mode) controller – this is significantly less fiddly
• a recessed lanyard mount on the bottom of the device – saving a couple of millimetres in length in one go
• a flush-fitting and more secure miniSD slot cover
• a tethered cover for the Pop-port connector – no chance of this one getting lost(!), although leaving it hanging there while you listen to music on the Pop-port stereo headset looks and feels somewhat messy
• relocation of the main speaker to the base unit – again, to help save space in the lid assembly
• a redesigned battery cover that’s a lot easier to remove and reattach
• a proper SIM card recess (rather than the flimsy and fiddly clasp on the N93)
• a charging LED set underneath the mirror top

Opening up the Nokia N93i reveals changes too, both positive and negative. Most obvious is the flush, metallic keypad, probably a necessity given the new slimmer lines of the base unit. There are spidery rubber inlays to improve grip and give you a better sense of where the key boundaries are in the dark. Although this largely works well and there’s a definite ‘click’, the amount of force needed to effect each keypress is fairly high and the N93i isn’t as useable as its predecessor when it comes to text entry. I also didn’t like the way there were no dividers between the Green/Edit and (more vitally) C/Red ‘keys’, it’s going to be quite easy to go for ‘C’ and hit the hangup button by mistake, thus ending the application you’re in.

Having reckoned the N93 had just about the best display of any smartphone I’d seen (in all light conditions), the N93i blew me away, indoors at least, with its colour rendition of my photos. The N93i has 16 million colours rather than the N93’s (paltry!!!) 262,000 available. What this means is that colours are more vibrant and more accurate, which is good. Not so good is that the change in screen technology has meant undistinguished performance outdoors, especially in sunlight, as shown below. The outer layer of the screen proved too reflective and consequently ruined the contrast, whereas the original N93 screen reflected nicely off the back of the display, giving excellent contrast in the brightest of light.

The main reason why outdoor screen contrast is important, of course, is because it’s the viewfinder for all still and video camera functions, the main raison d’etre for the N93 and N93i. Although restyled, the camera seems to be identical, in terms of hardware, to that in the N93, though once you examine photos you’ll realise that there is a significant difference.

As you know, the raw CMOS sensor data from a smartphone camera gets processed by various hardware and software in order to improve contrast while reducing digital ‘noise’ and artificial constructs (‘artefacts’) brought about because of the physical layout of the sensor and optics, and because of the compression schemes used to keep the amount of data manageable. In the Nokia N93, the noise reduction seemed to be largely turned off, with the result that images were very crisp but horribly full of artefacts if you zoomed in very closely. For the N93i, there’s far more noise reduction applied, with the result that artefacts (i.e. detail that isn’t really there in the first place) get blurred out, to hopefully result in a more pleasing picture, even if the photo isn’t apparently quite as crisp as the same image taken on the original N93. A nice side benefit of the reduced level of artefacts is that JPG file sizes are considerably (up to 50%) smaller.

Which noise reduction setup you prefer is down to personal preference – but for most people it won’t matter as there’s nothing you can do to adjust it on each device – and in any case, the photos are more than good enough on both devices for semi-professional use. There are the usual range of focus presets and lighting modes (e.g.’Incandescent’), plus of course the tremendous 3x optical zoom, making the N93i as good as many standalone digital cameras. Focussing is done by the usual gentle pressing of the main shutter button and, impressively, I found the speed of auto-focus to be far quicker on the N93i than on the N93, a real boon as speed of focus has always been an N93 gripe.

Although in theory, N93i video recording should be the same as on the N93, with the familiar VGA (640 by 480) capture at 30 frames per second, better than anything else currently available, there are several significant differences. On the plus side, there’s now the option for ‘Continuous auto-focus’, with the usual tick-tick-ticking of the focussing mechanism activating as your subject matter changes. Being able to film items really close up is a huge advantage, probably offsetting the fact that the mechanism noises make their way onto the video soundtrack.

Talking of soundtracks, one big minus point is that the move of the stereo microphones from either side of the camera housing (on the N93) to beside the power button (on the N93i) has meant lower sound levels overall and a reduction in the stereo separation.

I’ve had a few minor issues with handling the MP4 files produced by the two N93 variants, but digital video is such a complicated area that I’m not prepared to lay the blame with the smartphones at this time. I can suggest you steer clear of the supplied Adobe Premiere Elements as your editing software unless you have an absolute monster dual-core PC.

Away from multimedia, the Nokia N93i is familiar on all fronts, it’s standard S60 3rd Edition all the way, though with the extra tweak that you can run any application in ‘landscape’ mode by twisting the screen round in the other direction. And, as with the N93, you can echo your display out to a widescreen TV using the supplied TV-out lead and extra graphics chips in the smartphone. Being able to shoot video and then play it back straight away on any TV… and then upload it directly to the web to a video blog via a Wi-Fi connection is just cool, cool, cool. And blogging got even easier too, at least in theory, with the addition of Vox to the ‘Open online service’ option in Gallery (Flikr is already there). Just don’t try this at home on a typical European data tariff…

The N93i comes with a handful of dark and moody themes, as shown below, although I preferred to use it with a much lighter theme, giving more screen clarity in daily use.

There’s also the WLAN wizard, as featured in the very latest N93 firmware, helping you to define an access point directly from an initial scan of the airwaves. As with other S60 3rd Edition smartphones, the Wi-Fi reception isn’t spectacular and you’ll need to be close to a router for perfect operation. As with the N93, there’s support for UPnP (over Wi-Fi), should your home a-v equipment support this for streaming media. Quickoffice is supplied for business use, in viewer form but with the latest Quickmanager module for over-the-air upgrading to full edit mode.

Another casualty of the slimmer form is the battery, which is now a 950mAh BL-5F rather than the 1100mAh battery in the N93. This is a little worrying to be honest – when using the N93 day to day with a reasonable amount of photography or filming, I was often out of power by nightfall. To have battery capacity reduced is definitely cause for concern.

S60 itself shows the same maturity as in the N93, with almost 22MB of RAM free after booting, ensuring that memory problems in use are few and far between, even when starting up a Java program or a satellite navigation app.

In summary, here are the pros of each of the N93 models, based on my experience:

Nokia N93	Nokia N93i
Longer battery life Clearer sound on video recordings Better stereo separation on video recordings More legible and tactile numeric keypad Much clearer display in sunlight	Slimmer, sleeker, shorter Better on-board optical noise reduction on still images Faster auto-focus Option of continuous focus in video recordings 16 million colour display Better Pop port and card covers Better side joystick

By necessity, I’ve been concentrating on technical differences from the N93, but most new users will be coming to the N93i fresh and will be blown away by its features and capabilities. N93 purists may want to hang onto their black (or silver) monsters, with better screen contrast, better video sound, proper keys and longer battery life, but for everyone else the new slimline member of the N93 family is a very welcome addition.

The N93i looks and feels like a second generation design and will doubtless delight many a new Nseries customer as well as make jaws drop around the world, in homes and offices, both at its looks and at the sheer number of things such a relatively small device can do.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N93i.php

Nokia N93 DT-22 Tripod

Great as the Nokia N93 is in many ways, one unavoidable result of the slightly odd form factor is that you can’t leave it with the video running and prop it up somewhere – at least not without lots of fiddling around. Which, for something that’s so insanely great at shooting video, is a major problem.

Enter the DT-22 accessory, so new that I can’t even find a price for it on the Web (though I’d guess at £30 or so), a standard portable digital camera tripod with a custom N93 mount screwed on the top. As shown below, it certainly looks the part, at least on the more common black N93 variant.

Starting from the top, the N93 is held between two foldable jaws, one of which is mounted on rails with an adjuster knob. You simply insert the N93 and tighten the knob until the smartphone feels secure. The jaw assembly has a standard female camera threaded socket, with the DT-22 coming with a ball joint, as shown below, allowing a wide range of camera angles to be set up. The ball joint in turn is tightened by another knob – even fully locked it’s possible to force the ball round, but it doesn’t budge under the weight of the N93 and that’s the main thing.

The three legs are each telescopic, as shown below, and work in any of three lengths, or even a mix of lengths if you’re setting up the tripod on an uneven surface.

So far so good, it’s a reliable holder for the N93 and certainly beats cardboard or pile-of-books homemade ‘solutions’. But what about using it for filming while out and about? The main problem here is that the tripod, even at full extension, is only about 30cm tall. Luckily, the use of the standard camera thread, mentioned above, means that  you can simply screw the N93 ‘grip’ assembly onto any standard camera tripod of full height. This works extremely well, to the point where you wonder why Nokia didn’t just market the grip assembly rather than branding an entire mini-tripod. Still, I guess this way round you get the best of both worlds.

The DT-22 is perhaps the ultimate niche accessory – for the ultimate niche smartphone. But for any N93 owner it’s almost a must-have. Certainly for anyone taking video semi-seriously (such as for a video podcast!), the grip assembly looks better and works better than any hand-held or home-brew mounting, as as such it gets my approval (subject to price, not yet announced!).

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N93_DT-22_Tripod.php

Nokia E60 (2)

Nokia E60 review: Strictly business

Nokia E60 is available on the market for some time now and offers the users powerful business solutions in almost every possible way. The tri-band phone has 3G UMTS network support and features a fabulous TFT 16 million colors display. E60 is based on the 3rd edition Series 60 and runs on Symbian OS 9.1. It has GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared and USB support.

Nokia E60

Key features:

• Brilliant display
• Symbian OS
• Fast user interface
• Very good web browser
• RS-DV-MMC memory card slot
• Office documents editor
• 64 MB internal memory
• All connectivity options: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Infrared, USB
• GPRS, EDGE and UMTS support

Main disadvantages:

• Visually big dimensions
• No camera
• No FM radio
• Tiny Profiles/Switch off button

Nokia made this phone’s interface and functionality features remarkably like the N80 model. It only lacks the 3 megapixel camera but has a display with more colors. Both phones are of 3rd edition Series 60 with Symbian OS 9.1 and thus are very similar in terms of user interface. We will use part of the material for Nokia N80 in this review.

Elegant and clean

Nokia E60 looks very elegant and sophisticated. However, the silver phone reminds me of an old VCR remote control. The big dimensions of the phone are more of an optical illusion than real bulky size. Actually, the phone feels very comfortable when held in hand and there isn’t even the slightest sign of the visually perceived big size. 115 x 49 x 17 mm and 117 g seem pretty normal for E60. Interesting fact is that not everybody who sees Nokia E60 thinks that it is a high-class phone with nice design, some consider the phone looks as cheap.

Nokia E60 held in hand

The very plain and clean design of Nokia E60 is eccentrically disturbed by the front silver frame which ends in its left side but merges with the lateral side on the right. Similar design solution is used for the battery cover. Another interesting thing about Nokia E60 is the two white lights which are located in the alphanumeric part of the keypad. They serve as additional light for the backlighting.

Solid as a rock

Nokia E60 is surprisingly solid. The phone is so well elaborated that it seems that it’s made of one big piece and then it has been cut down to its current form. There aren’t any gaps between the parts of the phone and it seems unbreakable. Moreover, the phone leaves the impression of safety and control in your hands. Nokia truly deserve admiration for this.

When you first grab E60 in your hands, the first thing you will notice is the enormous display. The 16 millions colors display covers half of the front side of the phone. Above the display there is only space for the speaker and a Nokia sign, both etched in the metal frame, which surrounds all elements on the phone’s face.

On top of the keypad there are the two soft keys and the green & red receiver keys with the navigation joystick between them. On the next row are the Pencil, Menu and C (correction) buttons. Below them are the numeric keys.

Front side

The back side design of Nokia E60 lacks imagination. It shelters another Nokia sign, the battery cover and collaborates with the top side for the two holes for a neck-strap. The battery cover, however, is interesting as it slides aside not downwards. When you remove it you will find the BL-5C Li-Ion battery of 970 mAh capacity. The manufacturer promises up to 290 hours of stand by time and 6 hours and 40 minutes of talk time with this battery and we’re prone to trust him. Nokia E60 managed very well during the test period and we had to recharge it only once.

Back side • SIM card bed • Memory card slot

The sides of the Nokia E60 body are made of silver and black plastic. The left side of the phone features the volume control keys and another button for voice recording. All buttons are made out of metal and look great.

Left side • right side

The right side of Nokia E60 consists of three metal plates. The top one is short and beside it is the loudspeaker grill. Then there is a long one and the RS-DV-MMC memory card slot cover. It has a memory card picture on it so it cannot be mistaken. It is easily opened and closed but supposedly it can become loose or even brake off as the joint part of the card slot cover is not very reliable. When you open the cover, in order to get the memory card in or out, you should push it until it produces a snap sound. The method is similar to digital cameras.

The top side of the phone hosts one eyehole for the neck-strap and the Profile/Turn Off button. However, the traditional Nokia Profile/Switch Off button is really tiny this time. A good thing is that it bulges a bit from the surrounding surface but still, it is pretty small. The bottom side of the phone accommodates the Pop Port and the charger port.

Top and bottom sides of Nokia E60

Wavy style

Nokia E60 has a very well elaborated keypad with nice, easy to distinguish buttons. They are made out of some soft plastic and can be pressed without any problems. An interesting observation of the keypad is that the buttons are located in different heights and are positioned in such manner elaborated in different ovals and angles that they look like a wave combination when looked at from aside.

The navigation joystick of the phone is very good. It is small and stands low but is very functional. The confirmation press on its center cannot be mistaken easily and thus making navigation of the phone seamless. The alphanumeric keys are big enough to be pressed without any effort and small enough to be distinguished easily in the dark. The white lights surrounding the joystick and between the three columns of alphanumeric keys are very spectacular when in dark. They glow with a very decent white light, assisting the main backlighting. So, the backlighting of the keypad is fabulous.

Keypad backlighting

16 million ways to success

The 16 million colors TFT display of Nokia E60 is just incredible. The 352 x 416 pixels resolution makes it look great. Out of curiosity we compared it with 21” Samsung 214T desktop LCD high-end monitor with 1600 x 1200 pixels resolution. The colors of the two devices look exactly the same, but the phone display fits 9 times more pixels on the same surface. Of course, it looks much finer.

The display is very big and thus offers the users a better use of the phone. 35 x 41 mm are very impressive dimensions for a bar phone display. The backlighting of the display is also very good. It glows evenly in the dark and every part of the display is perfectly illuminated.

Display backlighting

Nokia E60 has active stand-by display such as Nokia N80, with the same six applications row and the events list below it. The phone displays the network signal strength, battery status, date and time, operator name and the labels of the applications assigned to the soft keys. It also displays the active connections, Bluetooth, Infrared or Wi-Fi.

Active stand-by display

No mistakes

The main speaker of the phone offers clear and loud sound during calls. So does the loudspeaker. It is powerful enough to be heard even in crowded place or when stuck in a deep pocket. The vibration is normal and can be felt in almost every occasion. When somebody calls you, the phone displays the caller name and picture. E60 can also display the picture of the phone (home, work, other) if it is in your phonebook.

Dexter calling • Dialing a number

Rotate!

Nokia E60 runs on Symbian 9.1 OS and is based on 3rd edition Series 60. So is Nokia N80 which we reviewed not long ago. In this review we will use some of the material we used for the N80 review as they have the same user interface.

The main menu of the phone is made of a 3 x 4 matrix grid but can be switched to a list view or can be turned into a 4 x 3 matrix using the Rotate option. This feature rotates the phone in horizontal mode. This feature can be very useful in the web browser and office applications when you will need more space to display more things. Some sub-menus can also be viewed in grid view but there are some that are in list view only.

Main menu • rotated main menu • rotated active stand-by display

There is a Voice aid application which pronounces everything you do when started. I myself cannot see the need of such application unless you are driving a car and you need to do dial a number or something. Besides, Voice aid is available only in several menus, not in the whole phone.

Voice aid disabled

E60 runs very quickly for a smartphone. There aren’t any major delays in the work speed in any application even when using the memory card. The RS-DV-MMC memory card support is useful for extending the 64 MB shared internal memory.

Tools sub-menu • Profiles/Switch Off menu

Sky’s the limit

The phonebook of Nokia E60 knows no limits as it uses the shared memory. You can add as much contacts as free memory you have. It offers an endless list of fields to assign for every contact. First and last name, job, home and work address, several different phone numbers, email addresses, web sites, etc.

Phonebook • rotated phonebook • assigning different fields

You can order the phonebook list either by first or last name. Search in the phonebook is performed by gradual typing of the desired contact’s name. As all Symbian phones, E60 phonebook can be synchronized with PC very easy. The PC Suite can export you contacts in several format types, including the most popular Lotus and Outlook formats.

Contact view

Who, when and for how long

Nokia E60 has a very good call records log. It is used for the data transfers and connections too. It has 30 records capacity and can show all recent calls made with the phone. The phone calls log is divided in three tabs: Dialed, Received and Missed calls. The connections are logged with the phone calls. General information about the duration of the connection and data transferred is stored.

Missed calls pop-up message • Missed calls tab • Dialed numbers tab • Log • Record information

Try the email

The messaging menu of the phone is not at all different from any other Nokia Symbian phone. It has an Inbox for all incoming messages except emails and asks you for the type of message you want to create when you initiate the editor. The SMS editor is the same as in previous models and shows a character counter with a digit for the amount of messages that will be sent. T9 dictionary is available to assist, of course. The editor displays up to 6 lines en bloc.

Messaging menu • Inbox • Reading SMS • Writing SMS

The email tab of the messaging is the most interesting. Nokia E60 supports multiple accounts and uses POP3 and IMAP protocols. The phone displays 10 emails in the Inbox list. It also manages attachments seamlessly. The email client is either a new one or at least it has been redesigned.

Email inbox • Reading email • Viewing attachment • Writing email

It’s just not what it’s made for

Nokia E60 offers a music player with support of the most common music formats but that’s not what it is created for. The player has a built-in equalizer with some presets. It produces good sound, clear and loud enough but Nokia E60 is a business phone first of all and not much of its users will be interested in listening to music anyway. Music can be played in background, of course, and the song will be displayed on the active stand-by display below the calendar events. Nokia E60 also has a Flash player and a Real Player and thus it can play videos, too. The great display allows very good performance on this subject.

Music player o Equalizer o Music playing in background

You can connect to anything

The phone supports GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, UMTS, PTT, Bluetooth, IrDa and USB. Nokia E60 works with Bluetooth Specification 1.2 supporting the following profiles: Basic Printing Profile, Generic Access Profile, Serial Port Profile, Dial-up Networking Profile, Headset Profile, Handsfree Profile, Generic Object Exchange Profile, Object Push Profile, File Transfer Profile, Basic Imaging Profile, SIM Access profile, and Human Interface Device Profile. Unfortunately, the A2DP profile is not among them which make impossible the use of stereo Bluetooth headset with the phone.

Connectivity menu

The phone offers a Printer connection application which can be very useful if you intend to use a printer more frequently. The phone makes a connection with the printer via Wi-Fi, USB or Bluetooth, it’s you choice. The USB connection can be made only with a custom USB data cable as Nokia E60 doesn’t have a normal USB port.

The fast data transfer can be used via GPRS, EDGE or 3G UMTS. You can also try the Wi-Fi connectivity, in which case you have to be near a Wi-Fi hotspot. You can set the phone to detect and connect automatically to such hotspots or you can search them manually. When you are connected, E60 automatically creates an access point for the hotspot and starts using its Internet broadband. The connection speed depends on the distance from the hotspot and on the provider. The signal is displayed as the network signal strength.

Available WLAN networks menu

When needs meet quality

There are two web browsers in Nokia E60, a great one and a poor one. The poor one is mostly used for connecting to services web pages and for downloading ringtones and games. The real web browser is the same as in Nokia N80. It is one of the best, if not the best. It can open web pages just like you’re browsing them on you PC. The great display makes this browsing even better. The Rotate feature is very useful for viewing web pages. You can see more and better when you use the phone in landscape mode.

Web browser

There is even a mouse cursor which can be operated through the navigation joystick. Surprisingly, it works great and is very easy to control. A semi-transparent mini-map of the page displays on the screen when scrolling a webpage. The mini-map can also be accessed by a shortcut – the “8” key. You can zoom in and out on the page using the “*” and “#” buttons. It’s amazing to see how small the text can be and still remain readable. In fact, this browser fits more information in a single screen than the IE browser on the VGA display of Qtek 9000!

Browsing gsmarena.com

Most of the sites we visited (including gsmarena.com, take a look at the screenshots) looked exactly like on the PC. Even when loading complex pages, the web browser was operating fast and there was no slowdown in the scrolling speed. The browser also loads Flash clips (not all of them, pitifully) and has no problems dealing with Java Scripts.

History – switching between web pages

Office organizer

More than everything Nokia E60 is a business phone. That’s why it offers great office features. It has Word, Excel and PowerPoint editors which work very well. You can zoom in and out in the file, jump to other page or edit the content. You can also create new files. These Office applications are much better, compared to those in Nokia N80, which could only read office documents but couldn’t edit them.

Office sub-menu • view and edit of Word and Excel files

E60 features a dual clock. You can set two different times and dates in two time zones. The Calendar has Month, Week and Day view. You can assign Meeting, Anniversary, Memo and To-do tasks in the Calendar. You can also put alarms on those assignments.

Month • Week • Day view of the calendar

There are also the Notes, Converter, Calculator and Recorder applications in the Organizer menu. The Converter converts Currencies, Area, Energy, Length, Mass, Power, Pressure, Temperature, Time, Velocity and Volume. The calculator is very simple and easy to use. Regrettably, the Recorder has a one minute limit for voice records. This seems quite illogical since the phone has such powerful features, enough internal memory and a memory card slot.

Calculator • Recorder

Strictly business

Nokia E60 has some preinstalled applications which can serve well if you need them. The Positions, Navigator and Landmarks applications are meant for an external GPS device. You can connect to the GPS receiver via Bluetooth and then connect to the satellite for incoming data. There is an option for determining your position through the network, if it supports such feature, of course. You can use those applications to pin-point locations you wish to save for further use and acknowledgement.

GPS connection methods

Another application is the HP printers one. It is for managing seamless connections with HP printers vie Bluetooth, Wi-Fi or USB. The phone also supports Internet telephony and you can connect to such provider and use the lower tax rates of VoIP technology.

Printers • Printer information

The test E60 we had didn’t have any preinstalled games, so we cannot tell you anything about the Golf Tour game announced by Nokia which is supposed to come preinstalled on E60.

If you need not to have camera

If for some reason you are keen on a business phone without a camera, there’s no doubt that Nokia E60 is the best possible choice for you. With such a rich set of features as Wi-Fi, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, Bluetooth and Infrared and with the great display, Nokia E60 seems the best business solution on the market. And the fast interface response makes it even more desired for the users.

Undoubtedly, the lack of camera and FM radio makes the phone less attractive but if you don’t demand those extras and want to focus on business tools, Nokia E60 has just the right thing to offer you at a reasonable price.

Nokia E60 photos

Display screenshots

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e60-review-86p6.php

Nokia E60

The one thing you really can’t (generally) accuse Nokia of is conservative smartphone design. Quite apart from the outrageous specifications and gymnastics of the Nseries, especially the N93, even their ‘business’ devices are very differently styled. So, we have a trio of Eseries smartphones (plus the more recent E50 – which AAS is going to be reviewing in the next week or so – and the leaked-but-not-quite-announced-yet Communicator successor), all with very similar internals but very different form factors.

There’s the landscape-screened E61 with permanent qwerty keyboard and the folding E70, with camera and twin keyboards, both of which are strong contenders in their own right. So what’s so special about the E60, with neither qwerty input, camera or gimmicks? The unique selling point is that there aren’t any gimmicks. It’s the full S60 3rd Edition experience but in the plainest, most traditional ‘boring’ form factor possible – no curves, no sliding bits, no cameras, no hinges. The E60 looks like a phone, acts like one and will hopefully be as reliable as that 6 year old Nokia ‘dumb’ phone that’s been kicking around in your glove compartment – there’s simply almost nothing to go wrong. And the absence of a camera will endear it to many companies, worried over security.

My initial impression was that Nokia had made no effort to shave off extra bulk – by modern standards there’s quite a bit of real estate that’s wasted – and this is backed up by the more recent release of the E50, which is leaner all round. Yet there’s a certain industrial feel to the E60 that’s attractive in a ‘does what it says on the tin’ functional sense.

There are few surprises on the hardware front, with Nokia plumping for the conservative choices of DV RS-MMC expansion card, ‘old’ style charging socket and BL-5C battery. Three buttons on the left hand side control up/down volume and voice recording/control. The joystick is a pleasant surprise in that it’s shrouded in rubber and quite superb to use, without a doubt the best smartphone/PDA joystick I’ve ever used. That apart, it’s left to acres of silver aluminium and plastic to deliver the plainest S60 3rd Edition experience  possible. The first genuinely mugger-proof smartphone?

As with the rest of the Eseries, the E60 has the full Symbian/Nokia Office Suite (though rumour has it that future Eseries devices will have a different Office suite again), the new Web browser, of course, and Wi-Fi, absolutely essential for a business device these days, for both fast web surfing and Voice over IP functions. I can see businesses going for the E60 in a fairly big way, integrating it into a company Voice over IP solution, presumably saving money in the long run.

The last incarnation of Symbian’s own Office suite? Still quite sufficient for most users…

As with the identically-equipped E70, the screen is amazingly crisp and bright, at 352 by 416 pixels, despite not being physically any larger than an average phone display. And as with the E70, you can run all the applications in landscape mode, should it be any more convenient, such as when viewing Office documents or, more likely, browsing using the Web browser. Here the switch between screen modes is done in software, with a ‘Rotate’ utility on the opening menu. As with all S60 smartphones, the first 12 application slots are shortcutted to the number pad, which means that you can switch screen modes from the menu with a single press of the ‘0’ key (or whatever it ends up corresponding to after you’ve finished customising!)

In portrait and landscape modes, although actual rotation is via the ‘Rotate’ utility shown…

The S60 3rd Edition platform will be familiar to most readers, with quite adequate PIM apps, Calendar, Contacts and the like, allied with cutting edge multimedia, including MPEG4 video and AAC audio (though you do have to buy your own stereo headset). As one of Nokia’s business devices, they’ve made sure it’s compatible with all the leading push email systems in use in the corporate world, and they’ve also not been stingy with the general software package. Downloads for Nokia’s Eseries on Nokia’s web site include a year’s subscription to the popular WorldMate travel aid and a licensed Zip archive utility.

We’ve often mentioned Nokia’s OpenSourced ‘love it or hate it’ Web browser on AllAboutSymbian and it’s arguably better here than on any previous device, with the extra high resolution screen, Wi-Fi for decent page loading times and even handy backlit ridges embedded in the main keypad to make it really easy to hold and use the E60 in landscape mode. It’s worth noting that you have to go back to the main application menu to make the switch though – you can’t toggle to landscape mode from within each application.

Nokia have been getting better and better at providing new users with a good experience, and the E60 features the full S60 3rd Edition Help and Tutorial systems. I doubt many people will bother to sit down with the manual (a shame, but I’m being realistic here), so these systems at least make sure the basics are all covered on-device.

My review E60 had the very latest, optimised firmware and came with over 21MB of free RAM at boot-up, which in practice is plenty for a device that doesn’t have to worry about a camera or RAM-hungry photo editing, and I had no memory problems during the review period, thankfully.

The E60’s ‘monolith’ styling isn’t immediately attractive, but look past that and there’s a seriously powerful smartphone here just waiting to be unleashed in the right hands.

Source: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_E601.php

Nokia N93 Golf Edition (Pro Session Golf)

Announced a while ago but only really available from selected outlets, the Nokia N93 Golf Edition is the result of some good lateral thinking from the people at Nokia. Given the sort of premium price tag applied to the N93 and given its fast, high resolution video camera, why not look at activities enjoyed by those with a little money to throw around and then think of ways in which the hardware could help?

At its heart, the Golf Edition is a standard N93, with slightly different packaging (some golf photos in place of some of the regular box artwork) and with an extra application, Pro Session Golf, supplied on a 1GB miniSD card. This extra card partly explains the £50 price premium for the Golf Edition, of course. The rationale for needing such a large card is presumably that Pro Session Golf is a video-based application and creating lots of your own golf swing videos might eat up a lot of space, though after a heavy session on the driving range I only managed to get through 50MB, 1/20th the card’s capacity.

And so to the software itself, all linked in seamlessly to the N93’s camera. The core of Pro Session Golf is the front/side comparisons of your swing with those from a professional, supplied on the card. In practice, this means getting a friend to film you, using the software and a steady hand, lining up the shot using a handy ‘ghost’ image on-screen, so that you get head/body/ball in approximately the same proportions as the ‘pro’. Your friend films a few swings, some from the ‘side’ (misleadingly named, actually from behind), some from the ‘front’ (from the side! – though maybe this term confusion simply illustrates my lack of golf knowledge…)

Once plenty of footage is ‘in the can’, you can both retire to the warmth of the clubhouse and start your analysis. It’s possible to use the software out on the range, of course, but it’s very limiting for two people to try to do anything useful in terms of analysis on such a relatively small screen, possibly in the freezing cold (hey, it’s winter over here in the UK and I was braving the conditions in the name of this AAS review….).

Far better to use the N93’s other unique feature, the TV-out facility, to operate the software and view its comparisons on any convenient TV set, the larger the screen the better! Here are snapshots of Pro Session Golf comparing a swing with that of its ‘pro’ (a ‘reference’ swing):

(incidentally, some of these graphics are necessarily taken from snapping the TV image, since the video playback software in Pro Session Golf isn’t compatible with available S60 screen capture utilities)

One important aspect of the comparison process is synchronizing playback of the two swings, in order to notice differences more clearly. This is done by starting and pausing the reference swing, then using a single menu command, followed by using navigator left and right to advance your swing to the same point as the pro’s. Playback can then be simultaneous and repeated as often as you like.

As you can see from the TV grabs above, and despite my golfer friend’s impressive swing (to the casual eye), it’s painfully obvious that there are things to learn and work on, pointed out by the swing-to-swing comparison. Looking at just the three capture points above:

1. not bad at this stage, although the right leg seems splayed, probably meaning the initial stance is slightly wrong
2. again, pretty good, although there’s not really anywhere near enough movement in the right leg and hip (where a lot of a pro’s ball speed comes from), and the shoulders look to be lagging a little
3. at the end of the follow-through, the shoulders are square on to the ball’s direction, in contrast to the pro, who is more supple and has put more ‘body’ into the shot and whose shoulders are almost 180 degrees turned from the moment of impact. In addition, the feet are still pointing in the same direction as the initial stance, whereas the pro’s feet have swivelled with his body

Now, I’m no golfer and no coach, but it really was easy to at least point out basic differences and suggest areas to work on. Out on the driving range, I completely forgot about an important facility, that of being able to change the reference swing between ‘iron’ and ‘driver’. It’s a menu option within the ‘Compare’ section but I missed it completely, my own fault. Still, the swings are similar enough not to have mattered too much. Interestingly, it seems you can even record your own reference swings, perhaps to match up your swing against your local club professional’s, for example.

Also provided in the Pro Session Golf package was a set of six video ‘lessons’, each only around a minute long and showing tests you can do to see what physical problems might be causing your swing to be in trouble. These mainly serve to point you to the TPI web site, where the co-makers of Pro Session Golf handle tips and exercises in more detail. Still, a useful set of pointers.

At any time, you can play back your recorded swings, or those from the pro, in full-screen, from the Pro Session Golf ‘Album’. Again these look far better on the big screen, using TV-out.

With any swing loaded up, there’s a useful ‘Draw’ facility, letting you annotate any paused frame with simple line, circle and rectangle primitives. At first gimmicky, these can get handy later on when you start to analyse a swing seriously, pointing out limbs which aren’t aligned correctly and movements which shouldn’t be there.

It’s also worth noting that there’s full support for left-handers, with options to flip everything, from framing marks to the reference swings themselves.

I have to confess to being a little sceptical at first, was it really worth setting up a whole themed edition of Nokia’s flagship just for a single application. In truth, the software really should be released as a third party addition to existing smartphones – maybe this will happen in the future. In the meantime though, the Golf Edition will hopefully impress many people in and around the clubhouse and improve Nokia’s Nseries visibility amongst a demographic who probably won’t flinch at the purchase price.

And, altruistically, plenty of golf swings will hopefully be changed for the better. “Bogeys to birdies”? Maybe!

Source: http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_N93_Golf_Edition_Pro_Session_Golf.php