Nokia X6

So here comes the X6. As the de facto sequel to the surprise hit of the 5800 XpressMusic, the X6 has a lot to live up to in the eyes of the media and the consumers. Actually, being honest, a touch screen device, with music support, operator backing and a stylish black look such as the 5800 had all the indications of being a successful device even before launch. Shall I cut a long review short and simply say that the X6 doesn’t (yet) manage this, but if Nokia apply themselves, it could do so in the future?

And now, the longer version, over multiple parts.

The X6 doesn’t have the first mover advantage of being Nokia’s first touch screen S60 device, but you can’t help but fail to notice the biggest change in Nokia’s touch screen devices with the X6, and this is the switch from a resistive touch screen to a capacitive touch screen. No more stylus needed (or in fact, able to be used), the X6 screen will only pick up on the touch of human skin on the screen (normally your finger).

This has an impact on the S60 UI, and I’ll come onto that in a subsequent part, but in general this change to the interface has made the X6 a much more tactile and gorgeous device to handle. You don’t need to struggle with a stylus, aim a fingernail at the screen, or even be pixel perfect accurate – a glancing stroke with a finger or a thumb swiping across the screen is more than enough to have your touch picked up and acted on.

Just to give you a heads up that the S60 5th Edition changes in the X6 lack one word – consistency – but this is nothing to do with the physical hardware of the screen. Not only is it excellent and responsive, but the colours and sharpness give the X6 a wonderful clarity; I’d go so far as to say that it demands to be held and touched.

Also on the front of the machine are the call/end call/app buttons. Unlike on the 5800, which had these as three raised buttons, a strip of plastic that takes up all the space at the bottom of the screen carries the three buttons here. Rather than being touch sensitive, this is a physical set of buttons where the whole strip pivots slightly depending on which button you press. It suddenly takes away from the glorious screen and dumps a cheap plastic phone back in your hand. Not good mojo.

This bendy and cheap plastic feel also applies to the back cover. It’s a single sheet of moulded plastic, and instead of slides, catches and runners to hold it in place, you just bend it up at the bottom edge and pop it off. It makes for a smooth construction (and lower production cost) but again, adds to the tacky feel of the phone.

And then you have a SIM card slot cover which is little more than a plastic wedge over a push in slot – there’s nothing seamless or tactile about these buttons and covers. Okay the SIM slot is a thing that the average user might only use once, but it has an impact on perceptions of the machine.

Which is a shame because the X6 is more stylish than the 5800. With the two long edges nicely curved, it sits comfortably in your hand, while the slight off-vertical surfaces at the short edges give an almost trapezoidal shape. The curve fits my hand, it’s easily picked up from a table,and perhaps my only complaint is that with no lip around the screen (as the 5800 has) it’s very easy in this thin candybar format to have your fingers stray into the touch screen area.

Right then, let’s address the biggest issue I’m having with the X6 – and it’s a physical problem. The key-lock slider on the side of the unit, which unlocks the touch screen has two problems. It’s far too stiff and the sliding key needs far too much pressure when pulled towards the base of the unit to be at all comfortable. Also, unlike the similarly functioning key on the 5800 which was heavily ridged, there’s a tiny raised padlock symbol which gives almost no purchase on the key. This is a backwards step from the 5800 and one that seems to be more a lack of oversight than anything else.

Yes, there should be some style, but this is a step too far.

The top edge of the X6 carries all the connectivity and power options. There’s a microUSB connector hiding under a plastic grommet that seems securely fixed to the X6 body, the 3.5mm headphone/headset socket, an charging socket and the power/profile button. That button seems to have a huge amount of play before it actually does anything, which isn’t particularly reassuring; and the inclusion of the charging socket is required as the X6, amazingly, does not charge over USB.

The volume buttons and camera buttons are in the expected place, on the right side with volume at the top and the two stage camera shutter button at the bottom. This is Nokia’s design language and not something you would expect to see changed. What’s interesting is that these two buttons are a different style to the key lock and power buttons. Much like the software of the X6, the outside seems to be two different ideals running into each other and compromising as best they can.

On the opposite long edge to the volume buttons are the speakers – one at the top and one at the bottom. I like this positioning, both of them are on the left long spine of the X6. This makes little difference when the phone is thrown on the kitchen worktop as I bake another masterpiece (really? – Vikki Spence), but the benefit becomes clear when you watch video on the 16:9 ratio screen, you’ve got yourself some stereo separation for the latest feature film (or in my case Question Time on the BBC iPlayer). They’re also a substantial set of speakers for such a small unit. You won’t get high fidelity from them, but you will get enough noise to fill a hotel room as you get ready in the morning. That’ll do for me.

One problem with the diagonal styling on the top of the unit is around the 3.5mm headphone socket. Because the socket is at right angles to the screen, but the plastic moulding around it carries the angle. With certain cables that need to fit flush, they’re pushed very slightly out of the socket, which is just enough in some cases to cause connection problems, especially for audio playback.

Plugging in a generic peripheral to the socket and you’re asked to confirm what you’ve just put in… every time. A default setting here would be nice. What would also be nice is if the Music Player paused when something is removed from the headphone socket, or at least have another option to set this, because it’s really useful. Of course a certain company already does this – and if Nokia were to add this usability feature would they be hit with another patent/copying lawsuit? Who knows, but I wish they would take the chance.

The X6, once it gets into the supply chai,n either on a hugely subsidised contract or in a version which removes the Comes with Music addition and brings the SIM free price into the ‘disposable’ range, should be a popular phone. And anything that makes the X6 punch above its RRP is to be welcomed. That’s why some of these styling faults are going to be disproportionately punishing on the fortunes of the X6. People don’t want to be seen with a ‘cheap’ phone; and the little niggles in the construction detailed above move the X6 away from ‘stylish’ to ‘tacky.’ It’s not insurmountable – the screen and front style is lush and modern, but someone needs to get a grip in the factory and break some knuckles before the X6 breaks too many hearts on the High Street.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_X6_Review_pt_1_styling_and_physical_presence.php 

Sony Ericsson Satio (4)

In a nutshell, the Satio can be seen as a Nokia 5800 with flashy homescreen and a much better camera. But that’s a big simplification, as you’ll hopefully see below. The Nokia 5800 reference is apt though, since this too uses the somewhat klunky baseline S60 5th Edition interface, with little thought to back porting any of the intuitive kinetic scrolling found in Symbian^2 as has been done for products like the Nokia N97 and N97 mini. In practice, this means fiddly manipulation of scroll bars in all the S60 standard applications, a system that’s rightly been criticised from day one (what you need, of course, in an ideal Symbian touch interface, is kinetic/content scrolling as well as scroll bars).

The Satio’s designers have even gone to great lengths to disguise the lack of kinetic scrolling in the main applications menus by organising all the 50 or so icons such that every page starts off with twelve or less, so that the new user doesn’t even have to think about scrolling down – but this does mean more taps, to navigate into the different folders. For example, newly installed third party apps appear in ‘My apps’, inside an ‘Organiser’ folder. You can move icons around, of course – this is S60, after all – but you’ll then possibly create app screens of more than twelve icons, leading to the dreaded and aforementioned scrolling.

In fact, and somewhat confusingly, the Satio does have kinetic scrolling – at least, it does in the Sony Ericsson-added bits. These comprise the fancy new homescreen and the Media suite (of which more in the final part of this review). Having the two different systems in the one device is a little disconcerting, but then such oddities are part of many other smartphones these days – witness the Windows Mobile world, for example – so this isn’t an isolated case. It is disappointing though, with the power of the OMAP3430 chipset and its integrated co-processor, to have many screens which are so markedly bare bones. Just the occasional fade-out, fade-in transition, plus animations in the custom Sony Ericsson-written bits, give away that there’s a graphics chip inside.

The homescreen is static but has four screens of shortcuts, two to the left and two to the right of the central ‘wallpaper’ – you get to each by tapping on its icon or by swiping with your finger. From left to right are favourite people, with the option to ‘call’ or ‘message’ each (and it’s a further tap to get to the appropriate record in Contacts), favourite web sites (curiously, totally independent of your Web bookmarks), photos from your Camera albums (presented in handy filmstrip form, as shown below, tap to set as wallpaper, send to someone else or to view in the Media suite) and shortcuts to your favourite eight applications (curiously managed using a totally different interface to the contacts and web sites panes).

(above) – the homescreen ‘filmstrip’ when it’s all working well, and (below) when it all goes pear shaped and the Satio’s media suite software has crashed for the umpteenth time that day….

Common to all the homescreen panes are four buttons – for a phone dial pad, for the Media suite, for S60 Messaging and for Google Search. Assessing the homescreen is tricky – it certainly offers more functionality than, for example, that in the Nokia 5800, but it’s also inconsistent, both with the rest of the interface and with itself. And it’s ultimately all a little static, when compared to the active widgets on, for example, the Nokia N97. The latter, of course, is plagued with RAM problems when these are used fully, whereas the Satio has oodles of RAM and no widgets. Gah – go figure.

Pressing the central S60 menu key reveals a familiar icon system, even if Sony Ericsson has jiggled everything round a little. Here are the main differences from a typical Nokia S60 5th Edition phone:
PlayNow is a shortcut to the mobile version of the Sony Ericsson content store. Basing everything on the web is simpler than Nokia’s system of using a Web runtime widget, but it has its own issues. Not least navigation. Open up PlayNow and browse around a little. You’re offered ‘Close’ on the right soft key and so you use it. You’d think that this closed down the browser window. Not so. It’s still open in the background but you have to be a Web-savvy geek to find your way back to it via the ‘Internet’ browser’s sub-menu. Instead, next time you tap on PlayNow, you get another instance of Web. And then another (see the ‘window count’ at the top of the photo below). And then another, until you’ve hit the internal limit within Web and everything starts to fall down around you. Confusing for the unwary and extremely inelegant.

A couple of shots of PlayNow in action. Content is quite static at the moment but has the output of a few selected Symbian software houses included, so at least there’s something decent for newcomers to buy…

Note that the system works in landscape (thanks to using Web as the underlying engine) but that, despite the nHD screen, you can’t fit much on a page this way and the user experience isn’t fantastic….

TrackID, Sony Ericsson’s beloved music identification system, is included, and, for current popular music, works rather stunningly. Give it 10 seconds or so of any song, just held up to the Satio’s microphone, and you’re taken to a web page which lists the track name, artist and album, along with the chance to buy the song from your network operator’s music store – an interesting tie-in. For everyday users, TrackID is a potentially showstopping feature, but you don’t have to venture far away from mainstream tastes for recognition to nosedive.

Google Talk and IM+ for Jabber are licensed versions of Shape Services chat client, plus there’s S60’s pretty useless generic IM client as well.

Google Maps 3.0 is included in the firmware and, thankfully, it was easy enough to upgrade this to the latest v3.3.1 – no getting stuck on an old version here.

A trial version of Wisepilot, a real time, online, sat nav application. You can extend its license using phone credit or other payment means. The trial is very short though (5 days?), it had expired even before I got round to trying it properly for the first time… There’s no local storage of maps, let alone preloading, disappointingly, so best stay away from areas with poor data signal(!)….

DataViz’s RoadSync is licensed, for easy synchronisation of your PIM data and email to Microsoft Exchange.

Web publishing is Sony Ericsson’s answer to Nokia’s ‘Share online’, and it’s similarly limited, with just PicasaWeb and Blogger supported out of the box. There’s a ‘New web album service’ function on the menu, but this just brings up the generic PlayNow system without much clue as to where to go next. There’s also a ‘New web site’ function, but this just adds a shortcut to the appropriate mobile site. All half-hearted and you’ll be much better off with the third party ShoZu or similar.

MyLook, a licensed (novelty) Bitween utility that allows your wallpaper to be changed according to time of day, or on a shake gesture, or when you get to a specific location. You’ll excuse me if I don’t get too excited by this one!

Labyrinth, a licensed marble-rolling game, with 10 levels available, the last five of which are locked until you’ve cleared the first five. A nice accelerometer demo and nicely frustrating to boot!

SMS Preview, the popular freeware utility that lets you glimpse incoming SMS without having to stop and open them up properly.
BBC iPlayer downloads – it’s good to see that Sony Ericsson (in the UK, at least) have worked to not only get iPlayer DRM ready in the Satio, but have also included the client in the firmware, saving users having to know where to go to get it. Nice one.

The music and video players, and the photo browser, have all been replaced to some degree by Sony Ericsson’s own media suite (see the next review part for this in detail).

On the negative side, the following applications, familiar from Nokia S60 phones, are missing from the Sony Ericsson Satio:
Nokia Maps, it’s obviously nowhere to be seen on this Sony Ericsson device, though arguably Google Maps and WisePilot take up some of the strain.

Sw_update – or indeed any kind of Over The Air updating. Firmware here is so far only upgradeable via Sony Ericsson’s Update Service on a Windows PC. This is a major downside in 2010, tying updates to a PC seems very old fashioned – and only ensures that most Satio owners don’t actually get round to updating to the latest OS and thereby get bug fixes.

Zip manager. Admittedly this isn’t used that much these days, but it’s disappointing that Sony Ericsson hasn’t licensed this from Epocware as Nokia did.

Active notes. No big deal, I don’t know anyone who uses this odd-ball rich note-taking system (because it doesn’t sync to anything).

Podcasting. Ah yes, this is a biggie for me, and probably for you, the reader, too. Starting life as a Nokia internal project, Podcasting hasn’t been contributed to the Symbian Foundation, meaning that Sony Ericsson would have to follow Samsung in licensing the code from Nokia. This they haven’t done, but thankfully the third party tool Escarpod installs on the Satio and helps fill the gap. Let’s hope it develops further.

Widgets. The Satio does support Web runtime widgets, but there’s precious little preloaded, in contrast to the Nokia N97 and N97 mini which are fairly laden down with them. OK, half of them are shortcuts to mobile web pages, but I’d still like to see more in this department from Sony Ericsson, to get the newcomer off to a good start.

NB. In case you’re wondering why there are lots of photos of screens in this review, it’s because something in the Satio’s graphics system interferes with Best Screensnap most of the time. Ah well….

Other S60 applications not mentioned are largely unchanged from the baseline S60 5th Edition specification, aside from cosmetic differences here and there. In particular, Web has been renamed ‘Internet’ and is the same slightly clunky klunky build as featured in the Nokia 5800. No kinetic scrolling, no automatic full-screen, no next-gen Webkit engine, relatively slow page rendering, and so on. And of course this module is also used as the engine to power the PlayNow system, impacting its performance as well… It’s underwhelming on a 2010-spec phone and here’s hoping Sony Ericsson can update the version of Web in the next firmware – I know it can be done because that’s exactly what Samsung are doing for the i8910 HD.

It’s also worth noting that, among the litany of other bugs and glitches I experienced with the Satio (even at R1C firmware), Web wasn’t entirely stable. In particular, double-tapping to zoom in, one of the most used functions in a touchscreen browser, often didn’t work at all on the review unit – I’m still trying to work out whether this is a Web or touchscreen-driver or hardware issue.

Search is implemented in a two-stage system, with an early version of Google Mobile Search implemented from the homescreen, and with a version of the standard S60 application data search available in the Organiser menu. Sadly, it’s buggy in the extreme. Searching for a few characters of a contact name (the simplest possible local search) took minutes – there’s obviously something horribly wrong in the code here – yet another fix for ‘R2D’ or whatever is the next firmware for the troubled Satio?

On balance, though, the application bundle is comparable with that on most Nokia S60 5th Edition phones, though one or more of the differences noted above may put some hardened Nokia fans off and it’s fairly obvious that the app mix is less balanced than on the likes of the Nokia 5800 or Nokia N97 mini. But, as with Samsung on the i8910 HD, it’s not too difficult to replace most of the bits you might expect on a Nokia and, glitches aside, there are a few extras which may positively put a smile on your face.

The biggest improvement for the Satio, when compared to the Nokia 5800, the most comparable competitor, platform-wise, is the inclusion of a proprietary media suite, the subject of the final part of my review, written in a way that totally ignores most of the rest of the phone’s interface (including theme – Media suite is resolutely black). However, it’s consistent with other Sony Ericsson phones that have gone before and uses a fairly obvious ‘direct manipulation’ metaphor (e.g. iPhone-like), so finding your way around is rarely a problem.

Within each media suite pane, top and bottom toolbars fill with icons (up to eight in all, in extreme circumstances) – if the thing you want to do can’t be done by just tapping on the media item in question then you can usually find an icon for it on one of the toolbars. Like most of the rest of the Satio interface (excepting the homescreen), the media suite functions work just as well in landscape mode (by turning the device on its side). Most screens twirl, slide and jiggle into place here, with good use being made of the graphics power under the hood.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Sony_Ericsson_Satio-part_3_Applications_and_interface.php 

Nokia E72 (3)

Camera

Although it’s debatable whether camera and multimedia functions should be emphasised too much in what is, unashamedly, a communications-focussed smartphone, the fact remains that:

a) Nokia has also included Music player, Music Store, (voice) Music Search, the full (Nseries) Photos suite, etc. So it clearly wants to promote a degree of multimedia prowess.

b) Anyone reading this site will be wanting a properly converged device, one that also handles basic photography and multimedia without flinching.

If left enabled, this is also used in the E72’s Camera application, for focussing – rest your thumb on the pad and focus is set up according to whatever you’ve got centred in the viewfinder, then press in the d-pad to actually take the photo. If the Navi key is disabled, pressing in the d-pad focusses and then snaps, in the manner of many non-Nokia touchscreen phones – nice to have crisp results but you have little control over focussing or subject (who may be restless and move before the photo is actually taken!)

The Camera interface is familiar from all recent Nokia S60 phones, and I have to admit that the lens and sensor in this 5 megapixel camera unit are pretty good (relative to expectations). Here’s a testing shot, taken in fading sunlight on both E72 and Nokia N97:

Taking the identical photo on the N97 (photo fragment on the right):

The first thing to notice is that the E72 photo is quite a bit darker – with launch firmware it currently makes something of a mess of exposures on most photos, each of which ends up being a little darker than you’d like. Hopefully a firmware update can easily fix this. What’s most important is that the raw detail and digital noise level are both good, certainly comparable to the 5 megapixel units in many Nseries phones. With the caveat over exposure, I can confidently say that the E72 has the best camera ever put into a Nokia Eseries phone.

Here are some more photo samples taken on the review unit:

(Click each to download or enlarge)

The Optical Navi key method of focussing is a little clumsy, one’s thumb naturally rests on the d-pad centre and it’s easy to find yourself focussed on something before you’ve even framed the shot, so you then have to consciously remove your thumb, reframe the shot and then re-apply your thumb. In addition, if you’ve brought up the Camera toolbar, focussing doesn’t work at all (at the moment) – you have to first dismiss the toolbar (using the d-pad) and then apply your thumb. To be honest, pressing ‘t’ (as on the E71) suddenly seems like the easy option.

Video is shot at the new Eseries standard of VGA at 15 frames per second. Quality is OK but there’s no attempt at pre-set focus and the results are only good enough for casual/fun use. Still, this really is diverting from the main point of the phone.
Multimedia playback

So, we’ve established that the camera’s pretty decent (speed apart) and that the mono speaker is better than average, but what else can this nominally business-aimed phone do in the multimedia stakes?

Video playback is aided by the use of S60 3rd Edition FP2, which had extra codecs (including WMV) and performance tweaks. You’re not going to handle many clips above QVGA resolution and sensibly low bit rates, but the basics are here, in terms of playing back clips recorded on the device, downloaded through Ovi Store or played directly through the included Google YouTube application. With a screen of only 2.4″, you are not going to be watching feature length videos on the E72 and what’s here is probably good enough for most.

The landscape-screened form factor has one advantage here, of course – you don’t need to keep rotating the device in order to get the screen to the ‘right’ aspect ratio!

Music playback is excellent, just as in all other smartphones since about 2005, with plenty of volume over my test headphones. The supplied pair weren’t up to the same standard of course, and this is where audio reproduction tends to fall down for many handsets. There’s a full software equaliser now, I’m guessing this is part of the S60 3rd Edition FP2 baseline functionality.

Slightly odd is Nokia’s latest take on the confusing Gallery-Photos-Videos scene. Here, on the E72, for example, you get ‘Gallery’, which has tabs for ‘Images’ and ‘Videos’. ‘Images’ takes you to ‘Photos’, which also includes your videos…. Oh, I give up, Nokia are absolutely hopeless at media organisation. Mind you, Sony Ericsson and Samsung don’t seem any better. Nokia, if you’re listening, I’ll design you a new system on the back of a postcard which will be a darn sight more intuitive than the current system…

Photos, showing videos (on the left), a familiar but deceptive front end (on the right)

‘Music search’ is the ‘say to play’ system that debuted on a number of consumer music phones – I can’t for the life of me work out what it’s doing here given that Podcasting has been banished – but hey, it works well, it seems that voice recognition is finally starting to work well for phone manufacturers and service companies. The usual FM radio (with the additional hacked in 6120 Classic version of Internet Radio, in my case!), Music store, Video centre (ooh, another way to umm…. play videos) and Share online are all present and correct though.

Attempting to fill Nokia’s gaps: Escarpod podcatcher (left) and Internet radio from the 6120 Classic (right)
Internet

Web on the E72 is, of course, 2009’s ‘Next Gen’ variant of Web, slicker and smoother and with a slight UI overhaul, though sadly without copy and paste (from a page) facilities still. The biggest restriction on Web is the physical one. On a QVGA screen (especially a small 2.4″ one), even the simplest web sites require a laboursome amount of scrolling around, zooming out and then zooming in again. With judicious use of the likes of BBC Mobile and mobile-optimised services, this isn’t a problem and, in fact, it’s often faster to get to the information you need via this low bandwidth route, but it does rankle a little in these iPhone/S60 5th Edition/Android days to have to work your way around the web through a QVGA keyhole.

The free Opera Mini is another option here, of course, as is Skyfire. The Optical Navi key works to move the on-screen pointer in Web, with an additional optimisation for successive ‘flicks’ to set the page scrolling faster, but ultimately it’s a gimmick. You can’t really say it’s intuitive, since you swipe down to make the page move ‘up’, etc., and simple d-pad keypresses nearly always got me to the desired place in a big page faster. And, as mentioned above, you can’t turn the Navi key off because then you lose control of focussing in the camera. Not very well thought out, Nokia.

‘Chat’ is a newcomer to S60, incorporating instant messaging interoperability with Google Talk, Ovi Chat and Yahoo Messenger. It works well enough but, as part of the Nokia Messaging family (see below), isn’t without its quirks. I’ve known several E72 owners who have Chat ‘disappear’ and have had to factory reset their device in order to get the ‘Set up chat’ bit back on their homescreen, to get going again. Still, promising to see a decent chat client in the works and not just the vanilla ‘IM’ system that S60 has had for years.

‘Files on Ovi’ is a shortcut to an online setup wizard, helping you get going with Nokia’s continual backup service. ‘Facebook’ isn’t the new S60 3rd Edition widget, disappointingly, but a simple shortcut to the Facebook mobile page. A missed opportunity – hopefully this too can be rectified in firmware. Ditto ‘MySpace’, though again, quite why Nokia’s marketing team deemed a Podcasting-less business device worthy of having even a mention of MySpace is beyond me. Maybe all will become clear as the firmware matures – let’s hope so.

Both mobile sites and not widgets/clients, sadly

‘Ovi Store’ is the real client, together with automatic update checking, at last – this store is moving out of the slow and awkward phase into something which is genuinely useable, at least for casual use, though with the application bundle on the likes of the E72, not a huge number of extras will really be needed.
Office

It goes without saying that, with this being an Eseries phone, there’s the full editing version of Quickoffice Premier. Version 5.3 if you’re counting, with the usual free upgrade to version 6.0 to get the latest file compatibilities and features. Quickoffice now works very well on this size of device and it’s a reassuring icon to see in the E72’s ‘Office’ application folder.

Also in this folder are the usual Eseries suspects, including ‘Dictionary’ (which debuted with the E71, you may remember), ‘Font magnifier’ (licensed from Psiloc), WiPresenter (ditto, enables WiFi or Bluetooth-driving of a compatible laptop for presentation purposes), ‘Multiscanner’ (for handling business cards, licensed from ABBYY), plus Zip manager and Adobe PDF viewer.

General applications

It’s slightly disconcerting to see Ovi Maps hidden inside a ‘GPS’ folder inside ‘Applications’ rather than prominently flagged up in the root folder, but at least it’s here and works well, with the GPS locking on quickly in tests. There’s also the freeware ‘World Traveler’ (also from Psiloc) and a couple of nice games, the Java-based Block Cascade and the super-slick Epocware card solitaire compendium.

Fitting in with the rising trend to allow more voice control (Eseries has always been strong in this department), there’s the third party Vlingo as well as the E72’s own voice commands.
Nokia Messaging

And so to Email, a.k.a. Nokia’s next-gen Messaging system. I’ve deliberately left this until last because it’s the most controversial aspect of Nokia’s recent Eseries devices. Some people love Nokia Messaging, declaring it to be a huge step forwards. Others, like me, can see the potential in it – and also admire Nokia for rolling out a six month long beta test in actual device firmwares, rather than behind closed doors – but end up cursing it, hating and generally giving it as wide a berth as possible.

Predictably, Nokia Messaging on the E72 was just as flawed as on every other device I’ve tried it on. In this case, I couldn’t even complete the setup process, as the wizard just looped around, asking me again and again for my email address and password, with no error messages, no confirmations and no progress. Fail. Yet again. It’s a complex client server system with multifarious connections to many third party services and software packages and isn’t, in my opinion, ready for the prime time yet. In fact, given its complexity, there’s a serious argument that it will never, ever, as a system, be glitch-free.

I’ve also heard from many people that Nokia Messaging on the E72 (in the current firmware) has a number of serious problems talking to Microsoft Exchange 2003, which is a bit of an own goal, considering the device’s target market.

Rounding up the E72

In addition to the omission of Podcasting, to the confusing media handling and to the Email problems, there are plenty of other signs of early Nokia firmware – for example, hit a Web search box and start typing quickly and you’ll find that your first character gets misplaced, often getting inserted several letters into your first word. This is the sort of glitch that happens when low level OS software modules aren’t talking to each other properly and really needs to be addressed and optimised.

I have to say that it’s disappointing that, at the end of 2009, we’ve got a S60 3rd Edition smartphone with major issues. The core OS and FP2 modules must all be locked and stable by now, but the E72’s product team (and the N86’s before it, to be fair), with the addition of a new version of Web, of Email, with the inclusion of fancy transitions into the UI, have managed to create something which is eminently in need of a firmware fix-up from the very beginning.

Firmware as of 17 Dec 2009 (left) and free RAM after booting (right, top left of screen)

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Nokia_E72-part_2_Camera_Media_Applications.php 

Nokia E72 (2)

Nokia E72 review: The business of messaging

Introduction

Nokia E72 is one of those handsets everybody is talking about long before their release. There may be nothing much to talk about – after all everyone knows what to expect of the Eseries and they have never let us down. But still, savoring the next batch of Eseries steel is always a pleasure.

The Finns keep feeding business ammo to the market and there’s nothing out of the usual at first sight. We already tasted the new Eseries generation and the E52 and E55 were the usual good healthy meals. The E72 though needs to be nothing short of delicious.

Nokia E72 official photos

There’s no need to tell you the Nokia E72 walks and talks business. The big one though has greater responsibility to carry. We guess the E72 will not fear being judged against the best messengers in its class. But it will certainly look back to a haunting shadow within its own family. The Nokia E72 can certainly go where the E71 would not venture. But it’s not only the equipment (of which the E72 has aplenty) that makes a winner.
Key features:
Quad-band GSM support
3G with HSDPA 10.2Mbps and HSUPA 2Mbps
Landscape 2.36″ 16M-color display of QVGA resolution
Comfortable full QWERTY keypad
Optical trackpad on the D-pad
Symbian 9.3 OS, S60 UI with FP2
600 MHz ARM 11 CPU and 128 MB of SDRAM
5 megapixel auto focus camera with LED flash
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, UPnP technology, DLNA support
Built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS support, digital compass
Accelerometer for turn-to-mute
250 MB of internal memory, microSD expansion, ships with a 4GB card
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP support and microUSB v2.0
FM radio with RDS
Remote Wipe
Great battery life
Office document editor (including MS Office 2007)
User-friendly Mode Switch for swapping two homescreen setups
Smart dialing
Full Flash support
Great audio output quality
Lifetime Nokia Messaging subscription
Main disadvantages:
Optical trackpad is not as handy as we’d like
Limited camera features, no geotagging, video recording maxes out at VGA@15fps
No DivX or XviD support (can be enabled, possibly requiring a purchase)
No TV-out functionality
No dedicated camera key (trackpad compensates for that)
Poor loudspeaker performance

Eseries are always trying to get more skills on their resume. But the one that’s supposed to be the next big thing in its class is really pushing it. Nokia didn’t have to try and experiment with the E72. Build muscle on the E71 was their main objective. And by the looks of it they did more than well. The E72 promises richer experience and superior skill. But it will still be expected to deliver more than the sum of its parts if it wants to prove anything to the standard-setting E71.

Nokia E72 in our office

The Eseries spirit is all there – and we guess in-house competition is always in the picture. The E72 is bold and impressive, but manages to keep its cool too, as befits a conservative business handset. Armed and dangerous or polite and elaborate – the E72 will be whatever you want it to be. So, make up your mind, and take the jump. We’re unboxing and feeling the cold Eseries steel in our hands.

A lot of goodies in the box

The retail package of Nokia E72 has all the essential luggage for a business tool. It’s hardly a surprise though, as the E71 already had nearly the same ingredients. The E72 comes with a standard charger (not the smaller variety that we expected) and a really short data cable (microUSB). We didn’t quite expect Nokia to cut corners with an expensive phone like E72 but they obviously did.

A 4GB microSD card is prebundled (E71 had 2-gigs of complimentary storage) and so is a standard Nokia headset. It is one piece, which means you cannot use the remote with another set of headphones.

The retail package brings a number of nice surprises

The extra content in the box includes a leather lanyard, a leather carrying case and a branded cleaning cloth. The rest is the usual paperwork and leaflets.
Nokia E72 360-degree spin

Nokia E72 stands at 114 x 58 x 10 mm and weighs 128g, which is – you guessed it right – almost exactly the same as the E71 (114 x 57 x 10 mm, 127g). It is obvious that Nokia had little choice but follow the E71 recipe as closely as possible. Yep, they’ve used the more recent Eseries styling (E52 and E55) but the form factor and general feel just couldn’t have been much different. The actual upgrades the E72 brings over the E71 are not the point here. It’s the styling and the first impression. Our initial feeling is the E72 is trying to show more sophistication but does it look a bit softer or is it just us? Let’s see.

Nokia E72 is still among the slimmest QWERTY handsets on the market and comes in three colors: Zodium Black, Metal Grey and Topaz Brown.
Design and construction

The sweeping success of the E71 seems to open a wide latitude for the E72 to explore. But the upgrade will also have to live up to some seriously high expectations. The E72 is a high-end business tool and it looks it. It somehow fails though to repeat the strong impression the E71 produced. Fair enough, we’re either spoiled by the Eseries or the E71 was just that rare stroke of genius to make a QWERTY messenger one of the sexiest handsets lately. And at the same time it does look super sharp and unforgiving. By the way, this may as well have been the desired effect. A more refined and polished E72 selling alongside a lean and mean E71.

The earpiece of Nokia E72 is placed dead center at the top of the front panel. A little to the right is the ambient light sensor and the video-call camera. The ambient light sensor does well to optimize screen brightness and the excellent backlighting of the QWERTY keypad.

Ambient light sensor and video-call camera right next to the earpiece

Below is the 2.36″ QVGA display, followed by the main bank of control and navigation keys and the QWERTY keyboard. The screen, keyboard and controls will get their due coverage in a short while. At the left bottom corner is the mouthpiece.

There’s three-button combo on the right hand side – the volume rocker with a dedicated voice command key between the up and down buttons. The layout works well – you’re not likely to mispress the voice command key, which is sunk lower than the volume controls. The problem is the actual volume keys have a somewhat low stroke and poor feedback.

Volume rocker and voice command key on the right-hand side of the phone

On the left you’ll find the standard microUSB port and the microSD card slot. Both apertures are sealed with plastic caps to hold off dust, and keep the contour of the handset intact.

The microUSB port and microSD slot

At the top are the power button and the 3.5 mm audio jack. There is no sign of the unsightly red power knob of Nokia E71 and this time the key is even a bit concave, so accidental presses are almost completely ruled out. The power button lets you quickly toggle ringing profiles, lock the keypad or safely remove the memory card. There is an extra option too to get in and out of power-saving mode.

The top of the phone hosts the 3.5mm audio jack and the power key

The bottom of Nokia’s latest messenger features the charger plug and the lanyard eyelet, both squeezed in the left corner.

The charger plug at the bottom o a lanyard eyelet is also there

The back panel of Nokia E72 is made of finely-grooved stainless steel and doesn’t seem to have the same finger-print issues as the E71. It will get smudges too but cleaning is easy and a cloth is provided in the retail box. The E71 rear was almost impossible to clean.

Rearside, the Nokia E72 features the 5 megapixel camera lens with LED flash.

The camera lens sticks out a mile and there is no lens protection, except that it is a tiny bit recessed. If you carry your handset in the pocket, it would most definitely get scratched. Still the whole camera module looks quite stylish and fits the overall design.

The five megapixel camera comes with a LED flash and a self-portrait mirror

A nice little latch at the base of the battery cover allows you to release it quickly and easily. You slide it gently and the all-metal plate simply pops out.

Removing the battery cover is a piece of cake

What’s under the cover will hardly come as a surprise: the 1500 mAh BP-4L Li-Ion battery is the same unit we saw – and appreciated – in the Nokia E71. For the E72 it is even quoted at 576 hours of stand-by time and 12 and a half hours of talk time to just outperform its predecessor.

The battery lifetime of Nokia E72 is really impressive

Considering the excellent battery life of the E71, we are more than sure the E72 won’t let you down.

The Nokia E72 will definitely turn heads. We personally will miss some of that intimidating charisma that made the E71 so hard to resist. The E72 is no less of a power tool but it’s somehow not letting its horsepower ooze from every pore. And that by the way it has in excess. The E72 handles nicely and ergonomics are top notch. It still has every box ticked on our checklist for design: practical, slim, smart, steel-clad, fingerprint resistive.

The Nokia E72 has commendable ergonomics

Small display fits the style

Nokia E72 features a 2.36″ 16M-color QVGA display. It’s the same size as the screens of E71 and E63. And size is hardly an issue here, even from an upgrader’s point of view. The resolution though is a different matter. A slightly more pixel-dense screen would’ve certainly made as big a difference as any of the otherwise valuable additions (better CPU, optical trackpad, 3.5 mm jack just to name a few). We’ve seen Nokia do it for S40 (6260 slide) and it’s high time perhaps they considered the competition of BlackBerry screens more seriously.

Eseries are stuck at QVGA giving BlackBerries a bit of an edge

The screen performance is still great, with excellent contrast and vivid image. Sunlight legibility is not an issue for Nokia E72 display ranking it among the best of its class.
Keyboard is key

The Nokia E72 QWERTY keyboard is an almost complete replica of what we had with the E63, some changes notable compared to the E71. Despite the few minor tweaks, the overall usability is intact. The space bar on the E72 is smaller, leaving room for two extra keys. One of them is particularly useful: the Symbol button will toggle Bluetooth on and off upon a long press.

As before, pressing and holding the space bar in standby powers up the LED so you can use your handset a flashlight. That’s a nice little perk and it even overrides the keyboard lock.

Maybe you shouldn’t expect regular desktop typing speed and you’ll certainly have to look at the keypad but you can achieve pretty decent results with the E72. If you are into typing lots of messages you are sure to get used to it quickly and start speeding your way through texts.

The keyboard is really nice

The controls above the keypad have the more recent Eseries styling along the lines of the E52 and E55. The logic is the same though – two selection keys, Call and End buttons, the menu key and the three so-called one-touch keys. One-touch keys can be set as shortcuts to any application you like, never mind the icons on them might suggest otherwise. Furthermore, you can assign two applications per key, making use of the press and press-and-hold function on all of them.

This time instead of the solid one-touch keys on the E71 sunk amid slightly raised call buttons and soft keys, we have the opposite layout. The call/softkey deck is flat, using one shared plate, while the four program keys are raised and U-shaped, which makes them very thumb-friendly and minimizes wrong presses.

The keyboard backlighting is impressive to make the phone no problem to handle in the dark. You can set the LED around the D-pad to notify of missed events like incoming messages or missed calls. There is also a breathing light option – slow blinks in standby when the screen is off.

The controls above the keypad are a joy to use

The big news is the trackpad functionality of the D-pad. In pure directional pad terms, the E72 is doing well – the D-pad is small but very tactile and allows very comfortable vertical and horizontal scrolling and selection. The optical trackpad in the middle is a bit let down by the size of the button. It works just fine, but the raised directional ridge does limit the available space for thumb sweeps. This seems to affect horizontal scrolling worse than vertical navigation. It’s easy to feel the difference on the BlackBerry Bold 9700 trackpad: it’s virtually the same size but does much better in terms of speed and response.

The E72 trackpad, which Nokia call optical Navi key, has three sensitivity settings: low, medium and high. High is what nearly gave us the response we were looking for, though horizontal scrolling remained somewhat problematic. The lower sensitivity settings we found just about useless. The trackpad is haptic enabled too, gentle vibrations marking every thumb sweep.

The trackpad however is amazingly useful in camera mode. Mind you, we’re talking a phone without an actual shutter key. Placing your finger on the trackpad activates the autofocus and locks it, and then a full press down captures the image.

It works like a charm, and gives the user a lot more control over the shot than say, virtual shutter keys on touch phones. And this is incomparably better than the ridiculous two-key focus/capture routine on the E71.
User interface: S60 3rd edition does not surprise

Nokia E72 runs on Symbian 9.3 OS with the Series60 3rd Edition user interface. It has Feature Pack 2 like the E52, E55 and the E75 side-slider.

More importantly though, the Nokia E72 is powered by the same 600 MHz CPU as the E55. In Symbian terms, that’s a lot, not even Nokia’s current flagship – the N97 – can match it.

Nokia E72 runs on Symbian S60 3.2

The phone’s main menu has two view modes: a 4 x 3 grid of icons and a list. The E72 comes with the new S60 icons for a pinch of 5th edition (touch) styling. However, with the E72 you cannot opt for having animated icons like on some other Nokia phones. This is probably just another way of reiterating the business focus of the phone. At least the font size is widely configurable depending on your preferences.

The optical trackpad is a nice addition and can make navigating the menus even smoother. Unfortunately, the imposing frame of the square D-pad doesn’t favor thumb sweeping.

The main menu has two view modes

The active stand-by mode goes without saying on the Nokia E72. This is a convenient way to add shortcuts to all your favorite applications on the homescreen. You can even assign shortcuts to websites of your choice for quicker access.

In addition you can bring up to fourteen different kinds of notifications on the homescreen: email boxes and voice mail, through calendar and to-dos, to the currently running track in the Music player and FM radio. Choosing how many of those fourteen items to use is completely up to you.

Basic homescreen, active stand-by or talking theme

Each of the one-touch keys (messaging and calendar) below the display can be customized to access any feature (actually two per key) of choice. The two soft keys functions are user-configurable too.

Another handy feature of recent Eseries handsets allows you to toggle between two different phone setups – the so-called Mode Switcher. Each of them can be customized with its own theme and homescreen applications for maximum usability. This way you can have both a leisure and a business profile and switch between them with a single click.

The built-in memory is 250MB, which is a decent amount. The included 4GB microSD memory card comes in very handy for extending it, but higher capacity cards up to 16GB are supported as well.

As we managed to confirm, Nokia E72 has no problem handling a 16GB microSD card. Accessing applications or any other files on the memory card is quick and you probably won’t notice any difference compared to accessing data in the phone memory.

As with any Symbian phone, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It is launched by the dedicated key on the right side of the E72 and does a good job. It’s fully speaker-independent and recognizes a very high percentage of the user commands.

And finally, there’s a nice security feature known as Remote Lock. If your Nokia E72 gets stolen or lost, you simply send a coded SMS message to remotely lock the phone. After three unsuccessful attempts to unlock it, it wipes itself clean of all personal or sensitive info. You might not get your Nokia E72 back, but at least nobody will get your personal data either.

Great Symbian phonebook

The phonebook of the Nokia E72 does a tremendous job, offering storage space for a virtually unlimited number of contacts and fields with all the available memory potentially usable for that purpose. You are also treated to as many fields for each contact as you like and some other nice extras, so there’s no reason to complain.

Welcome to the phonebook

Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name, and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any name. You can pick whether you want the SIM contacts, the service numbers or the phone memory contacts to be displayed or alternatively show them all at the same time.

Some of the available settings

Predictive search, contact list back-up, as well as grouping, are also available.

Editing a contact offers an enormous variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you are able to think of any.

Personal ringtones and video can also be assigned. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

Good luck trying to find a field that Nokia missed • you can even rename labels

The Call log application can hold up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key in standby.

Detailed info of your past communications is to be found in the call log

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers. You can even filter the entries (by contact or by type), a useful feature if you’re looking for a specific call.
Telephony: calls good, loudspeaker quiet

With Nokia E72 you are unlikely to experience any reception issues. Sound during calls is very clear and free of any interferences. It’s not too loud at the loudest setting but it will do great unless you’re in a very noise setting. Like quite a number of Nokia handsets, the E72 features advanced noise cancelling, which usually works quite nice to filter background noise.

Nokia E72 also has a Smart dialing feature, which helps you quickly find a contact straight on the standby screen.

Smart dial

Nokia E72 didn’t come with the Advanced Communication Manager application out of the box and the free version available in the Ovi Store is just a trial worth 20 calls. Shame this top-of-the-line business model lacks such a helpful app for filtering calls based on black and whitelists.

The Nokia E72 also has support for VoIP calls – you just contact your VoIP service provider and get the internet call connection settings, then you are all set.

We conducted our traditional speakerphone test with Nokia E72 and it performed rather poorly, scoring Below Average. Here is how it compares to same of the other handsets we have tested. You can find information on the actual testing process, along with the full list of tested devices here.Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overall score
Nokia E72 65.7 60.2 66.3 Below Average
Samsung B7610 OmniaPRO 66.6 64.7 72.2 Average
Nokia E71 68.0 66.5 76.2 Good
HTC Touch Pro2 74.6 70.0 78.1 Very Good
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 75.5 66.6 82.7 Very Good
HTC Touch HD 77.7 73.7 76.7 Excellent

The business of messaging

Eseries devices are mostly about messaging and connectivity and who would know that better than the supreme Nokia E72. The first time you start your phone you’re prompted to set up your email account, leaving no doubt that the E72 is equal parts a phone and a messenger.

Text entry is a make-or-break feature of devices meant for heavy messaging. Besides the relatively comfy keyboard, you can also use prediction, auto-completion, set the level of spelling correction and a couple of more tweaks.

We suggest trying out the different settings – for example the High setting for spelling correction might be too intrusive and you can set how the suggested word is displayed, either in place or above the currently typed word. If you spend five minutes on this, you’ll maximize your typing productivity, while minimizing the number of spelling errors.

The Input settings menu

On the whole, the E72 great email client and the ability to view and edit office documents will really help keep you up to date while you’re away from the office. Just like E52 and E55, E72 also comes with the Nokia Messaging software preloaded along with a lifetime service subscription.

There are three message editors aboard: SMS and MMS share the first one, audio and e-mail have their own. The SMS editor is the familiar application for all Symbian S60 smartphones.

An SMS automatically turns into an MMS when you insert some multimedia content

The email client has great looks and messaging organization. Each of the folders of your mailbox can now be sorted by whatever filters you might like and can then be searched if necessary.

Composing an email on the E72 is as easy as it gets

You can also define what the folders preview should look like, i.e. how many lines per entry, whether title dividers should be applied etc.

You can sort your email much like on a desktop computer email client

The email client supports a wide range of personal and corporate email standards such as Ovi Mail (obviously), IBM Lotus Notes Traveller, Microsoft Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail etc.

Encryption is also enabled, as well as mobile VPN support for connecting to secure corporate Intranets.

The Message reader can read your messages while you’re driving

Quite naturally, the Nokia E72 supports the ultra easy email setup of all recent Nokia handsets. The email setup has been slightly redesigned – you get a list of the six most popular email providers and an “Other” option for the rest. From then on it’s the same as before – enter your email address and password and E72 will take care of the rest.

That works only if you are using any public email service among the over 1000 supported providers, otherwise you’d have to enter the settings manually. Just make sure the phone is not in Offline mode, because ours wouldn’t add new mailboxes unless we put in a SIM card.

The one gripe we have with the email client on the Nokia E72 is the lack of threads. We know it’s a Gmail thing, but it’s a great feature. Maybe when other email service providers catch up, threads will get better support outside the Android world.

Image gallery: Eseries spelled with an N

The image gallery is the same as the one found in Nseries phones and looks great. Thumbnails of images and videos are arranged in a horseshoe shape, with the currently selected image top center.

You can scroll left or right and the speed of photo browsing increases if you press and hold the direction buttons on the D-pad. This makes a sort of circular scroller appear along with the month and year the picture was taken. This is great for quick skipping of tons of files if you’re not in the habit of sorting out your memory card regularly.

Scrolling in the gallery is also one of the places where the optical trackpad is put to good use. Getting to the next image with a sweep is effortless and makes for a true Nseries experience.

Browsing the image gallery

Zooming is very speedy, thanks to the zippy 600MHz processor. It does slow down a bit when you get over 100% but it will go up to 400% zoom. Zooming is done in small increments (about 10%) and panning is quite fast too.

The gallery offers a nice slide show with customizable effects and delay between slides. You can also choose the direction of the slideshow – forward or backward from the currently selected photo and the track to go with it. Music can also be switched off if you prefer.

The gallery also has a very good picture tagging system. In addition to geotagging, which is automatically handled by the camera, you can add as many tags as you like to each photo and then use them as filters.

There’s also the option to organize photos in Albums.

Zooming in • you can add tags to photos
Music player: Symbian regular

Full-featured music ability is not the main focus of a business device but the music player of the Nokia E72 is still pretty decent and we set our hopes for good audio quality high, knowing how recent Eseries devices performed.

The lack of dedicated music keys is easily overcome by the smooth D-pad control. There is a huge number of audio formats supported including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA. M3U playlists are also managed seamlessly and transferred files are added to the music library trouble-free by choosing the refresh option.

The music player is pretty straightforward

Filtering tracks by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching tracks by gradual typing is also available.

The player comes with five equalizer presets, bass booster and stereo widening effect. You can also create new equalizer presets if the preloaded ones won’t do.

The available equalizer presets • creating a new one

Finally, being one of Nokia’s best equipped phones, the Nokia E72 naturally also includes support for the A2DP Bluetooth profile, which allows listening to music on a stereo Bluetooth headset.
Video player is decent

The Nokia E72 features Real player for playing your video clips. The video player works in landscape mode only and that’s hardly a surprise. Fullscreen mode is available of course. The softkey functions are hidden in full screen so they don’t get in the way, and they only pop up when you touch the trackpad.

The E72 Video center • the video player has very few controls

The relatively big landscape screen and the MP4 video clips support add up to a passable video watching experience but you will probably resort to another player anyway. The reason for this is quite simple – the E72 lacks DivX and XviD support out of the box. Luckily, finding applications for the S60 3.2 that support those codecs is a fairly easy task (though they can be paid).
FM radio with RDS

The Nokia E72 sports stereo FM radio with RDS, controlled by the well known radio app. Upon starting, the app asks about your location in order to set up the proper frequencies for your area.

The FM radio can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. Scanning for alternative frequencies when traveling can also be set to automatic. You can save up to 50 radio stations and the option to play music through the loudspeaker is available.

The FM radio app
Top-notch audio quality

Here comes another musically-gifted member of the Eseries family. The Nokia E72 has great all-round perfomance that can make some dedicated music handsets jelous, let alone its business collegues.

We told you that the E52 and E55 were the best performers in Nokia’s business team as far as audio quality is concerned, but they didn’t hold on to that title for long. Differences are not major as you can see from the table but the improvement in E72 is still visible.

Comparing the Nokia E72 to one of its market rivals – the BlackBerry Bold 9700 we notice striking resemblance between their results on most readings. If it wasn’t for the BlackBerry’s cut-off bass we would suspect that it is the same hardware inside those two. But in the end the better frequency response makes the E72 the winner in this contest.

Cutting to the point – here go the results so you can see for yourselves.Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Nokia E72 +0.05, -0.26 -88.3 88.2 0.012 0.024 -88.8
BlackBerry Bold 9700 +0.25, -3.62 -89.8 87.8 0.014 0.023 -88.6
Nokia E55 +0.05, -0.23 -83.6 83.3 0.013 0.033 -84.3
Nokia E52 +0.05, -0.22 -85.3 85.0 0.014 0.034 -85.4
Nokia E75 +0.11, -0.91 -91.6 91.4 0.012 0.462 -73.3
Nokia E71 +0.74, -1.26 -74.5 74.7 0.016 0.097 -75.8
Sony Ericsson W980 +0.31, -1.25 -86.0 89.4 0.037 0.828 -86.3

Nokia E72 vs BlackBerry Bold 9700 frequency response graphs

Camera: very good 5 megapixel snapper

The Nokia E72 means business even in the imaging department. While 5 megapixels are no longer high-end, it’s more than enough for casual use, even for prints. The camera captures photos up to 2592 x 1944 pixels resolution and sports autofocus and an LED flash, which can be used as a video light too.

The camera uses a nice tabbed interface and offers extensive settings: from manual white balance and ISO sensitivity to exposure compensation, sharpness and contrast settings, as well as various effects, which are labeled color tones.

There are some changes to accommodate the optical trackpad and lack of a dedicated shutter key – touching the trackpad serves as a half-press, while pressing it all the way down actually takes the photo.

The tabs on the right can be displayed and hidden by pressing left or right on the D-pad. But while the tabs are visible you can’t take a photo because pressing the center key activates the selected item in the tabbed menu. You get used to it, but it’s annoying nonetheless.

The camera user interface is pretty familiar

A gridline can also be applied to the viewfinder to assist you in framing you photos using the photographic rule of thirds. Using it to align your subjects and place points of interest on or near the lines and their intersecting points makes your photos more professional and aesthetic.

The sequence mode and self-timer are nothing new. The flash can be set to four positions: automatic, always on, red-eye reduction and always off.

Small font tooltips are displayed to help you understand what the phone is doing at each specific moment (processing image, for example). You can also customize the toolbar deciding on shortcuts to display for which settings and in what order.

Strangely, the option to activate geotagging is missing. It could be a Nokia 5800 type of deal, where geotagging was enabled through a firmware update.

Image quality

The image quality of the Nokia E72 is among the best 5MP snappers we’ve seen. The noise reduction is dialed back, which makes images a little noisy but the amount of captured detail is uncompromised. Contrast and color rendering are good, though images show a somewhat yellowish tint. This generally makes the colors warmer and more appealing though. The dynamic range is often not wide enough, which leads to loss of detail in the highlights and shadows.

Here are some image samples so you can judge for yourself:

Synthetic resolution

We also snapped our resolution chart with the Nokia E72. You can check out what that test is all about here.

Nokia E72 resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Nokia 6700 classic resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Video recording

Video recording on the E72 is not very impressive. The business-minded handset manages VGA videos at 15 fps, which is far from stellar but is certainly better than what E71 and E66 offered.

The quality of the recorded video is not very good and even if 15 fps is acceptable to you, the E72 is not a camcorder. The image quality is inadequate, mainly due to the heavy compression. Other than that, it renders some nice colors.

Here is a sample video for you to check out.
Connectivity: A-list stuff

The E72 is truly on fire where data transfer is in question – it just has it all: from Bluetooth v2.0 and USB v2.0 to Wi-Fi and 3G. Furthermore, the 3G comes with HSPA support for the fastest network data transfers – up to 10.2Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink. That’s the most recent Nokia radio module, which allows the E72 to as much as triple the data speeds of the E71.

VoIP is a great addition to the call functionality of the E72, it even lets you make emergency calls if there’s a Wi-Fi connection available and the cell network is down.

A microSD card slot is also on board, and easily accessible at the side of the phone. Because it’s hot swappable, it might just be the quickest and most convenient way of transferring data.

The standard 3.5mm audio jack is also there and the only thing missing that we can think of is TV-out functionality.
Web browser agrees with YouTube

Browsing the internet on a Nokia smartphone is definitely a positive experience. The E72 is no exception with its excellent page rendering – most web pages look like they do on a desktop computer. The landscape orientation of the screen makes it much better at viewing pages not specifically designed for mobile devices.

The virtual mouse cursor is easy to control and generally works well. The D-pad control here is enhanced by the optical trackpad, though it’s not as good as we would have liked. Using the optical trackpad, the cursor jumps just as it does if you were using the D-pad, instead of moving smoothly. The jumps are equal in length too, so it’s not very useful for scrolling either.

Browsing GSMArena.com on the E72

A mini-map can be activated and it even appears automatically when you scroll longer, which helps you navigate complex websites without excessive scrolling. The zoom level is also easily adjustable at the expense of only a few key presses. The web browser also offers fullscreen view mode.

Along with the usual key shortcuts, the browser in E72 offers a toolbar, which can be launched by pressing 1 or pressing and holding the center key on an empty area of the page. You can customize which shortcuts are on the toolbar – up to seven shortcuts like “Subscribe to feeds” or “Bookmark manager”.

The toolbar is quite helpful

The Nokia E72 browser features full Flash support. It handled many of the Flash sites we threw at it, but chocked on others (games most often).

Flash video handled seamlessly

Flash video is mostly not a problem for the E72 web browser – you can watch video on the full-featured version of YouTube, which worked without a hitch. With other video hosting sites though it’s a hit or miss affair – for example, some of the videos on DailyMotion worked, but not all. Of the ones that worked, some lagged. Anyway, YouTube is guaranteed to work.

The browser is very zippy – panning is very fast, it easily loads pages over 1MB. One thing though – only the numeric keys are used as hardware shortcuts, but they are only a third of the whole keyboard. An option for assigning shortcuts to some of the letter keys would have sped things up a bit.

Top-notch PIM and Office 2007 support

As they say time is money, so time-management is another business phone virtue. There’s no wonder then that the Nokia E72 has one of the most elaborate organizer packages we’ve seen. There are a lot of nice applications, all very user-friendly and functional.

The calendar has four different types of view – to-do, weekly, daily and agenda as well as five types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Meeting request, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. The only change from previous handsets is that things were rearranged slightly to work better with the landscape orientation of the screen.

Setting up an event

The agenda view mode is really nice – it allows the dates of the month and the events for the selected day to appear simultaneously on the screen.

Day, week and agenda views

Mobile office is also duly covered, with seamless handling of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files. Furthermore, unlike most other Nokia handsets out there, editing documents is supported right out of the box.

With the Nokia E72 you won’t need to pay extra for editing your office documents. And there’s another thing you get for free – support for Office 2007 documents (.docx, etc.)

The E72 supports document editing out of the box

A PDF reader is also part of the Nokia E72 preinstalled content and a ZIP manager allows extracting archived files straight on your phone.

A PDF reader is also available • ZIP manager

The other pre-bundled organizing and time-management applications are: a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. We are not going to get into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough.

The ActiveNotes application is also on board allowing multimedia content to be added to your notes.

Some of the other organizer apps: unit converter, calculator and ActiveNotes

The Nokia E72 alarm clock application allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name and start time. You can also customize the snooze time from the settings menu.

The E72 allows dozens of alarms to be set simultanelously

The useful “Search” application is also at hand on the Nokia E72. Its reserved space in the active standby menu no longer comes as a surprise. After all, an application this useful really deserves to be conveniently placed.

The application itself finds almost every item in your Nokia based on a given keyword. From messages to settings, every bit of data is checked and results are then listed.

If it’s on the phone the Search app will find it

Finally, the Nokia E72 features a dictionary. English comes preinstalled but you can also download dozens of other languages for free from the Nokia website.

The dictionary has a rich database

The World Traveler app helps you when visiting a new city – it’ll offer weather forecast, a world clock, info on foreign currency, flights and even a 3D globe that marks your home and current location.

The traveler app can be quite helpful when travelling abroad

Thanks to the wireless presenter you can handle presentations straight from your phone.

WiPresenter is also here

The Multiscanner is a helpful looking app, which allows you to scan either business cards or text. It can’t scan much text in one go though and the accuracy of the OCR is disappointing.

The Multiscanner is not very accurate

But wait, there’s more – all the free stuff you can get from the Ovi Store. One of the more interesting apps is the Facebook app made specifically for Nokia E71 and E72. It’s great overall though it has a few kinks – it doesn’t show any newly shared photos or videos in the News Feed or in fact posts with shared photos or videos.

Still, you can view all the shared media from your friends’ profile pages and aside from that hitch the application works very well indeed. It’s a clever move from Nokia not to underestimate the importance of social networking in the business world – Nokia, Microsoft, even the US president all have a Facebook page.

There’s a free Facebook app for Nokia E71/E72 at the Ovi Store

GPS will lead the way

The Nokia E72 comes complete with a built-in GPS receiver, A-GPS and Ovi Maps preinstalled. Voice-guided navigation comes at a price, however, you get 10 1-day drive licenses that come with the phone (must be used within 3 months after purchasing the handset) and walk navigation is completely free for the owners of E72.

The preinstalled version of the Ovi Maps is 3.0 and as usual it’s pretty nice to work with. It has really detailed map coverage of a huge number of countries and a lot of extras such as traffic information, city guides and so on. Sadly, the extra features need to be purchased separately, as must the voice-guidance after the trial period has expired.

Nokia maps has four different view modes

The app also has very decent looks and easily customizable route planning algorithms. Our favorite feature is the 3D view mode, which unfortunately has to be turned on every time you restart Maps – that’s an odd one, no doubt about that.

Ovi Maps is also usable for pedestrian navigation or you can switch the GPS receiver off and simply use the phone as an electronic map. The nice thing about it is that you can actually preload the map content, so you don’t need to access the wireless network to download that on the go.

Overview of the route • Navigating • The Nokia E72 features a digital compass

Nokia E72 also features a digital compass. In order for it to work, you need the map zoomed on your current GPS position. The compass (a magnetometer sensor) is turned on by default, but it doesn’t work while turn-by-turn navigation is engaged. It’s quite useful while making your way around on foot though, as it rotates the map to match even your slightest change of direction.

Ovi Maps features extensive settings for the route planning algorithm

If you don’t fancy using Nokia Maps, you can opt for any of the numerous third-party applications available on the market, there’s no shortage of those.

The overall impression of the Nokia E72 GPS functionality is very positive, with the chip sensitivity being very good. It takes about a minute to get a lock form cold start and about 10 seconds on AGPS. The whole experience out of the box is good enough for most users’ needs and won’t make too many people look for alternatives.
Two classic timewasters

The Nokia E72 comes with two games preinstalled, both pastime classics.

The first one, called Block Cascade Fusion is a variety of Tetris, in which color also comes into play – instead of just making lines, you have to line up 5 or more blocks of the same color horizontally or vertically. The changes in the rules take some time getting used to – the lines of 5 or more same-color blocks disappear only during the fusion… blocks are dropping frantically, while you’re trying to figure out what the point is. It is part of the fun, so we won’t spoil it.

Block Cascade Fusion

The other option is Top Hit Solitaires bringing 15 types of solitaire, with classics such as Klondike and Freecell (if you ever owned a PC you’ve played them).

Top Hits Solitaires
Final words

There was a time when phones had cords and mail was delivered by hand. In comparison, the Nokia E72 seems like a space craft communicator. It handles just about every means of communication available today – from voice calls, through video calls, VoIP to texting, email and IM.

So do a lot of other phones but there’s a key difference. Most phones can handle email, but it’s not necessarily an enjoyable experience. For the E72 email is second nature, as easy to use as making calls. It’s not just the software or just the hardware, it’s how they work together that makes for the excellent experience.

Speaking of hardware, the “cheap plastic syndrome” is the curse of some of the most capable smartphones. Blazing fast wireless connectivity won’t make up for the cheapish looking plastic. But the Nokia E72 has the cure – metal – and it looks as good as it performs.

So, the Nokia E72 is king of the Eseries but whether it’s the best choice for you is another matter. The Nokia E71 is still something to be reckoned with, though E72 brings a few important improvements, the chief of which is the upgraded camera (and probably the 600MHz CPU).

The Nokia E55 offers just about the same software and the half-QWERTY doesn’t lag too far behind the full keyboard of the E72 once you get used to it. But while the two phones are a match at build quality and centimeter-thin bodies, the E55 is compact and – more importantly – cheaper.

Nokia E71 • Nokia E55

Those who don’t like Symbian will perhaps want to check out the WinMo alternatives by Samsung B7320 OmniaPRO and B7330 OmniaPRO duo. The B7330 especially is trying to come across as a Nokia E72 equal, so it will probably boil down to whether your current phone is running Symbian or Windows Mobile.

We’re talking QWERTY messengers and there’s always a BlackBerry Bold to try and spoil the day for Nokia. The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is sure hoping to be the E72 nemesis, just like the Bold 9000 was dogging the E71. Despite their recent dabbling in the popular phone market, BlackBerry phones are still the epitome of a business phone. And that sets them on a collision course with the Eseries.

Samsung B7320 OmniaPRO • Samsung B7330 OmniaPRO • BlackBerry Bold 9700

So, the Eseries have done it again. You can help yourself to another messenger of steel. The Nokia E72 won’t be just the next in line though; it’s keen to take the lead. It will be a while perhaps before Nokia decide to retire the E71, but they are making sure there won’t be an empty space after it.

For the time being the E71 takes one step down the rank and continues to do its job. The E72 sees to it that the lineup is up to date. Nokia is betting on two horses in the QWERTY messenger race and everyone is happy. That includes us – users. Business as usual in the Eseries.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_e72-review-422p8.php 

Nokia E72

From Nokia E71 to E72… and Beyond

There’s a temptation, writing this late in 2009, to dismiss any smartphone with a mere 2.4″ QVGA screen. And, in the general case, you’d be right to do so – the iPhone and the many models from all manufacturers that followed it have shown significant benefit in larger screens and (seemingly) new uses for our humble smartphones. A 4″ screen on a phone is now not considered outrageous.

However, the Nokia E72 (and the E71 and E61i before it) belong to a specific class of smartphone – the keyboard-centric ‘Blackberry’-style candybar, where instant access to QWERTY and speed of interface are paramount. Never mind watching videos or even browsing the ‘net’ – what’s important here is rock solid telephony and rock solid messaging.

Tellingly, Nokia’s plans for the next few years were revealed at their annual Capital Markets Day last week and, looking at the pie charts, I was somewhat astounded to see that their ‘QWERTY only’ range was actually planned to expand in the next couple of years – it looks like the E72 form factor (and perhaps that of the E75) isn’t going away anytime soon – this is a firm favourite with companies and Nokia are happy to keep refining the concept.

And it’s hard to argue with either the E71 or E72 – what seems to be too small and miniaturised on the spec sheet comes across far more as ‘perfectly formed’ when you hold it in the hand. For once, the nomenclature similarity is accurate – the E72 is very much an iteration on the E71, with the main changes being (relative to the older model):
A 5 megapixel camera (cf 3mp), with VGA video capture at 15fps (cf QVGA) – initial results look good for an Eseries device
An extra two keys on the qwerty keyboard, providing extra characters and also a ‘Torch’ option (press and hold space bar for four seconds on the homescreen)
Processor speed raised to 600MHz (cf 350MHz)
An Optical trackpad in the centre of the d-pad (with variable results – see below!)
A 3.5mm audio out jack (cf 2.5mm, shown right, great to see the industry standard here on this form factor)
Larger mono speaker, with reasonable quality for a phone
Digital compass (used when zoomed right in, in Ovi Maps)
Accelerometer
microUSB charging (as well as 2mm charging)
Active noise cancellation for calls
Around 180MB more free flash memory on disk C
High speed USB

That’s a pretty decent hardware upgrade by anyone’s reckoning. And there are software changes too:
S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, bringing User Data Preservation, Over The Air firmware updates, Destinations (intelligent access point degradation), wider media compatibility and a lot more
Ovi Maps 3.1 and Ovi Store client out of the box
Voice Music Search
The (previously Nseries-only) updated Photos app.
Quickoffice Premier 5.3 out of the box (free update to v6.0 Premier for all, of course, though)

Most of the software items above can be retrofitted easily to an E71, of course. Rather inexplicably, there have been some omissions in the software package, too, so its not all good news. There’s no geotagging in the camera, but this is likely to appear in short order in a firmware update. There’s no Internet radio, arguably a niche application for many – but you can install the version for the 6120 Classic and this works fine.

The most serious omission is that of Podcasting – if you’ve never got ‘into’ listening to podcasts then you’ll not understand the shock to someone who regularly subscribes to audio podcasts and then has them automatically downloaded, ready for whiling away boring journeys. I’m a podcast addict and I can see absolutely no reason why Podcasting was omitted from the S60 app set in the Nokia E72. There’s a tenuous product differentiation argument – business users don’t need to download podcasts – but then why are Nokia Music store and Music search included, both distinctly consumer-centric applications?

I live in hope that the E72 product team will see sense and re-introduce Podcasting, but in the meantime there’s Escarpod, a slightly quirky and somewhat beta-status third party Podcasting client – it requires a heap more babysitting than Podcasting, but it will have to do.

Taken overall though, the E72 is a significant step forward from the ageing E71. Even under the hood improvements like the dual-plus of having User Data Preservation keep user data and settings through an Over The Air firmware update make a huge difference to the average user and take the E72 further away from geek territory towards the man in the street.

A solid smartphone

There’s no doubting the E72 as a solid unit – unlike its stablemates the E52 and E55, seemingly from a different design school, despite the similarities in release timing, the E72 is just as solid as the E71 before it. Within the design constraints imposed by the qwerty candybar form factor, meaning a smallish screen and miniaturised keys, the E72 is not only useable, it’s genuinely desirable. A large stainless steel battery cover, a chromed outer ring and metal detailing on the control icons give the E72 a quality feel in the hand. My only complaint is that the battery cover’s corners could fit better against the plastic body – the amount of ‘give’ is quite small but possibly annoying, depending on where you place your fingers to brace yourself for typing.

As with the E63, slimming the space bar down to just double width doesn’t make a huge difference in usability, thankfully, and the extra character options are most welcome. As is the torch shortcut, which I use every night for treks to the garage in the UK winter. The Home/Calendar and Contacts/Email blocks are nicely raised and I had no difficulty with any of these functions.

The most controversial design element is the inclusion of an “Optical Navi key” – positioned inside the d-pad perimeter, the idea is that you move your thumb over it to indicate directional movement to the OS (you may remember that Samsung did something similar with the INNOV8). Demonstrating this working fairly well is easy – just bring up a Web page and the cursor happily follows your thumb’s flicking movements in satisfactory ‘analogue’ style. But the problem is that, although thumb movement on the pad does have an effect in other applications (usually mimicking a press on the appropriate d-pad direction), using the optical navi key is usually slower than using the d-pad’s edges in time-honoured ‘click at a time’ mode. Raising the Navi key’s sensitivity to ‘High’ in Settings does help a little, letting you swipe through several list entries/Calendar days/App icons at a time, and there is a certain novelty factor at work here, but if I’m honest it doesn’t really add much to the E72 experience. Still, it’s good to have the choice, it’s easy to turn off and the standard d-pad mechanics are still very good, so I’m reluctant to be too critical here.

In fact, the Navi key is used in one more significant place – the E72’s Camera. But I’ll leave this for the second (and final) part of this review.

The microUSB and microSD jack/slot are both protected by a tight-fitting, tethered cover, nice quality control here, Nokia, while the 3.5mm audio jack (hooray) is rightly positioned on the top of the phone, for easy access when in a pocket. There’s a 2mm charging socket on the bottom of the E72, but having the flexibility to charge via microUSB as well means that, like the E75 before it, this really is a smartphone to take anywhere and be sure of a top-up charge.

And Nokia do like playing up the backwards compatibility of their hardware to companies – yet again the superb 1500mAh BP-4L is used, so you can swap batteries between the vast majority of Eseries smartphones at will – very handy. 1500mAh should be enough to see the E72 through a couple of days of heavy use – something you couldn’t claim with many other smartphones on the market today.

Under the hood, as noted above, the E72 now has a 600MHz processor – absolute speed isn’t everything, of course, when we’re talking about mobile OS and a mobile’s components/bottlenecks, but it’s fair to say that the E72 whizzes along: it boots in well under 30 seconds, Maps launches in 3 seconds, Photos launches in around 1 second, and All About Symbian’s front page downloads and renders in five seconds flat (including ads, on Wi-Fi). Impressive. Also impressive is the amount of free flash memory for disk C – around 270MB, the best part of 200MB more than on the E71. I suspect an extra 256MB is present in hardware but that 70MB or so extra is needed to fit on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 (the E71 had FP1). Free RAM is hit harder by the switch to FP2, but there’s still 45MB free after booting. Not a huge amount for a nHD-screened, multimedia-heavy touch phone like the N97 but sufficient for almost all needs here on the QVGA-screened E72.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Nokia_E72.php 

Sony Ericsson Satio (3)

Theories about Xenon proving too costly, too bulky, too battery-unfriendly and too specialist, have all been shot down in flames at various points. We had the Nokia N82, a candy bar with small screen, then the Nokia 6220c, aping the N82 but with lower build quality and price to match, then the Samsung G810, an industrially designed chunky dual slider which also featured optical zoom but which was never supported or updated by Samsung, rather sadly.

And now we have the Sony Ericsson Satio, bringing a top notch 12 megapixel lens and sensor, along with Xenon flash and a LED video light, in addition to a giant 3.5″ touchscreen and S60 5th Edition. It’s true that Sony Ericsson hasn’t done much to the S60 codebase in general, that there’s no kinetic scrolling and that (as I write this) there are significant bugs right, left and centre, but there is a lovely new interface for the camera software and that’s the area I’m going to be concentrating on in this review part. See the final part 3 (to be published when Sony Ericsson has issued the first major firmware update for the Satio) for wider discussion of the Satio’s applications and general smartphone use.

As described in part 1 of this review, the Satio’s camera is hidden behind the singlemost impressive part of the phone’s case, a steel sliding section that, when retracted, also starts the Satio’s Camera application. This is also tied in with all the buttons on the ‘top’ (as the Satio is held in landscape/camera mode):
zoom out/in (though, as ever, digital zoom is strongly discouraged – you don’t gain any extra detail, you simply introduce extra digital artefacts into the centre of your subject area – it’s also worth noting that zoom in video mode is equally as bad, as on most other camera phones – there’s no intelligent digital zoom, as on the Nokia N86)

the ‘Album’ shortcut (at any point, pressing this switches to a ‘review’ mode, where you can swipe through your photos)

the stills/video toggle (soooo much easier than fiddling about in a menu or trying to hit an on-screen icon to change mode)

the shutter button (this is large and of high quality, with nigh-on perfect feel under the right hand index finger)

In addition to the light sensor, video shoot notification (red) LED, video shooting (white) LED and Xenon flash, there’s also a strip LED which light up blue for a second or so after starting the camera – and I have absolutely no idea what this is for. Comments welcome. Maybe it’s just there to look ‘cool’!

Sony Ericsson has always had its own ideas of what a camera interface should look like and they’ve been tweaking it for their touchscreen phones, with status icons along the top of the screen and camera control icons down the left edge (the right edge is saved for application . And, to be fair, it works much better than Nokia’s attempt for their S60 5th Edition phones, which tend to be marred by a confusing mix of pop-up icon panes and traditional menus and dialogs. The interface on the Satio works very well indeed and I found it intuitive.

Down the left of the interface are:
‘Scene modes’: Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Twilight landscape, Sports, Document, Twilight portrait, Beach/snow

‘Shoot mode’: Normal, Panorama, Bestpic, Smile detection, Touch capture (this last is similar to the systems on other touchscreen phones, where you touch the point in the image that you wish to explicitly focus on)

‘Flash’

‘Exposure’

‘Auto’ – turning this on removes all the other controls, the Satio literally becomes a ‘point and shoot’ camera

The toolbox icon at the bottom right of the screen leads to a custom tabbed dialog with few surprises. Of note is that the default resolution of the camera is actually 9 megapixels, corresponding to a widescreen (16:9) image, scaled similarly to the Satio’s display. For the purposes of the photo tests in this review part, I used the full 4:3 aspect 12 megapixels (4000 pixels by 3000 pixels!) though, naturally. The average consumer certainly doesn’t need 12 megapixels, but what I’m going to be doing here is looking at maximum detail under extreme circumstances.

Photo testing

Here I was comparing identical shots on the Satio with photos taken on the Nokia N86 and Samsung i8910 HD, both also 8 megapixel Symbian smartphones, plus the slightly older 5 megapixel Nokia N96, for comparison.
Shot 1: Sunlight into a garage, high contrast, mix of bright and pastel colours, plenty of texture

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version. Note excellent handling of colours – nigh on perfect, detail and contrast. Very impressive all round)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

As I tweeted recently, the difference between the detail from the Satio’s images and those from the N96’s is startling. Remember that the Nokia N95/N82/N95 (and others) have had just about the best phone camera up until a year or so ago. And yet the N96’s 5 megapixel image is made to look utterly ordinary and rather poor. In the tweet, I proclaimed that, camera-wise, the Satio is to the N95 what the N95 was to the N70 (from 2005).

Looking at the images, the Satio’s has the best colour rendition and detail, though the i8910 HD was only very marginally behind, showing what Samsung’s camera can do under ideal conditions. The N86 made rather a mess of the colours in the wood and its wide angle lens also meant that there was only marginally more detail than the N96’s image.

Shot 2: Sunlight on an open-air subject, macro distance, rich colours

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version. Note excellent handling of colours again – nigh on perfect, detail and contrast.)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

Again the Satio wins out with the best photo. Glorious detail, hyper-accurate colours. The Nokia N86 gets closest to competing, while the i8910 HD’s camera just gets the colours completely wrong and the N96 with its ‘mere’ 5 megapixels, simply seems outgunned.
Shot 3: Indoor indirect/poor lighting, fairly close subject

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

Again, unsurprisingly, the Satio again shows the best detail, albeit showing a little digital noise in the lower light conditions. The N86’s photo looks closest to real life (to my eyes) without too much low light noise, while the Samsung i8910 HD’s camera again tries hard but loses points for overcooking the colours – the green outer ring on the real clock is much richer and duller.
Shot 4: Very dark, subject 1.5 metres away (e.g. pub/club/party shot)

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

Now things start to get tricky for the camera phones. No natural illumination, poor artificial illumination, this is the scenario where you’ll get very disappointing results from most phone cameras. In my somewhat artificial posed(!) shot, the Nokia N86’s photo comes out almost perfect – the combination of large aperture, dual LED flash and large sensor just can’t be beat in this sort of situation. In contrast, the Xenon-lit Satio photo comes over as great looking as a whole but digitally noisy when you examine it very closely. HOWEVER, the other main advantage of Xenon flash is that it’s 1000x faster, meaning that in a real pub or club environment, with people moving/dancing/chatting, the N86’s photo would be at risk of being blurred, since the dual LED illumination needs the shutter to be open for up to 50ms, while the Satio’s Xenon flash would fire in up to 50 micro-seconds. This is fast enough to ‘freeze’ the fastest dancing/movement. Which is better, N86 or Satio? It depends on the sort of low light shots you like taking!

The i8910 HD and N96’s photos are both dull and badly lit by comparison.
Shot 5: Pitch dark, outside, flash range test

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Above is the N86’s photo, click to download the full 8 megapixel version)

Just looking at the two best low-light contenders here, we can see that although the Xenon flash is brighter on the Satio, its camera aperture and sensor don’t compare to the N86’s, which manages to achieve the same illumination range with just a dual LED flash. In addition, as you can tell from the Satio photo, it has severe problems focussing in dark conditions when there isn’t a nearby subject to latch onto. I’ve duplicated this effect with numerous other Satio flash photos, sadly. Hopefully this is something which can be tweaked in a future firmware update. The issue may not affect your party photos, but it’s certainly something to bear in mind.
Shot 6: Night time, street lamps, no flash allowed, testing raw sensor and aperture capability

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Detailed crops, clockwise from left: Satio, N86, N96, i8910 HD)

As expected, the Satio and N86 duel it out in their chosen manners. The Satio produces the most detail but also the most noise, while the N86 gathers more light and manages to suppress noise to produce a pleasing result. The i8910 HD result isn’t bad either in this company, while the N96 image shows how far behind “last year’s” smartphone cameras are when the going gets tough.
Shot 7: Late afternoon straight shoot out – Satio vs N86, challenging contrast, light and colours

(Above is the Satio’s photo, click to download the full 12 megapixel version)

(Above is the N86’s photo, click to download the full 8 megapixel version)

The Nokia N86 wins out in this final shootout, thanks to much better colour handling throughout, including capturing detail in the sky, while the Satio does manage to resolve finer detail, thanks to the 12 megapixel sensor, but lets itself down in other areas. Download the full images yourself and see what you think.

In summary, I’d rate the Sony Ericsson Satio as having, potentially, the best camera ever put in a smartphone. But, as with other aspects of the phone, its functionality is immature. The N86 being used for comparison is also new-ish, but it has had a chance for several signficant firmware updates. I’d expect the Satio’s camera performance to also stabilise as time goes on. The physical capabilities, allied with a sumptuous interface and numerous ways of shooting (e.g. Bestpic and Smile Detection, subjects for another test for another day) mean that the Satio’s stills camera will stay top (or nearly top) of the pile for some time to come.

And yes, in answer to the ne’er sayers proclaiming that neither will replace a good standalone camera, you’re absolutely right. But for casual use, you’d find it hard to argue that these smartphones can’t get jolly close in terms of results in most light conditions.

Video testing

Maximum video capture from the Satio is at VGA at 30 frames per second – good, but really only matching most Nokia Smartphones from the last few years. As you’ll see from the test video below, like the N97, N97 mini and 5800 from Nokia, there’s not only no initial focus, there’s no pre-focus either, so only objects further than a couple of metres away are in focus. Thus, the birds are clear enough but my face isn’t as clear as it could be.

Also, download the original MP4 clip here as satiovidsample.MP4 (20MB)

Frame rate and overall encoding are decent though – grab the MP4 version above if you can see the clarity in the YouTube version, and the Satio will be OK for most casual video use.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Sony_Ericsson_Satio-part_2_The_Camera.php 

Nokia MD-6 Mini Speakers

Picking up the MD-6 and you think you’ve got some retro-styled 70’s lighter. In fact, flipping the top open reveals two small speakers atop a battery compartment. This is the sort of Transformer effect I like in a travel unit, especially one that’s not much bigger than a big chunky marker pen.

At the opposite side is a red plastic section that slides out, with around two and a half feet of cable ending in a jack plug. Coil out just as much as you need, guide it through the gap, and slot the plastic back in. Voila, a nice tidy cable tidy as well. Smart thinking, Nokia. Perhaps I’ll overlook the need for four (four!) AAA batteries to power the unit with no option for recharging in situ, or even a non-amplified pass through option for the audio signal.

The good news is that the speakers are louder than the phone with full volume, but given the design there’s almost no stereo separation. More worryingly, there’s a break up at higher volumes so yes, it is loud, but don’t expect any fidelity when listening to the more delicate movements in Swan Lake (AC/DC is fine though).

One thing to point out is that, while carrying a 3.5mm jack plug, it is the jack with an extra contact ring – fine on Nokia devices when this is used for the hands free microphone, but try to put this into a SanDisk Clip MP3 player and you’re not going to hear much thanks to the wiring. The flexibility that I like when travelling (multiple uses over multiple devices) is lost in the MD-6.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Nokia_MD-6_Mini_Speakers.php 

Sony Ericsson Satio (2)

Sony Ericsson Satio review: Shooter by vocation

Introduction

Sony Ericsson have long ago shown that they are not afraid of any challenge, producing handsets that have claimed a top spot on the market. There are still plenty of fans from those good old days that would love to see another market-leading device thrown their way.

A look at what’s between the XPERIA X1 and the Satio is enough to tell you what Sony Ericsson have been up to for the past year. A top-dog Cybershot (C905) and an all-round Walkman (W995) were both compelling enough but none would be trusted to top the portfolio of a company that used to call the shots at the forefront of mobile technology.

So, Sony Ericsson might have been busy cutting costs, fueling the hype behind their new wave gadgets (Satio, Aino and Rachael) or experimenting with Symbian and Android. But there’s little doubt about their full-time job. The Satio is a lot more than its mouthwatering features, full touchscreen debuting Symbian S60 or its 12 megapixel camera. It may be too much to say that all the company’s hopes lie with the Satio but the burden on its shoulders is disproportionate compared to any other flagship device we can think of.

Sony Ericsson Satio official photos

This review, by the way, is coming after a massive spoiler. But the good thing is we know the Satio is all geared and ready to face some serious challenges. An industry leading cameraphone, or top-of-the-line smartphone, the Satio has a clear view of its goal. But you can be certain that its path forward will not be covered in rose petals. Sony Ericsson are in dire need of fresh devices (and cash) and the Satio should not be anything but a bestseller. When you’re trying to turn your fortunes around, you have very little room for error.
Key features
3.5″ 16M-color resistive touchscreen of 640 x 360 pixel resolution
12 megapixel state-of-the-art autofocus camera
LED and xenon flash, active lens cover
VGA@30fps video recording
Symbian OS 9.4 with S60 5th edition UI, spiced up with a home-brewed homescreen and media menu
ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz CPU, PowerVR SGX dedicated graphics accelerator and 256 MB of RAM
Quad-band GSM support
3G with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 3.6 Mbps support
Wi-Fi and GPS with A-GPS
microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
Built-in accelerometer
TV out
Stereo FM Radio
USB and stereo Bluetooth v2.0
Web browser has full Flash support
Preinstalled Wisepilot navigation software
Office document viewer
Main disadvantages
Xenon flash is not adequately powerful
The S60 5th edition UI isn’t to the best in class standards
No 3.5mm audio jack or a standard USB port
No DivX or XviD support out-of-the-box
No smart or voice dialing
Playing flash videos in the browser easily depletes the available RAM
No office document editing (without a paid upgrade)
No stereo speakers
No digital compass (magnetometer)

There’s very little to complain about looking at the list above, but the difference between a moderately successful handset and a blockbuster depends on all the performance you can squeeze out of those features. And with the Symbian S60 touch reincarnation hardly the most heralded OS on the market, the job gets even more complicated.

Sony Ericsson Satio at ours

The competition is at an all-time high in the premium segment, Sony Ericsson won’t enter the battle unarmed. The sleek Satio knows it has a trick or two up its sleeves and is eager to show the world its worth. And here we are revealing those secrets for you, starting with the design and handling on the next page.

Unboxing meets expectations

The Sony Ericsson Satio comes in a pretty compact box, which made us worried that there wouldn’t be enough stuff inside to justify the price tag.

As it turned out, our worries were unfounded. The box has all the things the vast majority of users will ever need. Along with the handset itself, you get a wall charger, user guide and a USB cable for connecting your Satio to a computer. There’s also a stylus in there but since we aren’t great fans dongle-style ones we hardly ever took it out of the box.

Exploring the Satio retail package

Unfortunately, the headphones are a rather basic set. We got a one-piece handsfree, which is a major letdown, given the absence of a 3.5mm audio jack on the Satio. We have reason to believe though the box contents are market dependent and luckier users may be treated to a two-piece headset with a 3.5 mm adapter on the remote, or even a TV-out cable.

We certainly cheered the 8GB microSD card we found inside the box. The Satio’s syncing software comes preinstalled on the card, so all you need to do is plug the USB cable in the handset and install it right form there.

Finally, there are some quick-start guides in the box too, if you need tips about handling the phone.
Sony Ericsson Satio 360-degree spin

At 112 x 55 x 13 mm the Sony Ericsson Satio can be slipped into most pockets without causing too much of a bulge. It’s not what you’d call a compact set but the 3.5″ touchscreen is a pretty good excuse. The extra girth around the lens is about what you would expect in a device boasting a 12 megapixel camera.

We are pleased however with the solid feel that the 126 grams give the handset. More importantly though, handling the phone is quite comfortable – most of the features are within thumb’s reach and the active lens cover and handy camera controls are very user-friendly.

Design and construction

The Sony Ericsson Satio comes in a choice of three different colors – black, silver and bordeaux. Having had the black version for a preview we have to admit the bordeaux paintjob is hardly as inspiring. We suspect it has something to do with the shiny red plastic being a bit too feminine for us.

The body of the Satio is almost entirely made of plastic, which looks pretty nice but we still prefer some metal on our mobiles. We are willing to accept this (admittedly high quality) material for the sake of keeping the handset weight down.

Most of the Satio’s front is taken up by the 3.5″ touchscreen with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. The resistive unit supports up to 16M colors and is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the device. It has remarkable picture quality with incredible brightness and excellent contrast for a TFT unit. Images look impressively vibrant on it.

The huge touchscreen excels in terms of image quality

Resistive displays generally need more pressure to get a click registered. As we found out, the Satio’s screen response is just fine – you don’t need to push like your life depends on it. It is by no means as sensitive as capacitive displays but then again, you can use the Satio with a stylus or with your gloves on.

The sunlight legibility of the display is decent, but not as good as the Nokia N97, let alone the Apple iPhone. Still you will be able find a proper angle for working with the phone even in the brightest sunlight if you try hard enough so that shouldn’t be a deal-breaker. Sony Ericsson still aren’t up with the best in this department but they aren’t too far behind either.

There are three hardware controls underneath the display, while the video-call camera, ambient light sensor and the earpiece are on top. There is also a proximity sensor up there to take care of switching the display off when you hold it against your ear in a call. The hardware keys are a bit too thin but still usable. They have decent press and blend well with the overall design.

The Satio’s main controls are a Call and an End key on each side of a menu button. Pressing and holding the menu key launches the task manager – in the long-standing Symbian tradition.

The three hardware keys at the bottom are nice to use * video-call camera, earpiece and sensors at the top

The left side of the Sony Ericsson Satio features the screen lock slider, the proprietary universal connectivity port and the microSD card slot. The absence of a 3.5mm standard jack and microUSB for data and charging are certainly among the small details that compromise Satio’s user-friendliness.

No 3.5mm jack and standard USB port can be held against the Satio

At least the memory card slot is covered by a plastic lid so it won’t fill up with dust. Plus, the Satio is yet another recent Sony Ericsson handset to move away from the Memory Stick storage. The Satio can easily handle 16GB microSD cards, so the transition is pretty seamless.

Design and construction (continued)

The right side hosts an array of controls. The three located towards the bottom are all camera-related. There’s a nicely responsive shutter key with distinct half-press for autofocus, a button to toggle camera modes and a dedicated gallery key. The volume rocker is further up and it isn’t totally irrelevant to imaging either, as it doubles as a zoom lever.

A host of camera controls on the right side of the handset

The power key of the Sony Ericsson Satio is placed at the top, right next to the loudspeaker. As on any other Symbian handset, you can also use the power key for switching profiles on the device.

The power key and loudspeaker are on top

All there is at the bottom is the lanyard eyelet.

The lanyard is attached at the bottom

The back of the Sony Ericsson Satio reveals its other standout feature. The 12 megapixel camera lens is underneath the stylish cover , accompanied by both xenon and a LED flash. The dual flash solution makes sure the Satio is covered in low-light conditions for both stills and video recording. There are also a couple of tiny apertures around the camera lens, which we guess are some kind of light sensors.

The star of the show: 12 megapixel autofocus camera

Having seen the Satio in action in our recent 12 megapixel shootout, praises for the image quality will hardly be a spoiler. The imaging performance is impressive and we’ll gladly shoot a few more rounds with the Satio in the camera chapter of this review.

Removing the battery cover on the Satio reveals the 1000 mAh Li-Po BST-33 battery. BST-33 batteries are nominally 900 mAh so we’re wondering where did those additional 100 mAh get from, but the pure specs are not the point.

Considering the screen size, you can hardly expect miracles from it, but it still managed to last through the day even if we never gave it a break. Since we doubt it any of you will be taking a hundred photos a day and endlessly fiddling with the other phone features, you have good reason to expect a longer gap between charges.

We have to mention that Sony Ericsson have gone for a strange solution for the SIM compartment on the Satio. You place the card on a small plastic tray, which slides in under the lens cover. It’s probably a neat trick to save some space but the plastic tray looks pretty fragile. If you’re in the habit of frequently changing SIM cards you should be careful.

Taking a peek inside Satio

Summing it up, the general build quality of the Satio is quite good and the materials used are both nice looking and durable. The handset feels perfect in the hand and, despite being a bit thicker at the top, it is evenly weighted so there is no risk of it slipping out of your hand.

The ample touchscreen is a treat in terms of image quality, and the response is quite pleasing. The camera controls are very user-friendly, and the active lens cover does well to both enhance the imaging experience and highlight the phone’s key feature. Our main concerns with the Satio are the absence of a standard USB port and 3.5 mm audio jack.

To sum it up, there a few hardware issues, which are not make-or-break perhaps, but still a nuisance in a high-end device. Ergonomics are quite up to scratch though and the Satio handles nicely.
Interface

Sony Ericsson Satio runs the Symbian OS 5th edition but you’d never tell by just looking at the homescreen. It’s a clean break from how other manufacturers see the touch-operated Symbian.

For starers we have prepared a short video demonstration of the user interface of the Satio. It should give you a better idea of most of the changes introduced by Sony Ericsson.

The homescreen uses a tabbed interface but not like the “Vertical icon bar” often seen (though rarely used) in Nokia handsets. There are five tabs, which are in effect five alternative homescreen panes: favorite contacts, bookmarks, home, photos, shortcuts.

The S60 5th edition homescreen has grown tabs

There are five shortcuts on the top of the display, one for each tab. Alternatively, horizontal finger sweeps can be used to navigate between the tabs. The transition itself is visually pleasing with its smooth animations – even if you switch from the first to the last tab, things will roll across the screen with no lag at all.

The other four tabs of the homescreen

The home tab is a typical homescreen – wallpaper, operator name, time and date (though time is also visible in the status row on top) and music controls. The music controls act as a shortcut to the music player and if there’s a song playing it will display track info (with album art) and basic player controls. There are four additional shortcuts at the bottom – Dialer, Media, Messaging and Web search.

The home tab is placed in the center. The leftmost tab is the favorite contacts tab, which gives quick access to a selection of contacts. They are displayed in a list with contact photos if available, so nothing fancy. Tapping a contact, brings up a popup with three options – Call, Message, View in contacts.

The second tab is the bookmarks and it does what it says. You can add new links but you can have eight at most. Another thing we would’ve liked is favicons in the list.

The fourth tab – photos – shows a vertical list of all your photos, sorted by date. It comes with kinetic scrolling and is the fastest way to view the latest photos.

The fifth tab is the shortcuts tab and holds a list of eight shortcuts – be they shortcuts to applications or bookmarks.

The main menu is more standard – there’s a choice between a grid and list arrangement, and by default the shortcuts are arranged so that they resemble the typical Sony Ericsson menu. The icons will feel very familiar to experienced Sony Ericsson users.

The main menu

The rest however is S60 5th edition – the D-pad and soft-key based navigation translated into touchscreen. Lists still require a double tap to select and confirm, while icons take just a single tap. There’s a shortcut to the task switcher or you can long-press the menu key.

Telephony needs smart dialing

We didn’t experience any problems with the in-call performance of Sony Ericsson Satio. Reception levels are good on both ends of a call, the earpiece is loud enough and there was no interference whatsoever.

The two things the phone lacks are Smart dialing and voice dialing. These two are included in other versions of Symbian and should have been available here.

The dial pad

Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can silence an incoming call on the phone by simply flipping it over. The proximity sensor automatically switches off the display when you put the phone to your ear and switches it back on when you pull it away.

In-call performance is very good. Thanks to the proximity sensor the screen turns off automatically while close to your head. There are four big buttons available – mute, hold, loudspeaker and end call. Form the options menu you can find more settings like lock screen and keys, switch to video call, new call, etc.

Making a call, call options

We also ran our traditional loudspeaker test on Satio. The handset didn’t perform too well but still scored a Good mark meaning we have seen (and heard) better. You might want to keep a closer look on it when you are in noisier environments.Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G 66.1 62.1 71.7 Below Average
Acer neoTouch 64,6 65,7 75,8 Average
Sony Ericsson Satio 71.8 66.1 78.2 Good
Samsung M8910 Pixon12 75.7 72.8 77.3 Very Good
HTC Touch HD 77,7 73,7 76,7 Excellent

More info on our test can be found here.
Phonebook

Sony Ericsson Satio uses the standard Symbian S60 5th edition phonebook. It has virtually unlimited capacity and functionality is among the best we’ve seen. You can set whether the contacts from the SIM card, the phone memory and the service numbers will get displayed.

You can order contacts by first or last name and you can naturally search any contact by gradual typing. To speed things along, the search keyboard is special – letters are in alphabetical order and not the entire alphabet is available. For instance, if there are no contacts whose name starts with a C, the letter C won’t appear on the custom keyboard.

The phonebook hasn’t seen much change • the search keyboard is quite clever

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one.

You can also assign personal sound ringtones and videos to the individual contacts. If you prefer, you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

Viewing a contact • editing a contact offers a huge variety of fields

The Call log keeps track of your recent communications. The application itself comes in two flavors – accessed by pressing the Call key on the stand-by screen or from the main menu. The first one brings 20 call records in each of its tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls.

The Log application

If you access the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers (even WLAN connections are included).
Messaging is great

The messaging menu is yet another part of the Symbian S60 UI that hasn’t been modified at all since the Nokia 5800, apart from some reskinning of the icons.

Sony Ericsson Satio supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. They all share a common intuitive editor which by this point should be quite familiar to everyone. When composing an SMS, a counter is displayed of characters left up to a limit of 160. An indicator in brackets shows the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

Once you insert some multimedia content or an email address as recipient, the counter is replaced by a data counter showing the size of your email.

Satio uses a common intuitive editor for all your messages

The Satio also features a dedicated audio message recorder. Much like with Symbian S60 v3.2, you can either record the message on the spot or use a sound clip from the phone memory. The interface of all the message editors is quite similar too.

You can activate delivery reports – they come up on the screen as simple pop ups and are automatically saved in a separate messaging folder after that.

The email client is really nice, able to meet almost any emailing needs. It prompts you to choose whether you prefer POP or IMAP access to mail providers that support both. However, it failed to set up the email settings automatically for our Gmail account so we had to do it by hand.

Setting up email is didn’t quite work out

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can check for new mail automatically at a given interval.

You can also schedule sending email next time an internet connection is available when you compose emails offline. This can save you some data traffic charges since you can use the next available WLAN connection instead.

Advanced email options

Multiple email accounts and various security protocols are supported, so you can bet almost any mail service will run trouble-free on your Satio. You can also subscribe to multiple folders, so you can check email in folders other than the Inbox, e.g. the Starred folder in Gmail.

The email client gives no reasons for grudges

Browsing emails is a bit weird – sweeping your finger selects text and prompts you to copy it. This means you have to use the scrollbar. Easily copying text is great but we would have liked some way to toggle between scrolling and selecting.

There is also support for attachments and signatures – the Satio meets virtually all your email needs, and with a screen resolution like this, reading emails on the device is a real pleasure.

Text input options

The Sony Ericsson Satio offers a complete selection of input methods The handset has a standard alphanumeric on-screen keypad in both portrait and landscape mode.

The alphanumeric keypad is available in both portrait and landscape modes

It definitely cannot be a match for any hardware keyboard but the Satio full QWERTY fares pretty well. Typing is enhanced by accurate haptic feedback and the keys are large enough for typos to be reduced to a healthy minimum. Unfortunately there is no predictive typing like on the Apple iPhone or the Nokia E71, but we do not consider this much of a disadvantage.

We are really happy with the virtual QWERTY keyboard

Unfortunately, rotating the handset doesn’t bring up the landscape QWERTY keyboard as a default input method and instead you have to select it manually from the menu.

There is also a mini version of the QWERTY keyboard which is only good for stylus use, typing with fingers is possible but it’s a real test of your patience. Its main advantage is that it takes little space on the screen and can be moved around so it doesn’t block your view of things.

The mini QWERTY has limited use

Finally, the Sony Ericsson Satio offers handwriting recognition and actually does a rather decent job of it, recognizing almost all the letters we scribbled in the box. You can improve its performance by taking the handwriting training – this is where you actually show the handset how you write each different letter.

The handwriting recognition worked pretty well for us
File manager is extensive

The Symbian file management system has been top notch for quite a while now, and it’s difficult to imagine what needs to change. The application can basically do anything you can think of with your files – moving, copying renaming, sorting or sending – you name it. You can also password-protect your memory card if you see fit.

The file manager has extensive functionality

Searching for a specific file or directory is also available on the phone. All you need to remember is a part of the desired name and where it was located (phone memory or memory card) Satio will find it for you in no time. There’s also a dedicated Search app, which searches through more than just files – it will sift through your notes, contacts, pretty much anything on the phone.
Media center: Sony Ericsson jumps in where Symbian can’t deliver

The Sony Ericsson Satio Media center is a replica of what you usually find on the company’s feature phones (and Sony Playstations, mind you) – an attractive and convenient way of accessing the media content on your phone.

Sony Ericsson decided to minimize the Media shortcuts (at least at this stage) and there are only three of the usual suspects to make up the main media center menu – Photo, Music and Video.

As you may already guessed the first one will lead you to the main gallery with various options available, the second give access to all playlist and the Walkman and finally, the third one will show you all video clips stored on the Satio.

The media center in portrait and landscape mode
Image gallery

The photo gallery is definitely among the best we’ve seen with great customization capabilities and features aplenty. Some of those options include: one-click access to the latest snapshot you’ve taken, timeline view for your images and tags.

Tags are a very helpful feature offering better ways to make albums – one photo can belong to more than one tag, which you can’t do with folders.

Viewing photos is a joy with the Satio, especially when browsing images fullscreen. When you want to go to the next in line, it doesn’t simply pop up but instead slides in from left or right. The selected photo expands smoothly to fill the screen.

You can reveal the full list of available options by tapping on the screen – delete, edit, use as, assign to contact, slideshow, print tag, rotate, information, etc.

The image gallery • landscape mode

There is also a Pictures section, which stores all the preloaded images that were not taken with the phone’s camera.

Walkman on Symbian

The Sony Ericsson Satio comes with the Walkman music player and all the accompanying extras and eye-candy. Much like the rest of the media menu, the accelerometer is used here for automatic rotation of the display.

Naturally the music player also offers step-by-step filtering of the tracks you want to listen to. The “Now playing” screen is simple but offers all the needed controls and information. The tracks are controlled by comfortably large and thumbable on-screen keys at the bottom.

Music menu • Walkman music player • the homescreen controls

Strangely enough, the Satio offered neither equalizers nor alternative visualizations.
Video player

The video player on the Sony Ericsson Satio has pretty limited functionality compared to the one found on the company’s features phones. It has neither slow-mo playback nor screenshot capabilities.

Our real grudge with the video player however is that there’s no DivX and XviD support – what can we say, LG and Samsung handsets have definitely spoiled us.

With the missing support for the extremely popular codecs, either you’ll have to buy a new application for video playback or you’ll have to convert all your videos by using MediaGo (with all the imposed limitations).

The video player could have used DivX support

When it comes to the watching experience itself, the Satio is nothing short of flawless. High resolution, excellent image quality and 16:9 aspect ratio make for a really nice video combo indeed.
Audio quality

Update Nov 10: As it turned out the Sony Ericsson Satio had some issues with our testing equipment, which prevented it from demonstrating its full potential. Now that we have those issues solved we are able to give you a more accurate representation of the Satio audio output.

The handset performs extremely well in this department, the cut-off extreme bass frequencies being the only slight shortfall. However the frequency response is excellent for the rest of the audible range so we are willing to let that one go.

All of the other readings are pretty good too with the distortion levels simply great. The stereo crosstalk, the noise level and the dynamic range are also pretty good. You can see for yourselves that the Sony Ericsson Satio is quite a gifted musician from the table below. Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Sony Ericsson Satio +0.37, -2.02 -87.0 86.3 0.011 0.125 -84.3
Sony Ericsson W902 +7.31, -2.18 -81.7 84.1 0.0039 0.020 -85.4
HTC Hero +1.04 -2.13 -91.3 92.3 0.458 0.902 -95.8
Apple iPhone 3GS +0.01, -0.05 -92.1 92.1 0.0035 0.011 -95.0
Samsung S8000 Jet +1.01 -2.03 -87.9 87.0 0.015 0.060 -85.9
Samsung i8910 Omnia HD +1.29 -2.74 -87.6 86.6 0.0023 0.255 -85.2
Sony Ericsson W910 +0.25, -1.25 -81.5 82.7 0.0071 0.028 -81.9
Nokia N97 +0.04, -0.27 -90.7 90.7 0.0048 0.896 -89.5

Sony Ericsson Satio frequency response

Best or second best, the Satio camera is a standard-setter

The Sony Ericsson Satio packs one of the first 12 megapixel cameras in the mobile phone world and we did a head-to-head shootout with the other 12MP camera phone – the Samsung Pixon12. With maximum image resolution of 4000 x 3000 pixels, both xenon and LED flash, it makes basic point-and-shoot cameras look obsolete.

The Satio camera interface is reasonably comfortable with the viewfinder occupying only the central part of the screen when regular 4:3 aspect ratio is selected. When shooting in 16:9 aspect ratio (9MP), however, the whole display is put to use from side to side.

On the right side of the viewfinder there are five shortcuts. Those include Scenes, Shoot mode, Flash settings, Exposure compensation and Auto mode. When you select Auto mode the handset takes care to select the most appropriate scene mode for each of your photos and apply the proper settings.

Camera interface • camcorder interface

Opening the settings menu gives you quite a load of customizable options. Those include focus mode, white balance, effects, image stabilizer and self-timer. You can also choose whether you’ll see a preview of every taken snapshot and if the image orientation should be recorded in the EXIF info. The camcorder part of the camera supports a very similar set of customizable settings.

A high-end cameraphone, the Sony Ericsson Satio naturally comes with image geo-tagging too. There is also face and smile-detection onboard, as well as panorama mode and Touch capture.

As the name suggests, Touch capture allows you to focus on any particular subject in the frame by simply tapping on it in the viewfinder. The Satio will automatically focus on it and take a shot.

The mechanical lens cover offers the best possible protection for the lens. Also, it’s an active one – that means that sliding it open launches the camera even if the phone is locked.

The other mechanical shortcuts that work with the camera besides the shutter key are the volume rocker for digital zoom control, a gallery shortcut and a button that toggles between still image capture and video recording.

Image quality

If you are interested in finding out everything there is to know about the image quality of the Sony Ericsson Satio please check out our 12 megapixel shootout article. There you’ll find a pretty detailed analysis of the two best cameras on a mobile phone currently on the market.

To summarize though, the Sony Ericsson Satio produces splendid images that are well beyond the output of any of its 8 megapixel rivals. The colors are vibrant and saturated, the amount of resolved detail is great and the noise levels are tolerable.

While the Pixon12 did have a small edge in image quality and xenon flash performance,the Satio has its own strengths as well. Simply said, the Sony Ericsson smartphone is some optical zoom away from matching low-end and mid-range digicam performance but we guess you can’t have it all just yet.

And here are some samples from the Sony Ericsson Satio camera, some of which you won’t find in the shootout.

Sony Ericsson Satio camera samples
Video recording

The Sony Ericsson Satio will produce VGA videos at 30 fps, equaling the XPERIA X1 achievement. Some of the issues we had with the prerelease Satio unit were ironed out and now everything is up to scratch.

The quality of the videos is really good with an almost unmatched amount of resolved detail, very good contrast and precise colors. While the HD capabilities of the Samsung Omnia HD are out of reach, the Satio is definitely among the top contenders for the world title in the VGA category.

Here is a Sony Ericsson Satio camera video sample for you to enjoy.
Connectivity is full suite

Sony Ericsson Satio is well versed in connectivity – all contemporary means of data transfer are supported.

Starting with the basics, there’s quad-band GSM and EDGE support, as well as 3G network compatibility. The Satio has dual-band 900/2100 MHz support for worldwide coverage, as well as an American version at 850/1900/2100 MHz. Data speeds are quite high with 7.2Mbps HSDPA and 3.6Mbps HSUPA.

Local connectivity offers the obligatory Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. Satio also comes with Wi-Fi, which includes DLNA support. Oh, and there’s the wired connectivity, which unfortunately makes use of only the proprietary Fast Port connector.

This Sony Ericsson has gone with with microSD cards recently, not Memory Sticks. The card slot on the Satio is is hot-swappable and easily accessible – it’s hidden under a flap on the left side of the phone. It supports cards with a capacity of up to 16GB (it comes with an 8GB card in the box), which is more free space than we’ve ever needed.
Web browser has Flash but disappoints in usability

Sony Ericsson Satio uses the S60 5th edition browser and starts up with the typical Sony Ericsson homepage.

It has quite a few shortcomings in usability though. The kinetic scrolling for one – it doesn’t have enough momentum and stops way too abruptly. The tap-to-zoom feature switches between three levels of zoom: 30%, 100% and 200%. Strangely, it was a little hard to trigger, so you are better off using the zoom bar.

Viewing a page full screen or bringing up the minimap requires two taps, which is exactly a click more than it should have been. And while the browser has support for multiple pages opened at the same time, this only works for popups – you can’t open a new tab manually and dial in a new web address.

The web browser

At least the page rendering is quite good, making all the pages look as if browsed on a desktop PC. The high resolution is also a welcome bonus here, as it allows more content to fit on the screen. There is also a login auto-fill interface that really makes logging online that much easier on a device without a physical keyboard.

Finally, the web browser has full support for both Flash and Java, which means that you can enjoy flash videos straight in your browser without having to use the mobile versions of sites like YouTube.

In terms of speed the browser performs very well but when viewing a YouTube video it would often show a “memory low” warning. The videos still played smoothly though.

So, generally speaking, the second S60 touch-browser is nicely equipped but fails to address some basic usability shortcomings.

Organizer – good old Symbian organizer

The S60 organizer didn’t get tweaked that much for the new OS beyond basic touch optimization. Well, developers were right up to a point but – given the progress of most competitors – some new functionality would have been nice like copy/paste of events in the calendar or a new calculator.

We have to admit though that the calculator is much more comfortable to operate with fingers than with a D-pad, almost as if it was designed for such use from the very beginning. Now let’s just hope new non-touchscreen devices get something better.

The calendar has four different view modes – monthly, weekly, daily and to-do, which allows you to check up all your To-Do entries regardless of their date. There are the same four types of events available for setting up as on S60 3rd edition – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do.

Each event has unique fields of its own, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

Some of the calendar views and available settings

Mobile office is also highly functional with preinstalled viewers for Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. The PDF viewer was preinstalled on our unit but it’s only a 15-day trial version (duh!) and after that you need to buy it.

Only viewing of documents is supported out of the box

Unfortunately, editing documents is not supported on the included Quickoffice version. If you would like editing enabled you will have to buy the additional license.

The organizer package also includes a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application.

Some of the other organizer apps

The alarm application allows you to set up as many alarms as you want, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern. If this seems too complicated, there is a quick alarm setup where all you do is set the time and you’re good to go. This is quite convenient for, say, setting up your wake-up alarm.

In addition, the number of alarms is not limited. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer you can also snooze the alarm by simply flipping your phone.

We are quite fond of the alarm application
Applications are half useful, half a gimmick

The preinstalled applications in the Sony Ericsson Satio include RoadSync, MyLook and SMS Preview. There’s also a dedicated voice-guided navigation software, which we’ll cover in a later section.

The DataViz RoadSync is among the most useful preinstalled applications if you plan on using your Satio in a corporate environment. In essence, it’s an ActiveSync client, which provides secure, wireless and direct push synchronization of corporate e-mail, calendar, contacts, tasks and attachments.

DataViz Roadsync is an ActiveSync client

MyLook is a fun little app, which runs in the background and changes the wallpaper. It works in one of three modes – timer (changes the wallpaper after a set period of time), shake (shake the phone to change the wallpaper), or based on your temporary location (the current cell ID).

MyLook changes your wallpaper based on where you are

The location-based option is interesting, here’s how it works: it uses Cell ID to detect your position and changes the wallpaper based on that. This allows you to have the wallpaper changed automatically based on whether you’re at work or at home.

SMS Preview is a handy tool, which previews incoming SMS messages on the homescreen so you won’t even have to unlock the phone to read the message. You can set up how long the preview lasts. To start using SMS Preview though, you have to activate the app, which requires sending a single international SMS.

SMS Preview shows new SMS messages on the homescreen

Games department offers two puzzles

There are two games preinstalled on the Satio – Labyrinth and Sudoku. Labyrinth has the same premise as HTC’s Teeter game – by tilting the phone, you guide a ball to an end point avoiding traps along the way.

There are some new obstacles on the way but the essence is the same. The maze is rendered in 3D and the camera shifts position as you tilt the phone. Unfortunately, it does so with noticeable lag, which somewhat breaks the illusion.

Tee… uh, we mean Labyrinth

The second game Sudoku is self-explanatory. It introduces a slight RPG element by letting you create a character with which you can earn prizes and trophies displayed on a shelf in a virtual cafe. You can create or join online cafes to show off your trophies. There’s also an extensive tutorial in case you’ve never played Sudoku before.

Sudoku will eat up your free time
GPS navigation talks you through

The Sony Ericsson Satio features a built-in GPS receiver. Its sensitivity is nothing spectacular – it managed to get a lock from a cold start in a couple of minutes but we had to go out into an open area. It wouldn’t get a lock on the balcony of our office.

The Satio is equipped with a Wisepilot navigation software and offers all the features you’d expect from a proper SatNav solution. There’s voice-guided walk and drive navigation, maps are courtesy of NAVTEQ, there’s 3D view of the maps, extensive route-planning settings, speed camera alerts, POI and weather.

Wisepilot navigation software

Its main downside is that maps are not stored locally but instead are downloaded over the air. A flat data fee is recommended but 1MB of data should get you about 600km of navigation. Still, we would have liked to have a map downloader as well, like with Nokia Maps. It really would have helped in avoiding data roaming charges.

We also wish there was a built-in compass, like on most of its competitors, to facilitate navigation.

Google Maps is included as well if you prefer it.

Google Maps
Final words

Sony Ericsson need a winner right now and the Satio is the phone carrying the torch. It’s equipped with a 12-megapixel camera, which puts it in an elite club. It failed to become the founding member of the club – that title goes to the Samsung Pixon12 – but the Satio offers a level of extra versatility available only on smartphones.

Let’s look away from the camera for a moment though – we paid it plenty of attention in our 12-megapixel shootout. The smartphone capabilities do deserve praise as well.

The Satio runs on the same “engine” as the iPhone 3GS, Omnia HD, Palm Pre and Nokia N900 – an ARM Cortex A8 CPU running at 600MHz along with a PowerVR SGX graphics accelerator. Symbian OS is known to run merrily on much lower-clocked CPUs and with more horsepower it multitasks like a champ. It also sports a brand new look, which certainly helps.

But all that platform talk renders the obvious competitor of the Satio a bit obscure. Yes, the Samsung M8910 Pixon12 is currently the archrival but the 12-megapixel camera is the only ground where these two phones face off. Yes, the Pixon12 offers GPS voice-guided navigation and Wi-Fi, a WVGA AMOLED screen and smooth and silky TouchWiz – but it’s not as versatile and flexible as the Satio’s smartness. The Pixon12 beat the Satio in a pretty close game but it was the cameraphone that lost, not the smartphone.

Samsung M8910 Pixon12

When the Samsung M8920, the worldwide version of the Samsung W880 AMOLED 12M, finally comes out, pressure on the Satio will grow. The M8920 won’t be a smartphone either but optical zoom will sure tip the scales. Until then, have a look at our preview of the W880 to get a taste of what’s coming next year.

Samsung M8920

Going down a notch in the camera department, we find a whole bunch of 8-megapixel options.

The Samsung i8910 Omnia HD is a ready and willing candidate. Its camera is probably as impressive, but in another way – the still unmatched 720p video recording. The bigger (and AMOLED) screen is worth noting too.

Samsung i8910 Omnia HD

In fact, the real promise is in the recent stir-up at the high end of the Sony Ericsson portfolio. We guess, phones like the Satio and the much-awaited Rachael give credence to the company’s efforts for a comeback. The Sony Ericsson top dogs really need to pull their ranks together to stand up to the competition.

The Sony Ericsson Satio lost the race for the first 12MP cameraphone on the market, but maybe it’s not too late to win the race for widespread adoption. There’s certainly a great deal of hype around it and the phone manages to live up to a lot of it. Of course it will be up to the mid-range reinforcements to follow Satio, Aino and Rachael to claw back some of the market share the company has lost over the last couple of years. But things may as well be looking brighter already with Satio leading the way.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_satio_idou-review-408p9.php

Sony Ericsson Satio

Flagships have a tough time in the phone world. Designed to include every function under the sun and to appeal to the most knowledgeable and tech-hungry users, they inevitably come up short. Witness the Nokia N96 and N97, for example, each plagued by bugs and issues in their first six months. In this company, it’s not a damning indictment of the Satio that it too is equally less perfect. As with the Nokia flagships, there’s lots of potential here – in fact arguably more, let down mainly by silly bugs and a few even sillier hardware design quirks.

Using one of the supplied themes – I do like black text on white background, for better visibility

Ostensibly a tablet along the lines of the Nokia 5800, and weighing in at 126g the Satio distinguishes itself by including the same 3.5″ transflective screen as the Nokia N97 classic – a good all-purpose choice and one which will work adequately even in sunlight, when out and about taking photos. The body’s almost entirely plastic, but solid enough. The huge camera bulge on the back (taking this section to 17mm thick) is understandable, given the Satio’s pretensions, but what’s not so clear is why the main body of the phone (around 55% of the remaining length) is kept so thin (13mm). Given that the battery here is only 1000mAh and that the Satio is patently underpowered, why on earth didn’t the designers allow more of the rest of the body to bulk out a little to accommodate a larger cell – the camera has already put paid to this phone ever being described as “razor thin”, after all?

Note the mix of materials – and I’d just wiped the plastic down on my sleeve! 😎

The camera cover is stainless steel and gorgeous, but the same can’t really be said for acres of plastic around it. Both the (resistive) touchscreen and the battery cover are utter fingerprint magnets – this isn’t a device to pull out after eating fish and chips!

The Satio after a few minutes finger operation – this is your worst case scenario – but still… ugh!

The Satio’s left side houses:

A keylock toggle

A Sony Ericsson proprietary USB port, the single most controversial design feature on the Satio. This handles data and audio/video and, arguably, is far more efficient than the traditional 3.5mm audio/TV jack and separate microUSB port, but efficiency shouldn’t really be the name of the game these days – standards are more important now than ever and the Satio falls down in this respect. It means that when you travel you have to take all the cables with you since you can’t rely on finding the right one at your destination.

A microSD card slot. At least Sony Ericsson has dropped the awfully proprietary M2 card format that absolutely noone liked. A step in the right direction.

On the top is:
A power button

A small mono speaker. Audio quality is surprisingly good, actually, I’d rate it equal to the speaker in the Nokia E75: moderate volume but nicely toned. Mono is a restriction though, compared to other smartphone flagships.

And then down the right hand side we have:

Volume up/down, doubling as zoom controls

Album shortcut, brings up the latest photos and videos taken

Camera/Camcorder toggle. This works very effectively and is a lot better than prodding around on the touchscreen (as in the Nokia touchscreen camera interfaces)

Camera shutter button

All the above buttons are of high quality, despite being plastic inset into more plastic.

Somewhat bizarrely, under the battery, the SIM card is retained in a flimsy toy-like caddy that has to be pulled out and then poked back in again (under the camera). It’s an odd arrangement, but it does work. Oh, and did I mention that the battery’s too small for the job? I’ll be returning to this comment again, no doubt, later in this review, in the context of day to day use and battery life.

Note battery capacity (boo, hiss) and SIM-tray mechanism

Internally, the Satio shows great promise, with 256MB of RAM and an OMAP3 graphics acceleration chip, just as with the Samsung i8910 HD. Of course, like the latter, there’s a lot more to a workable smartphone than high specs, but (again) more of that in a later review part. Having this much RAM means being able to open the largest web pages, hungriest games and maintain a dozen open applications, all without ever worrying about seeing an ‘Out of memory’ error, or having some of your applications closed down. Exactly what’s needed for S60 5th Edition and exactly what Nokia failed to put in their 5th Edition phones so far….

Unfortunately, unlike the i8910 HD, there’s no mass memory chip, so you’re stuck with just the 60MB or so free on disk C: (this may cause problems long term, as it has on the Nokia N97) and whatever you choose to put into the microSD card slot. Luckily, Sony Ericsson start you off with an 8GB card, handily preloaded with the PC Suite connection software, but Satio power users will want to budget for something bigger. 16GB minimum, I’d suggest.

The surfeit of RAM and the OMAP3 chip mean that general performance is pretty good, and it should only get better once the firmware has matured a little, the bugs quoshed and the OS optimised.

I’ll be covering the 12 megapixel camera in much more detail in part 2 of this review, but suffice it to say for now that it’s very impressive. Focussing is a little slow and images a little duller than the Nokia N86’s, but in every other respect images have great(er) detail. The Xenon flash works brilliantly too, it’s been far too long since I used a new Xenon-equipped Symbian smartphone. Videos come out well at VGA resolution, but the sound capture was far too quiet – as with the Samsung i8910 HD, hopefully this can be fixed in a firmware update.

A stunning camera, watch out for part 2 of my review for sample images and comparisons

The Satio’s application suite and interface will be covered in part 3 of this review. I’m deliberately leaving it to last because the Satio is, as I write this in the last week of November, very buggy indeed. Hopefully there will have been a serious firmware update by the time I have to appraise its software package. Already some shop chains have pulled the Satio from sale because of high returns and I’m not at all surprised. As a geek, I’m resigned to buying bleeding edge hardware and then sitting patiently while the manufacturer fixes bugs and polishes the software, but Joe Public is not going to be as understanding.

Among the bugs I experienced were the freezing up of the media suite and an annoying unresponsiveness to screen taps – not due to the touchscreen itself but seemingly due to an underlying driver bug. I also didn’t like several aspects of the Satio’s new homescreen: the top ‘strip’ of status icons is almost impossible to ‘hit’ without using a stylus, and the homescreen and media suite both completely ignore whatever you’ve set as your theme. So, for example, you set up a nice light/white theme and then find the homescreen and media suite only work in black!

Note black screen, despite white theme

And the above observations are in addition to the other reported bugs in the first shipping version of the Satio. Many have commented that it’s no worse than the Nokia N97 was at launch – but that’s hardly an excuse. Nokia took four months to fix up the N97 with v20 firmware that at last made the most of the hardware, let’s sincerely hope that it doesn’t take Sony Ericsson anywhere near as long.

Source : http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/reviews/item/Review_Sony_Ericsson_Satio-part_1_Form_Design_Build_Quality1.php 

Nokia 5630 (2)

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic review: A sharp note

The XpressMusic family has walked a long way – and shed a great deal of weight – since the 5700. The music-centric Finns have always felt at home on Symbian ground though, and the Nokia 5630 is the next step for them and they’re getting smarter and faster. A sharp mind in a fit body, the latest XpressMusic smartphone packs the quickest processor Nokia have offered to date.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic official photos

XpressMusic is not the Nokia 5630’s only virtue. The subdued exterior reveals little of the talent that lays beneath. Along with the music perks go Wi-Fi, a 3-megapixel snapper, N-Gage support, and S60 FP2 to open the door to a whole world of extra apps.

Of course, it’s not without its flaws but think again before casting the first stone. The 5630 XpressMusic is slim enough – both in girth and price – to dodge its critics.
Key features:

ARM 11 600 MHz processor
Quad-band GSM support
3G with HSDPA
12 mm slim
2.2″ 16M-color QVGA display of excellent sunlight legibility
3 megapixel camera, enhanced fixed focus and dual LED flash
VGA video-call camera
Symbian OS with S60 3.2 UI
Stereo FM radio with RDS
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g with UPnP technology
Bluetooth (with A2DP) and microUSB port
microSD card slot (16 GB supported, 4GB included)
Standard 3.5mm audio jack
Dedicated music keys
N-Gage support
Ovi Contacts integration
Contacts bar on the homescreen
N-Series-like gallery
Carrying pouch supplied
Text-to-speech Message reader system application

Main disadvantages:

Cheap plastic build
microSD card very hard to eject
Screen is on the small side for comfortable web browsing or video watching and has inaccurate color reproduction
Camera has no autofocus and tends to oversharpen images
Video recording quality is poor and the framerate – low

We quite like the nice little twist the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic brings in terms of looks and substance. Behind its youthful and playful disguise, there is indeed a power smartphone (along the lines of Nokia E52) to meet all your media and connectivity needs.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic live shots

The Nokia 5630 is quite reminiscent of the super slim 5310 XpressMusic. It doesn’t have the flashy aluminum accents but the added power and S60 make it a real workhorse. And having in mind it’s a smartphone – and a powerful one too – it makes the slim waistline even more impressive.

A couple of slim XpressMusic candybars

So, now that we’ve got you tuned in to the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic, we guess you might be eager to see it in action. Let’s roll.

Unboxing the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic

The retail package of the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic has all you need to get your Nokia 5630 XpressMusic going. There is a microUSB charger, a peculiarly short data cable, and a set of stereo headphones on a detachable remote. The 860 mAh battery is there as well, while a manual and a mini DVD with software and product information round out the contents.

The bonus tracks include a 4GB microSD card and a soft carrying pouch. What more could you want?

Nokia 5630 Xpress Music unboxed
Nokia 5630 XpressMusic 360-degree spin

The Nokia 5630 Xpress Music measures 112 x 46 x 12 mm and weighs a mere 83 g. Slim and lightweight, the phone sticks to the palm and is reasonably comfortable to navigate. Is it pocketable? Given its size and weight, that really goes without saying.

Design and construction

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is thin, light and ready to play. There are three color versions hitting the stores – red on black, blue on grey and chrome on grey, and all of them look fresh and appealing.

The earpiece is centrally placed right next to the secondary VGA video-call camera and the ambient light sensor.

Earpiece, video-call camera and ambient light sensor above the display

The display of the 5630 XpressMusic is among the Nokia’s finest in terms of both contrast and color rendering, and it has an impressively wide viewing angle.

The QVGA screen can display up to 16M colors on a 2.2″ diagonal. Sunlight legibility is an absolute treat and a Nokia trademark.

The main grudge we may have here is with the smallish size. The color reproduction also seems a bit off, with a distinct bluish tint visible. That gives the photos displayed on the 5630 somewhat unpleasant cold looks.

A decently-sized display

Beneath the screen, on each side of the D-pad there are three raised areas accommodating the soft keys, the Menu and Clear buttons, and the Call and End/Power buttons. All controls are comfortable to use and occasional mispresses are unlikely to be an issue.

The buttons below the display are comfortable

The old-school-matrix-like dotted symbols on the numberpad are quite unusual but still readable. The buttons themselves are smallish but quite tactile and solid to press. The mouthpiece is placed between the “0” and the hash key.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic buttons are small but comfortable

The display backlighting and the white keypad illumination are very strong and even and make the handset a pleasure to use in the dark.

The strong and even white backlighting is quite helpful

The top side of the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic hosts the 3.5mm audio jack and the microUSB port. There’s a small status LED up there too that lights up when the phone connects to a computer or is charging.

The top side of Nokia 5630 XpressMusic

On the left are the standard music player controls, typical of the XpressMusic lineup. They are thin and tactile feedback is not the best, but it’s nothing major. The symbols above the keys glow white in the dark.

Also on the left is the lanyard eyelet.

Music player keys are on the left * the lanyard eyelet is also here

The right side of Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is quite crowded. Here you’ll find the volume rocker and shutter key along with the microSD card slot. The latter has a small protective cap. It is quite hard to pull the microSD card out using your fingers only since the card sinks too deep into the slot and is very difficult to reach. We guess you’d ned a tool every time you want to take it out.

What we said on the comfort of use of the three music player keys goes the same for the controls on the right as well. The volume rocker and the shutter key are just a bit too stiff.

The right side of 5630 XpressMusic: volume rocker, microSD slot and camera key

The microSD slot is said to support cards of up to 16GB, and this was as far as we went testing it. The handset even handled a full 16GB microSD card trouble-free.

The bottom part of the 5630 XpressMusic is pretty bare – there are no buttons or ports to see here.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic bottom

Design and construction (continued)

We conclude our round-trip of the 5630 XpressMusic with the rear. The thin plastic battery cover features a dual LED flash right under the 3-megapixel camera lens. On the other are the two loudspeaker grills. You can see how the loudspeakers performs in our dedicated test in the Telephony part of this review.

The plastic rear: camera lens with LED flash

Releasing the battery cover reveals the 860 mAh Li-Ion (BL-4CT) battery and the SIM compartment. The SIM card compartment is housed under a hinged metal bracket and swapping it in is quick and easy.

A look under the battery cover: battery and SIM card slot

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic feels solidly built and we didn’t notice any rattles or creaks while reviewing the phone. The plastic looks a bit on the cheapish side, though the 5630 XpressMusic may be excused for this given the low price it’s going for. Having a lot of metal would have also increased the weight.

The phone’s front tends to collect a few fingerprints but it isn’t such a big deal. The back, on the other hand, is absolutely fingerprint-proof.

The slim Nokia 5630 XpressMusic handles nicely
S60 3.2 UI: Homescreen redesigned

The Nokia 5630 runs on the Symbian 9.3 OS with S60 3rd Edition user interface. It has Feature Pack 2 but there have been changes since its previous incarnations.

The biggest (and best) change is the Contacts bar option for the standby screen. It is similar to the typical Active standby screen but things have been reordered and as the name suggests – a bar with contacts has been added.

The top of the screen is a bar with favorite contacts – each represented by the contact photo and their first name – and it’s possible to have three contacts visible at a time though the list allows for scrolling left or right.

For each contact you can add an RSS feed, so we guess a nice trick is to add a contact that isn’t a person just so that you’ll have quick access to your favorite feeds from the homescreen.

Selecting a contact from the Contact bar brings up a screen with info on the contact (a different one than you get if you select the contact from the Contacts list). It has the contact photo, name and phone number. Under that are four buttons – call, send message, update feed and settings.

Bellow that is an area that shows the communications history for that contact – both calls and messages. And finally, at the bottom there are the top two lines from the RSS feed.

The new Contacts bar • viewing a contact from the Contacts bar

Under the Contacts list, it’s pretty much standard Active Standby. First up is info on the email account showing the number of unread messages and sender and Re: fields of the most recent message. Under it is the status and number of friends online for Ovi Contacts, which gets replaced by song info if the music player is running. At the bottom is the shortcuts tab.

The old Active Standby layouts are still here and include Basic – you can assign shortcuts to the D-pad, Horizontal icons bar – the old Active Standby and, finally, the Vertical icons bar, which has only tabs (shortcuts, calendar, music player and personalization) but doesn’t hide much of the wallpaper.

Basic • Horizontal icon bar • Vertical icon bar

Finally, the S60 UI Feature Pack 2 brings some graphical improvements as well, such as animations when browsing the menus.

The task manager has also received a face-lift and now appears on every pop-up menu. It’s actually placed on top of every list, which can be a little irritating at times. Alternatively, you can still use the well-known shortcut of pressing and holding the menu key to bring up the task manager.

The embedded 128MB of RAM are an important factor for OS performance. In Symbian terms 128MB is virtually impossible to deplete even with several applications running in the background. You shouldn’t expect any memory full warnings on your Nokia 5630 XpressMusic.

The 600 MHz ARM 11 CPU is lightning fast and is the speediest you’ll find in a mid-range Symbian. Navigating the menus is quick with an instant response to user commands. The blue circle next to the icon of a running application is a well known Symbian indication reminding users to quit unwanted applications that are still running in the background.

As with all Symbian phones, there is a built-in voice recognition system. It does a good job, being fully speaker-independent and recognizing a fairly high percentage of our commands.
Telephony

Signal reception is great on the Nokia 5630. The phone has commendable speaker quality and the sound during calls is clear and free of any interference. Vibration is also strong enough to make sure you never miss an incoming call or message.

Calling Dexter on the Nokia 5630

The results from our loudspeaker test are at your disposal – Nokia 5630 XpressMusic turned out to be a good performer in this respect. Check out the table showing how it stacks up beside some of the handsets we’ve put to the same test. In case you want to find out more about the test itself or a complete list of tested devices, hit the link.Speakerphone test Voice, dB Pink noise/ Music, dB Ringing phone, dB Overall score
Apple iPhone 3G 66.1 62.1 71.7 Below Average
Nokia 5630 XpressMusic 68.6 65.7 76.0 Good
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic 75.7 66.5 68.5 Good
LG KM900 Arena 70.9 68.2 78.3 Good
Nokia 5320 XpressMusic 74.3 66.6 78.3 Very Good
Samsung M7600 Beat DJ 75.7 75.7 77.8 Excellent

Phonebook is robust

The Symbian handsets have an excellent phonebook with virtually unlimited capabilities. There is storage space for a practically unlimited number of contacts and fields with all the available memory potentially usable for the purpose. Contacts can be freely ordered by first or last name and can naturally be searched by gradual typing of any of the names.

Contacts list • searching by gradual typing • viewing contact details

Editing a contact offers a great variety of preset fields and you can replicate each of them as many times as you like. You can also create new fields if you happen to be able to think of one. We personally find it quite a challenge to think of something Nokia has missed here – there’s everything from the contact’s nickname to their assistant’s name and phone number.

Personal ringtones and videos can also be assigned to a contact. If you prefer you may group your contacts and give each group a specific ringtone.

An enormous variety of fields is available when editing a contact

Synchronization is also nice and easy although you do need the Nokia PC suite (or Ovi Suite as of lately) for things to go smoothly. Sending and receiving contacts via SMS or Bluetooth is also a piece of cake.

The Call log application is another Nokia 5630 strength. It holds up to 20 call records in each of the tabs for outgoing, received and missed calls. These are all accessed by pressing the Call key on the homescreen.

The call log is there to keep track of your communications

If you enter the Log application from the main menu, you’ll see a detailed list of all your network communications for the past 30 days. These include messages, calls and data transfers over the air or even over Wi-Fi. The period can be shortened to save some space but you are quite unlikely to do that, as even with a huge number of calls the log only takes a few miserly kilobytes of memory space.
Messaging and Ovi Contacts

Texting with Nokia 5630 is spot on. With a decent keypad and great software support your correspondence is as good as it gets on this kind of devices. Let’s face it, Nokia are targeting the youth with this handset and solid messaging is key for them.

The Nokia 5630 supports all common message types – SMS, MMS and email. The SMS and MMS share an editor. It is the well known intuitive application from previous Symbian S60 smartphones. It has a counter of characters left up to a limit of 160. There is also an indicator in brackets showing the number of separate parts the message will be divided into for sending.

Turning an SMS into MMS is as simple as adding any multimedia content

It goes without saying that you can activate a delivery report for messages. The reports pop up on the standby screen and are subsequently saved in a separate folder in the messaging sub-menu. If you exit the message editor without having sent the message, the editor prompts you to either save it to the Drafts folder or to discard it.

All it takes to convert a common SMS into an MMS is to insert some multimedia content. A nice feature allows the resizing of pictures automatically for sending via MMS.

The Nokia 5630 also features a dedicated audio message editor. Although technically a type of MMS, the audio messages have their own separate editor. You can either record the message on the spot or use a previously recorded sound clip.

The audio message editor has questionable applicability

The email client is also very similar to what previous Symbian powered phones have offered. If you are using any public email service (it has to be among the over 1000 supported providers), all you have to do is enter your email address and password to start sending and receiving emails. The Nokia 5630 takes care of downloading all the relevant settings to get you going in no time.

The client can download headers only or entire messages, and can be set to automatically check mail at a given interval. There is also support for attachments, signatures and basically most of the things you can think of, so the Nokia 5630 can meet almost any requirement regarding the user’s emailing needs. Thanks to QuickOffice, viewing attached Microsoft Office files is a breeze.

The email client

There’s also the option to listen to the email – the Message reader app comes with one language and two voices preinstalled (one male and one female) and the option to download more. The application handles this quite nicely and while the voice didn’t sound too natural, it didn’t trip over difficult words and even managed to read URLs.

Listening to an email • speech settings

Ovi Contacts come preinstalled with Nokia 5630 XpressMusic but you can also install it on most other Nokia smartphones. Ovi contacts integrates tightly with the Contacts list as a new tab and offers an IM client with a twist. You can search for people already registered with Ovi or send an invitation to anybody using Gmail since the Ovi contacts supports G-Talk, Google’s own IM, as well.

Ovi Contacts is a very capable IM client

Thanks to this service you will be able to chat in real time with all your Ovi/Google Talk-connected contacts, change your status messages and mood, and all that kind of social networking stuff.

In addition you can even go as far as sharing your GPS location so your friends can view immediately where you are at that particular moment using the Ovi Maps. Or you can share the name and the artist of the track you are currently listening to.

What can we say – it all works exactly as advertized. Your contacts need not have an Ovi-connected phone, they can chat with you just fine over Google Talk.

XpressMusic player is not spectacular

The XpressMusic branding raises the bar high for the Nokia 5630 music player. While it’s pretty good, it’s by no means exceptional: just on a par with other recent Symbian devices. It has a huge number of supported audio formats, including MP3, AAC, eAAC+ and WMA but little to top the business-oriented Nokia E71 for example.

However, the dedicated music keys on the side and the new active standby layout, where the music player is one click away, are things that enhance the sonic experience. Quite naturally, the player can also be minimized to play in background. In this case a tab replaces the Ovi Contacts tab on the stand-by screen and indicates the currently running track.

The music player “Now playing” interface • song info on the homescreen

Sorting your songs by artist, album, genre and composer is automatic and searching tracks by gradual typing of the desired name is also available. Tracks are transferred to Nokia 5630 via Bluetooth, USB or by simple download. You can also use a card reader for that purpose and transfer them directly to your memory card.

Searching the music library

Upon completing a USB transfer, or inserting a card, the phone automatically prompts to scan for new music tracks and, if allowed to do so, adds the new ones to the music library. The player comes with five equalizer presets and, should they seem insufficient, you can edit them or create new ones in a matter of seconds.

Six equalizer presets are available • creating a new one

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic also features an innovative feature called Say and Play. By using the phone’s built-in speaker independent voice recognition, it allows you to play any stored track by simply saying its title or artist.

The Nokia Say and Play feature currently supports English and the pre-installed UI languages. However it should be able to pick up titles in any languages if they are pronounced in an English manner or with UI language pronunciation.

To search the tracks, the Say and Play features uses the metadata embedded into the tracks. If no metadata is stored, the handset will create ones based on the filename.
Very good audio quality

The audio quality of Nokia 5630 is pretty good as one might expect from a handset, titled XpressMusic. Except for the slightly high total harmonic distortion and intermodulation distortion, all the readings are excellent.

The noise level and dynamic range of Nokia 5630 XpressMusic are excellent, easily rivaling dedicated music players. As you can see from the table it even outscore the Apple’s iPhone 3GS on those and that is about as good as we have managed to test. The same hold true for the stereo crosstalk.

The frequency response of the Nokia 5630 is simply great, remaining within 0.26 of the perfect line throughout the range.Test Frequency response Noise level Dynamic range THD IMD + Noise Stereo crosstalk
Nokia 5630 XpressMusic +0.13, -0.26 -94.0 94.8 0.466 0.876 -97.3
Nokia 5130 XpressMusic +0.04, -0.16 -89.9 89.0 0.0033 0.014 -83.6
Nokia 5310 XpressMusic +0.29, -1.69 -94.4 92.0 0.015 0.491 -73.8
Nokia 5220 XpressMusic +0.29, -1.64 -91.7 90.3 0.012 0.612 -73.1
Nokia N85 +0.28, -1.19 -94.4 95.4 0.305 0.701 -88.1
Nokia N96 +0.52, -2.14 -90.6 90.7 0.016 0.364 -73.5
Nokia 5800 XpressMusic +0.09, -0.77 -92.2 92.1 0.013 0.297 -75.0
Apple iPod Touch 2G +0.04, -0.05 -91.4 91.5 0.0027 0.012 -90.0
Apple iPhone 3GS +0.01, -0.05 -92.1 92.1 0.0035 0.011 -95.0

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic vs Apple iPhone 3G S frequency response graphs

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
Video player is good enough

Nokia 5630 features Real player for playing your video clips and the video player can be displayed in both normal and fullscreen modes. When in full screen, the softkey functions are hidden so that they don’t spoil the viewing experience and only pop up when a key is pressed.

With such a small screen though, video playback is not this phone’s strongest suit. And to confirm that, if you want DivX/XviD playback you’ll need to install a third-party player.
FM radio with RDS and Internet Radio

The FM radio on Nokia 5630 has a nice simple interface and can automatically scan and save the available stations in your area. RDS support is included and the Visual radio is also on-board. If internet connection is available, the Visual radio application can download all the local stations and save them to the handset with their names.

FM radio and internet radio are available

Should you ever get bored of local radio stations and are in range of a Wi-Fi network, Nokia 5630 offers Internet radio with an extensive directory of stations and the option to save the best in Favorites.

You can stream stations over 3G or even GPRS with separate settings for the audio quality, but it’s probably not worth it. Searching for stations can be done by name, genre, language or country or if you can’t find what you’re looking for you can always add a station manually.

Nseries-grade image gallery

The image gallery was a pleasant surprise – it’s the same as the one found in Nokia’s N-Series phones and looks great. The speed of photo browsing increases if you press and hold the direction buttons on the D-pad. This allows quick skipping of tons of files if you’re not in the habit of sorting out your memory card regularly.

Browsing the image gallery

Unlike, say, the Nokia N85, zooming here is very speedy, thanks to the zippy 600MHz processor. It does slow down a bit when you get over 100% but it will go up to 400% zoom. Zooming is done in small increments (about 10%) and panning is quite fast too.

The gallery offers a nice slide show with customizable effects and delay between slides. You can also choose the direction of the slideshow – forward or backward from the currently selected photo and the track to go with it. Music can also be switched off if you prefer.

The gallery also has a very good picture tagging system. In addition to geotagging, which is automatically handled by the camera, you can add as many tags as you like to each photo and then use them as filters. There’s also the option to organize photos in Albums.

Zooming in • you can add tags to photos
Camera is alright, video – not

The Nokia 5630 is equipped with a 3 megapixel camera with a maximum image resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. It sports a dual-LED flash but no lens protection whatsoever. This means that the glass covering the lens is prone to finger smudges. It doesn’t have autofocus, instead it relies on the so called enhanced fixed focus.

Camera interface

As far as settings go, the camera on 5630 XpressMusic is limited, although it offers several scene presets, one of which is user defined. There’s limited control over light sensitivity (it has low, medium, high and auto settings) as well as some control over sharpness and contrast. On the right side of the screen, there’s a bar with shortcuts for some settings. You can add and remove shortcuts so you can have quick access to the settings you need.

The rest of the settings include flash control, self-timer (2, 10, 20 seconds), night mode, automatic panorama mode and multi shot. Multi shot captures consecutive images one after another (6 images or – if you hold down the shutter key – until you release the key or the memory runs out). After that you can pick which images to keep.

There’s also an option to capture consecutive images separated by a predefined interval (from 10 seconds to 30 minutes). Color effects (sepia, negative, black and white, vivid) can also be enabled.

Image quality

The image quality is good overall, with decent levels of detail for a 3MP shooter. There’s little noise in well lit areas and the contrast is good. The color rendering is accurate; however the sharpening algorithm gets overzealous, which results in artifacts.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic camera samples

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is the first Nokia handset to feature the enhanced fixed focus, which was introduced by Nokia at this year’s MWC in February. The handsets with enhanced fixed focus are supposed to be able to shoot from closer distance than the regular phones.

We tried shooting with the 2 megapixel Nokia 6500 classic just for focus comparison’s sake. As it turned out, the technology is not that much of an improvement. Take a look at the comparative test shots. They are both taken form 30 cm distance. Any closer than that and the phones failed to achieve acceptable focus. By the way, the iPhone 3G produces pretty much the same results from this distance, but we are not including it in this test.

Nokia 5630 XpressMusic • Nokia 6500 classic

As for video recording, the camera shoots in VGA resolution at 15 fps captured in MPEG-4 format. Although this is a decent achievement, the quality is quite poor actually. The modest frame-rate takes the fun out of the higher VGA resolution and makes the videos unsuitable for viewing on a larger screen.
Synthetic resolution

Finally it comes the time for our studio resolution chart. This is a standard ISO12233 chart used for evaluating the synthetic resolution of digital cameras. It is an excellent tool for measuring pure horizontal and vertical resolution and also offers a good reference point for comparison of resolution between cameras.

The long parallel lines serve as good measurement of resolved resolution. The point where the lines are no longer clearly separated is where the resolution resolved by the camera maxes out. There’s a number scale alongside so you can even set a number corresponding to the camera’s performance.

The several different line sets are taken from various places across the frame so you also have a nice representation how the image resolution changes as you go towards the edges of the frame (poor optics are far blurry towards the frame ends than in the frame center).

We also have some grey and color test charts stuck on there – those show how the noise suppressing algorithm affects the various colors (usually different) and how the algorithm affects the detail in the shadows. Usually with a poor camera you can’t distinguish any difference in the shades of black, while in reality there is some.

Meanwhile the thin lines at the top of both the color chart and the gray scale illustrate the real-life effect of the noise reduction. You will notice that the numbers are barely readable with some phones and more easily recognizable with others.

Here’s a comparison of the camera on the 5630 XpressMusic and the one on the iPhone 3GS. They perform about equally, as might be expected (both are 3MP snappers). The iPhone 3GS has a really small edge in resolved resolution. The noise suppression algorithm on the Nokia is too aggressive, resulting in cleaner but more processed-looking photos. Also there’s a strange blue fringing visible on the 5630 photos, which is too hinting of imperfect processing.

Nokia 5630 resolution chart photo • 100% crops

Apple iPhone 3GS resolution chart photo • 100% crops

All-round connectivity

Data transfer options are numerous on the Nokia 5630. Every common network data transfer medium is supported and so are USB 2.0 and Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP. HSDPA support goes up to 10.2Mbps and HSUPA is also here at 2Mbps. Nokia 5630 also has Wi-Fi capabilities to really sweeten the deal.

There is also a card slot so if you have a card reader lying around you can transfer the data directly to your memory card. The card is accessible from a slot on the right side, but it’s too deep and getting to it can be quite a challenge.
Such a good browser deserves a bigger screen

Browsing the internet with the Nokia 5630, like with all Nokia smartphones, is a pleasant experience. Even the most elaborate pages are rendered well and finding your way around them is a piece of cake.

The virtual mouse cursor earns the browser another point as it is easy to control and generally works great. A mini-map can be activated to help you find your way around large sites where lots of scrolling is required. The zoom level is also easily adjustable and searching for text on a page is easy.

The large amount of RAM is surely one of the best things that could happen to the browser, as it is clearly one of the most RAM-intensive applications. Now, even if you load very heavy web pages and have a few applications running in the background, you are extremely unlikely to run out of RAM.

The very good web browser downed by the small display

The web browser also has full support for flash and java content so you should have no problem watching content found on the Internet. If you’re watching a video on YouTube for example you can click on the video and view it fullscreen. That doesn’t always work as some sites use clicking on the video for play/pause but the option is accessible from the menu. That option is needed as videos generally are too big to fit in the QVGA display, which a real shame.

YouTube video playing in the browser (50% zoom) • the video playing in fullscreen

The only problem is the smallish display. Only 2 inches means the smallest fonts aren’t always readable and you have to go for larger ones. This in turn limits the amount of text that can fit on screen and forces the user to scroll even more.
Organizer and apps

The time-management skills of Nokia 5630, like most other Symbian handsets, are really good. Just name the application and you can bet the handset has it.

We start exploring the rich application package with the calendar. It has three different types of view – monthly, weekly and daily, and four types of events available for setting up – Meeting, Memo, Anniversary and To-do. Every event has its own unique fields, and some of them allow an alarm to be activated at a preset time to act as a reminder.

The calendar month, week and day views • setting up an event

The mobile office is also very well supported with preinstalled applications able to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files seamlessly. Editing documents is not supported out of the box, but hey, we’re not talking Eseries here.

If you would like editing enabled you will have to purchase the complete application at the Nokia Download center. The final ingredient here is the included ZIP manager, which allows extracting archived files straight on your phone.

Nokia 5630 handles .doc .xls .ppt and .pdf files seemlessly

Some of the other included PIM applications are a great unit converter, calculator and voice recorder, as well as the Notes application. We are not going to go into detail with them, as their functionality and performance are familiar enough. The ActiveNotes application is also on board allowing multimedia content to be added to your notes.

Calculator, ActiveNotes and converter

The alarm application allows a huge number of alarms to be set, each with its own name, trigger day and repeat pattern.

Setting up an alarm

Organizer and apps (continued)

If the gallery file-management options (which even include sending multiple files at a time) is insufficient you can use the file manager. It allows you to do almost anything you can think of with your files. Copying, moving, creating new folders – you name it and it’s a safe bet that the file manager can do it.

The file manager is our favorite • zip manager

The useful “Search” application is also aboard the Nokia 5630. The application itself finds almost every item in your handset containing a given keyword. From messages to landmarks, every bit of data is checked and then all results are displayed on the screen.

Every bit of data is checked by the search application

Finally, the Nokia 5630 features a dictionary with a very rich database. English comes pre-installed but you can also download dozens of other languages for free from the Nokia website.

The dictionary
Games are N-Gaging

Nokia 5630 comes with N-Gage support and several preloaded games. They are trial versions but there’s an activation code provided so you can activate one of those games for free. You can of course download new games but they are trials all the way unless you are willing to pay.

There’s a lot of N-Gage games, but they are trial versions

On top of that, there are plenty of third-party games out there, so Nokia 5630 users can easily download both native and java titles.
Final words

Nokia are not only keen on populating the XpressMusic grid, they’re tailoring and focusing their handsets to cover a wider market. Come to think of it, the XpressMusic portfolio is more like the standard 4-digit models – the “common” phones that are neither top-of-the-line media gadgets nor business tools.

The XpressMusic phones get their edge elsewhere – they’re reasonably priced and specialize in music. Throwing Nokia 5630 XpressMusic into the mix, there’s a wide range of phones to choose from. Starting with the run-of-the-mill S40 handsets like 5130 or 5310 and going all the way through capable Symbian smartphones to the touch-enabled 5800. The 5630 even has a side-sliding QWERTY counterpart – the Nokia 5730 XpressMusic.

The Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is a great upgrade over the 5320 – faster 3G, Wi-Fi on board, improved camera, a speedy CPU and all in a 12mm slim package. The Contacts bar is a great addition too – all the most common tasks can be carried out in the comfort of the homescreen. Ovi Contacts is a nice feature too, considering that a big part of all communications of a typical high-tech adolescent now goes through some IM network. We’d have liked to see support for more networks though.

The one thing we’ll probably never see on an XpressMusic phone however, is a high-resolution camera – with Wi-Fi, GPS and even touchscreens, they’d be too deep into N-Series territory and it’s important for Nokia to maintain their brand distinctions.

So, Nokia have taken quite a bite at the music-enabled handsets market with some multi-talented players in Symbian shirts.

If you can live without Wi-Fi support and will settle for a chubby chap with a weaker camera, CPU, and data speeds, the 5630’s predecessor – the Nokia 5320 XpressMusic – is the entry level alternative.

Nokia 5320 XpressMusic

If you like the 5630, but want to round off the already impressive package with a QWERTY keyboard and a bigger screen, the side-sliding 5730 XpressMusic is already up for grabs.

Nokia 5730 XpressMusic

Then again, if you want to go up the ladder and have a touch-based UI and GPS, then the 5800 XpressMusic is what you’re looking for. It’s got a slower CPU but bigger 3.2″ screen and VGA@30fps video recording.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

What we really like about the Nokia 5630 XpressMusic is that it sits comfortably in the middle of all this without losing sight of its one goal – to be a good portable music player. It has the audio-quality and smartphone chops to pull it off without burning a hole in your pocket. We would have liked a beefier camera, but we guess keeping the market price down has been the main priority with Nokia 5630 XpressMusic.

Source : http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_5630_xpressmusic-review-370p8.php