E-Series, Meet the N-Series. Talk.
The E65 will be sorely missed by this blogger. More and more, I’m finding things on this E-series that make me wonder why they haven’t made it to the N-series. I know that Nokia is a massive company, but there’s still no real reason that these two teams can’t talk. I for one am hoping that as part of the massive reorganization, Nokia sits these two groups down together and makes them have a big pow-wow. But in the meantime, I’ll give you my list…
1. Access Point Groups - This is the single most necessary built-in
feature for any WiFi-enabled phone. For those that aren’t privy to this
wonder, Access Point Groups allows you to choose the access points you
want your phone to use, and put them in the order that you want it to
search for them. For instance, I have my MEdiaNet, home WiFi, and
Christina’s WiFi networks that I use. With Access Point Groups, I can
create a group called "Use This" and default all my apps to it. This
group will tell the device to first check to see if my home WiFi is
available, and if it’s not, move on to Christina’s WiFi. If that’s not
there either, then use the MEdiaNet access point. All without me
telling repeatedly. This is brilliant. Why this isn’t on N-series, I
don’t know.
2. The aforementioned Download! App . This is, again, brilliant.
3. Build quality. Seriously, it’s amazing to me that 2 phones from the
same company can have such a difference. This one is known well in the
blogosphere.
4. RAM Usage. This needs to be really studied. My N95 has 20MB of free
RAM, about the same as my E65 does. On the E65, I can run that down to
~3MB before I start losing apps. Believe it or not, I’ve had TalkPlus,
Jaiku, Log, Contacts, Messages, and the Web Browser open without
breaking a sweat. It’s unreal. Where is this kind of memory management
on the N-series? Both my N73 and N95 had roughly the same free RAM and
couldn’t run nearly the same number of apps.
But let’s not forget, this is a two-way conversation, so what is it that the N-series guys need to share with their more business-like brethren?
1. Lifeblog - businesspeople are bloggers too, and there’s no reason that they shouldn’t have the application as well. To say it’s built-in is BS, cause I remember when I could install it on my phone. To say it has to do with the cameras and the fact that the N-series is multimedia. Again, not true, as the E65 has the same camera as the N76. So let’s open things up a bit, shall we?
2. N-series, let’s share the multimedia key. The "Own Key" on the E-series is a joke.
I want to say that it’s still ok to maintain software differences. Despite the tirades of others, I don’t personally have a big problem with maintaining some differences. The doc editors, the BlackBerry and Exchange suites, go for it. I mean, you have to maintain some difference.
But regarding these small usability features, let’s all just remember our childhood and share.
Totally agree with this. I would love being able to blog from my E90 for example. It has such an amazing camera + a decent keyboard ….
Hi,
I am a E65 owner and I miss Lifeblog too. I tried to install it but, of course, it failed. What a pity :p
Try to take away the “My Own” key and I’ll hurt you.
The problem with the N95 and memory management is due to the fact that there has to be a certain amount of memory free on the N95 to load ‘core’ features if required (camera, GPS maybe). You’ll never be able to push the phone as far as you can push an E-Series, just due to this artificial restriction.
Sadly, Nokia removed Access point groups after the E65, the E90 doesn’t have them.
The N95 (and other n series devices) don’t have the Messages plugin for active standby either, and unlike the e series devices you can’t choose which plugins to use either.
For some reason, Nokia, like many other big companies, has this strange mental model where people are either all-business or all-fun - either that, or they just want us all to buy multiple phones (and if that’s the case, why isn’t is faster to swap SIM cards?).
I only want to carry one phone, and I want it to do everything it can. In my case, that’s an E70 - but I Crave (with a deliberate capital) the Lifeblog stuff from the N series that I’m stupidly prohibited from using.
I agree with Andrew… I wish they could throw better memory management and drop the “all-business/all-fun” phones…
I wish N95 had some features of the E series. It’s a fun fun fun phone, but no so good to handle my business demands… The e-mail client is a joke.
I guess symbian should also make some better improvements for the callendar, for example. I don’t want to have to buy profimail and software like papyrus. I like symbian, but they should consider making some serious tweaks in the system.
Just as a note, I recall seeing on the nokia site that you can download a driver on the phone so you can use the wireless nokia bluetooth qwerty keyboard with this phone.
Jun 14th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
[...] I then remembered reading how Symbian S60, 3rd edt., Feature Pack 2 (the Nokia 6220 Classic is one of the first S603rd FP2 handsets) introduces something called "Destinations" - a revamped version of "Access Point Groups", which originate from Nokia’s E-series. N-series users - and others - have been requesting precisely this feature for a long time. [...]
Jul 19th, 2008 at 5:01 am
[...] and headset jack) are beautiful. Rock solid slider, quality build, high-quality materials. Now, Eseries guys, go play with the Nseries guys. Hang out, talk. [...]