One major feature I have been thoroughly enjoying on the E61i is the screen. This thing is HUGE and so gorgeous. I know it’s only QVGA but to tell you the truth I will never understand the advantage of a VGA until I have one in my hand. For now, the E61i’s screen is one aspect that I know I will deadly miss when I have to send this baby home. It’s not that big compared to the N95 (2.8″ vs 2.6″) but it easily gives the impression that it is much much bigger.
This is also partly due to the whole landscape UI design of the device. Right now, many handsets including the N95 and the N82 support landscape mode by default, but it’s more of a landscape rendering of their default portrait mode. The E61i was originally built for landscape use and hence makes use of the width of the screen instead of its length. You will see this clearly in the active standby mode with 7 application shortcuts, and most importantly, in the messaging application where you can see 10 messages without scrolling, all with sender name, date and a short snippet. This is very efficient when you’re looking for THAT particular message.
I have also found 3 other applications that function awesomely well on this screen and these are Quick Office, Mobireader and Windows Live.
Basically the landscape mode on the E61i uses the screen estate better than the N95 for example, where sometimes more than half of the screen is not utilized, and this is what brings me to my wish.I hope the next S60 devices which support landscape mode by default have a dual screen mode, ie they would function normally on portrait, but on landscape will switch to make use of the width provided, by showing more information in Messages, like in the E61i. I also hope that this would be implemented all across the landscape UI too, something even the E61i lacks : in contacts, log and calendar for example, I still don’t understand why there has to be two lines to show the minimal information about one item.
You have a big gorgeous screen, USE IT. I don’t know if this dual screen mode is possible with S60, but as I always like to believe, nothing is impossible. And it would be stinkin’ great if it happens!
