5800 XpressMusic Contact Bar – Missed Opportunity
One of the highly-touted features of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was a new homescreen view, dubbed the Contact bar. This view allows you to select 4 contacts, which sit on your standby screen, and you can enter web feeds for them, which would automatically update using your phone’s data connection. The idea behind this is really good – it positions the 5800 XpressMusic as the handset to have for the connected individual. In the promotional videos, Nokia showed how this view could pull in someone’s Jaiku stream, Flickr photos, and even blog posts, to basically bring your friends’ lifestream to your phone, so you could always know what’s going on.
Unfortunately, Nokia didn’t take this Contact bar much further beyond the ‘cool idea’ level, for a number of reasons. Let’s walk through setting this up to find out why…
To get the Contact bar setup, you first need to choose the homescreen theme. Open the menu, then go to Settings, Personal, Home screen, Home screen theme, and choose ‘Contacts bar’. This will kick you back out to your newly activated Contacts bar standby screen, with an icon in the first position. Click on that icon, and you’re presented with the option to choose an existing contact, or add a new one. We’re off to a great start, let’s pick an existing contact.
If the chosen contact doesn’t have a thumbnail image, you’re presented with an opportunity to either select one from the gallery, or snap a new image using the 5800 XpressMusic’s camera. Thus far, the setup is quite nice and user-friendly. The final step is where it all falls apart, and unfortunately, it’s the most important step.
After choosing the contact and image, you need to add your web feeds. There’s a big button for this, labeled ‘Add web feed’. Cool. You’re told that each contact can only have 2 web feeds, which is a bit restrictive, but this is a new concept for a phone, so we’ll roll with it. You can now ‘Add web feed’ or ‘Select feed from a list’. Given that I can only set this up from my phone, and not from a PC, let’s choose the feed from a list.
Oh, wait, there’s no preloaded feeds. WHAT? Surely, it can’t be too difficult to have Flickr, Twitter, Jaiku, and a few other likely web services available, so that all I need to do is type in my friend’s username, right? Apparently, Nokia didn’t get that far, so I’m left first to find, and then manually type in any web feeds for my various contacts. If that seems phenomenally silly to you, you’re in good company.
Oh, that’s ok, then. I can at least type in, for example, Mrs. Guru’s blog URL (thecaddens.blogspot.com) and the phone can find the RSS feed, right? Again, not so fast. This is getting embarrassing. You have to actually type in the exact RSS feed. The web browser on this phone can detect an RSS feed from a website, but this fancy-schmancy new Contact bar cannot. Brilliant. However, after a bit of exploration, I discovered that the ‘list’ I can apparently select a feed from is actually the built-in RSS reader in the web browser.
So, in order to populate this Contact bar, you need to first browse all of your friends’ sites from your phone, and save their RSS feeds in the S60 browser. You can then choose the various feeds for each contact. Sure, this works, but how many typical users would 1. figure that out and 2. go through the hassle to do so? I’d guess a small minority, at best. Why not do like so many other Web 2.0 lifestream aggregation services, and pre-load some of the more popular services in here, so that I only need my friend’s username, and the phone is smart enough to fill in the rest? Wouldn’t that make it so much easier? What’s worse, the S60’s built-in RSS reader doesn’t support the new Destinations, which allows you to prioritize access points, so I have to choose between WiFi and cellular data. Also, the most frequent automated checking possible is every 15 minutes. While that’s fine for a blog feed, if I’ve got my contact’s Jaiku or Twitter feed in there, it’s completely ridiculous.
As with most of my complaints with the 5800 XpressMusic thus far, this could easily be fixed in a firmware update. Let’s see some preloaded Web2.0 services added, Nokia, as well as the ability to use the Destinations, and setup a much more frequent update time frame.
Nokia wants so badly to join this connected world, with its own services and whatnot, but it has trouble executing this. The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is a great opportunity to really grab today’s youth, and the Contacts bar was a BRILLIANT idea to really appeal to the always-connected crowd. Unfortunately, in its current state, it’s only half-baked, and no one wants to eat raw bread.
As an example, Ovi is a great idea, but i have to manually synchronize my handset with the website and that's if i remember to do it. A small thing like automation at specific periods would make a big difference.
I agree with you Guru, there is so much potential but Nokia just don't have the idea people or motivation to make it possible.
Software is the future and its software for the layman, not geeks. If you put too many hurdles in their path, they get frustrated, give up and move on to greener pastures.
The best solution for that is, again, Handy Shell.
As bazanime mentioned I do agree that there is no cohesion between the some of Nokia's softwares.
As for the web feeds that is not particulary new.
Take for instance the videocenter and podcasting application, where you must enter exact feed for the medias you want.
It's even worse for the videocenter between the N95 and the N82 where they are presented with two completely different websites where not all the "videoservices" for the N82.
(Though it is only a link to a page and can be easily bookmarked. The one for N82 leads to a N-series site)
The same is also the case for the Download! application on both devices, where there were far more application for the N95 and fewer for the N82.
(Now improved but the navigation on the N82 is worse and more unordered than on the N95)
As for the issue of wifi consuming battery I have configured both my devices to use only 10 mW.
(This is found under Tools-Settings-Connection-Wireless Lan-Options-Advanced Settings)
Nokia has spoken: if you won't more features then pay more with N97!!
I think the reaction they were looking for was "Finally! I don't have to open the web browser to view Ricky's feed! I can just pin it to the Contacts bar on the home screen!"
It can't be vertical. If it is always horizontal, your wall paper will be only partly visible.
some times it cuts most of the wallpaper. so you can see only background but not any faces/main picture on the wall paper. It should be possible to configure the contact bar either horizontal or vertical, of course with firmware upgradation.
In iTunes, there is a menu which helps us decide how many podcasts under one topic should be retained and the rest can be removed. I do not find any such facility in 5800. With the result, my memory gets filled up very fast with old podcasts. I have been deleting the old podcasts one by one.
Can some one suggest me a better method?
Rgds
rao
Thanks Symbian Guru for telling us about Salling- which as he says is still a works in progress application but the response of the admin in helping us through the problems is terrific.
Rgds
rao
We have podcasts in the Music Library which can be listened to and I have started using Salling for syncing them
But we also have the Podcasting feature which is available under Music in the main menu. This I was using to update the podcasts (using the home wireless network). But after I have started using Salling, I do not understand what, if any, role Podcasting can play.
In short, is there and if so what sort of a relationship exists between the podcasts/episodes in Podcasting and those in Podcasts in the Music library
And one point reg this forum- which is so helpful. Is it possible to give the users an option to check their own posts and the responses first at the opening screen since it is difficult to check my message among the various sections?
Rgds
rao
I need some help with regard to 5800 podcasts
The podcasting feature shows "Limit Exceeded" in the case of some podcasts and does not download the new ones. There does not seem to be any way I can limit the podcasts to the newest one or the last 3 etc., with the result in some cases it show hundreds of old episodes. How do I stop this? other than manually keep deleting the old episodes ?
Rgds
Rao