The Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T, with its slide-out QWERTY keyboard and clicky buttons, isn’t an especially impressive piece of hardware, though it’s not really all that bad, either. Another important aspect of any smartphone is the software inside. To finish up our review of this smartphone from AT&T, we’re going to take a look at the software, including the extras that AT&T has loaded up on here, as well as a few 3rd party applications.
System
As I discovered in my unboxing post, the Nokia 6790 Surge has a rocking 78MB of RAM available for multitasking, and an equally impressive 117MB of internal storage for applications and other data. This is definitely a good thing, and makes other new Nokias, such as the supposedly ‘flagship’ N97, look rather embarrassing. I had no problem with some insane multitasking on this phone, and the 1500mAh battery is more than capable of keeping up, as well.
I’m not sure exactly which processor the 6790 Surge is blessed by, but it’s plenty powerful to provide a snappy experience with the S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 interface, even with transition effects enabled and several applications running in the background. The screen can be set to automatically rotate, though it is also triggered into landscape mode when you slide the keyboard out, obviously.
Text Input
As with other recent QWERTY-equipped smartphones from Nokia, the 6790 Surge from AT&T has predictive text, which makes it even faster to use the already convenient keyboard. The predictive text can work in several ways, and there are settings to adjust how aggressive it is in fixing things. You can have auto-complete turned on or off, and this will guess the word you’re trying to type after only a few letters. To confirm the word without typing the rest, simply press right on the d-pad and you’re on your way.
Unfortunately, I found even the lowest setting for auto-correct to be far too aggressive, specifically when I wanted to type a comma. The comma shares a button with the period, and I found, with predictive text on, I had to press the right d-pad to deselect the word before adding the comma, or else it would always be changed to a period. Aside from this, I found the system quite handy, and the ability to tweak it and disable certain features makes it great for nearly anyone. Of course, you can also completely turn the prediction off, if you prefer.
Synchronization
I was pleased to see that there doesn’t seem to be any limit to the functionality that the Nokia 6790 Surge has with Nokia’s PC Suite, including being able to tether, transfer media, install applications, and synchronize with Microsoft Outlook. I also used the Sync application to synchronize the Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T with Google Sync (over SyncML, not Mail for Exchange) and GooSync, for a complete Google Contacts and Google Calendar synchronization experience. Unfortunately, there are still no options to automate this process, but at least it all worked as expected.
Gaming
The Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T is not, apparently, N-Gage compatible, as I received an error when I tried to install N-Gage on the phone. There are, though, a number of java games pre-installed from AT&T. Unfortunately, these are just demo versions, and require that you pay for the full version after a designated limit. I tried to play the Guitar Hero III game that was pre-installed, but found the graphics to be horrid, and the gameplay used the number pad, rather than taking advantage of the spacious QWERTY keyboard, which was extremely frustrating and disappointing.
Web
Unfortunately, the Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T does not have the new version of the Nokia Webkit browser, but it does include the version that most of us are used to, with full Flash support for YouTube and whatnot. There are the standard set of annoying hard-coded bookmark folders – all, of course, with basically nothing in them. The browser does not seem to be limited by AT&T in any way – I was able to choose an access point, and access the expected set of options, which is good. The speed over AT&T’s 3G network is quick, as well.
Music
Music on the Nokia 6790 Surge is really a poor experience, but then again, it’s not billed as a music device, so I can’t really hold this against it. The standard S60 music player is on board, again, with the normal options that you would expect to see. The microSD card slot is hidden under the back cover, though at least it’s not blocked by the battery. While the music player is, in my opinion, a great experience, the options for enjoying your music are poor. The 2.5mm audio port means that I have to find an adapter and make sure I have it with me all the time, and the single speaker, located at the top/left of the Surge, is obvioiusly not suited for jamming out. While this speaker is plenty loud, there’s a definite lack in quality, specifically in songs with heavy bass. Bluetooth A2DP support for stereo headsets is on board, and the audio quality through there is typical, with minimal static or hiss at all.
Navigation
The Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T does have a built-in GPS receiver, and comes preloaded with the AT&T-branded version of Telenav, called AT&T Navigator. For $9.99/mo, you get nationwide, voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation, as well as live traffic updates. It’s really quite a nice application, and I often wish I could get it on my unbranded phones. It’s also rather trivial to install Ovi Maps 3.0 on the phone, if you wish, though with Google Maps Mobile, I really found no need.
Contacts
The contacts application, again, is standard S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 fare, aside from the new Favorites tab, which allows you to specify certain contacts that are more easily accessible. I was able to install Ovi Chat on the Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T, but for some reason, my account has issues on any device that has S60v3 FP2 or S60v5, so I wasn’t able to actually use it.
Menus
This is the area were you can most see AT&T’s branding, and it’s quite annoying, in my opinion. Various icons in the main menu have been permanently changed to AT&T ones, and some of these are even locked down, so you can’t move them to a different position, nor can you move them into a folder or rename them. This is honestly one of my biggest complaints about AT&T-branded Symbian-powered smartphones, as it doesn’t make much sense to lock this part down. From previous posts, though, I know that most of our Symbian-Guru readers simply use an application such as Jbak Taskman to offer quick access without opening the menu, so this may not be a real factor to some.
Sharing
As mentioned previously, Share Online is not loaded on the Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T, which makes sharing photos or videos quite frustrating. You can, of course, use MMS or email to send photos to your friends directly from the phone, though that’s not an ideal solution. However, the camera is only 2 megapixels, and does not have a flash, so you may be too embarrassed to share your photos, anyways.
Conclusion
The Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T is actually quite a solid device, thanks to the stability of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and the generous amounts of RAM that Nokia put in this thing. Unfortunately, the only negatives that I found on the Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T are AT&T’s fault. The lockdown of the main menu, paired with the removal of most photo and video sharing software means that this thing is just a bit….boring. Fortunately, I only ran across a few of my favorite 3rd party applications that refused to work on the 6790 Surge, such as Ovi Contacts and Share Online. Everything else, including Nokia Messaging, Gravity, Mobbler, and Handy Taskman ran without an issue.
If you can get past the hardware, the software on the Nokia 6790 Surge from AT&T is quite a contender for the power user.
