Symbian-Guru.comPhone Reviews

Samsung i8910 OmniaHD Unboxing And First Impressions

TheGuru — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 14:31:16 +0000

While the Samsung i8910 OmniaHD has been out for over a year, it is still an impressive phone based on its features. The massive 3.7-inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display is basically unmatched, and its 8 megapixel autofocus camera and HD video recording are, too. Thanks to our friends at iUnlock.com, I’ve gotten ahold of a Samsung i8910 OmniaHD to use for a little while. This is my first non-Nokia Symbian phone, and I’m quite interested to see how the overall experience compares to say, the N97 Mini.

Here’s the unboxing video -- the packaging is quite simple, especially as compared to Nokia’s Nseries smartphones, but gets the job done.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbe2I92CLTQ
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Overall, my first impressions of the hardware are good. The phone is large, but thin, considering all the guts it has stored inside. The build quality is awesome, although I’m not a fan of the high-gloss piano black paint job -- it traps fingerprints far too easily and results in a smudged-looking phone.

The Samsung version of S60 5th Edition is, as expected, mostly similar to what I’m used to on my 5800 XpressMusic or N97, with the exception of the icons and a few of the applications. I’ll be exploring more of the applications experience, as well as the multimedia, as I get the phone setup.

Unfortunately, one area in which Samsung falls flat on its face is with desktop support, specifically firmware updates. The i8910 was shipped to me with a slightly old firmware installed, so that I could have the user experience of trying to install a firmware update through Samsung’s PC Studio (which is basically a licensed version of PC Suite). Unfortunately, as I am on Windows 7, there was no easy way to get this to work. After countless hours and trying numerous workarounds (including a Windows XP virtual machine), I gave up, and simply used the ‘Symbian ROM Flashing Tool’, which is definitely not an official application.

It’s really sad that I had to go through such trouble simply to get an officially-released firmware update installed to my phone. Hopefully, if Samsung continues to release Symbian-powered smartphones, they make use of the OTA update feature and eliminate this silly need for desktop computers to update our mobile computers.

Now that I have the i8910 all updated, I’ll be using it as my primary phone for a few days, to get an idea of the real experience. What sorts of things should I be testing out? What would *you* like to know about the Samsung i8910?

Nokia X6 Unboxing Videos

TheGuru — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 16:20:58 +0000

The Nokia X6 was released recently, and while we wait for Dotsisx to put together her review of this hot new touchscreen smartphone, there have been a few interesting unboxing videos that we thought you’d like to watch.

For starters, Ewan Spence from AllAboutSymbian decided he needed a bit of help to unbox his Nokia X6, so he enlisted his feathered friend Emu.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRdhQXK0uL8
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On the other hand, for a more laid-back approach, our friend Jay Montano of MyNokiaBlog.com put together a stop-motion video of unboxing the Nokia X6. I’m partial to stop-motion for some reason, so I found this incredibly well-done and really quite entertaining.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSDrGu4ds-M
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Great work from both Ewan and Jay -- perhaps Dotsisx will get the creative bug and put together a fancy-schmancy unboxing of her own.

Nokia E72 vs E71 Review – 7 Things I Hate

Dotsisx — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:00:38 +0000

After yesterday’s rundown of the 7 improvements the E72 brings over its younger brother, I take a look today at the 7 problems that the newest Eseries device has which were absent on the E71. It’s more of a proof that whenever you try to improve one thing, you always mess up something else.

1. Loose battery cover

The one feature I always take pride in when talking about the E71 is how sturdy it is. My unit has been through rain, drowned in a sink, fallen more times than I care to remember on the asphalt or the stairs or the paved floor, flown in the air and landed in the dirt… I have come to a point with the E71 where if it falls on the floor, I just pick it up and put it in my pocket. I don’t even bother to look and see if it’s still working because I know it is. The E72 still doesn’t inspire this much trust, and although it has successfully survived 1 or 2 mishaps, it has always ended up with the battery cover and battery coming off. There were even a couple of times where I felt the battery cover coming loose (it’s only held in place by a small latch) in my hand while holding the phone and working on it. The E71 never had that issue, you even needed some wits and strength to figure out how to pull off the battery cover.

2. RAM

When I read the E72’s specifications, I was quite ecstatic to see it had the same amount of built-in RAM as the E71, but when I got the E72 in my hand I noticed that although they have the same chip, the amount of free RAM available for you to use is almost 25-30Mb less than on the E71. Here are a few comparison screenshots:

Upon boot: E71 (67.9Mb) vs E72 (40.8Mb)

Opera Mobile, Symbian-Guru.com page loaded: E71 (47.1Mb) vs E72 (20.3Mb)

Opera Mobile 2 tabs, Symbian-Guru & AllAboutSymbian: E71 (44.5Mb) vs E72 (15.1Mb)

You can easily see that if you had Opera Mobile with 2 tabs open, as well as for example Gravity or Nimbuzz, the RAM will run seriously low on the E72 and applications will start closing. I’ve run into this issue many times on the device, and eventually decided to switch to Opera Mini and limit multitasking to 3 or 4 simultaneous apps, whereas on the E71, I could run at least 6 or 7 RAM-hungry processes without any problem whatsoever.

3. Spacebar bug

I heard a few people mention this bug, but I didn’t encounter it personally until last week. All of a sudden, the space bar stopped working on the E72, and there’s nothing I could do to have it work again. I tried typing Fn, Shift, Ctrl, Sym, before or while pressing the spacebar, I tried closing apps and reopening them, tweeted it, until I eventually resolved to restart the device. It was all back to normal and it has never happened again with me, but I know that many people have it occur more frequently than that.

4. No Podcasting

Eh, we’re tired of mentioning this again and again, but it seems that no one at Nokia has understood that removing Podcasting and Internet Radio from the newest Eseries isn’t a good portfolio move. Of course, you call still use our guide to get a similar function back, but it doesn’t beat having it preloaded on the phone.

5. Optical Touchpad

I usually try to embrace any new function and get accustomed to it before pinning it down as useless for me, something I know you can’t say about 90% of consumers who dismiss anything the second it doesn’t work for them. Anyway, I left the Optical touchpad enabled on the E72 and started getting used to it. At first I was hitting it by mistake all the time, until a week ago when I noticed that I no longer hit it by mistake. The problem? It turns out I stopped using it all-together. Basically my brain told my finger to dismiss the optical navigation and just go with the regular D-pad function. So yes, I hate that it’s there, I hate that I spent a month trying to adapt to it, only to discover that I had no use for it in the first place and that the regular d-pad function works better for me. Maybe if I was able to restrict it to certain programs (like the Browser or Gravity), it would’ve been easier on my brain to make good use of it without dismissing it.

6. Keyboard layout

Personally, I’m not a fan of Nokia moving the bluetooth and silent profile toggling switches to separate keys instead of the regular * and # ones. Nevertheless, the important keyboard layout issue is specifically related to the fugly Arabic layout on the E72 unit I received from Lebanon. It’s extremely crowded, the colors are horrendous, it lacks an easy way to insert characters like % and &, and I personally can’t fathom it. You can read more details about it here.

7. Loudspeaker

I’ve already mentioned how Nokia’s new devices have ridiculously low-volume loudspeakers for calls (not music), and the E72 is no exception. The fact that the speaker is on the back on the device, instead of the top position it occupied on the E71 doesn’t make it any better either.

That ends my love/hate relationship with the Nokia E72 in comparison with its predecessor, the mighty E71. I will later tackle the detailed Software and Hardware comparison between both of these, so stay tuned for it.

Nokia E72 vs E71 Review – 7 Things I Love

Dotsisx — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:15:08 +0000

Although my first impressions of the Nokia E72 weren’t highly positive, as I found it to be disturbingly similar to my trusty E71, it started growing on me after a while. After using the E72 as my daily phone for over a month now, I can clearly see which improvements have been made that really and positively impacted my usage pattern.

1. Camera

For some, this might be the only obvious change between the E72 and E71. The bump from 3MP to 5MP isn’t the only improvement though, as the quality of the images and the colors is dauntingly different. I can finally walk out of the door with the E72 and without a camera, and feel confident enough that if something interesting strikes my eye, I have a tool to capture it in good quality. There’s also the addition of the Panorama mode that has been useful to me several times.

Macro Mode

Outdoor, Daytime

Sports mode taken from a moving car

Outdoors, Sunset and Night time

Indoors, fairly lit and poorly lit

2. Internal Memory

The Nokia E71 usually has 110MB of free internal memory out of the box, whereas the E72 has around 250MB. Now you might think that 140MB isn’t all that important nowadays in the TeraByte ages, but the practical difference it makes for me is that I can easily install all my applications, games and themes on the internal memory, and still have room enough to spare. On the E71, there are many times where I chose to put some themes or games on the memory card, which made for an annoyance every time I connected it to my computer in Mass Storage mode (apps closing, theme reverting to default…). I don’t have to suffer that on the E72.

3. Torch

I live in Lebanon, which equates to constant electricity blackouts and at least one or two daily switches between the official electricity source and the backup generators. Having a torch on the E72, accessible with the simple long-click of the Space bar, has been a welcome boon. I think I’ve reached the point where everyone around me tells me “light, please” when we have a blackout. I wonder what will happen when I return the E72.

4. 3.5 mm headset plug, MicroUSB Charging

Unlike the Nokia E71 and its 2.5mm headset plug, the E72 has a 3.5mm plug allowing me to connect my favorite Sennheiser CX-500 earphone instead of Nokia’s torturing excuse for a headset (the WH-601) and without having to add an additional 2.5mm to 3.5mm converter tip.

The E72 charges through the regular 3pin charger from Nokia, just like the E71, so I don’t have to mount a different charger on my wall. The difference though is that it also charges through the MicroUSB plug. I used to think that this is more of a gimmicky feature, but I lately always keep a USB-MicroUSB cable in my bag. Although the E72 lasts easily 2 days on a full charge with my usage, I find it super convenient that I can simply plug it in the computer at work for an hour or two in case I simply forgot to charge it at home.

5. Music Search

Another feature I used to deem as a gimmick, the Music Search function on the E72 has surprisingly gained a bit of my respect over the last week. Instead of going through the Menu, finding the Music Player, launching it, selecting whether I want to browse by Artist or Song, and then starting to type the name of what I’m looking for, I simply press and hold * on the E72’s homescreen and speak the name of the artist or their song. Ka-Boom! The Music Player launches and starts playing, no other step needed. Of course, it’s a hit and miss with voice recognition, but in about a week of usage, I’ve reached a success rate of 60-70% from the first try and I think I’ll be able to improve my pronunciation the more I use it.

6. Accelerometer

I haven’t tried the E72’s accelerometer in games yet, but I’ve used it for snoozing the alarm by flipping the phone, and for using Step Counter, an experimental app from Nokia Beta Labs. Step Counter has always been a necessary extension to my exercise routine, and being able to run it on the E71 is something I’ve always wanted, heck I even stated that the accelerometer is the ONE feature that would’ve made the E71 perfect. Well, the E72 solves that.

7. Free Ovi Maps Navigation

While we remain uncertain whether or not the free navigation version of Ovi Maps 3.03 will be back-ported to the Nokia E71, the E72 already supports it. I downloaded the version and am now enjoying turn-by-turn voice guided navigation inside the disturbingly complicated streets of Lebanon, a feature I thought I’d never need but that has already proven to be useful on 3 occasions in less than a week.

As far as making a leap ahead of the E71, these 7 aspects, although under-appreciated at first, have grown on me, and made me see the potential of the E72 as a real E71 successor and not only a glorified but similar replacement. The problem though is that if you own an E71 and want to switch to an E72, the grass is not necessarily all green on this side, and there are aspects where the older brother trumps the newer one. Join me tomorrow for a rundown of the 7 things I hate about the E72.

Sony Ericsson & Symbian: Satio Final Thoughts And The Vivaz

Dotsisx — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:00:50 +0000

You might recall a long, long time ago when I did a review of a prototype Sony Ericsson Satio, before it became available on the market. I promised a conclusion to that review and somehow it fell forgotten under my other blogging work, until Sony Ericsson announced the Vivaz last week and I thought it would be interesting to end my Satio review in light of this new release.

Looking back at the Sony Ericsson Satio, a full 4 months after I returned it to SE France’s PR department, there are a few things that got stuck in my mind. Hardware-wise, the screen was beautiful and the 12MP camera with Xenon and LED flash was phenomenal for a mobile phone, nevertheless, it was chunky and the pop-port connector for charging and music was retarded. Software-wise, the improvements Sony Ericsson made on top of Symbian^1 were extraordinary, especially in the Media Browser, Camera & Homescreen.

There are many things I loved about that prototype device, and many other things I hated, some of which were apparently non-existent when the Satio made it to the market as a retail handset. For example, many users reported that the 950mAh battery was enough to last them through a full day (and more) of usage. Also, the computer suite that the Satio came with (which I didn’t get with my prototype) solved the Contacts transfer issue. I was even told that the Satio comes with a small pop-port connector that lets you charge it and listen to music at the same time. All of this to say that you can’t really judge a device in prototype stage, after all that’s what a prototype is for: testing and improving before public release.

Now unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a retail Satio unit in my hand to test the improvements for myself, but I can talk a bit about my overall impression of the Satio, and where I see Sony Ericsson standing in regards to the Symbian Foundation and its Open Source platform.

The UI changes that SE made on top of Symbian^1 in the Homescreen, Camera and the Media Browser are a tangible proof of how customizable Symbian is. We’re used to seeing Symbian under the Nokia lens, but it was refreshing to take a look at it through the eyes of another company with a different perspective and another team of engineers and designers. The transitions, animations, and the simplicity of SE’s UI were simply astonishing for me. Yet, the main problem with the Satio was the lack of an overall UI system carried throughout the different software pieces (see point 3 here). It’s a mix of:

The regular S60 UI
Some Symbian^1 aspects in the Browser, Contacts and Messaging
Sony Ericsson’s specific UI in the Homescreen, Camera and Media Browser.

What this amounts to is a lot of confusion for the user in terms of operating his handset. What I sincerely hope for is to see SE taking the leap to overhaul the whole software, and not remain limited to certain areas, therefore presenting the user with a unified and consistent UI.

Which brings me to the Vivaz that was announced last week, as the second SE Symbian^1 phone. Upon looking at a few comparison images with the Satio from SE-First, I can clearly see that the Vivaz solves all of the Satio’s hardware issues: it’s smaller and more rounded, has a standard 3.5mm headset plug and a microUSB port. It also supports HD video recording with continuous autofocus, TV-Out and seems to have the fastest processor to date on a Symbian phone (720MHz). Unfortunately, a compromise had to be made and the Xenon flash was left out. There are very few demo’s of the Vivaz software to see whether or not any other aspect of the Symbian UI was modified by SE, but I found this video of Sony Ericsson Developers mentioning that the homescreen has been pushed to the next level.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4hadFHinXc
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As you can see, the homescreen now supports Flash Light 3 and you can apparently choose the 5 panels yourself, putting Twitter or Facebook or even a game developed in Flash on any of them. It’s innovative to say the least.

So where does that leave the Satio? Well basically, I think it was more of a “let’s test the waters” handset for Sony Ericsson, they made the ultimate camera smartphone to date and wished to sell enough to see whether Symbian is good enough as an investment. The announcement of the Vivaz is a positive sign, and on paper, the Vivaz trumps the Satio in every aspect, except the camera’s resolution and the lack of Xenon flash, so if you’re looking into buying a Satio, I’d recommend you wait and see what the Vivaz can do. It’s reported to launch in the first quarter of this year, so it might not be that long of a wait.

What’s also worth mentioning is the competition that Sony Ericsson is bringing to Nokia on its homeland Symbian turf. Realistically, now SE has two Symbian devices that trump Nokia’s Symbian handsets in many hardware aspects (mainly the Camera and the Processor) as well as bring intuitiveness in some UI improvements, making their offer incredibly attractive for power users. Nevertheless, despite Sony Ericsson’s bundled Google Maps, WisePilot, RoadSync software, Nokia still has the upper hand when it comes to providing a full package of device + services (Nokia Messaging, Comes With Music, Ovi Store, free navigation with Ovi Maps). It will be interesting to see how these two battle it out when the rules of the game change with the release of Symbian^3 and Symbian^4.

Nokia E72 vs E71 Review – First Impressions

Dotsisx — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 09:01:31 +0000

“Hello, I am Rita El Khoury and I have been a Nokia E71 addict for over 12 months”. E71-Addicts-Anonymous group therapy attendees respond in sync “Hello Rita”.

There’s little I have yet to say about how much I love my Nokia E71: build quality, day-to-day usability, productivity, responsiveness, robustness, this device just fits in my hand and there’s a warm feeling in my heart each time I put my SIM card back in it after having it in some other trial Symbian device. It’s just like wearing that comfortable pair of sneakers after going to a party in high heels: the latter are clean, chic and everyone marvels at them, but you know you couldn’t wear them daily like your filthy and scratched sneakers.

Hence, you can only picture my excitement at the idea of finally getting my hands on the E71’s successor when Nokia Lebanon told me they have a Nokia E72 ready for me to trial. As a matter of fact, I had already chalked it up, on paper, as my next device and a worthy upgrade from the E71.

A few weeks ago, the E72’s box dropped by my house and the minute I opened it, I felt, well, underwhelmed. I had received the topaz version which has the annoying perk of coming with a white Arabic keyboard and Latin letters in light green (full rant here). Aside from the color and keyboard annoyances, another thing was slightly disturbing me: it felt just like the E71. Now some of you might scratch this under the positive aspect, but I didn’t. When you get a new gadget, you really want that wow excitement of having something new in your hand, you want to spend hours discovering new aspects or playing around with it. No one around me noticed that I had a new phone, and everyone was surprised when I told them “it’s not the E71, it’s the E72″. Plus, the E72 just fit in my hand like the E71 did, and instead of praising that, I felt like Nokia had pulled a good prank on me and every E71 addict: “give us your money and we’ll give you the same thing in a bit more modern look. Ta-Daaa!”

Fortunately though, the E72 is, and I quote what I said on Twitter a few weeks back, “like a bottle of fine wine: it just gets better with time“. A few days later, I was starting to appreciate the differences it had with the E71, as significant and as little as they were.

This is just a taste of my conflicting thoughts on the newest baby in the Eseries family. Over the next few days, I will be reviewing the Nokia E72, but I won’t do it as a standalone device: there’s plenty of plain E72 reviews out there. I will look at the E72 from the point of view of a tried-and-true E71 user, and will try to answer the most daunting question everyone is asking: if I own an E71, is the E72 a worthy upgrade?

Nokia N97 Revisited: I Love It

TheGuru — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:44:29 +0000

Seven months ago, I was able to review the Nokia N97, then the flagship Nseries multimedia computer. This was a big deal for Nokia, and they needed to nail it, given several factors that I outlined in my Nokia N97 Review Conclusion. The unit I reviewed then had firmware v10.0.0.12, and it was a complete mess. You can read the full Nokia N97 review series here. However, several weeks ago I received my own personal N97, and immediately installed firmware v20 on it.

The result is, well, pretty much exactly what I expected back in June, when I said

The N97’s firmware is, without question, the buggiest launch firmware I’ve ever seen, topping even the N95-1 and N96. Does that make it a colossal fail? Surprisingly, no. The good news is that the hardware is solid – which means that with a firmware update or two, the N97 will, without question, be a rockstar smartphone.

Since getting the phone, setting it up, and using it as my primary device, I haven’t experienced any of the issues that I previously had. All of my contacts synced over from Google Contacts beautifully over SyncML, and GooSync handled my multiple Google Calendars smoothly, as well. No double first-names here (Ovi Sync is still a mess and should be avoided at all costs, though that’s not limited to the N97).

When I booted the phone up, the Software Update app politely informed me that an update to Ovi Contacts and N-Gage was available, which I promptly downloaded. Sure, N-Gage is dead, but I do have a handful of games that I might as well try to get transferred over. The firmware update also fixed the QWERTY keyboard, so that I can press and hold a button to get its corresponding function character, instead of a row of e’s or f’s.

The GPS module on my N97 is also well connected, so much so that I have consistently seen a SOLID GREEN GPS indicator in Ovi Maps, whereas on most phones I have several bars of green with a few yellow ones tacked on to the end.

While the phone obviously has the same horrid amount of RAM and internal storage, the handling of these precious commodities has improved. It does require a watchful eye, but I’m able to fully use my N97 without any issues, including multitasking and whatnot. The Memory Reorganizer app helped a bit, too.

After the 5800 XpressMusic finally converted me into a touchscreen fan, the N97 is much more pleasant to use, for sure. I really really love the hardware, specifically the tilted screen, camera button, and the keyboard (which is nicely tactile on my black NAM unit).

For those wondering, my batch is 42/2009. It’s too early to tell if I’ll have the camera lens issue, but overall, this phone is awesome, and only poised to get better, especially with the release of the N97 Mini, which uses the same firmware. If you were holding out on the N97, now’s a great time to take another glance at it. You can get a pretty good deal, and with this new firmware, it’s finally capable of performing as my primary phone.

I was stricken with the camera lens issue, but it’s definitely under warranty, so I’ll be sending it off promptly to get that taken care of. Expect a followup post on my experience with Nokia CARE in the U.S., as that’s been a rough experience in the past.

Overall, for $532 unlocked, with v2.0 firmware, the Nokia N97 is a great little machine. It does everything I want it to, can easily last through a full workday thanks to its 1500mAh battery, and the firmware is finally usable.

Have you stuck with the N97? How do you like it?

Nokia 6710 Navigator Review – The Ultimate GPS Solution?

Dotsisx — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:00:56 +0000

Announced at the same time as the Nokia 6720 Classic which we quickly reviewed earlier, the Nokia 6710 Navigator sets out to be the new heir to the Navigator throne, right after the 6210, and it doesn’t disappoint.

The first thing you notice when you unbox the Nokia 6710 Navigator is that it is a very well thought-out GPS solution. Unlike recent Nokia devices that come with a charger, USB cable, battery and headphones, the 6710 Navigator also adds two very interesting accessories. The first one is the Nokia Car Charger DC-4 that goes into your car’s cigarette lighter and should allow you to keep the 6710 going during long hours of GPS navigation. The second one is the Nokia Mobile Holder CR-111 with the Easy Mount HH-20 which is essentially a suction cup you can position on your car’s front windshield with a specific holder for the 6720 Navigator. Both of these accessories work well to help you get the most out of the 6710 Navigator as an in-car GPS system.

As for the device itself, the 6710 Navigator comes clad with a light brown matte plastic cover. The front is covered with a 2.6″ bright transreflective non-touchscreen that works very well outdoors. Below that, you’ll find a 6710-first, the touch zoom bar which lets you zoom in and out from the Maps by gliding your finger over it to the left or right. It also works in the web browser and the photo gallery, providing a very nice alternative to clicking the volume buttons. Below the D-pad is another Navigator special, the GPS key that launches Ovi Maps and lights up when the device has a GPS signal, which is almost instantaneous if you have enabled A-GPS.

The 6710, like all of the Navigator family, is a slider handset, revealing a keypad with big comfortable keys. I would’ve loved if the left and right column were stretched over to the edge of the slider, making them a bit bigger and easier to type on (especially for the * and # keys), but I didn’t have any real issues with the keypad as is.

The 6710 Navigator has a slightly curved design, similar to the 6720 Classic, with the lower part of the slider getting its chin up. This makes the handset a bit more ergonomic in the hand, and more comfortable to hold if you’re using it as a pedestrian GPS solution for an hour for example.

The back of the 6710 Navigator holds the now regular (yet oddly new on a Navigator phone) 5 MP camera with Carl Zeiss optics and Dual-LED flash. The image results are what you have come to expect from the likes of the N85, N79, N97…

The 6710 Navigator also adds a 600Mhz processor and WiFi radio compared to its 6210 predecessor, and is TV-out compatible though the cable isn’t provided in the box. I won’t go over the software in detail. It’s the regular S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 joy, with built-in Nokia Messaging, a few pre-installed games, compatibility with the Ovi Store, firmware OTA updates available, and you can install all the 3rd-party software you have come to love on Symbian… Ovi Maps 3.0 is also pre-installed, with the ability to synchronize your Favorite locations and routes with your Ovi Maps web account, 3D monuments, satellite imagery and all. Regional maps data for your country is also included on the provided 4GB microSDHC, with a lifetime turn-by-turn voice guidance driving and walking license tied to the device’s IMEI.

Worth mentioning though is the fact that the 6710 Navigator finally integrates PIM applications and Maps data. A few examples are when you create a new Contact, you can insert their address from Ovi Maps or from your Favorite locations in it. The same applies for making a new meeting in the Calendar: you can choose the meeting’s location from Ovi Maps or from the Favorites collection. In both instances, when you visualize the new Contact or Meeting, you have the option to view it in Ovi Maps in a click. It sounds simple, but this is the kind of integration we have wanted on Symbian in an eternity!

Below is a short video preview of the Nokia 6710 Navigator’s hardware and software, with a demo of the zoom bar in action on Ovi Maps.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCAL9LQNaNQ
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So overall how does the 6710 Navigator stack up as a GPS solution for those of you who are always moving?

Pretty good actually! It beats the 6210 Navigator in every aspect: better build quality, better camera, 3.5mm headset plug, WiFi, dedicated zoom bar, and better software. It also trumps any other recent GPS-enabled Nokia device out of the box, thanks to the car holder and charger included, the dedicated GPS key and zoom bar, the lifetime driving/walking license, and the better software integration between PIM applications and Ovi Maps.

If you’re looking for a mobile smartphone that can also serve as a GPS, out of the box without any tweeking or additional purchase, the 6710 Navigator should easily be your choice. Its small enough to go un-noticed in a pocket, on level with today’s smartphones when it comes to camera and music, and offers a very attractive GPS package at a reasonable price.

Nokia 6720 Classic Review, Efficient But Forgettable

Dotsisx — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:00:41 +0000

When I think back to Mobile World Congress 2009, I definitely remember the first unveiling of the Sony Ericsson Satio concept, the bomb that was the Samsung Omnia HD, as well as Nokia’s E75, E55, N86 8MP and Ovi Store announcements. The Nokia 6720 Classic? Not so much, honestly. Nevertheless, I recently had the 6720 Classic dropped in my hand for a one-week trial and I came out feeling nothing but confused.

The 6720 Classic is a quad-band candybar phone with HSDPA support, GPS, a 3.5mm headset plug with TV-Out support (no TV-Out cable included), 5MP camera with Dual-LED flash and Bluetooth. There is no WiFi on board, which makes this device rather pointless in countries with no real HSDPA networks, and it also doesn’t charge via MicroUSB. The 6720 has a simplistic design, is slim, has a curved body that helps it fit nicely in the hand. It houses volume keys and a camera button as well as a microSDHC slot and a microUSB connector.

As for the software on board, it’s plain old S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. Nokia Messaging, with its latest version, is on board and works beautifully, there’s also Ovi Maps, Share Online, N-Gage, a Windows Live Messenger client and the regular Nokia & Symbian software.

Honestly, I couldn’t find anything wrong with the 6720 Classic. It’s a perfect little phone, there’s not a single issue with the software or the hardware, and it definitely does what it says on the can. The problem? It’s dull, incredibly dull. I kept searching in and out for the smallest thing to excite me and everything I could find was the yucky yellow color for the led light around the D-pad as shown in the image below.

I know that this feeling of boredom with the 6720 Classic stems from the fact that I’m an S60 veteran and I’ve tried almost every S60 3rd Edition phone released in the past 3 years, so there was no real surprise in the 6720 for me. Still, I can’t help wonder about the gap that a device like this fills. It’s an update to the 6220 Classic, yet instead of improving the camera, it comes with a Dual-LED flash instead of a Xenon flash, and it lacks the blue star GPS lock light that the 6220 Classic had. The one improvement I could find was with the 3.5mm headset plug instead of a 2.5mm one. That’s it.

Here is a short video with me fiddling around with the 6720 Classic. There’s a hardware overview at the beginning, a full walkthrough of the menus, and a Panorama mode demo.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBS3dFKv3ZQ
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Would I recommend the 6720 Classic if someone asked me for a good affordable smartphone with a decent camera? Probably yes, if I ever remember that it exists. It does what it sets out to do, it won’t attract prying eyes, and it’s filled with features. Yet, it’s unbelievably forgettable.

Nokia E52 Review – 6 Things I Hate

Dotsisx — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:00:42 +0000

Despite the many things that I find myself loving about the Nokia E52, I couldn’t help being disappointed by a few aspects of the device, that I will expose to you below.

1. Build Quality Issues

Build quality normally isn’t on any of my “things I hate” list for Eseries, and although the E52’s design, style and materials used are incredible, I found myself frequently annoyed of 3 issues on the device. The first one is that the E52 leaks more lights than a Christmas tree. I can easily identify 15 sources of light leaking, other than the regular small ray that you see between two adjacent keys on a keypad, 15 different sources! Here are the images of the front, left side and right side of the E52 with all prominent leaks circled.

The second build quality issue is the fact that the middle column on the keypad (2, 5, 8, 0) isn’t well lit compared to the left and right columns.

The third issue is one that I noticed on this Nokia E52 from Lebanon, as well as a Nokia E55 (E52’s brother) from France and it’s that the front plate cover peels off really easily from the rest of the device. It’s not loose by any mean, but if you *try* to peel it, it takes almost no effort to do so.

2. No Green and Red keys

The E52 has Call and End Call keys, but the problem is that they aren’t colored in green and red as usual but in plain white. It is a matter of personal preference, but for me, as well as the 5-6 other persons who have tried using the Nokia E52 around me, the lack of this color differentiation makes it harder to recognize the call management buttons fast.

3. Not all applications can be set as shortcuts on the One-Touch keys

The E52 has two one-touch keys: one labeled with Calendar and one labeled with Messages, both of which can be set as shortcuts to different applications on a short and long press basis, totaling 4 different shortcuts. I normally like to assign one of these to Share Online so I can quickly send my photos through Pixelpipe to any of my destinations, but I couldn’t do it on the E52. I also couldn’t set it to open the pre-installed applications such as Can’t Stop Solitaires, Block Cascade, or Psiloc World Traveler. The choice of the applications that can or can’t be set to these One-Touch keys seems random, unexpected and pointless, unlike the E71/E66 for example where any application could be set to these shortcuts.

4. Slow Camera key

Of course, the inclusion of a dedicated camera key is a good improvement, but it’s painfully slow. I takes 4 seconds at least between the time you press the camera key and the time it’s ready to take a picture, which is ridiculous, especially that you have to keep the camera key pressed for at least 1-2 seconds of these in order to launch it, otherwise nothing happens.

5. Only 1GB Memory Card

At a time where 8GB microSDHC cards cost less than 15$ in retail, there’s no excuse for including a 1GB microSD card with the E52, no excuse at all, especially when your device can handle maps, music and video. Cheap cheap Nokia!

6. Lack of Macro Mode

The Nokia E52 comes with an EDoF camera that has a very set focus range. The problem is that you can never take a good macro photo. Personally, I use Macro photography for tons of things, like keeping important information or just insect and flower photos. Lately, for example, I’ve been looking for a new car and using Macro to take pictures of the car VIN numbers in order to check them on the CarFax site later. The E52 handles this, but it requires a very steady hand and a good angle of lighting in order to get the VIN number readable.

What do you think of this list of things I hate about the Nokia E52? Is any of them a deal breaker for you, or are you willing to compromise on this, given that the positive aspects outweigh the negative?

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