Dear Nokia,

Thanks for producing the wonderful E90 phone. But please send your software people back into the labs and right a few wrongs? The items that particularly annoy me are:

1. The navigation software.
   You were joking, right? Can we have the real stuff now? And can we also stop with the silly subscription service? When the phone costs over six hundred pounds, don’t you think you’ve made enough money? I can BUY a (good) stand-alone sat-nav system with windscreen mounts & everything for what you want to charge me to use this rubbish for a year. Either fix it so it works, or let me use it for free. You don’t even have to do all the work here – partner with TomTom or whoever, give them what they need to release an E90 version.
2. The office software.
   See above. Same bad joke.
3. Networking
   While it is awesome that I can do Bluetooth, Wifi, IR and GSM-based comms all on the same handset, you’ve made it extraordinarily painful to use. EVERY TIME I want to do something I have to tell it that it can go online, and then tell it HOW to go online. PLEASE give me the option to tell it “my home and office Wifi connections are ALWAYS authorised, you NEVER need ask my permission. If you can see one of those, just use the bloody thing and stop wasting my time.”
4. The Camera
   Another one of those jokes. It SO fiddly to use and SO unresponsive it really is quite silly. Fix it or remove it, I could live without the added weight and complexity, and if I want a half-decent photo I’ll need a proper camera anyway ‘coz this one takes terrible pictures.

5. Other useless bits
   Maybe some people still use IrDA, but I haven’t heard about them for a few years now. If you absolutely insist on adding it, at least give it enough guts to be useful! Honestly, what’s the point in something that only works at a range of six inches? Is that supposed to be easier than plugging in?
   And an FM radio? Whose bright idea was that?

So right now I’m carrying around what is admittedly a huge phone, but with a several hardware modules that are almost as useful as soggy tissue paper, due to the lack of a bit of software effort. Come on, Nokia, you can do better than that!

And a couple of hardware niggles too:

1. Where’s the cradle?
   After making me sell a kidney to get my hands on this phone, you could have at least given me a desk cradle. Fiddly little plug-in chargers and USB cables PAH! Who has the time?
2. Where’s the car kit?
   Professional people want a good solid vehicle mount that holds the phone firmly, charges it, routes calls through the car’s sound system if possible (while muting the radio, of course), and connects it to an external antenna.
3. Why change the charger plug?
   This has got to be the most idiotic one of all. D’oh!

Fix or replace the software, for starters. And let me know so I can download an update. Then chuck out all the useless hardware and make it smaller, cheaper, lighter and faster. Now put a sync/charge dock in the box and a proper car kit in the shops. And you’ll have an absolute winner. I’d probably have to sell my other kidney. Or maybe a child.

Should you wish to discuss all or any of these ideas with me, please feel free to leave a comment with your contact details. (yeah, like THAT’s gonna happen)
Sincerely,

pembi.net

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Basically, I’m impressed. The Symbian S60 OS is very polished and a pleasure to use. Almost everything is intuitive – very different to the Windows Mobile implementation on my old HP iPAQ hw6915.

As a phone… it’s a Nokia. Running Symbian. Everything just works. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform really is dire in comparison. This was one of the problems with the HP – as awesome as it may be, it was just not very good at being a phone. In particular, it would never let me answer a call from my boss. Although there were times when that wasn’t such a bad thing ;o)

As a camera, the only word to describe it is… pathetic. i’ve seen other reviewers rave about image quality, but I’ve found it so fiddly to use that I’ve scarcely taken any pictures at all. This isn’t really a problem to me, I’ve never been a phone-happy-snapper, but I thought it worth a mention. Unforgivable, really – it is so bad that there’s no point in having it, and it adds size, weight and complexity. I’d be just as happy without it.

As a navigator… I can’t begin to explain how disappointed I am. Simply awful. And you have to pay a subscription fee to use it! Utter rubbish. If it was free, I might make occasional use of it. As it is, I doubt I’ll ever open the application again. It DOES work… but really badly. The routes are laughable, and any useful information it might manage to show in the screen is so small you can’t read it under the best of conditions – let alone when you’re driving. Nokia, have a look at the TomTom software, will you? They put you to shame. Will have to buy a third-party one, I think. A pity TomTom doesn’t work here, it was great on my iPAQ. In fact I still use the iPAQ in the car as my navigator, while the E90 sits on my belt, pouting.

As a PDA… it’s OK. Contacts, Calender, Notes and Tasks are kept in sync with Outlook with a minimum of fuss. The combination of a wide screen and a full QWERTY keyboard make it very user-friendly. However, the bundled portable QuickOffice stuff is once again sub-standard, and needs to be paid for before any useful features are available. What are you thinking, Nokia?

As a portable Internet device… it’s awesome. Most websites render beautifully, and it is fast and responsive – FAR quicker than either the iPAQ or my old Nokia 9500. A choice of Bluetooth, GPRS/EDGE/3G/3.5G and WiFi connectivity helps. Email functionality is great. I’ve set up an additional “mobile” address on my mailserver, with a forward from my main address for certain important people. Now whenever I’m away from my desk, I stay in touch. It’s a little clunky, as HTML mails are displayed as text with HTML attachments, but I can live with this. Full IMAP4 functionality makes things really useful. There’s even a native GMail client available, although I’ve found it simpler to just add my Gmail account as an IMAP service – the Nokia built-in mail client is a good one.

A little more intelligence would have been welcome, particularly when it comes to connectivity. It would be really nice to set the device up so that it ALWAYS connects to a pre-registered WiFi point when trying to go online, before asking me if it’s allowed to. I do like the fact that it asks for permission, but I’d love to be able to tell it “you may always connect to this WiFi point without bothering to ask”.

As a portable media player… it’s not an iPod, but that’s the only bad thing I can say about it. A little more thought could have gone into the player controls, but you get used to them easily enough. Music quality through the supplied earphones is good  but not fantastic. Good enough for commuting, I guess. You’ll need an adaptor if you want to add your own cans. Video playback is phenomenal. The 800×352 widescreen internal 4″ display is just about perfect for watching movies on the train, and the on-board graphics processor has more than enough grunt to handle the task. In fact, the quality is so good you’ll soon forget you’re looking at a handheld device.

Still got lots of testing to do… to be truly useful it needs to have VNC Client capabilities, and I haven’t found a good one of those yet. There must be one out there – the Symbian S60 platform is well established.

Battery life is good. About a week with light use, several days of proper work, maybe one day if you’re constantly using WiFi and BlueTooth. And here’s where Nokia lost a point – the charger. WHY OH WHY did you change the connector? I’ve got a house full of old Nokia chargers (and old Nokia phones), and this is the first one that is different. To add insult to injury, the supplied USB data cable doesn’t charge the phone! If you’re going to use a USB port (and I’m glad you did), use the power lines on that cable! What a stupid thing to omit.

In conclusion:

The good: screen, keyboard, great phone, great media, excellent online functionality.
The bad: sat-nav, QuickOffice, power connectivity.
The ugly: camera.

A flawed genius? Maybe. But more genius than flawed, I think. Nokia have done a fantastic job of putting together an awesome hardware package. Unfortunately, the brilliant project leader was apparently replaced with a dimwit when they handed it over to the software team. Trying to claw more cash out of your customers by supplying sub-standard software you expect us to pay for is not a good idea, Nokia. You’ll just drive people elsewhere. And next time around they might not have a Nokia on the shopping list.

Overall I’m happy. I’ll fill in the holes with third-party and/or open-source software.

If I had the power to make some demands of Nokia:

1. Make the camera usable! The sensor is up to the challenge, this is just a software issue. Or just get rid of it, there really is no call for it on a phone clearly aimed at the serious business user. I’ll happily trade that hardware for better software (keep reading).
2. Incorporate a good 3rd-party sat-nav package, there are enough of them out there. Most customers are going to end up buying one anyway, if you license it in bulk the price will be sensible. Don’t waste software effort fixing your own (horrible) solution – just use one of the specialists.
3. Give us proper portable office stuff, not this “the first taste is free” crap.
4. Put the standard old Nokia power socket on the bottom. Honestly, what are you playing at?

and finally: you know this is a serious business phone for serious business users. Where’s the car-kit? Just the head-unit will do, I’ve already got the rest of the kit, which worked on my 5110, 6110, 6250, 7110 and 6310i with no changes at all. Would it be so hard to supply? Don’t fob me off with mutterings about “generic” or “universal” or “Bluetooth” – business users are not interested. We want a solid mount we can snap the phone into as we get in the car, that charges it, has full hands-free functionality, mutes the radio as needed and connects to a beefy external antenna. And by the way (just to make sure I get my rant across), all the aforementioned phones used the same flaming charger!