Nokia Lumia 920 (aka the peak of irrelevance)

I tried a Nokia Lumia 920 this week. Its well built, solid (I could use it as a traditional weapon its so damn heavy), and the unit I played with was a deep red (and came with a luminous yellow inductive charging pad). Quite eye catching.

 

LIke the Blackberry Z10 I played with a while ago, the Windows Phone has some great features. Its super responsive, the graphics are gorgeous, and its quite quick to get going. But, it doesn't take long for the Microsoft-ism's to come shining through. All the built-in apps only integrate with Skydrive; sorry Google Drive and Dropbox users, you're stuck. And Google users, there's no social networking, search, browser, Earth or maps. There's nothing. Unlike the Blackberry, this platform has been around long enough that if those applications were ever going to make it over, they'd have been there by now. The fact that they're not, indicates that they probably won't ever be.

 

And thats sad, because this could have been a great contender.

 

Emphasis on could have been. Adios, Nokia & Microsoft. It was, respectively, a great (Nokia) and fucking goddamn awful (Microsoft) 20 years in the mobile industry; by hitching the two horses together, they'll just drown faster.

Blackberry Bold 9000

In a previous post, I spoke about how I was irritated by my phone device (Nokia E75), and was going to try out a Blackberry Bold 9000.

Well, I tried it. And I have been trying it since mid-December. And, I have to say, I get it. I get the whole Blackberry phenomenon. It does e-mail really, really well. Its simple to use, and has a decent superficial skin. Poke a bit deeper though, and you quickly hit the smartphone equivalent of a DOS prompt; long linear lists of text, with obscure configuration options with no decent help.

I have activated it using my employer's BES server, and thankfully, they haven't gone down the whole "lets lock everything down" route; its relatively untouched and was actually quite a slick process. There are some issues overall though.

• there is no way to switch off e-mail syncing - ever
• the battery lasts about 1.5 days if you're a light phone user, a day if you're a moderate user and not a minute longer
• if you use a BES, you are forced to browse and access the Internet through your corporate's network
• your device experience is only as good as your IT department's competence
• the default "blink red for every e-mail" notification is annoying, and should be disabled

My summary; I've put the equivalent of a pay-as-you-use card into the device, and will continue to use it as a "work" device. It fulfills this role perfectly, and if I ever go overseas, I know I'll use this device a lot because of the unlimited data plan. But as the overall personal/work device, this isn't there yet.

Mobile phone talk

As you might remember, a while ago I bought a Nokia E75.

In summary, its a rubbish device. It irritates me to no end, in spite of re-flashing it to not be a Vodacom-branded device. I updated firmware to 201.12.01, but this promised firmware update that solves all evils still doesn't fundamentally solve the major gripes; bad build quality, lethargic responsiveness and frequent "pauses".

Enough is enough.

So what I've decided to do is to go with the dreaded "two phone" model. I've gotten a Blackberry Bold 9000 to play with, and if I like it, I'll buy the updated 9700. This device will be used as the primary calling and e-mail device; something that Blackberry is apparently excellent at.

But its boring. And I (probably) won't learn anything. So I've also ordered a Motorola Milestone, otherwise known as the Droid in the US market. It looks hot!

• Runs Android
• Made by an old-school phone manufacturer who can't fail
• Has a keyboard
• Has a very cool multimedia docking station
• Is relatively cheap in ZA from Expansys

I know, two phones is dorky. But lets see how it goes. Anything beats my E75.

Nokia E75

So I got a Nokia E75. Great phone, with some awesome features. Except for two things; the battery life sucks, and some of the best features of the phone seem to be poorly implemented or executed.

To elaborate, the high-level feature set that I was interested in was

• A-GPS
• HSDPA / HSUPA
• Not one, but two! keyboards. T9 keyboard, and a slide-out QWERTY
• Symbian Series 60, version 3, feature pack 2 (read latest, great Nokia OS)
• improved messaging support
• tons more

Sounds great, but what doesn't work ?

• the 1-business day battery
• the fact that the built in E-mail client doesn't understand Destinations, Nokia's implementation of access-point bonding (i.e. try WLAN A if its present, otherwise WLAN B if its present, and then as last resort, 3G)
• the fact that the built-in accelerometer doesn't seem to work with the tap-to-silence feature
• the stupid Vodafone firmware on it (which amongst other things disables the built-in Nokia SIP client

So, how to get around these things ?

1. Go read this thread, and download the Internet telephony client
2. Go and download Birdstep SmartConnect, which implements bonding correctly
3. Charge the damn thing daily
4. Change the firmware to make it a generic Nokia phone (haven't figured this one out yet)

I hope a new firmware upgrade comes out soon, because this is currently not that great. But it beats the pants off an iPhone, which, BTW, can't even do any of these things that are badly implemented.

Handy tip: I bought an application which I see as very important to me; Best Profiles auto-switches the phone profile to a silent one when I have a calendar entry, and changes it back when its scheduled to finish. Now that is useful!

Future-proof phones

How do you choose a future-proof smartphone ? There are a literally thousands of choices. You have to choose what you need. For me, critical criteria are;

• The ability to send and receive MMS and participate in video calling (babies do cute shit at random times)


• The ability to send and receive business cards


• A battery life measured in days, not minutes or hours


• The ability to run multiple applications at once


• Activesync support


• WiFi, HSDPA/HSUPA


• Bluetooth tethering


• Use of the phone with one hand (and in a car)


• No beach balls or equivalents to cover up rubbish code

I am not interested in camera support (I have several real cameras), multimedia (I have an iPod and enough storage to run a small country) or the ability to use my phone as a light-sabre and/or spirit level. I don't think these criteria are unique.

This rules out the jesus phone (iPhone) and all Windows-mobile phones (not even going to bother explaining) for me. The iPhone is a target for much of my wrath, because relatively intelligent people turn into blithering, sycophantic dimwits when someone presents them with functional technology that is at least 10 years behind the rest of the industry (remember, this is a device American's love, case in point).

But am I alone in this view ? Apparently, because even Nokia is launching of touch-screen phones, along with everyone else. Think Nokia 5800 & N97, Samsung Omnia, etc. All touch-screen, all featuring innovative design, all copying the iPhone. And the jesus phone itself is addressing most of these issues above. So would I consider an iPhone ?

As long as it had a keyboard or even the pretense of one (think Haptics technology), yes. I could live with all the above failings, because

1. the intuitive nature of the interface is unparalleled
   
2. the application variety and store framework mean supported applications that won't crash the phone
   
3. the user base is strong, vocal and active
   
4. the phone is putting smartphone features in the hands of consumers
   

The iPhone has pioneered a new revolutionary stage in the mobile phone space; it presents a rich, easy-to-develop against platform that means eventually people will buy their device for what it can run, not what it comes with or does out of the box. And that is truly future-proof.