Too complicated to use?

I was reading through some mobile related sites the other day, and I came across this article. It's related to the story the other day that Symbian have shipped 100 million smartphones.

A couple of the comments in the story caught my interest. First:

The S60 3rd Edition interface has received tonnes of criticism from veteran Nokia users for being far too complicated to use. It's great that there's new stuff to play with, but not so great that the old stuff, as in making calls and sending texts, has been made more complicated.

Is this really true? Is S60 so hard to use these days? I don't think so. I've been a fan of S60 since the 7650, through the 6600 (what a great phone that was) 7610, and on through to the N70, N80 and N73.

One of the things I liked about S60 from the start was the simple customisation of the menu structure, the flexibilty in creating folders and moving programs from place to place. S60v3 still has this. Setup on S60 phones has always been straight forward and easy, S60v3 is still so. Even more so now with the settings wizard. Is making calls and sending text more complicated on S60v3 than previous versions of S60? I don't see how it is.

The fact is, Nokia's phones are in danger of turning from the iPods of the phone world into the Gizmondos -- from devices dedicated to doing one thing well to jacks-of-all-trades that do too many things poorly.

The NSeries range is aimed at people who want more functionality from their phones. Sure, some features are not as good as they could be. The standby screen on S60 is not as customisable as on a S40 phone. I would dearly love to remove calendar appointments from the main screen and just keep the shortcut icons. And there are a few other areas that S60 can improve. Better PIM features (apparently, the built in calendar covers my needs but feedback on various forums suggest it is not good enough for most) would be one. But jack-of-all-trades, master of none is not a comment I would use to describe S60 phones.

You now have to wait for your 'multimedia computer' to boot up and shut down and once everything is up and running you have to wait while an application loads. Is that what mobile phone users really want?

It was often a criticism against S60 phones, how long they take to start and access the menu when switched on. S60v3 is faster than on previous phones. Start up time on my N73 and N80 is quicker than that on my SE W810i. Accessing the menu is a second or so after start up, afterwards it's as fast as I need it to be. I rarely turn my phone off, so this is a minimal issue for me.

Then there's the issue of battery life. With so many new features the battery simply can't cope anymore. Recharging your phone almost every day has become the norm, which is a far cry from the days when phones like the Nokia 6310 would last you four or five days.

Battery life is a problem on phones like the N80. But then, do a check list between an N80 and a 6310. You can't compare the two. Battery life on my N73 runs at around 3 days. I don't turn my phone off, so that's three total days. Usage is internet, email, Orb or Avvenu, calls, text, occasional Sat Nav use, music player, etc, etc, with the phone powering a large QVGA colour screen. Battery life of six days would be great, but for what I use three days is good.

Last month Crave went to the Symbian smart phone show and we were blown away by the number of applications Symbian-based handsets can support. It was simply overwhelming -- from satellite navigation to instant email access to VoIP. But do phone users really want all these new features?

For those who don't, there is the Nokia 6021. Or 1112. For those who do, we have NSeries.

The perfect balance would be to do both well. Rather than focusing all efforts on making expensive converged devices, it might be a better tactic to make several devices that do one or two things very well, with calling and texting at the heart of the user experience. Nokia phones' ease of use and simplicity made them the iPod of the mobile phone market. But the dream of convergence has made Nokia fly too close to the sun

I think Nokia have this covered. They offer the high end smartphones with various features across the range, with WiFi on some phones, better cameras on others, QWERTY keyboards, etc, they have a good number of mid range phones covered by S40 UI and there is a fair number of low end phones for the 'I only call and text' brigade.

For me, The N73 covers all I need and does it very well. And where it could do better, there is usually a third party application I can use instead.

edit: There is a related discussion to this topic at this post on blogs.S60.com