Wot, No NSeries?

It’s been quite a while since I last posted here. With Lent, Easter and some other things going on, my attention has been taken away from the mobile phone market and from the latest happenings in the NSeries range.

Also, for the first time in a very long time, I actually currently do not own a Nokia NSeries handset. Nothing much has changed, I still consider the NSeries range to be the finest set of handsets produced by any handset manufacturer, combining great looking handsets with such a wide variety of media options, I just find myself in a ‘transition’ moment.

Very recently, I was using the Nokia N95 8GB. This is a top class handset, it looks good, is easy to use with the excellent S60 UI and is packed full of all the latest handset features and options. The N95 8GB and N95 Classic deserve their place at the top of the tree. But in the back of my mind, I had a nagging doubt, and it is nothing to do with functionality or usability, it is a simple design issue. I do not like slide phones. My favoured design choice is standard candybar; that is a main reason why the N73 always rated as my all-time favourite handset, and why my all-time favourite now is the N82. It matches the N95 pair feature for feature, but the design is just right. Having recently spent a good three months using the N82, it is easily my favourite handset, I have finally made up my mind, no more chasing the ultimate phone, the N82 does it for me. If I were to look at something to improve the phone, it would be maybe making the phone a bit thinner, and a bit lighter.

So, I found myself without phone, after passing the N95 8GB on. I needed something that will fulfil my current usage requirements, fast data transfer, preferably smartphone, even more preferably S60. I wanted something slim, with a good battery. A decent keypad would help, as would expandable memory (although it is hard to buy a phone these days that doesn’t offer that option)

I looked around the market, and settled on a straight out choice between the Nokia 6120 and the Nokia E51. And the E51 took it for me, for one (personally) important reason. It is something I have bleated on about for ages now. The Active Standby plugins. Yup, that old chestnut, again. Ever since I used the E65 a year or so ago, and found this feature when browsing through the menu, I have loved it. I adore the fact that I can simply remove the calendar from the main screen! I use the calendar to remind me what I have to do, so I don’t double commit to things. I don’t need reminders two weeks in advance that an upcoming appointment is pending, I also don’t need to be showing to anyone who looks at the screen of my phone what my upcoming appointments are. I’m sure this could be done better, by setting appointments to private or public, and setting the notification required, but as it stands the calendar on S60 phones can’t handle it. So, next best option is to remove it from the screen altogether. With the plugins option on ESeries phones that is so simple, so straight forward, and so effective! I also like the way ESeries phones handle message notification and the different way messages can be shown. This whole side of S60 operability is so much better on ESeries phones than on NSeries, and I still fail to be convinced why this should be. Maybe one day I will be offered an adequate explanation, but I don’t hold much hope.

Aside from this, the Nokia E51 also covers the basic requirements I have from my phone. Size? Check. Battery? Check. Data transfer? Check. Here, also, the E51 outscores the 6120 with the option of WiFi as well as HSDPA.

The keypad layout on the E51 is also well thought out and well designed. The 12 main keys are very well sized, and offer great feedback, texting and emailing and the four shortcut keys are a great bonus. As well as having the 6 on-screen shortcuts, two soft key shortcuts you also have four shortcut keys around the centre D-Pad. The first has a house on it, the one under it has a calendar icon, the third has a contacts icon and the one underneath that has a messaging envelope icon.

The house key takes you to the menu. A long press of the key takes you to any open applications; if you have installed Handy Taskman (pretty much a must have app, in my mind) then the long press will bring that up. A quick press on the calendar key brings up the main calendar, which opens up in month view, a long press takes you to the add new meeting screen. A quick press of the contact key takes you to the address book, a long press takes you to the add new contact page. With the messaging icon, I have set mine to a quick press taking you to the main messaging menu; a long press takes me to the write new email screen. All of the keys can be changed, so if you want something else to be associated with those keys you can set it in the main settings menu

Other shortcuts from the keypad include holding down # to enter silent profile, and holding down 0 to launch the web browser which is standard on most Nokia’s. A useful shortcut addition is a long press of the * key activates Bluetooth. Perfect. The pencil key is no longer part of the keypad layout, but the functionality of the pencil key is now dealt with by the # key. This is ok, but it makes use of Screenshot programs very hard, in fact nigh on impossible. I found this on the N82, now the pencil (edit) key is part of the # key; I found the only setting that worked was to use the C key for screenshots. Which is fine until you forget the app is still open, go to use the C key for its natural purpose and you end up taking a screenshot! Screenshot is the only app I can get to work with the new setup, using the C key (on the E51 the C key is the backspace key, with what looks similar to a pencil design icon on it just to confuse things a little more)

How do others deal with this issue? I like to take screenshots for use on the blog, and also it can be fun to take screenshots of something you see on the web and email them or MMS them to a friend, and losing the pencil key makes it more hassle than it needs to be.

Apart from that little gripe, I’m loving the E51, it is a quality handset, well built and put together, with a solid feature set and easy to use. I expect it will easily cover my mobile needs until I either get a black N82, or maybe I will hold on for the next generation NSeries phones that are going to be released in the coming months.