A good Memopad application... or the lack thereof!
One thing that never ceases to surprise me is the weakness of the S60 built-in PIM applications. In another post I'll post my thoughts about the calendar application and possible replacements, but today I'm going to focus on the Notes application and its alternatives.
To make things clear and honest, I'm a long time PalmOS user and recent Symbian switcher, so I'm quite used to PalmOS's Memopad application, which although basic was already a very useful program on its own.
I've used Memopad (or more recently a more powerful variant, PsMemo) for years, and have more than two hundred notes in the database, which I would have loved to transfer easily to the E61, but wasn't able to. Blame it on me for not using Outlook on my PC, the result is that all the notes are still in my Palm Desktop, waiting for me.
The good news is that had I been able to get them on the E61, it wouldn't have helped much, as the built-in Notes application feature no such things as categories, a lookup field, or even a search function. All in all, I'd have been stuck with plenty of data and no way to access to the needed bits of informations I carry...
So here I am with my problem, thinking "Oh, well, surely I'm not the first PalmOS->Symbian switcher and this issue must have been solved by a clever programer with the adjunction of a third party applicaton. I open my browser and head for the usual places (my-symbian, all-about-symbian, handango or symbiangear, to name only the first ones) only to discover that the choice of alternative Notes replacement applications is quite limited: none at all! :-(
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting dozens of apps, but I stupidly thought that maybe two or three such applications would fill this niche market. A cruel disillusion it was. :-(
So, is there simply no Notes replacement at all for Symbian devices, or is it just a question of waiting for the developers to port their existing apps to S60 3rd Edition?
Fortunately, there are a couple of existing note-taking applications for Symbian S60, it's just that they're not yet compatible with its 3rd edition. For instance, SafeNote for S60 seems a perfect candidate for my need: categories, sorting, even a password & encryption to protect sensitive data. But then, it's only available for S60 1st and 2nd Edition... :-(
All in all, I found that although the number of existing Symbian third party applications in general is far from small, the proportion of titles that have been portes to S60 3rd Edition, more than 6 months after the availability of the first devices featuring that new version of the OS, is really disappointing. Don't get me wrong, there's a number of quality applications like Handy Weather which have been ported and make a perfect and efficient use of our devices, but this is a tiny number when compared to existing PalmOS or Windows Mobile applications. Sure, there's also a number of Java "applets" out there that are compatible with, say, my E61, but they never make use of features like the full Qwerty keyboard or the horizontal (landscape) screen layout, and their ergonomy fits a normal phone better than a smartphone.
So here I am, stuck with my data stored on my laptop but unreachable on my Smartphone, just because there's no decent Memopad or Notes application...
Come on Nokia, is it really that much difficult to include a decent Notes application in the ROM?
posted by Patrick Robbe at 21:20
9 Comments:
Okay, quite a good observation about the third party personal productivity applications of nokia but if you dig deeper into the NS60 series then you will find out that there are plenty of what you are looking for.
Hi mobilephoneextreme,
Hmm... Plenty of Calendar or Notes replacements for S60 3rd Edition? Would you have a few sugestions or examples of such apps? I'm not dealing with S60 in general, and indeed as you mentioned there are plenty of third party productivity apps, but as far as 3rd Edition is concerned, I don't think that there's much choice at the moment... :(
Good day, for Nokia S60 third edition this is just my suggestion how about going for aqua calendar s60 v2.0 3rd edition for your calendar replacement and sbsh papyrus v 1.2 to manage your busy life I hope this would help a little, regards.
Hello,
I'm writing another post to deal with my Calendar experience on the E61, so for now I'll simply post a link to a message I've posted on My-Symbian about the two Calendar programs you suggest:
http://my-symbian.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=247758#247758
In a nutshell, both are still rather buggy (or were so last time I checked, only a couple of days/weeks ago), an if AquaCalendar indeed lets me in a way organize the monthly view as I need, the display is too "cluttered" by the color gradient which you can't seem to get rid of. As for Papyrus, it doesn't let you select a color depending on the entries present in a given day, which is something I have become dependant on a couple of years ago...
Thanks anyway for your suggestion!
SBSH papyrus is having an option for choosing your preferred color based on category in as much as it has an available icons that can be assigned to your daily tasks you've entered in your smartphone. Anyway Sir, I fully understood that you are a new switcher to symbian smartphone and you are a Palm user for a period of time. It's a personal preference, and let us give nokia their chance in the PDA category furthermore E61 is a new kid on the block. In a boxing match, E61 still an amateurish in comparison with PALM. My best regards.
Hi mobilephoneextreme!
It looks like you're the only one to read this humble blog, so thank you! :-)
As for your last comment:
"SBSH papyrus is having an option for choosing your preferred color based on category in as much as it has an available icons that can be assigned to your daily tasks you've entered in your smartphone."
That's true, but then the color is only used in the left bar that highlights the associated entry in the daily/weekly view, and for the color of the text in those views. Nothing so far allowing you to change the color of the background for the whole day, as I explain in my latest post on this blog...
I fully understood that you are a new switcher to symbian smartphone and you are a Palm user for a period of time.Well spotted! :o) Although more than 6 months after having purchased this phone, I wouldn't call myself a "new switcher" anymore. And my first PDA was a Psion 3a, the ancestor of today's Symbian Smartphone, and which Calendar or Memo applications were far superior to those built-in in the 3rd Edition of S60.
I do realize that Nokia and/or Symbian want to maintain some compatibility between their devices, which is a hindrance to innovation and prevents them from adding too many features to existing apps, but even the (now almost extinct) PalmOS guys were smart enough to improve a bit the PIM apps a few years ago.
Anyway, S60 3rd Edition breaks binary compatibility with the existing stuff, so who would care if the PIM apps weren't strictly compatible because of improvements?
It's a personal preference, and let us give nokia their chance in the PDA category furthermore E61 is a new kid on the block.Yeah, it's 100% a personal preference, but then this happens to be a personal blog as well, I don't pretend to have the ultimate truth about all this!
You're comments are welcomed even though our opinions does differ... :-)
Now as far as the E61 goes, my impression (and I've owned enough phones, PDA or smartphones to know a bit what I'm talking about) is that it is not polished enough to be 100% succesful. I mean, the interface clearly doesn't yet make full use of the landscape screen or the full keyboard. The same can be said about the third party apps, of course.
Where I beg to differ with your opinion is that Nokia seems to have no intention of "fixing" those issues for current E61 owners. If you look at what's happening, S60 3rd Edition FP1 has already been released, with the associated SDK for the developers, with new and exciting things like the new browser, or Flash Lite 2.0 or -insert your favorite improvement here- but they have also made it clear that this would only benefit people purchasing the new devices (N93 or N95, I think), as there will be no software upgrade for existing users... :-(
Indeed, their latest (the only one, in fact) ROM/Firmware upgrade fixes a couple of things but breaks some others (see my post about firmware upgrade) like one-handed use of the numerical keys. And the worst is that they don't seem eager to fix that issue with another Firmware upgrade!
OK, I'm a spoiled kid when it comes to PDAs or smartphones, I like to change for a newer, better devices almost on a yearly schedule, but I'm far from being alone in that case, and after 6 months using the E61, one can legitimely assume that at least half of the lifespan of the E61 has already elapsed...
That means that chances are higher by the day that a newer device will be released on which developers will concentrate and that the E61 will probably not get proper software support in the long run.
It's really too bad because on the hardware side it's one of the most brilliant devices I've ever owned!
Thanks for posting your thoughts here!
I've been using Palm since its first model.
Lately I want to carry only one device; so I choose to go for Symbian even I know at that time (and now ;-() that it lacks a good Memo function. This is one of a few remaining functions on Symbian 3rd which would fulfill my wish (the other one is Isilo). I wish both SafeNote and iSilo will release Symbian 3rd edition very soon.
Apart from that I'm very happy with my E50, especially the Mobireader where I can carry my e-books and lots of RSS feeds for offline reading.
You're right on the button. When I bought my first S60 phone 6630, 3 years ago, I couldn't believe it didn't have a global search function; what's the point of having dozens of notes if you can't find the info you need, or find that contact by searching on a word you know added in the note field?
The fact that Nokia still haven't added a global search function to S60 means, in my book, that it can't be called a true "smartphone".
Euroclie, seems Psion is concentrating on industrial and mobile computers maybe they left the PDA business and interest to Nokia and Sony Ericsson.
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