Nokia E61: so close to perfection, so disappointing its shortcomings.

It's been 6 months since I purchased my E61, and although it's a marvelous piece of hardware, I've tried to objectively enumerates the pros and cons of this smartphone in particular, and Symbian S60 OS in general.

After many years spent using various PalmOS devices, switching to another OS was a tough decision to take, but the PalmOS hardware was becoming increasingly technically outclassed (i.e. dull and boring) when compared to the competiton. I had been using WiFi at home for a while, and despite the relative rarity of free WiFi hotspots in Europe or France, I couldn't picture myself using a non-WiFi enabled device, so I sold my Treo 600, and a couple of devices and almost two years later, here I am with my E61, happy to use WiFi yet overall frustrated by this Symbian experience.

Things started on the bright side, after enduring the (few) joys and (numerous) pains of four months with a Windows Mobile 5.0 Qtek 9100, I was really impressed and satisfied by the E61: small and pocketable form-factor, a full Qwerty (Azerty in my particular case) keyboard which can be used singlehandly, WiFi and bluetooth built-in, a robust OS resulting in a reliable phone, this was more than enough to satisfy me while I was discovering this new jewel and getting to know the OS.

Sure, the E61 doesn't include a digicam, but then I'm very often carrying a real digital camera which produces far better pictures than any smartphone or PDA could possibly shoot.

The E61 features a miniSD slot? Well, yeah, but every couple of months you get bigger and cheaper cards anyway, so having to use MiniSD instead of a SD isn't a big issue for me.

Wait... There's no "Nokia PC Suite" for Mac (did I mention that I'm a recent PC -> Mac switcher? )? Yes, but with minor tweaking, you get a free iSync plugin that lets you synchronize your E61 with iCal and the Mac address book application, just what I need.

Let's see what I did truly come to love on the E61:

1) Bluetooth. Nothing fancy here, but the key is that "it just works". No need to hack your way, no need to reboot constantly, it just works smoothly, from using a Bluetooth headset to a Bluetooth GPS, or browsing the memory card content from my Mac using a Bluetooth connection, or Bluetooth synchronization, it's seamless, painless.

2) The phone part of the device is robust, reliable, well integrated. The SMS app is a bit simplish to my taste, but at least, you have the "Receive reports" setting, unlike the PalmOS Treo range... I just wish the log function could be more detailed and cover a longer period of time, but all in all it's the E61 strong point (logically enough, Nokia being also a phone manufaturer).

3) The battery life, while not exceptional, fits my needs, I can stay two full days away from a wall outlet & DC adapter. (Note: this battery life tends to decrease over time, which is to be expected, and now I prefer a nightly charge because at the end of the second day I'm always fearing to empty the battery...)

4) The form-factor. Small, thin, pocketable, light... no protruding antenna yet a good phone reception (good enough for my needs, anyway).

So what could be wrong with the E61 and/or Symbian S60 3rd Edition? Unfortunately, much more details than I expected, spoiling the pleasure of using the E61 to the point that I've ordered a new smartphone to replace it (more on this below). None of these "details", taken individually, is enough to change the appreciation of a good device like the E61, but they add up and the result doesn't fit _my_ taste (clearly, others will have different opinions, which is great. Having the choice is what makes all this interesting anyway!). Here we go, in no particular order:

1) Screen. Abandonning the touchscreen seemed a drastic change when I purchased the E61, but to be fair I have to admit that after a few weeks of use, the navigation is designed well enough to make the lack of touchscreen almost a non-issue. I write "almost" because at times it would still make sense to tap somewhere on the screen instead of navigating through endless sub-menus, but generally the navigation is simple enough, if a bit slower. What makes me frown, though, is the fact that the 320x240 resolution of the E61 is somewhat non-standard (when compared to other Symbian devices, at least), so not every program makes full use of the screen real estate. While this could be accepted from third party software, it's a pain to see that some of the built-in apps were not even re-designed for this particular screen dimension. In the address book, for instance, most of the data fits in the left half of the screen when viewing a contact detail, so the right half is basically unused and you have to scroll endlessly up and down to see everything. Also, the choice is rather limited when it comes to choosing the font size for optimal display. Overall, it's nothing dramatic, but if you add this to the rest...

2) Keyboard. While I like the "full" AZERTY keyboard on the E61, I have to reluctantly admit that it's not the best I've used. The keys are not always easy to press. The good side of this fact is that it almost never makes you press adjacent keys mistakenly while typing. The bad side is that sometimes, if you're typing a bit fast, you'll be missing some characters as the key wasn't depressed strongly enough. Otherwise, most characters commonly used are either directly accessible with a key press (with the appropriate use of the shift or "blue arrow" key when needed). Some characters require you to press the "Chr" key to display the popup menu, then navigate to the appropriate cell in the table to get the character you're looking for. I like this idea, because it means that there are many more characters that can be input than the simple key/Shift-Key/Ctrl-Key/etc. combinations. But what I really can't understand is the simple lack of some characters in the popup table. I can see why some characters like the "copyright" character were omitted from the table, because they are not necessarily used very frequently, but others like the degree sign (°) are much more commonly used, and unfortunately can't be input at all on the E61. :-(
If you add to this the fact that the non-numerical keys are rarely used (except when inputing text in a text field), either in the launcher (keyboards shortcuts to launch apps would have been a nice touch, either built-in r using a third party launcher), or in various apps, but if you take the calculator application, for instance, you have to clumsily navigate with the joystick to select the appropriate operator (plus, minus...) where you could have used the appropriate keys on the keyboard directly! And the latest Firmware update broke the keyboard support (now you have to press the blue arrow key _all the time_ when inputing numbers, where with the original Firmware, you could just press the numerical key and get the expected result. What this means is that in most programs like the Opera browser, the keyboard shortcuts used to work with a single hand usage, and now you have to use both hands to press the blue arrow key before pressing the desired numerical shortcut key. The same is true for Calcium, a wonderfully designed calculator replacement letting you compute without having to navigate your way through menus and buttons. The direction pad wasn't used as such, it was mostly used as 5 additional keys on top of the numerical ones letting you access directly to the operators. Now with the new firmware, it doesn't work so well anymore since you have to press the blue arrow key all the time, which means saying bye bye to single hand usage.

3) Connectors. Come on, I like small form factors, but the tiny DC adapter connector is not compatible with the standard Nokia cables, which means purchasing a new one, more difficult to find (for instance, I had to browse eBay sellers to find a compatible USB charging cable. Sure, the one I got was cheap (the bundled AC adapter died quickly, though, and I'm lucky it didn't fry my E61!) but I sometimes have to tweak and turn the plug in the connector to get it to charge my device. I'd rather have an original Nokia USB charging cable, except that it doesn't exist...
And what about the "pop" port for the audio kit? I can understand that Nokia wants to protect its market, but you have to either purchase an expensive, hard to find (here in Paris at least) and rather bulky adapter to use your favorite 3.5mm headset, or you have to purchase a not-too-good headset equipped with a pop port connector. What a pity! Likewise, a mini-USB sync connector would be sooo handy to avoid carrying the bulky Nokia sync cable with you... but no, when you purchase a Nokia smartphone, you get Nokia proprietary connectors. Again, nothing that I couldn't live with, but added to the list of annoying things...

4) WiFi. I loooooove having WiFi on my Smartphone, without having to carry an extra SDIO card that I'll loose on the first occasion. Hey, I purchased the E61 specifically because it offered WiFi as a built-in feature! So what's wrong? Before the Firmware upgrade, my WiFi connection wouldn't consistently remain usable for a long time. Whenever I tried to connect using my WiFi access point at home, I would be able to load the first page when browsing, but then the connection would "freeze" and I'd have to disconnect/reconnect the WiFi connection on the E61 to keep on surfing.
Now that I have performed the Firmware upgrade, though, the E61 do not exhibit this strange behavior anymore, and it's a pleasure to connect to the access point and update my favorite podcasts. The downside to this is that since I upgraded the Firmware, I've (almots) never been able to connect to other hotspots than my own access point in the living room. I've purchased an Airport Express access point which I use routinely with various computers (PC/Mac) or PDA (Sony Clie), but the E61 can't connect to that one (I always get an error about a gateway problem). Likewise, I'm now unable to connect using Orange's WiFi hotspots (same error message), and the WiFi network I have at work isn't reachable as well: I can connect to this one just fine, but a login page should pop-up for me to register, and the E61 doesn't seem to be able to display that page, neither with the Web application nor with Opera Mobile. I don't blame it all on the E61, though, I know that this WiFi thing is kinda complex to setup properly, but all in all the resulting user experience is less than satisfactory. Hmmm... I do live without WiFi and do not miss it that much, but it sort of defeats the purpose of buying a WiFi-enabled smartphone in the first place, doesn't it?

5) PIM. I've written two past articles on Memopad and Calendar applications on the E61. Suffice it to say that the built-in apps are a (bad) joke, and that, unfortunately, the third-party replacements are either not offering the features I need or simply have not yet been ported to S60 3rd Edition. So all in all, my life is less organized at the moment due to software limitations, which is rather annoying.

6) 3rd party applications. There are a couple of very good applications available out there, but it's to be noted that developers are, well, not eager to port their applications to S60 3rd Edition in general...
Don't get me wrong, I believe that S60 3rd Edition as such isn't a bad platform, even if I find the general security stuff really overkill for a smartphone platform (after all, the number of PalmOS viruses is very, very limited and after years of virtually installing every new application I could get my hand on, I have never actually been confronted with a PalmOS virus myself, yet PalmOS isn't a very secure platform by Symbian standards. All in all, my feeling is that with Symbian stupid and costly signing program, number of developers are not following the move to the latest version of the OS. Of course, the fact that 3rd edition also breaks binary compatibility doesn't help at all, but the net result is appalling.



I've just done a quick test, browsing Handango to find out the number of programs offered for various OS. OK, this is absolutely not a scientific test at all, but it gives some very approximative but interesting results:

Number of applications per manufacturer:
Nokia: 5192 apps
Palm: 10789 apps
HP: 11001 apps

So OS version set appart, despite the fact that Symbian OS has been around for a while now, and that in sheer number of unit sold Nokia outclass every other player in the field, there is approximately half as much apps available for Symbian devices than for PalmOS or WM/PPC devices.

Number of applications per device:
Nokia N70: 2351 apps
Nokia E61: 575 apps
Palm Treo 650: 4529 apps
HP iPaq hw6900: 1653 apps

So, for an "old" version of the OS (N70 runs S60 2nd Edition), you've got 2351 apps, and for a 3rd Edition device like the E61, only 575 apps. That's roughly 25% only, and the N70 has been available for a year, while the E61 has only been available for 6 months. Frankly, I'd like to believe that in 6 months the E61 will have more than 2000 apps available, but I doubt this will be the case. The iPaq 69xx has been released only a couple of months ago, and has already far more apps available than the E61. As for the Palm Treo 650, it's been available for, what, two years, and it's no surprise that almost twice as many applications are available for it than for, say, the N70...

Things do not look that bright, IMHO, for S60 3rd Edition devices in general and for the E61 in particular. If your favorite applications are already available, then no doubt they'll be refined, polished and upgraded as time goes by, but if (as I do) you're waiting for some very specific applications to pop-up on that platform, it seems safe not to hold your breath while you wait!

So here I am, with a nice E61 but no adequate software on it. Yes, the hardware is really impressive, and despite the minor complaints about the screen or keyboard, I think that it could have been an outrageous success amongst people who, like me, need a full keyboard on their smartphone. But the best hardware without appropriate software is deemed to fail, and I've lost patience waiting for the software issue to be fixed. I do sincerely hope, for people who are more patient than I am, that a new Firmware will soon be released that will at last fix what Nokia broke about the keyboard & numerical keys in the current Firmware upgrade, that alone would probably make every E61 owner happy. I sincerely hope also that more and more developers will port existing apps to S60 3rd Edition, but a recent mail exchange on SplashData's mailing list shows, for instance, that they have no plan at all to port (killer) applications like SplashMoney to Symbian, and that any improvement work /bug fix on the S60 3rd Edition port of SplashID is not scheduled in any foreseeable future. Their current port - many thanks to them for doing this in the first place - is so severely limited in comparison to other OSes versions that's its almost a (sad) joke! Yet SplashData is one of the "big & serious" PDA software editor out there, and they have written a few killer apps that don't belong to "the long tail" and are certainly profitable, so if developers like this don't see the point in working on S60 3rd Ed, what kind of developers will?

I've ordered a Treo 680, which is expected to be released this month or next month at a reasonable price (hey, it doesn't have WiFi, it's got the same lousy digicam as the 650 - yet this is better than nothing when compared to the E61 ). So I'm actually downgrading, this time, to a low-end smartphone. Why? Because the best features in the world (Wifi) are no use if the software issues (connection problems and/or browser limitations) prevent you from actually using that wireless option to connect to the net. Meanwhile, the PalmOS software platform is well known, has a lot of applications available amongst which the ones I know I can rely on, so even if I'm disgusted at Palm's lack of hardware innovation (come on, no WiFi in 2006? What a bad joke!) I know that I'll actually be able to organize my life with this smartphone, while I've been unable to successfully do that on the E61. I'll end up with a bulkier, inferior hardware, and old, outdated OS, but the overall user experience is probably going to be more satisfactory thanks to the myriad of clever third party software that the PalmOS software architecture allows. In my particular case, given my priorities, this is the best solution I see for now. Should things evolve in the future, though, I'd be more than ready to give an E68 a try in 2007 or 2008 if the software issues are fixed, but sadly that seems unlikely to happen, and I'm preparing myself to spend quite some time with my future 680, for I know that not resisting the lures of technology & yearly device upgrade would certainly mean compromising my life-organization efficiency, after spending so much time and energy trying to recover it!