A couple of days ago, I was calling a friend with my Nokia E61, and just in the middle of the phone call, my phone died on me...
Well, it didn't really die, of course, it's just that I had been on the phone for about an hour and a half, after having used my E61 throughout the day (or was it two days? Can't remember exactly, and it doesn't really matter that much anyway), so the battery was simply depleted.
So, what's the big deal, you ask? Well, I've had a couple of other phones, smart or not, before the E61, and they just wouldn't die silently like the E61 does.
I mean, it was night during my call, and I noticed a couple of times the screen and/or keyboard illuminating during the phone call, but with the phone stuck to the ear, it was just a brief flicker half perceived with lateral vision, and it didn't really bother me. After all, I've in the past faced situations where my ear would press on the tactile screen and wake the phone from the screensaver during a call, so it could have been me just pressing the phone too firmly and pressing a key or two...
As it happens, I strongly suspect that it was simply the "low battery" dialog box flashing by unnoticed.
This leads me to the first question to either Nokia's engineers or to Nokia smartphones power-users: how do I enable some kind of audio warning for the low battery situation? And how do I, assuming it's possible, chose which sound file to associate with the warning, like others ringtones?
And since the question above is labeled the first one, there's another one coming: how exactly am I supposed to know how much juice remains in the battery? The tiny icon in the top-right corner of the screen is nice, sure, but it isn't particularly big and easy to read, nor does it give you any hint about how long you can use your phone before heading to the nearest wall outlet with your favorite AC adapter in one hand, the E61 in the other, and a desperate look in your eyes!
Even on my good old t39m Ericsson phone, I could get an estimate of the remaining standy time and talk time. And on my Treo 600 it was trivial to get a simple percentage value showing the remaining battery life.
But on the Nokia E61, try as I might, no way to find any battery-related information anywhere but on that tiny icon...
Hint for you gifted skin/themes authors out there: a battery icon that clearly stands out from the background would be nice. Maybe with red bars at the bottom (and preferably not shorter than at the top: despite the fact that it looks good, the bars are then waaaay too difficult to read when your battery gets nearly empty!), then orange, yellow and green as you go up...
