My Nokia X6 experience
I have always been a Nokia fan. Growing up in India, pretty much guaranteed the love affair with Nokia devices and the OS running on it. The ease of use, the intuitiveness with its devices was the attracting factor. Also most Nokia phones had a good build quality with a Candy bar shape, which was a huge plus on my list. I used a Nokia E61 and E62 for a long period of time when it supported Blackberry service on those phones.
I have used a lot of Phones for a long period of time. My first phone was Motorola. I have used Samsung and Motorola phones, Blackberry and my last phone was an iPhone 3G.
Nokia came with its touch screen phones in 2007-2008 period. I had never seen a Nokia touch screen device and played with its S60 OS till I purchased my Nokia X6.
So here is my take on Nokia X6 and its OS.
Hardware --
1. The first time I opened the box, I saw a shiny plastic device with a glass on it. That was my Nokia X6! Nokia's are generally well build phones. E61 and E62 were built perfectly to take abuse from my daughter's rough handling of the phone. I am certain, that this device won't be in her hands for more than a day! The phone feels a little "cheap" compared to other Nokia's or its competitors. The back cover is a bit of a disappointment. It's a plastic mold which makes me a lot nervous. The whole purpose of having a separate slot for SIM card to be accessed from the side of the device is lost as there is no mechanism to remove the SIM without removing the back cover and the battery!!
I am sure, most people rarely remove the SIM from the phone, but there is a segment of people who carry multiple phones and changes their SIM card on a regular basis.
2. The lock feels perfect to me. There were complaints that the lock is too rigid or too tight to use. I kind of like it.
3. The volume button and the dedicated camera button is placed perfectly
4. The top is where I have issues with. There is a MicroUSB port, Charging port (Man...We are in 2010, we should get rid of those proprietary charging ports!!), a 3.5 mm audio port and a Power button. What was disappointing is that Nokia X6 does not charge of USB port. Having all 4 things just feels cramped when you have all the wires plugged to it.
5. Now the Screen. Beautiful! In sunlight...Meh....It was bad. I couldnt see a whole lot
The capacitive touch on a Symbian OS was smooth. It registered perfectly. I have not used resistive screen Nokia devices. But I did have an experience with Samsung touch screen resistive screen, and it feels world apart. Agreed, that the hand-writing recognition doesn't work that well, but there is a market which really doesn’t care about hand-written technology on a 3.2 inch cell phone. The capacitive touch on Nokia X6 is on par with an iPhone. Where it lags might be on the software front. More on that later.
6. I would have preferred Nokia to provide a lens cover.
7. The sound quality of Music and the call quality were nothing to complain about. All Nokia Standard...which is excellent!
8. it’s a fingerprint magnet!
Software --
Now this being my first Nokia S60 UI and coming from iPhone, I am lost at words. It won't be fair to compare it to an iPhone as iPhone has a good head start with its touch implementation, but even the execution left a lot to be desired. My friend AND I talk about how Nokia devices are good and sturdy and the ease of use they provide to the users. Apple had limited functionality in its OS (like no SMS/MMS, Cut Copy and Paste in its first version of phone, no multi-tasking and so on...but what it gets out of the door, is probably the best user experience you can get on a cell phone without firmware throws to fix issues and what not) I would like to get it straight. S60 UI has a long way to go to compete against the Android or the iPhone OS or even Win 7 OS. I have seen demos of Symbian ^3 and ^4 and it looks promising, but to be implemented in a phone is different thing. It would be interesting to see how Nokia manages that challenges.
UI --
One word. Inconsistent. Be it in Browser or a note or a contact list or you name it, it's very ordinary. The biggest gripe is that the OS never uses the entire screen space in landscape mode. It has a huge block that is modal and stays there. Why not hide that block and have some small icons to bring it back if the users want it? Also the actual entry for replying a mail is so small that it is not user friendly at all. The portrait mode opens up a T9 keyboard which I never get it. The switch to QWERTY mode is slow and worst it sits on top of the page that you were viewing. To give you an example, you are in a mail application and replying to an email, the portrait keyboard displays ¼ the page, when you switch to landscape keyboard, you do not see anything. So if I want to comment on an email related to points, I have no choice but to go back and forth. That is frustrating coming from iPhone platform. They keyboard is not friendly at all as multi-touch is not an option on X6. That makes typing fast a little problematic. The keyboard is not smart too. For example, if I type a number on the screen and press enter, the keyboard should automatically understand that I am typing my next word and should switch to character mode. It doesn’t. The accelerometer is slow and that might be because of the lack of horse-power, but still quite a noticeable lag. ".com" key is missing all-together. It is so convenient to have that key. It saves 2 clicks and that makes a lot of difference in making it a friendly UI.
Browser rendering pages is good, but again typing on it is a little pain. A classic example is when you are filling in user id and password, you have to tab in the user field rather than the keyboard showing up. If a website has a security code (characters& numbers) that it ask you to fill, the keyboard opens up in T9 keyboard and you can still see the image, but the moment you make it to qwerty, the keyboard takes the screen and you no longer see the page to see what it was. So you have to remember the security code and then type it.
It is good to get the flash on the website. That is a plus, but not a deal breaker for me.
I can go on and on about UI with numerous examples where they can really change things to make it a better product.
After looking at Symbian^3, I would be disappointed if they do not support X6 as a device to upgrade.
Camera --
The pictures taken are nice, but not extra-ordinary. I was happy with the night shots and day shots too. I have not tried the video yet, but the camera UI works for me. It's a good point and shoot camera on a phone. If I want serious pictures, I have my Nikon DSLR for that and that won't change with this phone
Music Player --
UI is simple and satisfies my needs
FM Radio –
It was quick to pick the stations. I can only listen to the Radio with headphones on! That is fine if they want the users to use headphones while listening to the radio, but then allow the users to save a setting to select the default action as headphone and never prompt each time you insert a headphone jack to the 3.5 mm port.
Nokia Messaging/Email and OVI
The best experience I had with a Nokia device. Very nicely done.
Apps on Ovi --
It has a long way to go for OVI to compete with App Store or Android Marketplace. The search is still an issue on OVI. I wish there were many apps on it. Skype app is free on iPhone and Android, not sure why it costs 9.99$ on OVI for the premium version? Am I missing something?
Till that time, there are better apps outside OVI and I would continue to use that!
Quick office and PDF should have been free on the phone. Unfortunately, it's not.
Joikuspot is awesome!!!
Games –
Playing a game on iPhone 3G was a pleasure. Playing the same game on iPhone 3GS was awesome. With Nokia device, I don’t want to play a game. Not bad, but I feel like I am in 90s playing on a Nintendo game boy!
Conclusion --
Nokia has come a long way and is still a dominant force in mobile industry with 40% market share. When they sell a device like X6 for 389$, I would expect them to get it right out of the gate.
Would I recommend Nokia X6 device? I am not sure at this point. I am sure more time with the device spent would change few things here, but in general Nokia has to consider small changes in making its UI user friendly. They sell the phone as smart phones, and then make it smart. iPhone is successful not only because of their marketing and fan boys, but they truly have created a user friendly device so that a layman can pick a device and use it without much issues. The device feels nice in hand and also looks good, but the UI is not intuitive. Right now, It is saving me 15$/month on data plan compared to iPhone. That means a lot to me. Tethering was possible even on jail-broken iPhone, so that leaves that as a benefit. If you can deal with the inconsistent, old and un-intuitive UI with headaches, then it does a pretty decent job and saves you money!
They really need to change the UI from bottom-up just like Windows 7 did or Palm Pre did. I understand Maemo or now Meego is an alternative, but the heart and core of Nokia is Symbian and unless they radically change their OS, it is looking at a long road ahead.
To me personally, Nokia is losing mind share and that is more destructive than losing market share.
