Comments

• 18 December 2011, Coldstreams.com by Edward Mitchell » Blog Archive » What if smartphones are mostly for personal pleasure and not business? writes: [...] Nokia Launching Lumia 710 on T-Mobile USA, Won’t Kickstart WP7 Sales (phoneboy.com) [...]
• 19 December 2011, Ed writes: I agree completely with so your last sentence.
• 20 December 2011, Appisaurus writes: Well, the Nokia Lumia 710 offers great connectivity capabilities, including WiFi and Bluetooth, as well as great turn-by-turn sat nav with spoken directions with Nokia Drive which is not really bad. Well see how this will turn out.

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This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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With the rise of the iPhone and the Blackberry, it’s hard to imagine hitting the road without a phone that can’t download music, serve up maps or send and receive e-mail. But sometimes a body just needs to make a few calls from the road. Sometimes a body needs a featureless phone.

Or you can use an older Symbian device like the Nokia E71 and get the best of both worlds–the ability to make calls, long battery life and some Smartphone niceties like maps and social networking.

Some of the annoyances of Symbian phones of this vintage, namely the incessant prompts to connect, are actually a benefit. When I’m traveling and using one of my roaming SIMs (e.g. Truphone, Maxroam), I can certainly use data, but even at their lower rates, I don’t want to use very much data. Just enough to, say, update my Twitter feed.

Using Opera Mini on a late-model Symbian device like the Nokia E71, which compresses web pages by up to 90% by routing requests through Opera’s servers, you can do that and more without breaking the bank.

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This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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This will be another long post, so go get your coffee and settle in for a nice read. If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to read my previous post on Symbian^3 and the Nokia E7 as a lot of that also applies here as well.

The Hardware

There are two basic form factors of phones I’ve really liked over the years from Nokia: The Communicator-style, which the Nokia E7 is most like, and the Blackberry-style device, which Nokia began doing with the Nokia E61 and, in my opinion, perfected with the Nokia E71. The Nokia E6 is the next evolution in that line and, at least in terms of the external hardware, they nailed it.

The first part: the keyboard. I really liked typing on the E71 keyboard and find it similarly easy to thumb type on the E6. The phone also has a four-way directional pad with a center button to select items, the standard send and end buttons, and the home/calendar/mail/contacts buttons.

You might have noticed that I didn’t mention the standard left and right select buttons. That’s because they don’t exist on this device: the 640×480 screen (which is physically smaller but has more pixels than the Nokia E7 screen) is now touch-enabled. While multitouch is supported in the places you’d expect, the physically small screen makes it difficult to perform these operations. It also makes the screen challenging to read if your eyesight is not the best.

The phone also has a MicroUSB (which can be used for charging and USB On-The-Go), a MicroSD card slot, a 3.5mm headset jack, volume control, a voice command activation button, the screen lock lever, a place to plug in your standard Nokia 2mm power charger, and a 1500 mAh removable battery. As for the radios, like the E7, the E6 is GSM-based and also has pentaband 3G, WiFi and Bluetooth.

Symbian Anna

Having spent a week with the Nokia E7 helped gear me up for the Nokia E6 with its updated Symbian Anna OS. The icons certainly look different. The problems I noticed with lag with Symbian^3 on the E7 seem to be largely non-existant on the E6. Given the processor on the E6 and E7 is the same, it has to be as a result of using Symbian Anna. Being able to use both hardware keys and touch in most places was largely intuitive. I did notice that a couple of particularly problematic applications on the E7, particularly the WordPress app, work beautifully on the E6.

Since the Nokia E6 has an always-exposed hardware keyboard, and thus does not need to provide an on-screen one, I don’t know if there will be improvements in the on-screen keyboard. I hope it implements one similar to the one that is implemented in Gravity, which itself is similar to the one that exists on iOS and Android.

The most noticeably different thing on Symbian Anna: The web browser. I had forgotten about this, although I had read various reviews of the Nokia E6 and it was most certainly mentioned. The first clue was that the browser had a URL bar up at the top rather than at the bottom. You can type in something in the URL bar and request that it be “searched” for rather than go to a particular URL. It also seems to do a better job at rendering pages, though I will admit I didn’t test that many pages. It should be noted this new browser will actually be backported to a number of older Nokia devices, including the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic I still have.

Something I missed when I talked about Symbian^3 but also exists on Symbian Anna: you can change the default applications for browsing the web, playing music, playing videos, and viewing images. For those who like the non-default choices for the web browser (especially), this is a nice bonus.

Something else I missed: apparently both Symbian^3 and Symbian Anna both detect WiFi hotspots and automatically bring up the home page. I missed this because, at least in my testing in Canada with the Nokia E7, this didn’t happen, but it did happen at my local Starbucks. Nice touch!

Since the SIM slot on the Nokia E6 is not externally accessible while the phone is on, I won’t know if they addressed the issue I raised about changing the SIM card while the phone is on in Symbian^3 is addressed in Symbian Anna or not (yet).

Home Screen and Widgets

Symbian Anna has a customizable home screen, like Symbian^3 and Symbian^1. Unlike on the E7, where each of the three screens have 6 customizable rectangular widgets, the Nokia E6 has three customizable widgets on each of its four screens with a non-customizable section along the left that shows up on all the screens. This section includes the clock, active profile, and notifications (e.g. for missed called, text messages).

The selection of widgets available on Symbian Anna is not significantly different than it is on Symbian^3. Because it doesn’t make sense to hold the device in landscape mode (except to take photos), there is no landscape mode for the widgets, either.

The Camera and Photos

The Nokia E6 includes an 8MP camera and a dual LED flash. While there is no dedicated camera button, the camera can be snapped with the select button in the middle of the 4-way navigation button. Unfortunately, the camera is not any better than the E7 in terms of taking macro shots.

One other thing I noticed on the Nokia E6 with Symbian Anna was that, by default, the camera application now geotags photos. This is also present in the E7 in Symbian^3, but it was disabled by default. Fortunately, the way I found out about this was the camera application told me this was the default when I first loaded the application. The dialog box provided a link to the settings page where this could be disabled, which of course I did right away. Personally, I’d prefer the feature be opt-in rather than opt-out (with a dialog telling you to turn it on if you’d like), but that’s just a personal preference.

Nokia Accounts, Ovi Store

My major complaints with the Ovi Store, and, well, any of the apps that require a Nokia account is that they seem to randomly “forget” I’ve authenticated with them. This happened on Symbian^3 and on Symbian Anna. This is either poorly thought out user experience or some sort of bug.

A Symbian phone should be associated with a Nokia account in much the same way that iOS and Android phones are associated with an iTunes and Google account respectively. The phone should ask for this information once. All applications that require this information should be able to use it with a one-time “ask for permission” (e.g. “can app X use your Nokia account information”).

The one exception to this rule: when doing a chargeable action (e.g. buying something from the Ovi Store). In this case, asking for the password for confirmation makes sense.

Other Included Applications

While, of course, you can buy applications via Ovi Store or get them via third parties, the Nokia E6 includes a number of applications “out of the box.”

If you’ve used a number of Nokia devices over the years, one included application you’ve likely used is the one that allows you to easily copy data between Nokia phones. It’s called Phone Switch and it’s been around since S60 3rd Edition. It uses Bluetooth to send the data between the phones, which works for things like text messages and call logs, but not so well for images and sounds. That said, it’s better than anything I’ve seen for any other platform.

Mapping and Navigation has always been a strong point on higher-end Nokia phones. The ability to download maps and use the mapping features when the phone is effectively offline is vital, especially when the phone is used in places where data is either unavailable or prohibitively expensive. When I first looked at the Nokia E7, I didn’t spend too much time using the mapping. I spent a little more time with the Nokia E6. I was able to easily download maps for offline use–directly from the handset. I could easily see the difference in size downloading the vector-based maps versus the bitmapped based solutions I’ve seen in the past with OpenStreetMap-based applications.

Some other out-of-the-box applications include QuickOffice (the ability to work with Microsoft Office documents), Adobe Reader LE (to read the ubiquitous PDF files) and JoikuSpot (which turns your Nokia phone into a WiFi hotspot). QuickOffice and Adobe Reader LE are “lighter” or even somewhat older versions of their pay cousins, and you are given a special price to “upgrade” to the more recent versions.

The included JoikuSpot is the full version, though it does have one significant limitation: it cannot operate in infrastructure mode, but only in ad-hoc mode. What this means is that’s it’s not a true access point, so not only will some devices (notably Nintendo’s various game consoles) simply not connect, you cannot use WPA as an encryption method. It also has impact on battery life, though Joiku has spent three years optimizing the battery usage as much as possible.

Music and Podcasts

There are no substantial changes from Symbian^3 in this regard. That said, I’m going to re-iterate my complaint about how Nokia even requires music libraries to be refreshed. They don’t make it easy to allow for apps like Podcatcher to automatically update the Music Library, either. Per this thread, applications signed with the Ovi Store certificate or a self-signed one do not allow for this functionality.

The “Phone” Features

While I myself don’t make a ton of calls, I seem to have issues with this phone when making calls from home. I have had a lot of dropped calls while using the Nokia E6–moreso than with my other phones. The phone seems to spend most of its time on 3.5G, which at my house, varies in signal widely. I tend to blame AT&T for this rather than the phone, but one cannot be 100% certain. I’ll have to do some comparisons with the Nokia E7 at some point, since when I was using the E7, I was in Canada and purposefully not making a lot of calls due to the cost of doing so.

Syncing With The Mac

I didn’t have any problems syncing the Nokia E7 with my Mac. The E6, on the other hand, was not recognized by Nokia Multimedia Transfer nor was there an iSync plugin when I initially set up the device. Since then, an iSync plugin for the E6 came out.

MicroUSB Charging

I have to say, I love the idea of devices supporting MicroUSB charging. Considering that I am a regular traveler, I hate taking extra chargers and cables if I don’t have to. Every bit of space helps.

Unfortunately, there is a serious issue in both Symbian^3 and Symbian Anna. While I can’t consistently reproduce this, I have noticed that USB charging doesn’t always work on the Nokia E6 and the Nokia E7 when the device is powered on and I plug in something other than the supplied mains charger. The end result: even though the device is plugged in and is recognized by the computer (i.e. I can use Ovi Suite or Nokia Multimedia Transfer), the device isn’t charging.

If I turn off the phone and plug the same MicroUSB cable in from the same computer, it will charge. If I power up the phone again and plug in the cable, it may (or may not) also start charging. Clearly there’s some sort of software issue here, or maybe there is some issue with my systems. Nokia Care seems to think whatever computer I am hooked up to isn’t putting out enough juice. It’s hard to say, but it is annoying that I have to double check to ensure my device is actually charging.

Did Nokia “Fix” Symbian in Anna?

Clearly Nokia did “fix” Symbian. There’s new bugfixes tweaks and whatnot. In terms of keeping the Symbian faithful faithful, I think it adds some nice features that bring Symbian near the iPhone or Android in terms of usability and functionality, though Apple is still the king of this. Its likely not enough to win new converts to Symbian, though, as Apple and Google continue to iterate on their respective platforms.

That said, I don’t think Symbian is as broken as everyone thinks it is. While usability is arguably better in iOS and Android and a wider variety of applications are available, at the end of the day, I do not need most of those applications on a regular basis. In fact, there are only two “third party” applications I use on a regular basis: Gravity and Podcatcher. I occasionally use Skype, JoikuSpot, QuickOffice, Adobe Reader, and Internet Radio (an audio streaming app), but only occasionally. There are a couple of missing apps that I require only occasionally (namely Evernote, TripIt, textPlus, Boingo, and any sort of application for Plurk). That can be mitigated somewhat by carrying multiple devices, which I do anyway.

The biggest issue isn’t with Symbian, it’s Nokia itself. Having worked for Nokia and seen some of their concepts, I think their vision for mobility is spot-on. Unfortunately, the execution of that vision is problematic, with many high-profile stumbles with flagship products.

Nokia also doesn’t seem to react to changes in the overall market in a timely manner. It took Nokia at least two years to introduce a credible alternative to the Motorola Razr, which came out in July of 2004. Likewise, when Apple introduced the iPhone in June of 2007, It took two years for Nokia to come out with a touch-based phone that, while a nice phone in its own right (the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic), was an inferior experience to the iPhone.

Had Nokia shipped Symbian Anna in 2009 (or even by this time last year), I think their fortunes would be very different. Instead of talking about how Nokia is going to launch Windows Phone 7 devices, people would be talking about how Nokia is going to evolve Symbian and MeeGo. Nokia seems to be following the market rather than leading it.

To be fair, one thing Nokia has always been good at–better than anyone else, in fact–is commoditizing high-end smartphone-like features and pushing them downmarket in lower-end phones. This has happened with cameras, music players, web browsers, even mapping! They can design features that work in environments where data is either not available or simply too expensive. Considering the low end of the market is where the volume is, and not everyone can afford high-end smartphones, Nokia has a real advantage here over their rivals.

The Final Verdict

I really like the Nokia E6 for many reasons, but I have to give the edge to the Nokia E7 for one reason: the screen. A touch interface really only works well on a bigger screen. Even though the E6 has higher resolution (640×480 versus 640×360), the E7 screen is physically bigger and much easier for me to read as well as use the touch interface on. The E7 will be that much better once it receives the update to Symbian Anna in August.

At the moment, I’ve switched back to using a Nokia handset as my primary phone–specifically the Nokia E7. It’s been two years since that’s been the case. That said, it need not be an either-or decision. You can have Symbian, Android, and iOS devices. They don’t necessarily have to be phones.

Comments

• 6 July 2011, The Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna | WOMWorld/Nokia writes: [...] its camera, its features or even if you wanted to know more about its syncing with a mac, you can read the full post and give us your [...]
• 6 July 2011, First impressions of the Nokia E6; my T-Mobile SIM is staying in it most of the time | Nokia Experts writes: [...] The PhoneBoy Blog (Dameon D. Welch-Abernathy) [...]
• 8 July 2011, The iPad 2–What I’ve Been Missing « The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] I got it home, and given my recent experiences with the Nokia E6 and Nokia E7, I began to understand why people really love the iPad. The software is one aspect, of course. Then [...]

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This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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Through some horsetrading, which included giving up my beloved my Nokia E71, I managed to get a brand new Nokia E7. It arrived at my house the day before I was spending 5 days in Canada, as did a Nokia E6 I got from WOMWorld Nokia for review. Since the E7 arrived first, and it’s also running Symbian^3 versus the newer Symbian Anna on the E6, I decided to road test the E7 so I can see the differences between the two later on.

In any case, this is a long review. I spent a week using the Nokia E7 and used it for, well, a lot of things. Including writing this review in QuickOffice. Go grab a coffee and settle in as I deconstruct the Nokia E7.

The Hardware

One thing I generally like about Nokia phones is the hardware. The E7 doesn’t disappoint with a nice, big, bright capacitive touch screen and a hardware keyboard that, when you push correctly on the left hand side of the handset, appears underneath the screen. The screen itself tilts up to a comfortable viewing angle.

The hardware keyboard is a 4 row chicklet-style keyboard but the keys are comfortably spaced and provide solid feedback when pressed. It has arrow keys, a reasonably sized spacebar in the middle of the keyboard, and shift, control, modifier key, and a symbol key that brings up a touchscreen to input characters not otherwise available on the hardware keyboard. My experience so far is that I rarely have to use this symbol keyboard–a testament to the fact Nokia has chosen what is on their keyboards wisely.

The phone also has a physical home button at the bottom, a screen lock/unlock switch on the left, a rocker switch for volume, a dedicated camera button, a SIM tray, 3.5mm headphone jack, a MicroUSB port that can be used both for charging and hooking other USB devices to using something called USB To Go, and an HDMI port. Notably absent is the standard Nokia 2mm charging port, which doesn’t bother me, the lack of any ability to add storage via MicroUSB (the device has 16GB of internal storage), and a non-removable battery.

Inside, the phone has WiFi, Bluetooth, GSM and WCDMA radios. The phone has all five bands where 3G are used worldwide, including both AT&T and T-Mobile in the US! This isn’t unique to the E7: several of Nokia’s high-end phones are pentaband, which increases your potential carrier choices worldwide without having to sacrifice 3G!

Symbian^3

While S60 and Symbian has remained somewhat consistent over the years, every new iteration has brought changes. Trying to figure out how each phone reacts in a given situation requires some experimentation and hunting to try and figure out where the option to adjust a particular behavior has gone. As I said before, the newest Nokia I had used until recently was the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, which runs S60 5th Edition. I haven’t seen a Symbian^1 device up close and personal, so I had at least two generations of changes to cope with on the E7.

The first thing I struggled with was basic application network connectivity. It didn’t take me long to define the various WiFi access points in my house and add them to the Internet “destination” on my device. I did not want the phone using Celluar Data since Truphone charges quite a bit for that. You can configure each access method within a given destination to prompt before use. You can also configure the phone to simply not use Cellular data at all depending on whether you are in your home country or roaming. Flexible, albeit a little clunky to configure.

On the plus side, applications seem to utilize whatever connection is currently connected much more easily than with previous Symbian iterations I’ve used, including the random hotspots I run across in an airport or elsewhere. Unnecessary prompts are minimized, which is a huge plus in terms of usability.

The next struggle I had, strangely enough, was the home button. It works similar to the Symbian key of old–you push it, it brings up the familiar grid of applications, which hasn’t changed too much, aside from the organization and included apps. The phone includes, among other things, Ovi Maps, Quickoffice, an over-the-air software updater, a web browser, and more.

When you hold down the home key, it brings up a visual representation of running applications that you can swipe through, switch to by touching the image of the running app, or kill by touching the X to kill. Very nice improvement.

The problems I had with the home key really weren’t problems with the home key, per se, but using the home key is the first place I noticed this: lag. Lag is defined as a very delayed response to touch screen or hardware key presses. I notice it throughout the OS in both built-in and third party apps. It was especially noticeable and annoying in QuickOffice.

I remember it took about four iterations of the E71 firmware to eliminate this. I’m currently using 14.002 (PR 1.1) and am not sure how many releases have been issued on the E7. I sincerely hope this is something Symbian Anna fixes because, quite frankly, it’s been a continual problem with Nokia’s Symbian handsets over the years and it’s inexcusable.

While the phone has a hardware keyboard, you can also use an on-screen keyboard either in portrait mode (using a T9-style keyboard) or a four-row QWERTY in landscape mode. If I’m going to type in landscape mode, I might as well use the hardware keyboard, but at least it’s an option if that’s how you roll.

A word about the SIM tray: if you change the SIM card with the phone on, the phone will reboot. Given that you are shown a message to that effect, this is clearly by design. C’mon, Nokia, if Apple can figure out how to implement this, surely you can.

Overall, the OS seems to take advantage of touch where it has to. I haven’t run into anything that I thought was a weird choice so far. The phone seems to understand and utilize multitouch, the long touch (e.g. To bring up a menu) and scrolling with your finger works much better than it did with the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. It’s still not quite as refined as iOS or Android in terms of usability but it is a nice step up from S60 5th Edition.

Home Screen and Widgets

Like Android, Symbian^3 provides a customizable home screen. It takes a different approach than Android where the screen is made up of a series of widgets rather than being a mix of applications and application icons. Each of the 3 home screens can have 6 widgets on it. A widget is rectangular and can provide certain kinds of information (e.g. Weather, email inbox) or provide 4 application shortcuts.

The upshot of this: the home screen functions both in portrait and landscape mode. When you rotate your phone, so does the widgets (which neither iOS or Android does). The only niggle: you can’t control the layouts independently of each other. If you get the widgets right in one orientation, they may not be the way you want in the other.

Ovi Store

Nokia does not get enough credit for their application store, as in a few ways, it rivals the App Store for iOS or Android Market. Any app that you’ve purchased or downloaded from the Ovi Store shows up in the My Stuff category and can easily be downloaded again to a new device, assuming the app is compatible with your new device. If the application is not compatible with your device, it won’t be shown either in My Stuff or searchable in Ovi Store. Considering the number of handsets Nokia supports with Ovi Store, this is a very nice touch. It supports both direct credit card and (where available) operator billing.

Unfortunately, Ovi Store is not entirely flawless. Some applications have issues downloading correctly (notably WordPress). I also saw different applications available or not because of my Truphone SIM and being in Canada. Instead of listing prices in USD, it was listening them in EUR. I assume once I am back in the US, it will switch back. It also seems to occasionally “forget” I am logged into Ovi Store (despite marking Remember me on this device). I also noticed some issues displaying long lists of applications in the Ovi Store.

Social Networking

Nokia includes a functional Twitter and Facebook application. I am not sure why it is tied to your Ovi account, but it is. In any case, much of the basic functionality is present. The only real benefit I can see in this client is that you can easily share photos to Twitter and Facebook from both the camera and photos app.

If you’re an advanced user, you will ignore the Nokia Social app and buy a copy of Gravity, if you haven’t already (I have five of them). Gravity supports Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, status.net, and Google Reader. It is the premiere Twitter app on any Smartphone platform and is the major reason I am still willing to use a Symbian-based device, despite its faults–it;s that good. On the E7, Gravity is even better with its built-in browser for links, which seems to work a little better than the browser built into Symbian^3.

The Camera and Photos

The Nokia E7 includes an 8MP camera and a dual LED flash. The camera itself is improved from the Nokia E71 but it lacks any ability to focus. Supposedly there is software that is working to improve the overall picture quality, but close-up macro shots that are in focus are impossible to get. Unfortunately this is something I use my smartphone for a lot (especially for receipts). If you forget to disable the flash on close-up shots, you’ll probably find that the flash has washed out your shot, as you can see in this shot:

For the sake of argument, here are a few other shots I took with the Nokia E7 during my recent travels:

The photo gallery app is nothing to write home about. You can look at all the photos on your phone, see specific photo albums, play a slideshow, edit photos (which launches a separate photo editing app), tag photos and organize them into photo albums. The app also supports the typical pinch to zoom made famous on the iPhone.

Music and Podcasts

Nokia’s Music Player has typically been very functional over its various iterations and includes a software equalizer with various presets. A new feature I hadn’t seen before now is the coverflow-style album browser when the phone is in landscape mode.

I have two major complaints. While the app recognizes podcasts, and has a separate section for them, it provides no on-device means for actually downloading them like the Nokia E71 did. Fortunately there is a free program called Podcatcher that you can acquire for this purpose. Why Nokia didn’t port its existing app to the E7, I don’t know.

My second complaint: the need to refresh the music library after downloading podcasts. I assume this is a problem of the Podcatcher app since the built-in app on the Nokia E71 did not suffer this problem. (Update: it turns out Nokia does provide a way for apps to update the Music Library, but it’s not allowed for apps signed by the Ovi Store certificate or a self-signed certificate per this thread). That said, even when I synced my tracks to the device with Nokia Multimedia Suite on my Mac–one of Nokia’s own apps–I still had to refresh the Music Library. Seriously, Nokia. This should just be automatic.

My third issue (not a serious complaint) with podcasts: no ability to listen at variable speed. This is a feature made famous on the iPhone, available on Android only recently via third party software, makes it easier to consume podcasts faster.

The “Phone” Features

While most of the die-hard smartphone users I know rarely use these features, they exist and for the sake of completeness, should be reviewed.

While I didn’t make a ton of phone calls while I was away, the few calls I did make were very easy to hear and I generally found myself understood. The phone benefits from a second microphone on the back that serves as input for noise cancellation. It also benefits from Nokia knowing where to place an antenna in a phone so any “grip of death” effects are minimized.

The included headphones serve well both as regular audio headphones and have a built-in microphone. The headphones I got were the WH-205s which are in-ear–my favorite kind. They also include larger earpads if your ear canals are larger than mine are.

USB On-The-Go

The phone came with a rather odd USB cable–one that plugs into the MicroUSB port on the phone and has a female USB receptacle to plug in another USB device. What you can do with this is plug in a regular mass storage device (say, a thumb drive) and it appears as another drive letter in the operating system. You can then copy files to/from it (e.g. with File Manager), save documents to it in applications, and, well, anything else you might use a thumb drive for. Reports say that Nokia introduced this feature in the N8, so it’s a relatively recent addition that will be very useful indeed!

Maps

Unlike Google and Apple, whom have to license their map data from third parties, Nokia owns Navteq, which produces high-quality mapping data. Also, unlike iOS and Android, which cannot cache map information for offline use (short of using a third party mapping tools based on OpenStreetMap data), Nokia can cache map data–remember, they own the data outright.

While OpenStreetMap can cache data, it tends to be bitmap-based, which means if you need a map for a large area or even a small one at high resolution, it means downloading a ton of data. Nokia’s maps are now vector based. This means a higher level of detail in the maps with much, much smaller downloads.

The mapping application also supports turn-by-turn navigation, traffic information, checkins with Foursquare, city guides, and much more.

The Final Verdict

As much as I like this phone–I will admit that I still have a Symbian bias–Symbian^3 needs some improvements. The lag problem simply has to be fixed. The camera is not usable in one of the situations where I would use it (i.e. for close-up pictures). While Gravity is, in fact, an excellent application, and there are a number of apps available, a couple of key applications aren’t available: Evernote (which I make heavy use of) and TripIt. There are workarounds for this, of course, but they’re not as good as having native apps.

I’m hoping that Symbian Anna will be a big improvement over Symbian^3. Fortunately, I don’t have to wait until Nokia makes Symbian Anna available to my E7 via an over-the-air update (which will happen soon). I have a Nokia E6 from WOMWorld Nokia to review, which should have Symbian Anna on it. We’ll see if that improves things.

Comments

• 28 June 2011, My take on the E7 and Symbian^3 | WOMWorld/Nokia writes: [...] out all you will ever need to know about the E7 and Symbian^3  in PhoneBoy’s full review [...]
• 2 July 2011, My Take on the Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna « The PhoneBoy Blog writes: [...] | Recent Posts | Pages « My Review of the Hidden Messenger from Timbuk2 | My Take on the Nokia E7 and Symbian^3 [...]
• 6 July 2011, The Nokia E6 and Symbian Anna | WOMWorld/Nokia writes: [...] his last post, PhoneBoy reviewed the Nokia E7. More recently, he reviewed the Nokia E6 and Symbian [...]

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The handsets I am trading for a Nokia E7: a Nokia E71 and a Nokia E61i. The Nokia E71 was by far my favorite Nokia I’ve owned to date, but it is a few years old now, and runs S60 3rd Edition FP1. The E61i, the precursor to the E71, runs S60 3rd Edition (without FP1). As part of the trade I worked out, I had to reconfigure these devices with certain software, etc. This meant going through the devices, of course. Since I was giving away my primary go-to Nokia handset while I travel, I also decided to dust off my Nokia N95 8GB and set it up again with the necessary software.

The main issues I had with all these devices were mostly hardware limitations (CPU speed, RAM, and a non-standard headphone jack on the E71 and E61i), but everything else was mostly manageable. Major functionality worked, though web browsing was sometime difficult due to the RAM/CPU issues. There are apps for the major functionality I need on a mobile handset. Ovi Store, which had major issues back when it first launched, is now rock solid and works nearly as well (or better) as the Android Marketplace and iOS App Store (lack of apps for my handsets notwithstanding).

In any case, I realized just how much I actually liked these handsets. Nokia made–no, makes–good, solid hardware. While there is plenty to complain about in these older versions of Symbian–and believe me, I have–it gets the job done. It occurred to me that with all the handwringing that has occurred about Nokia’s choice to dump Symbian in favor of a partnership with Microsoft and Windows Phone 7, Symbian wasn’t as far back as everyone thought. There are several passages in fellow Nokia alumnus Tomi Ahonen’s recent posting declaring Nokia CEO deluded that reminded me that, from a functionality standpoint, Symbian had a lot of what Android and iOS brought to the table well before either of these operating systems were on the market. The issues, from my point of view, were underpowered hardware and usability.

In any case, I concluded that the supposed “problems” Symbian had, at least from my point of view, were fixable. I even tweeted about it:

The tweets ultimately got picked up by the folks from WOMWorld, and, well, I’ll be getting a Nokia E6 to trial shortly. While the E7 reminds me of the Nokia Communicator-style of devices, albeit with a touch screen, updated hardware, and Symbian^3, the E6 reminds me of my beloved Nokia E71 and it also runs the newest Symbian–Anna. The E7 will supposedly get Symbian Anna “in the coming months” but it will be nice to see the current evolution of Symbian and compare it with iOS and Android.

Comments

• 15 June 2011, Jason Harris writes: Welcome Back :)
• 15 June 2011, Randall "Texrat" Arnold writes: I agree with everything. ;)
• 16 June 2011, Ricky Cadden writes: I go back to my Nokia's periodically - been using the N8 on the weekends for a while now. Coming from Android, there are some serious limitations, but as you mentioned, it really is quite a solid experience, and the hardware can't be beat. Specifically, the camera. In fact, with a baby coming along, I'm seriously considering keeping the N8 charged up and ready for a SIM card - I trust that camera so much more than I do my G2's camera, both for quality and convenience. That being said, I disagree about Symbian. It's a capable OS, but there's no way Nokia could ever have 'fixed' it enough to be competitive in the public's eye. Look at the pathetic-ness of the updates from S60v3 FP1 to S60v5 to S^3. At least a year in between each one, and minimal updates when you compare against iOS, Android, WP, even RIM's platform updates. Nokia just doesn't have the chops to execute a proper platform update.
• 16 June 2011, PhoneBoy writes: Nokia's have always had good cameras, especially the N series devices. The only N series device I found problematic camera-wise was the N93 (but the video camera worked well). I'll have to wait until I see the latest generation of Symbian before I can comment on its current state. That said, Nokia can theoretically fix Symbian. The only reason it couldn't is, well, itself.

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Hi Matt, this is Anna from Nokia PR.

Matt, thanks for your opinion. We’re sorry you have chosen not to review the N8, and it’s ok that you don’t like our products. Millions of other people (and some of your peers at Gizmodo) like our products, but we’re happy to come pick it up from you. There are plenty of other influencers who would appreciate the opportunity to experience the N8.

As you know through various discussions with us, we are committed to the Symbian platform, which is still the world’s most widely used smartphone OS, contrary to your own viewpoint. Our newest Symbian devices are already shipping and we’ve had a record number of preorders for Nokia N8’s. You could’ve bashed the device and we would’ve been ok with it, really. We’ll just send them to people who write a review to help their audience make a decision.

Some companies might be tempted to blacklist you from future reviews, but that’s not our style. However, we have decided to give this N8 away to a lucky consumer – learn how by following @Nokia on Twitter.

Way to make some lemonade out of those lemons, Nokia! Too bad I’m not attending the Engadget event to potentially win the device. That said, you’re always welcome to send me a device for review, Nokia. I promise to give it a fair shake.

Comments

• 20 October 2010, Nokia tylyttää Gizmodoa: ”Otamme testikappaleen takaisin ja annamme sen Engadgetin lukijalle” – Muropaketti – Plaza writes: [...] Yhdysvaltalainen teknologiablogi Gizmodo ilmoitti aiemmin tänään, että se ei aio testata Nokian uutta N8-älypuhelinta lainkaan. Ilmoituksen yhteydessä Gizmodon toimittaja Matt Buchanan haukkui N8:n merkityksettömäksi jo ennen julkaisuaan ja vertasi sitähevosvankkureiden julkaisuun aikakaudella, jolloin Neil Armstrong laskeutui kuuhun.Nokian PR-osasto vastasi välittömästi Gizmodon ilmoitukseen ja pahoitteli aluksi, ettei sivusto päättänyt testata uutuutta ja jakaa mielipidettään laitteesta lukijoilleen. PR-osaston työntekijä Anna jatkoi kuitenkin, että he noutavat mielellään käyttämättä jääneen Gizmodon N8-testikappaleen takaisin ja lahjoittavat sen huomenna kilpailevan Engadget-teknologiablogin lukijoiden tapaamisessa New Yorkissa. Nokia lähetti vastauksen alunperin Gizmodon jutun kommentteihin, mutta se ilmeisesti poistettiin näkyviltä.Kerro kommenteissa, mitä mieltä olet Nokian vastauksesta Gizmodon ilmoitukseen, etteivät he aio edes testata N8:aa?The PhoneBoy Blog, Nokia’s Response to Gizmodo’s ”Why We’re Not Reviewing th... [...]
• 24 October 2010, Anonymous writes: [...] [...]
• 13 November 2010, Jose Ortega writes: Your are not missing anything. I got a device a couple of weeks ago and its plagued with bugs (hangs and reboots). Nokia unreachable and silent!!

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I congratulate you on assuming leadership of one of the great mobile and wireless companies in the world.  Surely, something intrigued you enough to leave the safe mother ship of Microsoft to take on the challenge to ‘re-make’ Nokia.

You certainly have a great base in which to start.  You’re selling over one million cell phones a day. That’s still better than any other mobile handset manufacturer in the world. You’ve got many excellent people – some of the most professional I’ve met in the industry. And, Nokia is one of the most recognized and respected brands in the entire world.

But all is not well with Nokia as you walk in the door. While the volume of cell phone production is very high, it’s clearly not the right mix of models, software and services.  And, while you have been a leader in phone development for many years and were one of the first firms to develop an full-featured multimedia SmartPhone with the N95 in 2006, you have clearly fallen behind in the fast-growing SmartPhone segment, especially in the U.S.  Integrated multimedia SmartPhones are becoming the dominate handset device type in the developed world, and Nokia needs to get back to creating truly great and innovative products.

I appreciate the spirit in which this is offered, but I am mixed on the suggestions. The software does need a rethink, but not just the handset software, but all the software the phone might interact with. They do need a simple iTunes-like experience for all their devices (with less lockin than Apple, of course). Fewer handsets with differentiated software–totally onboard with that.

Moving Nokia to the US? Dumb idea. They are a Finnish company. It would be about as smart as moving Apple’s headquarters to China. Rethinking the hardware design? It’s distinctive and generally very well done.

Nokia needs to work more closely with all the US carriers. They also need to make high-end CDMA handsets, which they have never done in the US.

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As Nokia’s new chief executive, Stephen Elop, takes over this month, he faces a formidable task: to regain the company’s lost ground in the smartphone segment of the global phone market, especially in the United States, while maintaining its worldwide dominance as the largest maker of mobile phones.

His biggest obstacle, according to Mr. Hakkarainen, as well as two other former employees and industry analysts, may well be Nokia’s stifling bureaucratic culture. In interviews, Mr. Hakkarainen and the other former employees depicted an organization so swollen by its early success that it grew complacent, slow and removed from consumer desires. As a result, they said, Nokia lost the lead in several crucial areas by failing to fast-track its designs for touch screens, software applications and 3-D interfaces.

Having worked at Nokia for 10 years, albeit for a part of the company that had nothing to do with mobile phones, I can say that complacent, risk-adverse middle management is largely responsible for the quandary Nokia is in today. It remains to be seen what playbook Stephen Elop is going to operate against, but if he doesn’t address the middle management problem, it will be all for naught.

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While I don’t know for sure, I’m guessing the fact that a pre-production unit fell into the hands of Eldar from Mobile-Review.com who posted a review of the Nokia N8 had something to do with the fact they officially announced it today. But it does bring to mind something that I believe is worth pointing out.

It’s actually not all that uncommon for Nokia to lose a prototype device. Regular readers of the mobile phone gadget blogs will attest to that. When I worked at Nokia, we got fairly regular reminders about letting information out about our pre-release handsets. They often came out shortly after a “flagship” device got prematurely exposed to the outside world.

When an Apple engineer accidentally left an unreleased iPhone device in a Redwood City bar, that was all anyone could talk about for days. Hell, it’s still in the news. Meanwhile, Nokia won’t get a whole lot of press out it. Sure, they’ll get some from a few hardcore Nokia bloggers and it might get a perfunctory mention on the gadget blogs and podcasts, but that’s it. It will cease to be a story in 24 hours.

I realize Nokia sells more phones in a week than Apple sells in a year. I realize Nokia is bigger outside the North American markets. I know many more ways that Nokia is better than Apple. But it goes to show you how the technology press cares more about anything coming out of that secretive little company in Cupertino, CA than they do for the things that come from that company in Finland. Just saying.

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• Nokia warns on profits as it delays much-needed ‘iPhone killer’ (guardian.co.uk)
• Nokia N8 To Be Announced at MWC with Symbian^3 (techie-buzz.com)

Comments

• 28 April 2010, Tom Raftery writes: Nokia used to make half-decent phones - for all I know they probably still do but as long as they continue with Symbian, they are on a long slow decline which is painful to watch. Apple aren't the only ones on the ascendancy. HTC, which has aligned itself with Android, have also become the darlings of the press and seem to have no problems attracting publicity. The common thread - both HTC and Apple have highly functional, extremely desirable, consumer friendly devices. Back in Sept 2007 I told Nokia in a prod dev meeting that what they needed to do was license the iPhone OS. The writing was on the wall even then.
• 28 April 2010, Auch Nokia "verliert" einen N8 Prototypen writes: [...] [...]
• 28 April 2010, PhoneBoy writes: We all know Apple will never license the iPhone OS to anyone :) But clearly Nokia needs a fresh start on the OS. They also need a fresh approach to how they put out phones. They have far too many handsets and far too many variants of those handsets. They need fewer, more clearly differentiated handsets and better software on those handsets that is easier to update.
• 29 April 2010, Vic | Brochures Printing Online writes: I agree, Nokia has a huge army of cellphones models, which is not surprising since they are a mobile phone company to begin with. However, I think this can also be their weakness. They have segmented their users too much that they ended up developing too many models.

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That year seems so long ago. The weeks and months leading up to the eventual close of the deal were some of the more difficult times I’ve been through personally and professionally. The number of unknowns were simply staggering.

One year later, it’s a much different picture. Based on my past experience with Nokia acquisitions of other companies that were integrated into our business unit, I’d say that Check Point did an excellent job. The fact that so many of my former Nokia colleagues are still at Check Point speaks to that.

Personally, it’s been fantastic. The stuff I’m getting to work on now is stuff that I wanted to work on at Nokia, but could not for various reasons. I can’t talk about all of it, of course, but it’s a good balance of customer/internal projects and social media-type activities. Yes, this means I’m posting on CPUG a fair bit as well as continuing to build our Twitter and Facebook presences and working with various parts of the company on how we can better utilize these communication mechanisms. I’m definitely not bored and there’s plenty for me to do

Speaking of which, back to work…

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Comments

• 15 April 2010, Ronen K writes: Very happy to read!

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• Choosing a Smartphone (PPT)
• Choosing a Smartphone (Keynote)

The presentation covers the various things that go into choosing a smartphone, which unfortunately includes a lot of other things than the phones themselves–the operating systems they run, the network operators that sell them, and so on. It is specific to the United States and the major operators (Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile). Smaller operators are not included because they are not available in this area. Prepaid operators aren’t included because, quite frankly, none of them are selling smartphones yet

One of the challenges I had with doing this presentation is that the information relevant to making such a decision changes almost daily. The phones change, either because new ones are introduced, old ones are discontinued, coverage changes, or even available software updates for existing phones. It’s hard enough for someone like me who tracks the industry to sort through it all, much less someone less informed who’s just trying to make an intelligent decision about what they should buy.

The problem is, no matter what you buy today, there’s always going to be something better tomorrow. Thus, whatever you choose to buy, buy the phone for what it can do today, not what you think it might do tomorrow.

Comments

• 19 March 2010, tom writes: not only are the smaller prepaid operators not selling smartphones but several that allow users to bring their own phone have recently starting banning activation of certain models(essentially blackberries, palm and anything with WinMo or android.) this has destroyed the business of a few small shops i know that had built a business almost entirely of activating used high end smartphones on carriers such as pageplus. mostly the customer would get voice and text through the carrier and data over wifi. this it seems is a quite acceptable setup for many. i do believe that it is the underling carriers(such as verizon) that instituted this new ban and not the decision of of the prepaid MVNO's. i do have to say though that i have a bit of a seroius problem with an actual phone model requiring a specific rate plan as opposed too a plan for certain feature. any phone should be allowed activated on any plan just without full functionality.
• 19 March 2010, PhoneBoy writes: All the operators are now requiring data plans for smartphones. Makes sense they would push this requirement down to their wholesalers also. I am not a fan of this policy myself. I wanted to cover the prepaid operators in this preso, but there's actually a lot of them. This preso ran long as it is ;) Also, since was more a Smartphone focused preso and the prepaid operators don't typically sell the smartphones, they weren't a good fit. MetroPCS and Cricket don't offer service in the Seattle area.
• 16 April 2010, Anonymous writes: [...] http://phoneboy.com/3294/choosing-a-smartphone-presentation [...]

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You might find it ironic that Nokia Nseries phones don’t do multimedia well, even though it is something they are designed to do. It is adequate, but small things like the speed of syncing with your computer or keeping track of play counts or ratings make for a less than stellar experience.

Mac integration is another sticking point for me. While Nokia gets kudos for Nokia Multimedia Transfer, which helps a Nokia device tie into the Mac ecosystem of iTunes and iPhoto, not to mention iSync plugins to sync calendar and contacts, there’s no PC Suite type app and no way to update the firmware from a Mac. Not to mention that Macs are not always supported when various Ovi services are launched.

And yet, with my iPhone, there are things it can’t do–multitasking perhaps biggest on the list. I knew going into the iPhone that this was going to be a limitation. I came to terms with that long before I gave up my credit card number and ordered the device, though.

The inability to load apps that Apple hasn’t approved is another issue. People get around this by jailbreaking the device. I am not going to pass judgment on those who decide to go that route. I’ve done it myself, not to install apps, but to unlock the device so I can use it with other (non-AT&T) SIM cards. It can be restored to Steve Jobs approved state easily enough.

While I like the flexibility that a Nokia device offers, I have decided that, for me, a mobile device that is reliable is also important. I have had too many instances where my Nokia’s aren’t reliable–even when sticking to built-in apps! The iPhone gives the right balance of both functionality and stability.

I was listening to MacBreak Weekly some weeks ago. The panel was discussing, among other things, the merits of Android versus iPhone. Andy Ihnatko made an excellent point that stuck with me throughout the day, though it was best summarized by Merlin Mann (also on the show that day): Once you accept how a device is put together, your mind operates completely differently.

Trying to treat an iPhone like a Nokia–or vice versa–is a waste of energy. While even today I am occasionally stimied by the lack of multitasking of the iPhone, I can now generally work with the limitations. The same can be said for the limitations of a Nokia device: I am familiar enough with the platform that I can generally work within the limitations. The mindsets needed to operate both are different, but one is not inherently “better” than the other.

For the functions that I use regularly, the iPhone wins, hands down. For those situations where an iPhone doesn’t make sense, I can always take my SIM card out and put it in a Nokia device.

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Comments

• 5 December 2009, Bob writes: One thing that doesn't get said when discussing "multitasking" on the iPhone, it supports the most important form of multitasking, one can run an app at the same time as making a phone call. What it can't do is run two app at the same time. That makes the limitation less severe that it would be otherwise. This also makes the iPhone more usable than CDMA phones where you can't have voice and data at the same time.
• 5 December 2009, PhoneBoy writes: That kind of multitasking--in a call and running an app--does work nicely. I've used it a few times. It's also nice that the 3G network lets you be on a call and use data at the same time. Unfortunately, the 2G network of AT&T doesn't allow that.

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When you work in a normal office setting, disconnecting from work is relatively easy. You don’t go into work. If you have a work mobile phone, you don’t answer it. Pretty straightforward.

Not so for me. I don’t go into a normal office. I work at home. I don’t have a non-work mobile phone (and haven’t for years). Friends I work with call me. My “work” and “personal” life doesn’t always have a clear delineation. I read both corporate and personal email on my mobile phone. Heck, I even tweet personal and corporate from my mobile phone!

So how do you disconnect from work while still being personally reachable? It’s relatively easy to not use my work laptop to check work email. However, the mobile phone requires a little bit of surgery to temporarily remove “work” from it.

The voice part is pretty simple. When the phone does ring, unless it’s a number I recognize, I let voicemail take care of it. I don’t get a lot of voice calls anyway (I can go days without receiving one), so I’m ok with this filtering method.

Email is slightly trickier. The challenge is that completely disconnecting from the Exchange server means that, when you reconnect, your phone contacts may be out of sync. You’ll end up with a lot of duplicates, creating a whole bunch of extra work.

Fortunately, the iPhone and Nokia’s Mail for Exchange both have ways to selectively remain connected to the Exchange server without requiring you to get email. On the iPhone, go to Setti ngs > Mail, Contacts, Calendar > Your Profile. You’ll get a screen like this:

Obviously, I took the screenshot after I disabled Mail and Calendar–the two largest potential sources of work-related annoyances. However, I’m still syncing contacts so that my contacts are backed up and not out of sync

Nokia offers a similar option in Mail for Exchange, but it requires editing several screens. In the Mail for Exchange app, select Options > Edit Profile. Go to Calendar, Tasks and Email and set the “Synchronize” option to No for each. When you back out, the device will re-sync. Email will be deleted from the device, however your Calendar and Tasks will not and, unless you manually delete them, they will continue to nag you.

One thing I discovered on the current firmware version of the Nokia E71 is that Nokia stupidly removed the “Delete All” option from the Calendar app. This means I have to manually delete all my Calendar appointments. The “Delete Before Date” option that now exists does not seem to work at all for recurring appointments, meaning I have to delete everything by hand. Way to take a step back on usability, there, Nokia!

The last thing I had to do was remove the corporate Twitter account from my various mobile Twitter apps. It’s easy enough to add back in later and I’d rather not accidentally send out a tweet on the corporate Twitter account

And now I can safely say my mobile phones are disconnected from work. I can reconnect it if needed, but I have no desire to right now. I’m on vacation, after all

Comments

• 19 November 2009, luca writes: I think I could never do this...
• 26 November 2009, Elisa writes: > One thing I discovered on the current firmware version of the Nokia E71 is that Nokia stupidly removed the “Delete All” option from the Calendar app the revamped calendar ui in the E72 has a delete > before date option allowing deletion of all entries before the day you rtn from vacation, so all future items thereafter remain intact. it works pretty well - even more granular than delete all.

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After I got my last email from Nokia Care related to my saga of the reformatted phone with an Ovi Store purchase on it,  I got a customer care survey. Having worked in a Nokia support organization, I am familiar with these surveys. I also know that our little part of Nokia (which is now part of Check Point Software Technologies) took those surveys very seriously. So I filled it out to see what would happen.

The general flavor of my answers was pretty simple: the rep was ok, but the answer of “we’re still working on it” was not. I got an email last Friday from a customer care person at Nokia who expressed his deep regrets for how the issue was handled and offered an explanation.

In short, the rep was not trained properly on how to deal with my situation. It should have been an easy matter of reissuing the download. We coordinated a time where an SMS could be sent to my phone so I could download the software–there is apparently a two hour timelimit on the validity of said SMS. I had my SIM card in my Nokia E71 ready to receive the message.

Sure enough, I received an SMS around the appointed time with a direct download to JoikuSpot, which is the app I purchased. I saved a copy of the app prior to the app installing (thanks, X-Plore) so I don’t have to go through this again (hopefully).

The main problem in Ovi Store is that there is no way to redownload stuff you purchased. The rep I was exchanging messages with acknowledged that problem and said it was a high priority to address. I sympathize with his team since they are bearing the brunt of this heinous oversight in the design of the Ovi Store.

One unrelated observation: the Ovi Store seems to do one-click installs of software now. Not sure what magic they are doing, but when I downloaded something new from the Ovi Store, I did not have the usual 4-5 installation popups come up. The app just installed straight from Ovi Store. Nice.

So what did we learn from this experience?

• Nokia can reissue Ovi Store purchases if you reformat your phone if you contact Nokia Care.
• Fill out the customer service survey when the case closes. Nokia listens and acts on these things.
• Be nice to the reps. They are a victim of these bad decisions just like you are and are only trying to help.

Meanwhile, my Nokia E71 now has JoikuSpot once again–ready for when I need it. Meanwhile, my SIM is happily back in my iPhone.

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Thank you for e-mailing the Nokia Care Contact Center. We are glad that you have chosen Nokia E71 as your preferred device.

I apologize for the delay in responding to your e-mail message and greatly appreciate your patience.

With regard to your inquiry about Nokia E71, we would like to let you know that I already escalated your concern to our proper department and they will contact you the soonest time possible.

Dameon, I sincerely regret any inconvenience this may have caused. Nokia appreciates your business and continued support of our products.

If you have any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us again. To ensure proper handling of your case, kindly continue using the current subject line.

Thank you very much for your email. Have a great day!

Kind regards,
<Name Redacted>
E-mail Specialist

It’s really quite simple: I bought an app, I downloaded it, I ended up having to reformat the phone, and now I have no way to get the software I rightfully paid for on the same device I had it before. This should not be a difficult problem to resolve: either give me a license code for said software or give me my money back.

The design of the Ovi Store is terrible for the very users they are trying to attract–the power users who are likely to reformat their phone periodically. Given what I paid for the app and Nokia’s cut of the proceeds, the very fact I have to contact Nokia Care to resolve this issue means Nokia has lost whatever money it made on the deal–and then some.

Seriously, Nokia, why has it taken more than 2 months to resolve this issue? How come I don’t either have a license code for this application or a full refund?

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nokia’s Ovi store mostly unavailable and empty (theregister.co.uk)
• Nokia’s App Store May Have Little Impact in USA (appscout.com)

Comments

• 5 September 2009, stuart henshall writes: Two Months Later, Nokia’s Ovi Store Still Not Delivering | @phoneboy interesting architecture flaw – lousy CSOvi Store continues to have problems and I'm surprised by the customer service response. However, I do keep in mind that the Ovi store isn't compteting in America… it is opening up opportunities in other countries where the iTunes APP store doesn't have the same inro
• 9 September 2009, Nokia Finally Reissues My OviStore Download writes: [...] After I got my last email from Nokia Care related to my saga of the reformatted phone with an Ovi Store purchase on it,  I got a customer care survey. Having worked in a Nokia support organization, I am familiar with these surveys. I also know that our little part of Nokia (which is now part of Check Point Software Technologies) took those surveys very seriously. So I filled it out to see what would happen. [...]

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