Last week I obtained a Nokia N80 for 'free' when I renewed my contract. Been testing it in place of my HTC Wizard. I have never been a fan of Series 60 interface and this new 3rd edition seems to be confirming it. The GUI - while flashy - is shit slow, counter productive and un-intuitive compared to PalmOS or Windows Mobile. But then again it is me. Many Series 60 fans has found it hard to migrate to touchscreen based GUI and vice versa.
A couple of negative stuff about this mobile. Despite having a 3Mp CMOS sensor, it still produce shit images. This is due to the smaller sensor size, lack of good lens and many other factors compared to dedicated digital compact. People who purchase a mobile to replace their digital or film cameras are just risking their memories.
There is still no touch screen interface on Series 60. Applications for Series 60 are still difficult to find through its archaic UI. It also uses miniSD - an absolute tosh of a format with no real identity (although to be fair the HTC Wizard also uses miniSD). It is hardly smaller than the SD format and is a giant compared to microSD (the probably successor to SD).
Now a couple of good stuff. The display is amazing. At a resolution of on a tiny screen, pictures looks absolute fantastic on it. I mean fucking brilliant. It is the HD display of all mobile phones. Too bad the N80 is so slow it probably wouldn't be able to play high bitrate videos.
The mobile itself is tiny - when compared to the Wizard. Built quality is awesome and when I checked, sure enough I found out that the unit I was holding was made in Finland. When it comes to assembling quality products nothing beats European factories.
I was finally able to download the new PC Suite from their website because the version that came in the CD would not connect to my PC, and therefore unable to sync with MS Outlook. The new version works well and isn't any better or worse than their counterparts (ActiveSync for WM and HotSync for PalmOS).
I returned the mobile a few days later and got the HTC Universe (O2 XDA Exec) instead. This thing is huge! But it works great. Speedier than the HTC Wizard, this piece of machine runs just about any application you can throw at it, including the resource hog TomTom 6. I am tempted to sell the HTC Wizard and keep this as my primary mobile - if it weren't for its size. Still I will give it a go for the next few days and see. WiFi signal isn't as strong as the Wizard, but the VGA screen makes up for a pleasent web browsing experience via Access NetFront (still the best portable browser hands down).
Technorati tags: Nokia Nokia N80 Series 60
4 comments:
o2 xda exec's cool. n80 is not cool.
Actually it is the other way round. N80 = cool, using the XDA Exec in public = not cool.
But I prefer function over cool anyday.
I have an N80 and it is an excellent handset with the exception of the software which is absolutely shocking. Perhaps it could be compared with running Windoze XP on a Pentium 2 - it can do it, but it's not very happy about it.
The main downsides are that it is slower than I am at using it, it crashes and restarts if it thinks you have given it a funny look and the battery life is something else altogether (36 hours if left on standby!). My 1997 Nokia 1610 could do at least 4 days....
Physically it's well built, although mine has been back once for repair already. It is feature packed and one has to remember that in order for development to occur, someone has to be the guinea pig.
Hi Tony!
Series 60, I am sure is a good GUI - if I would bother to unlearn my previous GUI expectations. Too bad I am not bothered. :)
Post a Comment