Oh the joys of never being happy with a PDA… As many of you will know I am currently using a Nokia E61 and have been for the past 3 weeks. In that time I have not experienced one crash, I have charged it only three times and it has worked wonderfully for email and web in particular.
The calendar is awful, the in built contacts application is even worse and the time it takes to enter information is prohibitive. I would say that the E61 is not a Smart Phone in it’s current form. Sure there are very few third party applications available at this time for Symbian S60 3rd Edition and I have spent some time looking at what is already available for the E61 Blog and some of it is very good. There is a problem though in that a lot of the good applications fall into the same genres- system tweaks, weather, JAVA apps and games and that’s about your lot. The problem is that a lot of what is already available is not very good at all and when I look further afield at the third party Symbian applications that could potentially be ported to 3rd edition I’m not exactly impressed. There is an awful lot of crap Symbian applications on the market and most of the games are laughable. This opinion is formed from comparing the Symbian third party market to Palm and Windows Mobile software offerings.
Back to the device- it is wonderful at what it does and as a connected mobile voice and email device it can’t be bettered but if you are looking for a variety of uses such as finance management and data collection my advice would be to steer clear of Symbian altogether.
The other day my PC died badly and at this time it is still not fixed. The problem is that it is tax return time and most of the information I need is on that PC. I have data on my Treo 650 and on paper and after a couple of hours the return is just about complete. Even if the PC had worked paper records would still have been prominent in completing this document and it has dawned on me more and more recently that ‘paper works’ and it works well. It may not be as fast as a PC and PDA but since using the E61 paper has figured more and more at work for me and I’m starting to see the benefits.
The Treo 650 can handle finance with ease and with Note Studio is a superb data collector and viewer but it is horribly unstable and unable to cope well with GPRS and web browsing (my experiences with three different models). It is also the easiest PDA to use by far and probably the only one that can be used almost completely one handed. It’s still on my desk but won’t knock the E61 of it’s perch just yet.
On to the main reason for this article- the Treo 750v. You get Windows Mobile with Treo navigation and this on the surface is a near perfect combination. I will definately be trying one soon even if the lack of WiFi, the 240 x 240 screen and the looks are a bit of a turn off. Potentially this could be the perfect device for me.
There will be a minor issue with compatible applications due to the screen pixelage but nothing in comparison to 3rd edition S60. Maybe I am just being impatient waiting for applications to become compatible but I have a nagging feeling that there are not enough Symbian developers out there with the resources to give that true Smart Phone experience to devices like the E61. I love the hardware more than any other device I have used but am concerned that ultimately the software offerings will not lift it from a ‘great connected mobile phone’ to a Smart Phone.
I agree man. The S60 V3 software catalog is complete crap. It looks like by the time they develop any interesting software, the E61 will obsolete.
Comment by Rajesh — September 17, 2006 @ 6:58 am
Give them time. New Screens recently, new resolutions, it has been the same on every platform when new resolutions are introduced not to mention new backends. Palm software was a mess when they increased the screen res. I’m not happy about waiting for software to be upgraded but the new Symbian OS is better, is here to stay and the new screen resolutions of the devices like the E61 will be catered to increasingly in the future. Besides who keeps a phone for more than a year or so now anyway
The E-Series for me is a fantastic approach and I look forward to the successor to the E61 (with full qwerty layout etc..)
I’ve had Psions, Palms, Windows CE adn older symbian devices. The current implementation is hands down the most stable OS I’ve ever used… so much so that I forget how good it actually is. Bottom line.. I don’t want my hardware to crap out on me when I need it most and (so far at least) the E61 is a joy to use for that fact alone. Sure it has faults but for me stability overrides these faults.
So I’m waiting patiently for software developers to get into gear and realise that symbian now has the capacity to foster programs on a par with windows/palm even linux devices.
Just my 2c..
Comment by BB — September 17, 2006 @ 3:34 pm
I have had many converged devices, Treo 270, Treo 600, Treo 650, Benq P50, Nokia E61, iPAQ hw6510, and iPAQ hw6910.
The E61 user interface was too cumbersome for me, and the lack of touchscreen and viable apps made up my mind. I does have a beautiful screen, good keyboard, great stability, and other nice features.
I have settled happily on my iPAQ hw6910. It is by no means perfect (phone app is weak, 240×240 screen is incompatible with many apps, particularly games), but it works best for me and has all the basic features I am after (EDGE, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, QWERTY, touchscreen, WM5).
Comment by Mark — September 17, 2006 @ 4:11 pm
With respect Mark, if WM5 is a feature that you are after, then an E61 couldn’t have been further from your ideal anyway.
Comment by RCopeh — September 17, 2006 @ 7:44 pm
Arrrgghh, I was sooo close to buying an e61 and now you’ve made me start to question the move. I want a converged device, and I want more stability than my &^@*ing LifeDrive. The functions I would use most are: voice, text, calendar/to-do and document creation/editing. I was hoping that with one of the aftermarket calendars (Papyrus when it is released?) I’d be happy with the e61. I can’t bear the thought of a Treo 650 given how often my current Palm crashes, and I don’t know how confident I feel about the 750 either. Oh well.
Comment by bookboy — September 18, 2006 @ 12:28 am
I absolutely agree as well. In fact, that’s exactly what is on my mind after spending a few months with the phone. It’s still a phone - a pretty souped up one, but not up to the level of a smartphone yet. It’s trying hard to be one, Nokia is spinning a lot of marketing (BB killer? Treo killer? Come on…) but it’s not up to par.
Coming from a Palm to Symbian is like changing from a BMW or Mercedez to a cheap Japanese car (not that I have anything against cheap Japanese cars). Both are cars but they are at a different level altogether.
Comment by Bernie — September 18, 2006 @ 1:03 am
[...] Before any of you fanboys start flaming me, remember - I own one as well. It’s a great phone, with features that will make any other feature phone wet its pants, but it’s short of being called a smartphone and I’m not the only one that thinks so too. Don’t believe me, drop by my place and I’ll demo to you what a Treo can do and we’ll just compare if the E61 can do 1/2 as much. [...]
Pingback by Bernie’s Ramblings / The Nokia E61 is not a smartphone — September 18, 2006 @ 1:14 am
[...] Before any of you fanboys start flaming me, remember - I own one as well. It’s a great phone, with features that will make any other feature phone wet its pants, but it’s short of being called a smartphone and I’m not the only one that thinks so too. Don’t believe me, drop by my place and I’ll demo to you what a Treo can do and we’ll just compare if the E61 can do 1/2 as much. [...]
Pingback by Bernie’s Ramblings / The Nokia E61 is not a smartphone — September 18, 2006 @ 1:14 am
Good luck with Palm, eh, WM5, eh, Palm OS, eh Linux, eh, Treo 750, or is it 650? Man, it’s way too confusing. With all respect due, Symbian may not be as clever as the ever changing Treo, but it’s solid.
Comment by ovi — September 18, 2006 @ 1:15 am
its just a matter of deciding what are your real needs and knowing the stuff you are buying… if you absolutely need a particular application, say for a job, then by all means go for that particular gadget, however know what you want as well… do you need a phone 1st or a PPC 1st??? i will set my example: i am in the construction field, i needed a device that i can use for taking notes, and be able to open AutoCAD files… at 1st, you can say the best would be a Win PPC coz of the AutoCAD, but then i found i can convert all my autocad dwgs to a pdf, and since i have used Win PPC before and so is palm, i just dont want to deal with all those soft and hard reset things associated with these devices anymore, so i opted for symbian… the E61 is new, so i gave it a try and so far it does what is required of it and i needed a device with a strong phone functionality before anything else… sure it also does a reset, but once in 4 months of use is something unheard of in palm/ppc circle… just my 2c
Comment by friedbrains — September 18, 2006 @ 3:42 am
It is all very confusing now though for the new user. I agree that the Treo 650 does a lot more (due to 3rd party software) but NVFS is a huge problem and the fact that a lot of software combinations make the device highly unstable (even Blazer web browser which is built in crashes) meant I had to move.
I still have the E61 as my main device purely because it is super stable and I see no reason to change at this time. The 750v will be interesting to see but I have a sneaking feelingthe E61 will win the battle:)
Comment by stmcgill — September 18, 2006 @ 6:17 am
I agree with you, Shaun, the lack of (serious) third party applications for the E61 in particular or the S60 3rd Ed. in general is appaling. And don’t anyone try to sell me things like “well, it’s a brand new OS”, it’s been out for a while now, and in less time than this Windows Mobile 5 had many, many more applications ported. Too bad as the E61 is otherwise a wonderful device!
Comment by Patrick Robbe — September 18, 2006 @ 4:20 pm
The E61 is a very cheap phone if you compare to other wlan phones in Scandinavia. Most wlan phones costs the double amount. WiFi and Qwery and it is all it needs. You can google for speed-comparison charts to see that touchscreen is nothing more than a gimmick (I know because I used to have a Palm). This is true for internal cameras as well. Microdatorn (a swedish computer magazine) wrote a full-page Nokia E61 review… on the Nokia E61 itself!
As for the software department, I agree that there are alot of rubish out there and I think it has to do with the fact that it’s hard to program for Symbian compared to WM.
If you didn’t really care for WiFi then there are better options for you. But if you want a cheap qwerty and WiFi compatible phone then E61 is the way to go. Skype will soon arrive for Symbian and that will be sweeeeeet.
BTW, here is a list of programs I use:
Putty - Control unix pc’s from the phone
Opera - Web browser
jmIrc - Irc client
Pdf+ - Fast PDF reader
Im+ - MSN and Gtalk for the phone
WorldMate - Weather
Bemused - Controll Winamp
FnattLab - Matlab (Math program) for the phone
Google Maps - Just because it’s cool
Handy Safe - Password storage
Doom - A Doom port for Symbian
Almost half of them require a internet connection (good thing it has WiFi
Comment by David Swe — September 18, 2006 @ 4:40 pm
I’ve never judged a device by its ability to perform “mobile finance” with ease. That’s number 9,937 on my priority list. The E61 didn’t work for you, OK, but hardly a reason to trash the platform.
I enjoyed your blog. The E61 coverage and comments were great. Sorry you have to move on so quickly.
Comment by Eric Brodeur — September 18, 2006 @ 5:13 pm
I haven’t moved on- I still use the E61 and the blog will continue. I’m just trying my best to get some apps built for the device…
Comment by stmcgill — September 18, 2006 @ 8:51 pm
I completely agree with stmcgill that the E61 is not a smart phone yet. I have been using a Sony Clie (Palm Pilot) PDA and the user interface is far superior than the built in PIM apps on the E61.
I am therefore reluctant to migrate my Sony Clie data to the E61, until a better PIM application is available.
I read the lacklustre reviews on AquaCalendar and decided not to get it. However, the guys at SBSH ( http://www.sbsh.net ) should in the near future be releasing a version of their Papyrus PIM application for the S60 devices. From the looks of it, this could be the neat PIM application that saves the Nokia E61.
Comment by machani — September 18, 2006 @ 10:40 pm
Well I, although being a diehard Windows Mobile fanboy otherwise, am ecstatic with my E61. Coming from the WM platform, there are a number of reasons why I like my E61:
1. It does what it does, and it does it real good (except for the calendar, Papyrus maybe ?)
2. It’s built rock solid ! Whereas most WM devices are real plasticcy, which is a major turnoff. The joystick on the E61 is nice and firm, whereas on e.g. my Qtek 8310, it’s already started to fail after 8 months. Plus the Qtek got dust under the screen already.
3. The OS - well, I’m a WM fanboy, but Symbian does its job with ease, and it’s pretty straight forward to navigate. And stable as hell !
4. Screen is absolutely amazing
5. Battery life is absolutely amazing
6. The bluetooth implementation on a Nokia phone, is lightyears ahead of WM when it comes to quality. No matter what BT headset I’ve used on a WM phone, I get good reception, but crappy quality when I speak (that’s what people say). On the E61 with the same headset - no problem. I’ve tried Jabra BT250, BT800 and Logitech Mobile Freedom.
7. Browsing. WM doesn’t stand a chance compared to the Nokia browser. It’s fan-frigging-tastic !
What the E61 lacks ? A proper calendar app, WAY more apps and games, and a .NET like framework. The last one especially. If the platform has an easy development platform, apps and games get made. Which in turn makes the platform that much more attractive to everyone.
However, I bought the phone just for the syncing, and because it is what it is. And it does what it does very, very good !
I’m SO happy with my E61, and I won’t be changing until there’ll be a physically rocksolid built WM smartphone of the same quality, available. Seriously, the E61 is SO much better built than any WM device I’ve tried.
But all in all - I disagree. The E61 is most definately a smart phone.
Comment by Jacob — September 18, 2006 @ 10:44 pm
I wonder if the issue is more that you’re missing a pen? Like you I’ve owed a series of CLIEs (NR70v, TH55) and then a SEP910i and all allowed pen input. I now have a NOKIA N80 and - it’s good (very robust having strayed into a Orange M500 and learned to loath windows mobile) - but I do miss having a pen. It makes all input more cumbersome.
Perhaps that is the defining element of a smartphone - it has to have a touch screen and a stylus?
Comment by Kieron — September 19, 2006 @ 11:42 am
Hi,
I completely agree with your point that third party application for S60 3rd edition are of poor quality overall. There is really is a lack of dedicated developers with the funds, skills and enthousiasm required to develop great apps. We can only hope that things are going to improve in the future.
That said, i’m still more than happy with my E61. It seems that there is nothing this thing can’t do (ok, i don’t need any finance software) and it never stops to amaze me. A few days ago, i read on a blog that it could print to network printers and sure enough, 5 minutes later i was happily printing emails on our networked HP printer. 2 days ago, i dicovered Map24 and was blown away by how cool and useful this application is. Web browsing, emailing, full screen movie playing, langages dictionnaries, you name it, the E61 does it. So while the third party application catalog is indeed very poor, this device is still an immensely capable device. And on top of that, i can slip it into my jeans pocket without fearing for its life or feeling like i’m carrying a brick with me.
*** To Jacob ***
- Proper calendar application: Papyrus (http://www.sbsh.net), a really good third party calendar application, is coming soon. In beta testing at the moment.
- .NET Framework: that’s coming too. Red Five Labs (http://www.redfivelabs.com/) have ported the .NET Compact Framework to the symbian plateform. It is now in beta testing. If their product delivers what it promises, then it is possible that we’ll see a sudden boost to the amount of good quality S60 application available as developing applications in C# using the .NET Framework is way easier than developing them in native C++. This should attract more developers to the Symbian platform, allow them to develop great new features instead of spending their time tracking down memory leaks and dandling pointers and might entice Windows Mobile developers to port their applications to Symbian.
Comment by vioccc — September 19, 2006 @ 4:21 pm
What do you mean it isn’t a smartphone? It’s everything the Treo is and more. It’s got the Blackberry functionality (although probably not quite as integrated as a BB). It’s Calendar is good. The Address book is great; everything syncs perfectly with my system. Messaging is extremely powerful. It has a standardized OS that’s rock solid and while there aren’t many 3rd party apps right now, these S60 v3 devices have been out for only a short time. EPOCWARE, for example, has all of there winning software ported over. As for S60 being cumbersome… it is differentl if you aren’t used to it then it might seem so but that’s what most people say about any OS they just started using. I teach people how to used their technology and those who come from BB’s, yes, it’s more complex but more powerful. From WM5, they are relieved that there is something easier to use, more powerful, and stable. Palm OS… well, the it’s stagnate and nothing new about it for three years. I’ve used a lot of OS’s, a lot of phones and smartphones and the E61 is one of the best. No touchscreen… good… no stylus to fool around with. I prefer not to have a touch screen OS on my phone cuz, if you’ve noticed, most people use one hand with there phone; not having to shuffle it around in the hand to touch things on the screen. While I will accept if someone doesn’t like it, it’s a pretty wild claim to say that it isn’t a smartphone. No device is perfect. Here is the State, most people have never even heard of S60 or Symbian… they thing the world ends with BB’s and Treos… while the rest of the smartphone world (80%) is on Symbian.
Comment by Onyx — September 23, 2006 @ 5:01 pm
I was hardcore Palm user until my Hagenuk S200 went wrong.
2 month ago I bought my E70 and I was unhappy at the first time.
Nokia is far more better in communication, but PIM is awful, worse than a 10 years old Palm Pilot.
Nothing is easy and so effective to use as Palm OS. Nokia should learn from simplicity, ease of use, effectivity and compose with the power of Symbian and the very good hardware.
I hope soon will be available Papyrus, a good third-party PIM application, which the most miss for me after years spent with Palm. Actually I am using paper for tracking my todos, instead of the crapy built-in application.
E-series are smartphones, but not real PDA-s (Personal Digital Assistants) by the original meaning.
- Anyhow, would somebody write a Palm emulator to S60v3?
Comment by Attila — September 23, 2006 @ 6:06 pm
The downer for the E-61 or any symbian for that matter, is the PIM and the spreadsheet is absolutely awful. I own a E-61 as well as a PPC. Agreed, the Nokia is more stable and PPCs arent, But connectivity ( where E61 takes the cake) alone is not a plus, if the phone does not support, productivty through ease of use in Office applications, PIM, which are the mainstay of a smartphone or a PPC.
Comment by Murali — September 23, 2006 @ 6:28 pm
E61 is not the best pda. But as smartphones go it is definitely up to par and beyond.
Comment by DeJ — September 25, 2006 @ 6:21 pm
[...] Find the title familiar? Perhaps you already read a post with that title over at E61 blog. If not, please do. Good post with some interesting comments. Link A smartphone or sphone is any electronic handheld device that integrates the functionality of a mobile phone, personal digital assistant (PDA) or other information appliance. This is often achieved by adding telephone functions to an existing PDA (PDA Phone) or putting “smart” capabilities, such as PDA functions, into a mobile phone. A key feature of a smartphone is that additional native applications can be installed on the device. The applications can be developed by the manufacturer of the handheld device, by the operator or by any other third-party software developer. [wikipedia - smartphone] [...]
Pingback by The E61 is not a Smart Phone at e61life — September 26, 2006 @ 7:40 pm
i have recently purchased an e61 (two weeks ago) and am still wrapping my head around the interface and all that jazz. it was a step forward from my zire 71 and ipaq rx1950. it was a little intimidating at first with the whole lack of touch screen. but guess what? it syncs when it is told. which the ipaq did not. the battery life rocks!! it has not crashed once. the main thing that i wanted out of this thing was an organiser which it does splendidly. inputing information could be a little bit quicker but all in all i am really happy with it. great screen. speaker quality is good. a definite step in the right direction from me.
Comment by Peter — October 4, 2006 @ 6:46 am
I am using Suse Linux 10.1 and was planning to buy the e61 hoping its PIM would easily sync with linux. I have a PocketPC device and still keep a WinXP partition only because of the phone, although I do run Finchsync to sync with linux (it works for contacts and calendar, but you still need XP to back up the rest of the data on the phone).
After 3 days searching the internet I have not found anyone reporting that the e61 actually does sync with a Linux PIM. That´s a bit strange since I remember reading somewhere that the e61 supports SyncML.
So: is ther anyone who can elaborate on his experience with the e61 and Linux? I mean, first hand experience?
Holger
Comment by Holger — October 7, 2006 @ 3:47 pm
I totally agree. The E61 is a nice gadget according to the specs, but when it comes to USABILITY as a PDA, it is total crap. The Nokia Calendar and Contacts apps, the functions that are at least required to make it somehow a PDA, are impossible to use. Partly because of the lack of a touch screen, but also because the user interface of these apps isn’t designed well. Nokia really has to learn a lesson here from Palm.
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Trackback by find useful best handheld gps information — February 12, 2008 @ 10:49 am