The latest on smartphones (and other gadgets)

If you have been following my blog you know that I have not posted in a long time. Partly because I got a bit bored with what was happening in the mobile world. In addition I have been using an iPhone 4 and that is so good that I started thinking we should simply all use iPhones. Why bother using anything else? There is no Android phone available today that really matches let alone surpasses, the iPhone. But that was yesterday. Today is a new day. Today is my first day with the new Nokia E7.

Yes, I know Symbian is not nearly as good as iOS or Android, and yes I know I have slagged off the N8 in previous posts. But man the E7 is an awesome piece of hardware. Forget about Apple, forget about HTC, forget about Samsung, forget about Motorola, forget about SonyE. Those okes build boring phones. Nokia’s hardware design rules. The hardware is so good that it makes up for the software. And I don’t know what Nokia has done to achieve it, but Symbian runs and feels better on the E7 than the N8.

I bought mine at Incredible Connection (yes it is freely available in SA) and as soon as the sales person removed the phone from its box, I desired it. It is large and sleek and shiny in an understated classy way thanks to the aluminium casing. The edges are round and smooth, which makes a welcome change from the sharp iPhone 4 edges. The 4 inch screen, an AMOLED capacitive touch screen with Nokia’s ClearBlack technology, is beautifully bright with deep colours, and the 4 inch size hits the sweet spot for me. The 3-5 inches of the N8 is too small for me, ditto for the iPhone’s screen. You can get a 4.3 inch screen on some Androids these days but that results in too big a phone for my liking. 4 inches is perfect. You will notice the difference when you read a PDF using the bundled Adobe PDF reader. On the E7 you can read a page without having to scroll from left to right, while on the N8 the smaller screen size means you have to zoom and scroll, which makes it a very frustrating experience.

The E7 has 5 stylish buttons, the usual power button on the top, a volume rocker switch on the right, the menu key on the front face, a camera button and the screen lock slider button on the left. The slider button has gained cool features. You can associate specific phone functions with the switch, and if you slide and hold it down for a second or so, the phone’s camera flash light turns on and you can use the phone as a flashlight. Pretty cool.

The camera is flush with the phone, unlike the N8′s one which sticks out. It is an 8MP affair, versus the N8′s 12MP, but 8MP is still industry leading compared with the iPhone and most Androids out there, which tend to use 5MP. The E7 takes good pictures, having a flash is great, and the dedicated camera button is the cherry on top. I see there is some photo and video editing software on the phone also.

When you have finished drooling over the beautifully crafted exterior of the E7, slide it open. Maybe slide is not the right expression, it more likes, jumps open. The screen mechanism is spring loaded and the screen opens up at an angle. The mechanism feels very well made and solid. So does the keyboard it reveals. Nokia has outdone themselves with this keyboard. It is large with 4 rows and well spaced keys. It even has arrow buttons to move the cursor around with. Typing on this phone is joy, and yes I know you can type fast on the iPhone, but you do not, can not, get the physical tactile pleasure offered up by the E7′s keyboard.

And then there is the HDMI output. Very cool. Lets you plug your phone into your TV and play movies from your phone directly on your TV. Of course it is a drag having to copy the movie on to the phone first, so Nokia equipped this phone (and the N8) with USB-on-the-go technology. So don’t copy the movie on to the phone, simply stick a USB memory stick containing the movie into the phone and off you go. When I tried the HDMI movie playing business on the N8 I wasn’t that impressed as the N8 didn’t support enough video formats to my liking, e.g. it couldn’t handle XViD (which my Samsung Galaxy S could by the way). Hopefully the E7′s can do better.

Some other cool hardware features on the E7 include a SIM card slot in the side, non-removable battery, no back panel to slide off, compass, accelerometer, and of course it is a quad band phone, which means it will work pretty much everywhere in the world, even in the US. And of course as you would expect, call quality is good.

Ok, so I guess I can’t ignore the elephant in the room any longer. I have to say something about the software on the phone. As you probably know Nokia has ditched Symbian as its top-end OS in favour of Windows Phone 7, and you can see why. Don’t get me wrong, Symbian is not a bad phone OS – it even has proper multi-tasking – but the interface is old and clunky compared with iOS and Android. And there are few apps, a situation that will worsen now that Nokia has ditched Symbian. For example using the iPhone I can control my Crestron home automation system using an app from Crestron, I can control all the TVs in my house using an app called Plugplayer which connects DLNA compatible media sources to media players. The list goes on. Try finding similar apps that will run on the Nokia. Good luck.

I can’t wait for Nokia to bring out an E7 running Microsoft Windows Phone 7. It will be fantastic. In the meantime, I am using the Symbian E7. I will run the Crestron and Plugplayer apps on my iPad and use my iPhone as an iPod.

The Android Market is not available in all countries (yet). South Africa is one of the countries still left out in the cold. As a result SA Android users (HTC Magic, Dream, Hero, Desire, SonyEricsson X10, etcetera) can get only free apps from the Market. Some of the paid apps are available outside of the Market, usually by going directly to the developer, but some developers do not have payment mechanisms outside the Market. Enter the MarketEnabler. This clever bit of code fakes your rooted Android phone’s location (as seen by the Market). I have tried it on my HD2 running Android 2.2 and it worked. The Market now thinks my phone is on T-Mobile in the US and is happy to show me paid apps and let me buy them using my visa. Priceless.

Download MarketEnabler here (free of charge of course): http://code.google.com/p/market-enabler/

Are you getting tired of pressing the Next Page button on your Kindle? Soon you will be able to interact with your Kindle in lots of new ways.  Amazon has announced the Kindle Development Kit with which developers will be able to build apps or “active content”  for the Kindle. Expect to buy them from the Amazon Kindle Store later this year. While you are waiting why not play MineSweeper. It is hiding as an easter egg in your Kindle today. To activate press Alt+Shift+M. The controls are:

I – Up
J – Left
K – Down
L – Right
M – Mark mine
R – Restart game
Space – Open cell
Scroll – Move cursor up/down
Alt + Scroll – Move cursor left/right
H – Home screen