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.

So anyway my new Motorola Droid Pro arrived just over a week ago. My initial impressions were a mixed bag. I liked the relatively low weight, when compared with my HTC G2/Desire Z, and liked not having to flip the phone into landscape mode in order to type on the keyboard, but wasn’t impressed by the screen, which apart from being as small as the screen on the Palm Pre, was not as bright and clear as I expected. The keys were also surprisingly difficult to type on. They are small and have ridges that are unlike other keypads I have experienced. Guess this will get better as I get used to the phone.

I wasn’t surprised when the phone prompted me for a code to unlock it. My supplier, CA-Cellular, warned me that the phone was locked to Verizon, and that they will email me the unlock code. When the code arrived a day later, I was however surprised when entering it failed to unlock the phone. A few email exchanges later I received another code from my supplier, which also didn’t work. I then bought my own unlock codes through Swiftunlocks, but knew I had a problem when these guys sent me the same two codes I had received from my supplier previously. With the aid of Google I soon discovered that the anal suits at Verizon have implemented a sophisticated locking mechanism that changes the lock codes continuously over the air. So apparently the only way to get the code is to phone Verizon and ask pretty please. Except they won’t give it to you if you are not a Verizon customer, which of course I am not, living in South Africa. So I had to send my phone back to my supplier, and am now waiting to see if they succeed in unlocking it. It has been more than a week, so am getting worried…

Don’t know about you, but I think these restrictive business practices are really irritating, out of sync with customer sentiments, and am convinced that they don’t result in the outcomes the providers are seeking. Why lock the phone to your network? If the customer wants to buy a contract from a particular network he will. And a willing customer is the best kind. You know why I don’t have an iPhone 4? Because once I have replaced my normal sim with a micro sim, it makes it that much harder to use another phone again. Apple clearly went the micro sim route as a way to lock in their customers. This kind of strategy can work in the short term, and possibly even for a long time, but at some point it will back fire. Look at Egypt. Mubarak’s customers have had enough of being locked into a single party dictatorship, even if it has been benevolent to a degree. They want freedom of choice of their service provide aka government. Take note Verizon, and Apple. Upshot of all this is that I am still using my HTC G2, and am still happy with it. I know I have called it boring in a previous post, but it is a good phone. Excellent keyboard, fast processor, Android 2.2. Everything works well on it, except that it loses cellphone signal from time to time in places where other phones don’t.

Thanks to my trusty on-line mobile phone retailer Ca-Cellular I have the new Blackberry 9800 aka Torch in my hands. It is AT&T branded but that is the price you have to pay to be the first Torch owner in South Africa. Actually I bought two Torches. Gave one to my wife who is now completely in love with the device. She moved from a Blackberry Curve to the Torch, which is like moving from chalk to cheese. She loves the combination of large(ish) touchscreen, usual blackberry keyboard, and slicker new OS. I am somewhat more jaded and critical, having used the latest high-end Android devices and iPhone 4. But even I am taken with the device, which strikes a nice balance between touchscreen and keyboard. The new OS works well with both, making it easy and smooth to use whichever interface you want. Web browsing is also much improved, and the Torch has a proper Youtube client, not as good as on the iPhone or Android, but nearly. I quite like the new notification system and home page, and the integration with Twitter and Facebook is very good. Even though the OS is new, Blackberry users will be instantly at home, as the new UI is very similar to the old one. And the Blackberry’s bread and butter – email and messenger – work as well as it always has.

The device looks great and feels great in my hand. The spring-loaded slide mechanism works well also, making one handed use of the Torch a pleasure.

My only real complaint is the speed. It is not that the device is slow, but it is not snappy.

Will people queue for hours to get their hands on this device? No, but if you are a Blackberry fan you will love it. O, and if you are going to upgrade from your existing Blackberry to the Torch, make sure you download and install the latest version of Blackberry Desktop Manager on your pc. It will move all the data from your old Blackberry to the new one – contacts, emails, text messages, pictures, videos, wifi settings, everything.

Thanks to Chris at iMod for blogging this interesting comparison done by GigaOm:

Strangely enough I am looking forward to getting the Blackberry Storm 2 in a few days. Unlike most of my mobile phone acquisitions, this one is coming my way courtesy of a network contract renewal. Blackberry is the preferred, actually the only officially sanctioned, push email mechanism provided by my employer, so I have had my fair share of Blackberries – Pearls, 8800, Bold, etc. The Bold is very good and I still use it from time to time. It sucks in a few areas though, specifically web browsing, youtubing and doing my gmails in html. Overall the BB experience is somewhat boring and falls short of the user experience on the iPhone, Android, WebOS and even Symbian I think. I considered the Storm when it was released but decided against it as it had no wifi – what was RIM thinking. And then everyone complained about the SurePress clickable touch screen. The Storm 2 looks quite a bit better though with an improved screen (read somewhere that this screen is the closest you will get to a physical keyboard with a touch screen one), wifi, and 2GB ram. And the web browsing is better than on the Bold. Maybe this will be the phone that converts me to a virtual keyboard. Will see.

In response to a friend’s comment that my blog seems oddly devoid of iPhone posts, I offer the following bit of news.

WinMo could always do this. Android could do it from the start. Palm WebOS can do it. Symbian has already forgotten that it can also do it. Until now the iPhone couldn’t. What am I talking about?

It is multi-tasking. You know, that thing that women can do and men can’t. Never mind that I am typing this while talking to my 2 year old, and trying to wake my 12 year old for school. And trying not to listen to cbeebies blaring in the background.

Now your jailbroken iPhone can do it, or rather can do more than one it at a time. Thanks to a 3rd party application called multifl0w. Check out the video demo below. Will cost you around US$5. Doubt that my friend’s iPhone is jailbroken. He is very law-abiding.