Spring Clean

Yesterday I made the drastic decision to get rid of all of my phones except the following:

• n900 - I am still interested to see how this develops
• E63 - a nice cheap phone that is being used as my work phone
• 5800XM - I am keeping this as a sat nav

I am getting rid of the following because I want a nexus one and an ipad later this year but here is a summary why:

• HTC Magic - Great android starter phone but limited on specification
• HTC Hero - Compared to the magic this is a breath of fresh air with the sense ui but HTCs lack of Android OS updates has shocked me. The magic is already on 1.6 whereas the Hero is 1.5 and newer applications I want to use are on android 2. HTC will update the Hero in march 2010 to Android 2 but my fears of not rolling out frequent updates where correct and as such I am abandoning non Google based Android handsets. I am of the opinion HTC either want people to upgrade to their new HTC Desire or Legend to use Android 2. Whilst this is their prerogative they have in effect stuck the two fingers up at existing owners. March isn't too far away but I believe this is a sign of things to come and I don't want to be party of it At least with a google phone I am guaranteed more frequent updates as Google develop the OS. SenseUI on the hero is great but does not bring that enough benefit to keep me on Android 1.5
• N810 - I now have the N900
• E75 - A great work horse but the 5800XM will now fill that position as being a back up device. The E75 is kind of phone you would either take out at night or away as the hidden keyboard really does make it look like a normal boring phone.
• E90 - A great communicator and specification on a phone on par with the E75. I a sad to see this go but I really haven't used it for for over a year.
• Palm Pre - There is a lot of potential with WEBOS but like the first generation iphone as there are no applications, the hardware is becoming long in to the tooth and now other phones such as the N900 and Hero with SenseUI no integrate with other social networks there is really no use for synergy. Should there be more applications that are more productive based I may look at WEBOS again. But for now, my conclusion is, it is nice to use but there is no substance due to lack of applications.
• Palm Treo 680 - An old phone I had just lying around doing nothing. Again, nice OS and lots of applications but long in tooth for me.
• BeBook Ereader - Not a phone but it will be replaced with the ipad or an android equivalent. I have not really used it and whilst it great on battery power I don't read many ebooks. Further its PDF support is limiting on the emagazines I read in that it is slow and does not render the pages well.

The replacements:

• Nexus One - To replace all of my phones with its larger screen and Google android based OS. Because I have already purchased a lot of android applications I can quite easily port them over to the new phone.
• Ipad Or an android equivalent - I am interested in a tablet device after using the Archos Android Tablet where the Ipad has caught my interest. However with the Dell Mini 5, ICD or a Tecra based Android tablet there will be others to look at.

Although 2010 might end up as 2009 with me purchasing many devices my intention ebaying the old devices is to fund the new purchased but also ensure I am not collecting clutter. I should hopefully have the nexus one within the next couple of weeks so will no doubt end up posting about it then.

The android cometh....

I have recently got back from holiday where I used Garmin maps on my E75 to redirect me around the traffic enroute to home. Garmin with google maps and occasional use of Ovi Maps was great on holiday for getting about. A quick lookup on google maps to find places then using the postcode in garmin to get me there by car. Or using the same postcode in Ovi maps for walking navigation. One wonders why we ever need maps. Well, due to the lack of 3g coverage and because I hadn't preloaded the Ovi Maps I still either needed a paper map or the preloaded Garmin maps.

On the journey home it was different because my phone required 5 manual reboots because Garmin kept freezing. I had even removed all of my memory hog applications to give it room to breathe with no luck. It worked fine taking me to my destination using this strategy until we neared the location. A swift stop and reboot fixed this, but why did I need 5 reboots yesterday. For this reason I love dedicated PND (personal navigation devices) They only do one thing of which is navigate and rarely crash. Whereas smartphones of which includes UIQ,S60 and windows mobile all have fits. If someone calls you they frustrate whether to take the call or carry on navigating to the extent they stop doing both. Then they rarely switch back to the navigation application after handling the call.

Finally I decided when I got back that I would look for an alternative device again. Whilst the E75 is a good device recent issues like this, the device slowing down (I only hard reset it 2 weeks ago) and now the slider is wobbling and the chrome surrond broken. I need a break from it so again its a good opportunity to try the competition as it will probably take a few weeks to repair, then its the usual 6 hour reinstall. I had bought 3 plastic surround cases to protect the phone but they all broke so off it will go back to the shop over the next few days.

I had rejected the thought of an android device earlier this year as there is a lack of space available to installed applications. However after listen to a recent podcast it is now possible to installed applications to the sd card if you either root the phone or installed an application to assit with this process.

Looking at the equivalent androids applications that I use on s60 the only missing ones are sms and call filter and an accounts manager like flying money. However I didn't have time to survey the homebrew libraries to see what is available there.

Looking at the phones for a little extra than a G1 I could get a G2 and recently the HTC hero is out. On reading about the hero, HTC have bastardised the Android OS for the better, but it does mean when Googke update Android you will not be able to update it OTA (over the air).

For this reason I decided to go with the G2 ie, Vodafone branded HTC Magic. I have ordered all of the accessories and it should be here over the coming days. There are several applications that I need to buy such as an Exchange sync, Ms office editors and sat nav but hopefully can test these beforehand.

The cupcake Os aka android 1.5 now looks more mature and it is possible to root (jailbreak) the phone. However there may be issues purchasing applications from market. But as usual these are all challenges ahead.

At this time I cannot comment if the device will last me. I had thought the E75 would have done but I have already said I am tiring of this. My 5800 is going on Ebay to part fund this purchase and possibly either the E75 or E90 but alas I do like the last device a lot. Nokia have really missed the boat with s60v5 so I seen no point hanging onto the device. 8 months on it is still slow, severe lack of ram and clunky to use. The G2 may well end up the same as my first iphone of which lasted only 2 months.

Later on in the year the E72 looks promising and the Pre is just around the corner. I have tinkered with the Pre Emulator and am imprest with the UI, how easy it is to set up and the general feel when using WebOS.
However there is a serious lack of applications available of which doesn't seem to be increasing in number. I am beginning to think until either the device reaches the rest of the world or if we wait another year, like android. Only then will we see more applications.

So the andoid finally cometh to me.... But how long will it stay?

How many?

I have purchased three phones this year already a Nokia 5800, an E63 and recently upgraded to an E75. All of them have three different from factors, features but all run symbian s60. O2 my provider had already contacted me to advise me that I could upgrade but as I was in no rush I wanted to wait.

I was toying with the idea of either the E71 or N97 and bought the E63 as a halfway gap to help me decide if I would like the form factor of the E71. When I originally saw the E61 I just laughed at the size of it which was probably hypocritical of me considering I had a Nokia 9500 and E90 before. However I braved my hypocrisy and got the E63.

First impressions where good where I loved the thumboard and found I can use it either one or two handed for typing. The only real let down for me was the Nokia Maps software which didn't make use of the screen real estate. Therefore I was really close on getting an E71. When NokiaExperts on Twitter got hold of an E71x with S60v3.2 So I then wanted to hold off again and get this. However being a NAM only device I didn't know if there would ever be a EURO model.

So the E71 was looking to be my E90 replacement for the next 18 months.

The thing that surprised me about the E63 was it handled everything I threw at it and just worked. Bearing in mind it is a low priced device it performed better than my 5800 which would either run out of memory or slow down.

I was going to wait for the N97 but after listening to a recent All About Symbian podcast it sounded as if the processor speed and memory issues that plagued the 5800 are present in this device. However this will be confirmed over the coming months.

Because I just want something that works I decided to skip this device and settle for an E series phone because of my experience on the E63, the build quality and the longevity of my E90.

So E71 is still looking good until I looked investigated it further. In a nutshell I dropped this device for the E75 due to its weak camera in terms of quality and lack of 30 fps video recording.

I phoned O2 who could only do the E71 and then I received a phonecall from carphonewarehouse who could do the E75. So I bit the bullet and ordered one.

The build quality is excellent but I am still getting used to the keyboard. As an E90 replacement I am not too sure as I do hope Nokia do release a communicator replacement. However I will persevere with the phone blogging and twittering about it.

I have purchased and loaded all of my sms, call filtering, call recording and other apps such as profimail, officesuite, wavelog and gsync. This weekend I will test the gamin sat nav software instead of the nokia maps. So whilst there is still a lot to do I will hang onto the 5800 to see if the touch improves or the E63 if I just want something that is robust.

The phones do get a good workout from me as I twitter, email, blood browse and occasionally call on them instead of using a Pc. Also I have just started to download all of my podcasts direct to the handset where last month I clocked up 1gb of data.

People ask me how many phones do I have and need. My answer is one at a time as I do like to change and the set I have at the moment allow me to do this comfortably.

In conclusion, it will be interesting to see now long the E75 lasts me and if I do change again soon. Should there be another communicator then that is where my money will be.

Lets twitter the night away with senoritas who do sway!

Recently I have set up a twitter account which I have integrated into this blog and to update my facebook. In essence it simplifies things by only having to update in one place.

I was originally using fring to do this but it was consuming too much ram on my 5800. I tried several java clients but did not like them so stuck with Fring.

Then two new clients came on the block a bit like two buses turning up. Gravity and Twittix are both cheap under $10 where I ended up purchasing Gravity first, then trying a trial of Twittix.

Gravity from Mobileways looks very professional, allows multiple twitter accounts to be added and also allows direct posting of images to twitpic or mobypicture.

Twittix cannot send images but again allows multiple accounts but allows you to look at user profiles and follow people direct from searched tweets, two things gravity does not do.

You can do the usual twitter actions of direct messages, reply, follow, retweet or add favourites with both applications. Twittix interface is clean and simple, you get it to auto connect/disconnect, alter the refresh interval and get it notify you on updates. Whilst Gravity has a nice responsive interface it lacks the connect, refresh and notification features of Twittix. Gravity periodically checks for updates, but sadly you have to remember to look at the app for these rather than telling you.

The winner for me is Gravity as I can save searches for topics of interest. Whilst Twittix can search, any searches are not persistent if you close the application down.

Searches in Gravity are persistent and it means in addition to rss I can use twitter as an alternative to give me notifications of news. Also like Twittix it allows me to go direct to the web page if it has been tagged.

I am also using Gravity on my E90, read my previous post about the issue with my 5800 and web browsing.

In conclusion it would be good to see the features missing from both applications in each other, which over time may happen. Whilst both apps are great for twittering, if you are really into twitter for searching then Gravity is the winner. If you want to send pics to twitpic then Gravity is the winner. If you want to use twitter more for messaging then Twittix is best due to notification, connection and update controls.

E90

Well after some deliberation and the recent issues with the 5800XM I have blown the dust off my Nokia E90 (over 18 months old), reflashed it and then spent three days reinstalling it after two bundled attempts.

The previous atempts failed due to the memory card where I had similar issues to my 16gb card. I had previously used the 16gb in the 5800 but it would not work and became corrupt. A similar issue happened in the E90 the first time. I then tried a 8gb card and the same issue here happened.

Looking at both card they were both class 2, so I tried a class 4, 8gb card on the third attempt and everything now works. When I had the class 2, 8gb card in a N95 it slowed the response of the phone right down. So the moral is, class 2 for devices like ebook readers, cameras or mp3 machines. Class 4 for pdas or mobiles. The 16gb has gone in my camera and the 8gb in my N810 for extra storage.

The E90 is like holding a shoe to your ear when making calls. However it has lots of memory, quite fast processor, can multitask, has a keyboard, large screen, gps, 3.2 megapixel camera, stereo, ad2p, wifi, bluetooth and ip telephony, Whilst the 5800 has all of this minus the hardware keyboard, the 5800 really slows down when doing too much.

You may ask what have I got running on the phone:

Push email
Ip telephony
Gravity for twitter
Push sync to exchange
Sms filter
Call filter
Call recorder
Sms gmail sync

Even with this running it still leaves enough ram for web browsing, blogging and the odd phone call.

The iphone can only do one thing at a time according to apple, however when I jailbroke my 2g iphone I was running ssh, php, web server, call notification software in the background and other apps in the foreground.

I have heard that apple will be be allowing push notifications to the phone where by rather than the phone periodically checking for updates or having a constant connection to the server, apple will notify the phone when something has updated so the phone can connect and make the updates. If this works, it will be a new way of doing push notification and will reduce on data being transferred from having to keep open a constant connection.

So whilst I have been looking for a phone that does everything I want I have had it for the past 18 months stuck in a drawer!

However, looking at new handsets at the moment the contenders are now E90, E71 , N97 or the palm pre. Matt Miller reports the keyboard on the N97 is poor in comparison to the E75 the device he is now favoring. You cannot use a virtual keyboard to input on the N97 as there is no software keyboard unlike the 5800, so you have to flip open the device. Whilst like my E90 I have to do this in order to type it would be good to see both options available like on the N810.

So whilst I am waiting and reading the reviews, I am typing this blog using wavelogger on the E90 as I know I have the yardstick in my hands. Should there be another communicator announcement from Nokia then the N97 will be ball parked until the communicator comes out for comparison.

As the phones cost a lot it will be worth the wait as they do stand the test of time - or at least me!