King Content

So my big Movember experiment raised £247 for prostate cancer research. As you can see from the video below, I can only barely grow a moustache within 30 days. Pathetic. Big thanks to everyone who sponsored me!

I am posting this with the hope that it will stop anyone who is contemplating purchasing the Nokia E61 "smart" phone. I have been subjected to using the E61 for the past two months and I have to note that I have never used such a poorly designed piece of consumer electronics garbage in my life. It appears that somewhere in the woods of Finland, a disgruntled Nokia employee decided to take they Symbian operating system and stuff it on a slow chip and, in turn, stuff all of that in a fat ugly box that looks more like a 1970's calculator than a phone. I have never been so disappointed with technology. I feel bad for Nokia, as the E61 represents, to me, that the company will not be able to competitively produce mobile phones in the future. Here are some of my chief gripes with the Nokia E61:

Waiting
The Nokia E61 is a 3G phone meaning if you are standing within the zone where it is able to pick up a 3G signal (I believe it is someone's garden in Pimlico, but it has never been verified), the increased download speed should make up for the massive amount of time you have to wait to get to the part of the phone's interface that you hope to use. From the main menu, when I click on the text messaging application, I wait, without fail, for at least 6 seconds until the screen changes. If I attempt to go to a mailbox, the phone will hang for up to a minute. Every click to open an application results in a flashing screen until it figures out what it is supposed to be doing. The amount of time spent waiting on this phone provides ample time to throw it against a wall, retrieve it, throw it again, make a sandwich, and then re-retrieve it. Sometimes, when you are really lucky, it will hang for such a long time, it will forget entirely what it was doing and just unexpectedly reboot.

Design
I have no idea what the Finns where thinking when they designed this phone. It is HUGE. It has a big screen, and big keyboard and is amazingly thick. If you are really intent on buying this thing, make sure to also go pick up some cargo pants, panniers or a briefcase so that you can carry it around with you. A buddy, noting the similarity with older desk calculators, asked whether there was supposed to be a roll of paper coming out of the top.

It sure does have a lot of buttons! Unfortunately many of them have no definable purpose and, better yet, buttons you come to expect don't exist at ALL. The two most easily accessible buttons are Menu (which takes you to an unorganized mess of lame applications) and Mail (a button that will either cause the whole phone to hang for 25 seconds or cause it to reboot unexpectedly). Nokia must have realized that this was a design flaw because they released the E61i which is the same terrible phone, but with two extra configurable buttons. Awesome. i = 2 buttons.

My favorite design flaw is that the E61 "smart phone" is not really able to function as a phone.

Inability to function as a phone
I don't know if a single person at Nokia tried using the E61 before it was released to manufacturing. If they had, they would have noticed that it is not very easy to place the earpiece over your ear. I have found myself having to constantly readjust the phone until I can finally hear the caller.

However, the only time I can use the phone anymore is when someone calls me. It is just too damn annoying to dial the thing. When I received the phone, none of the 50 (I counted) buttons would automatically take me to my address book. Trying to configure that became a tear-inducing trip through the phone's preferences. Now, I find myself making a few to many clicks to dial anyone: "Contacts" -> "Back" -> Name -> Select -> Choose Number -> Select -> "Call" -> "Voice Call". At the end of the sequence, you must choose Voice Call over Video Call, which seems like an unnecessary option BECAUSE THERE IS NO CAMERA ON THE PHONE.

Lack of Hardware Features
A camera is just one of the things you may expect from a current-generation "smart phone". Unlike it's fully loaded cousin, the Nokia N95, the E61 is very sparse on extras. There is no GPS (although the Google Maps MyLocation function works) and no camera. I think, if you really wanted to wrestle with it, you could use it, along with proprietary headphones, to listen to an MP3.

An interesting feature that is missing is "autolock" so that if you leave the thing in your pocket (of your cargo pants, remember?) chances are the buttons will eventually hit something and dial someone (usually emergency services). The phone has no native way to have the keypad lock after a set amount of time. Thankfully, some kind soul wrote a freeware application to provide autolock. Nokia should buy that guy a drink. Maybe make him VP of Engineering.

So it doesn't do well as just a plain phone, and there aren't many other hardware features on it... so you would hope that at least it could handle data and the Internet right?

Constant Asking of Questions

Which access point would you like to use?

• EasyLAN
  
• Search for WLAN
  
• initAccess
  
• O2 Postpay MMS
• O2 Postpay WAP
• O2 Postpay WAP(01)
• O2 GPRS
• O2 GPRS Streaming

Don't feel bad if you can't answer. The customer service representatives at O2 also have a hard time with this. The fun thing about the E61 is that it tends to ask you this question, or similar questions on an extremely regular basis. It never really remembers what you wanted. Even if you give it the same answer 100 times in a row. It's what I imagine working at a convalescent home is like at times.

Luckily, I have an unlimited dataplan, so I usually just tell it to stick with O2 Postpay Wap with the hopes that it will give me a rumored 3G connection. I tried at first to use the WiFi at home and at work, but then, when ever you leave the network, it asks you the above mentioned question. I don't understand how it is not possible to just have the phone follow the logic "If there is WiFi, use it. If it is not there, use the provider's network." I was told that there is software that I can purchase to get this functionality. I refuse to pay money to get a feature that I believe should come standard with any "smart" phone.

Don't Buy this Phone
If you decide that the Nokia E61 will be your next purchase, I reserve the right to say "I told you so." Companies like Nokia need to realize that releasing poorly designed consumer electronics is no longer acceptable in this day and age. If a smart phone cannot handle the tasks that a cheaper mobile phone (like my Sony Ericsson K750i, which I miss) has mastered, then the design must be scrapped and re-thought. There are extremely worthy competitors out there (Apple comes to mind) and better informed consumers. Nokia cannot afford to release such bad products.