E50 "Notes" Application - or why Apple will eat Nokia's lunch.

Iakovos

New member
While I appreciate my E50, some things just make you relaise why Apple feels that they can make a success of it in the mobile phone business. The "Notes" application and the implementation of notes in various portions of the S60 PIM is one example of this.

In the E50, you cannot simply "view" a note, you have to click into "edit" it to see the contents at all. Its an overly large font, not very readable, poor use of the screen and the phone numbers/e-mails cannot be clicked to use them.

However......while editing a note, if you click in to "Options", then "Find", then "phone number" or "email address" ......VOILA!! You see the notes in a crisp BEAUTIFUL font like you wanted to in the first place, and each phone number or e-mail is live, in other words you can click into it and it calls or opens the message function.

By the way,even the UIQ3 phones eg Sony M600i, show you Notes in this live mode automatically.

Then you ask yourself: "Why on earth is this NOT the default mode of the Notes program". Or at least why can you not have an option to pick either edit or view as your default mode? And despite all this, you cant move from note to note in this live view, you have to back out and go through the same ordeal again.

And this is also true in the notes field of your contacts, calendar and all - you dont have this live view. Why? Surely that is where you need it?

This E series are business phones - surely this would qualify as a value to busines users to be able to just click and call from their notes?

The same is true if you start from the Phone search tool, find a note and the click to view it. You get the ugly "edit" view.

Nokia has some good qualities, at least compared to other phone companies (**cough, cough, SE UIQ3, WMobile**) but still IMO for a consumer device company they dont pay enough attention to ergonomics.

This thing with the Notes is egregious because they have actually deveoped the correct function and then for some peverted reason, they turned it off?

But this is the sort of thing that Apple feasts on. They take a simple set of things and make the user experience seamless. IMO this first "iphone" is overpriced, overphyped and far too closed for my liking. But the thing about Apple is that they will just do that small bit, learn and just keep coming with more. Unlike Nokia, they generally pay immense attention to ergonmics and ease of use - and they learn.

And mind you this is just one gripe on "Notes". If Apple can make this type of improvment on other functions , well, you can see how this will go.

If all the phone companies stocks have tanked this week, that is why. Its not that the iPhone 1G is great - it is that Apple has their sights targeted on this business - and the incumbents are quite beatable by a company with Apple's ability to get to heart of the matter on ergonomics.
 
I tend to agree, the devil is in the details. I moved to e50 from 7610 and some things they have made worse - e.g. If you opened contacts/log and dialled a number from there, it would automatically close the contacts app. Now the v3 or E50 does not do that. It leaves it running in the background, eating battery/memory. Until you open it again and close it.

Same with music player/library. Why not provide a direct menu item/folder for music library? So I can simply select my album/artist and hit play to open the music player to play in one or two clicks?

Another one is the call reminder which is there on s40. Why is it so difficult to incorporate it on a 'smartphone'. It was not there on my 7610 and is still not there on my e50. To set a call reminder you have to do a lot of convoluted stuff on s60v3 - setup a meeting appt., then options, description and add a note with the tel. no. to the description field of a meeting. This again you cannot do directly from contacts. Why should such a simple and basic function of a phone not be implemented on a smartphone?

Actually Nokia used to be No. 1 on ease of use - I remember the oldies - 1610, 5110 - there was no need to even open the manual, everything was idiot-proof. As the phones get smarter, I also feel Nokia is not paying enough attention to ease of use anymore.
 
There is another thread on here about profile switching that reminded me of this thread. I first thought you were just a bit too bitter skagen, but the more I thought about it, the more I figured you were right.

I have bought Sidekicks more times than any other brand of phone (SK II - 5 times alone) because the OS is so integrated and works so well (despite its limits) that you don't have to think to do what you naturally want to do. That's their "thing", but unfortunately it's a crappy phone. The iphone's specs may not be absolute top shelf, but I think they are good enough for someone to make that jump from a SK to a iphone and get the same level of "everything works like you would expect it to" that will drive other smartphone users crazy.

I, however, don't think it's the end of smartphones for other companies. Depending on how much they limit the OS, ability to customize / add programs will always be a smartphone advantage, coupled with the ever growing tech specs. I do think though it will give all smartphone owners a really tough decision to make.
 
There are lots of things that I wish would be changed. For example I cannot understand why there is no way to make a shortcut to the Albums. However let's not be delusional, Apple is renown for locking things down even more. Just look at the iPod, or iTunes. Yes things come more easy to use and 'cute' out of the box, but you want to customize anything and it's not possible. The iPhone will be a restricted phone. Steve said himself that there will be no 3rd party software allowed on the iPhone. That means whatever Apple decides is what you get, and you can't even add apps that make the thing better. The E series are smartphones, because they are highly customizable and can be added software. The iPhone is not, and if you don't like the default, you won't even be able to go to the 'Options' menu and change it.
 
Well put skagen...that and Johnathan Ive's amazing talent as a designer...
I'm looking forward to seeing the 2nd generation iPhone....
 
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