Nothing touches the E71 when it comes to communicating with people. Even if I closed out the messaging app, I just use contact search to reply. Of course you still don't have a way of seeing what you are replying to. So you kind of have to remember.
The alternative on the E71 is to change in your options the phone book used to "conversations" instead of "contacts". Then the contacts hard key goes directly to conversations. Then if you are careful to hit "exit" every time. Then it will load fast.
On the 5800, you have to reply immediately or you have to press the green key and hope that person called you recently so you can text from there. Or the new FW has a search on the standby screen where you can type in the name.
But all said and done it is more cumbersome than the E71.
As for the iPhone it too is not very good, but at least in beta 3.0 you can swipe left and unlike S60v5 at least the keyboard comes up automatically. S60v5 is so dumb that you have to click in the text box and then the keyboard comes up. I mean what were they thinking? What are you planning on doing first thing when you enter a search program? That's right - enter some letters.
Then when exiting a text box it is pretty dumb also in that you must first exit the text box (in the browser or other app) and then you also have to hit "search" or whatever button you would in S60v3. So it adds an extra step. On the iPhone the webpage is active in the background so you directly hit "search" or "log-in" or whatever the case may be. Since it also has a google search bar on top like firefox and IE7/8 you can put text in there and the "exit" key automatically is the "search' key now. So it saves you a step.
Ironically, on the iPhone an extra touch step is not so bad since it responds to the lightest touch, but on S60v5 you kind of have to hit it once or twice to register a touch. It's hard to explain, but the only way to know is to try them and compare.
But I must admit that in the new FW v21, the browser's response to touch is much better. Where I used to not get any feedback about whether it registered a touch, it is consistent in highlighting the link you touched and then pretty quickly moving you to the linked page. On Wi-fi it is pretty snappy. However the haptics in the browser are still not consistent. But the now consistent highlighting does the job. So you can make it go to a link without it ever vibrating. Before in the old FW you would get neither highlighting nor a vibrate and I can't tell you how frustrating that was. It made me hate the phone. I would often zoom when I meant to click on a link. You still have to always hit it a little hard just to make sure it registers your touch because you don't want to take chances. On older FW, I would literally pound the screen and it would not tell me that it is responding. However even on the iPhone it can be frustrating sometimes when you want to operate faster than the interface is capable of running. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. It used to happen on S60v5 routinely, but the new FW seems to have made some fixes. Still the haptics are often delayed in all menus and applications.
The issue with S60v5 is that in order to appear to operate fast it will basically disable touch response while a page is visually loading. So if you touch it while a page is loading (that means in any application not just the browser) it does not respond and it does not really tell you that it is unable to respond. The iPhone does it frankly pretty cleverly in that it won't draw the page until it is ready to respond. So if you see an option and you touch it, the phone will respond. It just won't show you anything until it is ready to respond to your input. That makes a big difference in the feel of the device.
Often, my impatient self will touch again and again to wait until it is capable of responding and then it will actually register a double tap and do a completely different operation. Which you must then go through steps to correct and then again wait for everything to load and also guess the time it takes to respond to your touch again otherwise you'll end up in a loop of doing the wrong thing and undoing it again and again. So it feels like you have to kind of babysit the interface a bit.
Again, bottomline these touch screen devices don't touch an E71 when it comes to responding quickly. When you get the 5800 (I hope you paid $200), you will see what I am talking about. Frankly I think if you have the E71 on your mind as your ideal phone/communication tool you are better off learning about S60v5 on a $200 device than learning it on a $700 device.
You will see exactly why I am *****ing all day for a D-pad on this device, because I won't lie. If it did have a D-pad I wouldn't mind it at all. I would use it in all menus.
Also the inconsistent single touch/double touch thing is annoying. Yes you do get used to it after a while but it is just unnecessary with a decent interface design. It happens because they fell back on the select/enter system that works very well with a D-pad but is just not good on a touch device. There should be no select just enter. If you need to manipulate an object either come up with pressure sensitivity or use the long press method that the iPhone does well or from what I hear Android just puts to perfect use. Short press to enter or long press to edit. No more selecting by short press.
If you try the iPhone 3.0 you will see how beautifully it works. Long press brings up select and select all. You can then select all to copy entire sentences or e-mail addresses. Or you can select the start point and then select the end point at which time the option to cut or copy pops-up. You have full control over the text you select. It even works in 3rd party apps I noticed today. I was reading stuff in the FML app and you can copy text from nearly everywhere. Unbelievable.
The entire menu system needs a rework such that all functions are consolidated into a few groups like they've done in Office 2007. That way you should never be asked to scroll in a menu. It just is terrible in the 5800 to scroll through menus to see the option you want. Once you enter one of the groups, just give a nice big full screen menu because if you are in options you anyway need to finish your business in that menu before you doing anything with the app. So make it big and put all the options for that group there. Actually they do it in the S60v5 browser that way. But not in any menus.
Honestly I can't imagine it would have taken a team more than 2 days to brainstorm out a better way to group functions for any application or menu to reduce the size and obviate the need to scroll in a tiny menu. So it just looks and seems so thoughtless how they made the transition. Sure some people can live with it, but my feeling is that a room of cavemen in about 2-3 days could have come up with better ways to make the menu. Heck even if they had to carve their ideas on a stone wall it wouldn't have taken more than a week. This company is in the business of making phones, so WHAT HAPPENED? I can only wonder.
Anyway I think from people are saying the browser now automatically goes into full screen after loading a page and I guess then there is translucent button to go back into showing the side menu or maybe it comes back when you touch a corner or specific side. That was SORELY needed. On the 5800, the way full screen works is RETARDED and there isn't a better word for it.
It seems all the improvements in the N97 are in the browser, so that part may actually be decent to good and the 5800 with v21 looks promising. But the menus you see on the 5800 are probably going to be the same.
Those of use hoping to replace an E71 will not find this to be the solution. Those of us who want something in addition to the E71 might find the N97 to be a nice change for weekends and evenings. But the operative word there is "might". You probably have to have very low demands on your phone in the evenings, but it is also the time when I communicate the most with friends so the E71 contact search trumps all even after work. If anything, I think the E71/E66 are just not top notch in business roles with mail and PIM that are so primitive as to make you pull your hair out sometimes. Oddly enough maybe I could go WinMo or surprise, surprise iPhone for work and E66 for evenings. That combination would serve those roles best for me. I'm coming to some weird realizations.
The alternative on the E71 is to change in your options the phone book used to "conversations" instead of "contacts". Then the contacts hard key goes directly to conversations. Then if you are careful to hit "exit" every time. Then it will load fast.
On the 5800, you have to reply immediately or you have to press the green key and hope that person called you recently so you can text from there. Or the new FW has a search on the standby screen where you can type in the name.
But all said and done it is more cumbersome than the E71.
As for the iPhone it too is not very good, but at least in beta 3.0 you can swipe left and unlike S60v5 at least the keyboard comes up automatically. S60v5 is so dumb that you have to click in the text box and then the keyboard comes up. I mean what were they thinking? What are you planning on doing first thing when you enter a search program? That's right - enter some letters.
Then when exiting a text box it is pretty dumb also in that you must first exit the text box (in the browser or other app) and then you also have to hit "search" or whatever button you would in S60v3. So it adds an extra step. On the iPhone the webpage is active in the background so you directly hit "search" or "log-in" or whatever the case may be. Since it also has a google search bar on top like firefox and IE7/8 you can put text in there and the "exit" key automatically is the "search' key now. So it saves you a step.
Ironically, on the iPhone an extra touch step is not so bad since it responds to the lightest touch, but on S60v5 you kind of have to hit it once or twice to register a touch. It's hard to explain, but the only way to know is to try them and compare.
But I must admit that in the new FW v21, the browser's response to touch is much better. Where I used to not get any feedback about whether it registered a touch, it is consistent in highlighting the link you touched and then pretty quickly moving you to the linked page. On Wi-fi it is pretty snappy. However the haptics in the browser are still not consistent. But the now consistent highlighting does the job. So you can make it go to a link without it ever vibrating. Before in the old FW you would get neither highlighting nor a vibrate and I can't tell you how frustrating that was. It made me hate the phone. I would often zoom when I meant to click on a link. You still have to always hit it a little hard just to make sure it registers your touch because you don't want to take chances. On older FW, I would literally pound the screen and it would not tell me that it is responding. However even on the iPhone it can be frustrating sometimes when you want to operate faster than the interface is capable of running. It doesn't happen often, but it happens. It used to happen on S60v5 routinely, but the new FW seems to have made some fixes. Still the haptics are often delayed in all menus and applications.
The issue with S60v5 is that in order to appear to operate fast it will basically disable touch response while a page is visually loading. So if you touch it while a page is loading (that means in any application not just the browser) it does not respond and it does not really tell you that it is unable to respond. The iPhone does it frankly pretty cleverly in that it won't draw the page until it is ready to respond. So if you see an option and you touch it, the phone will respond. It just won't show you anything until it is ready to respond to your input. That makes a big difference in the feel of the device.
Often, my impatient self will touch again and again to wait until it is capable of responding and then it will actually register a double tap and do a completely different operation. Which you must then go through steps to correct and then again wait for everything to load and also guess the time it takes to respond to your touch again otherwise you'll end up in a loop of doing the wrong thing and undoing it again and again. So it feels like you have to kind of babysit the interface a bit.
Again, bottomline these touch screen devices don't touch an E71 when it comes to responding quickly. When you get the 5800 (I hope you paid $200), you will see what I am talking about. Frankly I think if you have the E71 on your mind as your ideal phone/communication tool you are better off learning about S60v5 on a $200 device than learning it on a $700 device.
You will see exactly why I am *****ing all day for a D-pad on this device, because I won't lie. If it did have a D-pad I wouldn't mind it at all. I would use it in all menus.
Also the inconsistent single touch/double touch thing is annoying. Yes you do get used to it after a while but it is just unnecessary with a decent interface design. It happens because they fell back on the select/enter system that works very well with a D-pad but is just not good on a touch device. There should be no select just enter. If you need to manipulate an object either come up with pressure sensitivity or use the long press method that the iPhone does well or from what I hear Android just puts to perfect use. Short press to enter or long press to edit. No more selecting by short press.
If you try the iPhone 3.0 you will see how beautifully it works. Long press brings up select and select all. You can then select all to copy entire sentences or e-mail addresses. Or you can select the start point and then select the end point at which time the option to cut or copy pops-up. You have full control over the text you select. It even works in 3rd party apps I noticed today. I was reading stuff in the FML app and you can copy text from nearly everywhere. Unbelievable.
The entire menu system needs a rework such that all functions are consolidated into a few groups like they've done in Office 2007. That way you should never be asked to scroll in a menu. It just is terrible in the 5800 to scroll through menus to see the option you want. Once you enter one of the groups, just give a nice big full screen menu because if you are in options you anyway need to finish your business in that menu before you doing anything with the app. So make it big and put all the options for that group there. Actually they do it in the S60v5 browser that way. But not in any menus.
Honestly I can't imagine it would have taken a team more than 2 days to brainstorm out a better way to group functions for any application or menu to reduce the size and obviate the need to scroll in a tiny menu. So it just looks and seems so thoughtless how they made the transition. Sure some people can live with it, but my feeling is that a room of cavemen in about 2-3 days could have come up with better ways to make the menu. Heck even if they had to carve their ideas on a stone wall it wouldn't have taken more than a week. This company is in the business of making phones, so WHAT HAPPENED? I can only wonder.
Anyway I think from people are saying the browser now automatically goes into full screen after loading a page and I guess then there is translucent button to go back into showing the side menu or maybe it comes back when you touch a corner or specific side. That was SORELY needed. On the 5800, the way full screen works is RETARDED and there isn't a better word for it.
It seems all the improvements in the N97 are in the browser, so that part may actually be decent to good and the 5800 with v21 looks promising. But the menus you see on the 5800 are probably going to be the same.
Those of use hoping to replace an E71 will not find this to be the solution. Those of us who want something in addition to the E71 might find the N97 to be a nice change for weekends and evenings. But the operative word there is "might". You probably have to have very low demands on your phone in the evenings, but it is also the time when I communicate the most with friends so the E71 contact search trumps all even after work. If anything, I think the E71/E66 are just not top notch in business roles with mail and PIM that are so primitive as to make you pull your hair out sometimes. Oddly enough maybe I could go WinMo or surprise, surprise iPhone for work and E66 for evenings. That combination would serve those roles best for me. I'm coming to some weird realizations.
