You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
S60 vs. Windows Mobile Smartphone Edition
- Thread starter Ganon2020
- Start date
Gods SonFlower
New member
Thanks for that -- I left a comment regarding RAM on the unWired page. Did you pair your S60 and WMSE with linux, and if so how did they both work out in real life? (bluez or cable)
edit: by pair I meant "use as a modem", not syncing data
edit: by pair I meant "use as a modem", not syncing data
Nice review, I do disagree with one line though where you stated:
"WMSE has a more comprehensive call history, going back much further than S60?s history"
On both my N73 and N80 there is a log that has every phone call or text made since I purchased the phone, and there are hundreds. Furthermore, it tells me whether it was incoming or outgoing, the time and the date, rather than just a simple list. Other than that, nice comparison.
"WMSE has a more comprehensive call history, going back much further than S60?s history"
On both my N73 and N80 there is a log that has every phone call or text made since I purchased the phone, and there are hundreds. Furthermore, it tells me whether it was incoming or outgoing, the time and the date, rather than just a simple list. Other than that, nice comparison.
This is a nice, well written, comparative review.
You did not address the differences in call quality, bluetooth implementations, audio quality through the headset, probably because these are all issues of Nokia vs HTC rather than Symbian vs WM5, but I have found that these are actually the deciding elements for me. Possibly this is because I make a lot of calls from my phone and these features are more important to me than anything else.
A couple of other things you missed were that
1. the latest Symbian phones, including the E70 I believe, have a nice speaker independent voice dial function built in which allows me to voice dial any of my contacts when in the car.
2. Symbian allows the user to send a contact's business card over SMS in the same standard format that pretty much every regular feature phone has allowed for years. Symbian also allows me to receive business cards in sent in this way. This is a pretty important feature for a business person, particularly in a big company. In contrast WM5 does not allow you to send a contact except as a vCard, which is not a lot of use if the receiver is not also using a WM5 phone. With my old WM phone I didn't even get an alert to tell me if somebody sent me an SMS contact. The message just never arrived!
By the way while it is true that the Symbian menu key doesn't allocate numbers to the program names you can still launch a program from the keypad without scrolling. Just press the keypad button which corresponds to the icon's position on the 3x4 matrix.
Apart from that though your review seemed accurate and remarkably unbiased. I certainly still miss having the T9 contact search from my i-mate SP5.
You did not address the differences in call quality, bluetooth implementations, audio quality through the headset, probably because these are all issues of Nokia vs HTC rather than Symbian vs WM5, but I have found that these are actually the deciding elements for me. Possibly this is because I make a lot of calls from my phone and these features are more important to me than anything else.
A couple of other things you missed were that
1. the latest Symbian phones, including the E70 I believe, have a nice speaker independent voice dial function built in which allows me to voice dial any of my contacts when in the car.
2. Symbian allows the user to send a contact's business card over SMS in the same standard format that pretty much every regular feature phone has allowed for years. Symbian also allows me to receive business cards in sent in this way. This is a pretty important feature for a business person, particularly in a big company. In contrast WM5 does not allow you to send a contact except as a vCard, which is not a lot of use if the receiver is not also using a WM5 phone. With my old WM phone I didn't even get an alert to tell me if somebody sent me an SMS contact. The message just never arrived!
By the way while it is true that the Symbian menu key doesn't allocate numbers to the program names you can still launch a program from the keypad without scrolling. Just press the keypad button which corresponds to the icon's position on the 3x4 matrix.
Apart from that though your review seemed accurate and remarkably unbiased. I certainly still miss having the T9 contact search from my i-mate SP5.
i dont think its a very good review at all, coz the following were obviously omitted:
1) nothing about call quality... a phone head-to-head review without call quality, cmon???
2) WM reboots more often than S60... too often actually
2) WM's BT sucks bigtime all the time
3) WM Cingular 2125 does not have wifi
4) 2125 does not have qwerty
5) 2125 memory card is under the battery, no hot swap
all the guy was focusing about was the menu structure and key presses, which is nothing coz such thing is very subjective... it works for him, coz he is a WM user, it does not work for us, coz we are used to the symbian menu...
1) nothing about call quality... a phone head-to-head review without call quality, cmon???
2) WM reboots more often than S60... too often actually
2) WM's BT sucks bigtime all the time
3) WM Cingular 2125 does not have wifi
4) 2125 does not have qwerty
5) 2125 memory card is under the battery, no hot swap
all the guy was focusing about was the menu structure and key presses, which is nothing coz such thing is very subjective... it works for him, coz he is a WM user, it does not work for us, coz we are used to the symbian menu...
Paul Jason
New member
"In order to get to the S60 version of the Today screen (the Active Standby screen) you have to hit the menu key twice."
Hitting the red "end" key takes you directly to the active standby screen. Also with the menu key taking you directly to the menu on the first press, you can start new applications without going to the WM "home" screen and then having to go to the start button next to find an app. Then if the app you want isn't in the start menu you have to enter "applications" to find your app. That's 3 button presses to find some apps as opposed to one.
"Another peculiarity of S60 is that in programs one of the soft keys is almost always taken up by the ?exit? command."
I have many applications where one of the softkeys is not an "exit" key. This has to do with the particular program and not the OS per se.
"In S60 only headers are downloaded, and then you have to download each email you want to view separately."
There is a way to retrieve the whole message for either new or all or selected messages by entering the IMAP mailbox and hitting the left softkey and then "retrieve." Although with POP you can just set it to retrieve full messages on connect.
Hitting the red "end" key takes you directly to the active standby screen. Also with the menu key taking you directly to the menu on the first press, you can start new applications without going to the WM "home" screen and then having to go to the start button next to find an app. Then if the app you want isn't in the start menu you have to enter "applications" to find your app. That's 3 button presses to find some apps as opposed to one.
"Another peculiarity of S60 is that in programs one of the soft keys is almost always taken up by the ?exit? command."
I have many applications where one of the softkeys is not an "exit" key. This has to do with the particular program and not the OS per se.
"In S60 only headers are downloaded, and then you have to download each email you want to view separately."
There is a way to retrieve the whole message for either new or all or selected messages by entering the IMAP mailbox and hitting the left softkey and then "retrieve." Although with POP you can just set it to retrieve full messages on connect.
Enigma Reborn
New member
S60 is a Symbian shell.
But moving on, come on guys, why are you posting points on devices on a S60 vs WM5 review? I mean call quality? That is a manufacturing issue. A model might be better at reception than another, it might have nothing to do with the software the gadget is running. Duh.
There are plenty of crappy reception (hence call quality, or even operator's crappy coverage) WM phones out there and yet my friend's HTC is as good as a Nokia's. Both running on same software.
But moving on, come on guys, why are you posting points on devices on a S60 vs WM5 review? I mean call quality? That is a manufacturing issue. A model might be better at reception than another, it might have nothing to do with the software the gadget is running. Duh.
There are plenty of crappy reception (hence call quality, or even operator's crappy coverage) WM phones out there and yet my friend's HTC is as good as a Nokia's. Both running on same software.
Heather[TBTMK]
New member
my point is if he wants to compare, compare it in ALL points and not on matters that are very subjective, coz obviously, you will only favor the things that are good according to your liking or to your experience, hence not a very good comparison at all... it is much better yet to do a comprehensive review of any particular phone or gadget for that matter, and point out the pros and the cons...
others are saying it is a nice review/comparison, i beg to differ coz i thought i have seen better reviews and comparisons and it included all aspects of the phone, which IMHO, it should be the way so we can actually see the whole picture... again just my .2...
and what about multi-tasking, he did not even mention it...
others are saying it is a nice review/comparison, i beg to differ coz i thought i have seen better reviews and comparisons and it included all aspects of the phone, which IMHO, it should be the way so we can actually see the whole picture... again just my .2...
and what about multi-tasking, he did not even mention it...
Lover of Blue
New member
True, true.
The_World_Is_Mine
New member
wow, I'm glad to see that my review has sparked some conversation . To reply to some of the points that have been brought up:
---Did you pair your S60 and WMSE with linux, and if so how did they both work out in real life? (bluez or cable)
I don't use linux so I can't answer this, sorry.
---On both my N73 and N80 there is a log that has every phone call or text made since I purchased the phone, and there are hundreds. Furthermore, it tells me whether it was incoming or outgoing, the time and the date, rather than just a simple list. Other than that, nice comparison.
This is correct, and I was in error in my review, thank you for pointint this out.
---1. the latest Symbian phones, including the E70 I believe, have a nice speaker independent voice dial function built in which allows me to voice dial any of my contacts when in the car.
This is also true, and a very nice feature of Symbian, although I did have a little trouble with the system picking up exactly the name I wanted.
---2. Symbian allows the user to send a contact's business card over SMS in the same standard format that pretty much every regular feature phone has allowed for years.
This is also true, although I believe I read something not too long ago that either a 3rd party app or an update has added this functionality to windows mobile.
---By the way while it is true that the Symbian menu key doesn't allocate numbers to the program names you can still launch a program from the keypad without scrolling. Just press the keypad button which corresponds to the icon's position on the 3x4 matrix.
You misunderstood, I'm not referring to the grid of icons in the application menu screen, I am referring to the menus you get when you hit the soft keys. In Windows Mobile you these menus are numbered, in S60 they are not.
---1) nothing about call quality... a phone head-to-head review without call quality, cmon???
It wasn't a phone head to head, it was a comparison of the operating systems that each phone uses.
---2) WM reboots more often than S60... too often actually
And I mentioned this in my review
---2) WM's BT sucks bigtime all the time
I'm just going to have to disagree with you here, almost all of the modern Windows Mobile devices support profiles such as a2dp and avrcp that current S60 phones do not. I've never had a problem with my windows mobile bluetooth implementation and don't see a significant difference between the two operating systems.
---3) WM Cingular 2125 does not have wifi
This is true, but this is not a comparison of the 2 phones (see above) there are plenty of WM phones that have wifi and plenty of S60 phones that do not
---4) 2125 does not have qwerty
---5) 2125 memory card is under the battery, no hot swap
(see my previous answers)
---Hitting the red "end" key takes you directly to the active standby screen. Also with the menu key taking you directly to the menu on the first press, you can start new applications without going to the WM "home" screen and then having to go to the start button next to find an app. Then if the app you want isn't in the start menu you have to enter "applications" to find your app. That's 3 button presses to find some apps as opposed to one.
As far as the end key taking you to the active standby screen this closes the program which can defeat the purpose of a multi-tasking OS, but I see your point, and as you described the S60 system does have its pluses.
---There is a way to retrieve the whole message for either new or all or selected messages by entering the IMAP mailbox and hitting the left softkey and then "retrieve." Although with POP you can just set it to retrieve full messages on connect.
This is correct, and i actually used this system, but its still not as elegant as WM's built in email client which allows me to download the whole message automatically, thereby saving me the key presses and they wait.
---now i think i should not even bother with this... S60 is not an OS!
Technically correct, but come on, get over it.
---my point is if he wants to compare, compare it in ALL points and not on matters that are very subjective, coz obviously, you will only favor the things that are good according to your liking or to your experience, hence not a very good comparison at all... it is much better yet to do a comprehensive review of any particular phone or gadget for that matter, and point out the pros and the cons...
others are saying it is a nice review/comparison, i beg to differ coz i thought i have seen better reviews and comparisons and it included all aspects of the phone, which IMHO, it should be the way so we can actually see the whole picture... again just my .2...
and what about multi-tasking, he did not even mention it...
Of course it is just my opinion, that's what any review is. Yes I am a longtime user of Windows Mobile but I am not a fanboy by any means. I think S60 is an excellent UI and I belive that I stated this several times in my review. I also stated that there wasn't going to be a "winner". This was completely and utterly my subjective comparison between the two, and I don't think there is anything wrong with me putting my opinion out there. I did not compare certain things like call quality and reception because that was not my purpose, as I stated above, I did not want to do a comparison of the 2125 and E70, I wanted to compare WMSE and S60.
As far as mult-tasking goes, you are correct that I did not mention it directly, however both WMSE and S60 are multi-tasking OS' and the only relevant difference that I saw was the limitations that S60's low RAM puts on certain programs, which I did mention.
Thank you all for your comments, I'm glad for those who enjoyed the article. I am now reviewing a couple more S60 phones, the N93 and N73, so check out my website in a couple of weeks to read those reviews.
---Did you pair your S60 and WMSE with linux, and if so how did they both work out in real life? (bluez or cable)
I don't use linux so I can't answer this, sorry.
---On both my N73 and N80 there is a log that has every phone call or text made since I purchased the phone, and there are hundreds. Furthermore, it tells me whether it was incoming or outgoing, the time and the date, rather than just a simple list. Other than that, nice comparison.
This is correct, and I was in error in my review, thank you for pointint this out.
---1. the latest Symbian phones, including the E70 I believe, have a nice speaker independent voice dial function built in which allows me to voice dial any of my contacts when in the car.
This is also true, and a very nice feature of Symbian, although I did have a little trouble with the system picking up exactly the name I wanted.
---2. Symbian allows the user to send a contact's business card over SMS in the same standard format that pretty much every regular feature phone has allowed for years.
This is also true, although I believe I read something not too long ago that either a 3rd party app or an update has added this functionality to windows mobile.
---By the way while it is true that the Symbian menu key doesn't allocate numbers to the program names you can still launch a program from the keypad without scrolling. Just press the keypad button which corresponds to the icon's position on the 3x4 matrix.
You misunderstood, I'm not referring to the grid of icons in the application menu screen, I am referring to the menus you get when you hit the soft keys. In Windows Mobile you these menus are numbered, in S60 they are not.
---1) nothing about call quality... a phone head-to-head review without call quality, cmon???
It wasn't a phone head to head, it was a comparison of the operating systems that each phone uses.
---2) WM reboots more often than S60... too often actually
And I mentioned this in my review
---2) WM's BT sucks bigtime all the time
I'm just going to have to disagree with you here, almost all of the modern Windows Mobile devices support profiles such as a2dp and avrcp that current S60 phones do not. I've never had a problem with my windows mobile bluetooth implementation and don't see a significant difference between the two operating systems.
---3) WM Cingular 2125 does not have wifi
This is true, but this is not a comparison of the 2 phones (see above) there are plenty of WM phones that have wifi and plenty of S60 phones that do not
---4) 2125 does not have qwerty
---5) 2125 memory card is under the battery, no hot swap
(see my previous answers)
---Hitting the red "end" key takes you directly to the active standby screen. Also with the menu key taking you directly to the menu on the first press, you can start new applications without going to the WM "home" screen and then having to go to the start button next to find an app. Then if the app you want isn't in the start menu you have to enter "applications" to find your app. That's 3 button presses to find some apps as opposed to one.
As far as the end key taking you to the active standby screen this closes the program which can defeat the purpose of a multi-tasking OS, but I see your point, and as you described the S60 system does have its pluses.
---There is a way to retrieve the whole message for either new or all or selected messages by entering the IMAP mailbox and hitting the left softkey and then "retrieve." Although with POP you can just set it to retrieve full messages on connect.
This is correct, and i actually used this system, but its still not as elegant as WM's built in email client which allows me to download the whole message automatically, thereby saving me the key presses and they wait.
---now i think i should not even bother with this... S60 is not an OS!
Technically correct, but come on, get over it.
---my point is if he wants to compare, compare it in ALL points and not on matters that are very subjective, coz obviously, you will only favor the things that are good according to your liking or to your experience, hence not a very good comparison at all... it is much better yet to do a comprehensive review of any particular phone or gadget for that matter, and point out the pros and the cons...
others are saying it is a nice review/comparison, i beg to differ coz i thought i have seen better reviews and comparisons and it included all aspects of the phone, which IMHO, it should be the way so we can actually see the whole picture... again just my .2...
and what about multi-tasking, he did not even mention it...
Of course it is just my opinion, that's what any review is. Yes I am a longtime user of Windows Mobile but I am not a fanboy by any means. I think S60 is an excellent UI and I belive that I stated this several times in my review. I also stated that there wasn't going to be a "winner". This was completely and utterly my subjective comparison between the two, and I don't think there is anything wrong with me putting my opinion out there. I did not compare certain things like call quality and reception because that was not my purpose, as I stated above, I did not want to do a comparison of the 2125 and E70, I wanted to compare WMSE and S60.
As far as mult-tasking goes, you are correct that I did not mention it directly, however both WMSE and S60 are multi-tasking OS' and the only relevant difference that I saw was the limitations that S60's low RAM puts on certain programs, which I did mention.
Thank you all for your comments, I'm glad for those who enjoyed the article. I am now reviewing a couple more S60 phones, the N93 and N73, so check out my website in a couple of weeks to read those reviews.
IWannaGoHome
New member
^ you are very much entitled to your opinion...
and please, try to not to refer to S60 as an OS, it aint the OS...
and how sure are you that WM does multi-tasking and that it doesnt have the same issue as S60 with regards to RAM???
you kept mentioning that there is "no winner" but at the end of your article, you specifically mentioned that you are "using WM", hence you have implied that it is the winner, hence i call that your preference and being a long time WM user, it goes to say your comparison is biased...
and please, try to not to refer to S60 as an OS, it aint the OS...
and how sure are you that WM does multi-tasking and that it doesnt have the same issue as S60 with regards to RAM???
you kept mentioning that there is "no winner" but at the end of your article, you specifically mentioned that you are "using WM", hence you have implied that it is the winner, hence i call that your preference and being a long time WM user, it goes to say your comparison is biased...
tom_mcmullen06
New member
I used to have my pocket pc iPAQ hx4700 and Nokia 6680, and switched to pocket pc phone XDA Atom. Now I come back with hx4700 together with Nokia N73 since the unsatisfactory performance of pocket pc phone. I understand there are difference between Windows smartphone and pocket pc phone. There are huge difference between smartphone running in Windows or Symbian. I have to carry 2 devices and I select my Nokia phone because of its battery performance, simple OS, built-in profile, stability.
How sure am I that WM does multi-tasking? Well, I'm looking at my phone's task manager right now and as I write this Pocket IE, Papyrus, TCPMP, Contacts and Camera are all activated.
As far as RAM, I know that WM doesn't have the same issues that S60 does because I've used both devices in the same manner and I use task managers on both devices to keep a very close eye on RAM. Because of this I know that when I spend an hour surfing on Pocket IE, and have half a dozen other programs open, I still have 10mb or RAM free on my WM device, whereas on the E70 I'm down to 1-2mb within 10 minutes.
At the end of my article I admit I put in a little sly thing about using my 2125 still, and frankly it all came down to 2 reasons:
1) I didn't like Web, either the interface or the RAM issues it creates
2) I didn't like the built in email client, the fact that I needed to take an extra step to download my email and also the fact that sent messages were not stored on my IMAP server.
Because I spend a significant amount of time doing web surfing and email on my device these were enough for me to go back to my 2125, even though there are a lot of things I think S60 does better.
QUOTE=friedbrains]^ you are very much entitled to your opinion...
and please, try to not to refer to S60 as an OS, it aint the OS...
and how sure are you that WM does multi-tasking and that it doesnt have the same issue as S60 with regards to RAM???
you kept mentioning that there is "no winner" but at the end of your article, you specifically mentioned that you are "using WM", hence you have implied that it is the winner, hence i call that your preference and being a long time WM user, it goes to say your comparison is biased...[/QUOTE]
As far as RAM, I know that WM doesn't have the same issues that S60 does because I've used both devices in the same manner and I use task managers on both devices to keep a very close eye on RAM. Because of this I know that when I spend an hour surfing on Pocket IE, and have half a dozen other programs open, I still have 10mb or RAM free on my WM device, whereas on the E70 I'm down to 1-2mb within 10 minutes.
At the end of my article I admit I put in a little sly thing about using my 2125 still, and frankly it all came down to 2 reasons:
1) I didn't like Web, either the interface or the RAM issues it creates
2) I didn't like the built in email client, the fact that I needed to take an extra step to download my email and also the fact that sent messages were not stored on my IMAP server.
Because I spend a significant amount of time doing web surfing and email on my device these were enough for me to go back to my 2125, even though there are a lot of things I think S60 does better.
QUOTE=friedbrains]^ you are very much entitled to your opinion...
and please, try to not to refer to S60 as an OS, it aint the OS...
and how sure are you that WM does multi-tasking and that it doesnt have the same issue as S60 with regards to RAM???
you kept mentioning that there is "no winner" but at the end of your article, you specifically mentioned that you are "using WM", hence you have implied that it is the winner, hence i call that your preference and being a long time WM user, it goes to say your comparison is biased...[/QUOTE]