It's been a wee while since I updated my own blog. Ongoing problems with Typepad, the launch of www.scottishgames.biz and the Edinburgh Games Festival all conspired to keep me from any sort of free time, or personal projects.
However, it's time for another update looking at the world o' mobile and a review of my experience with the Nokia N80, after using it consistently for the past four months.
I have lusted after the Nokia N80, since it was first announced. It looked like everything I could ever want in a phone in a neat little S60 driven package - and in many ways it is. However, there are ongoing persistent problems with the handset that are driving me crazy. To the point where I want to get rid of it and find something else.
First of all, let me go through each of the components/capabilities of the phone...
S60 V3
The operating system is gorgeous. OK, not most people's first priority with a mobile, but if you use it for work and do things other than make calls and send text messages, it's pretty damn important. As a long term S60 fan, I had high hopes for V3. It more than meets them. This OS can do *everything* Admittedly there's not a huge amount of 3rd party s/w out there yet, but yet is the operative word here and it's coming.
The S60 version on my handset is robust, fast and fixes most of the minor quibbles I had with the software in earlier incarnations. Little things like not being able to flip to the bottom of a list from the top and the necessity to specifically shut down applications when closing them.
Some of the software Nokia is making available adds a huge amount to the mix as well. The Internet Radio and Podcasting apps are fabulous. I found myself making use of the phone in ways I had never imagined. Streaming music to the phone while in the garden/bedroom/bath is very cool. I'm a huge Internet radio and podcast fan (Hi Ewan) and these apps alone made the latest S60 the best phone O/S I've come across.
The standby screen and added multimedia key are the icing on the cake. They give instant access to all of your most commonly used functions and can be modified and customised very quickly and simply. Two of the best features of the whole phone.
WLAN
The WLAN/WiFi capabilities of the N80 were one of the things which immediately caught my eye when I was originally looking for a new phone. It makes sense given the extortionate data charges in the UK. I can browse online, stream music, check e-mails whenever I am in a free WiFi hotspot. Yay! Plus the aforementioned Podcast and Internet Radio apps could only really be justified when using a WiFi connection.
So, it's great, fabulous and wonderful. Though it does drain the battery. A lot. Plus you can't switch the option off totally, which would be handy if you're out of the office and need to minimise the drain on the battery. The best option I could find was to minimise the number of times the phone would check to find a WLAN. This isn't a huge problem, but it is annoying and does contribute to the abysmal battery life of the phone.
Internet Browsing/Email
I love using the Internet on my phone. I bought a copy of Opera for my 6600 the week it was released and it's proven a godsend on many occasions. So my hopes were high for Nokia's new browser. On the whole, it's OK. Some nice features and the visual history/page navigation are very nice. But in terms of speed and accessibility, Opera is still in the lead. One quick purchase and I'm back online and at peace with the Internet as a whole.
E-mail access is much the same as previous incarnations of S60 (as far as I can tell from a user perspective). It does the job. I suffer from a huge, colossal amount of spam. Upwards of 85% of everything I get is crap. Which is what comes from having your email address at the foot of every press release sent out. It's annoying to have to wade through this dross, but until I invest in a server based spam filter (coming soon...), then it is merely an annoyance. You can limit the time taken and data used in a number of ways though. Allow the inbox to update and then cancel the operation before the headers begin to download and you can zip through and pick only those emails you really need to check. An option to do this within the e-mail app, or better yet an integrated spam filter would be an option for the future though.
Camera
The camera on the N80 has been touted as one of the best on the market
and at 3megapixels, it should be blistering. In carefully controlled
circumstances it is pretty good. In bright, well-lit areas, where your
subject is not moving at all, I managed to get some very nice
pictures. However in any other conditions I found the camera almost
pointless. I tried several times to get the low light/low natural
light modes to take nice sharp pictures, but have so far failed to get
anything even remotely useful. In addition, trying to take a picture
of anyone who's moving - and by this I mean maybe talking rather than
pole vaulting or running the 100 metres - results in a very blurred
snap. Even the sports modw, for fast moving subjects doesn't really
solve the problem. Pictures which do work out seem 'gritty' or
specular, with the pixels themselves fairly large and recognisable. I
didn't buy them phone for the camera, it's not a vital feature for me,
just nice to have. But even so, I've found the results from the camera
disappointing. Comparing pictures with a Sony Ericsson W800i, it's
clear that the N80 camera is not the rock and roll star it was supposed
to be.
One of the problems is the focus switch on the back of the phone, which
allows you to switch between macro and normal shooting modes. It's
loose. It rattles. It stays locked fairly firmly in macro mode, but
it comes out of normal mode if you so much as brush it and then rattles
around between the two locking areas.
The dedicated key on the side of the camera is pretty good, though it is very slow. Anyone wishing to take a spontaneous picture with the N80 better hope that nothing changes for 8-10 seconds from unlocking the keypad to being able to take a photograph.
The biggest problem I had with the camera was nothing to do with the phone, but with the network - more on this later.
Games
Dammit Nokia, I'm sick of dull card games. You have demos of N-gage titles, access to a world of Symbian demos, what say we give customers a little more choice than bloody Solitaire or Klondike. Snake 3D is nice, but Snake is more or less a part of Nokia now. I was surprised there was such a limited choice of games on the phone to begin with. I know it's aimed at 'business users', but these days we're not all 45 year old, suit wearing accountants.
Sound/Music
The music player on the N80 is excellent and the phone's loudspeaker gives great sound output. I've listened to hours of MP3's, Internet Radio and Podcasts through the N80. It actually has better sound than my PC, hence it's been used a lot for these sort of services. It would be nice if the standard FM radio didn't need the headphones to act as an aerial, but with all of the other options there, it didn't really stand out as a problem. I can't wait till phones have DAB digital radio too, since that's another option I suspect would be used a lot. However, as more and more stations stream content over the Internet, this would probably be redunant fairly quickly.
The headphones/hands free kit provided with the phone similarly have pretty good, responsive sound. They're not the most stylish headphones ever. The more modern 'in ear' types now standard with SE and Samsung phones would be far nicer, especially in a high end handset such as the N80, but they suffice. Nothing special and the looped cord which goes over your head helps them win the award for the most easily tangled headphones I have ever owned. If you try to pick them up, put them on and answer a call in a busy/noisy area, you're in for a good two minutes of swearing and cursing as you attempt to sort them out.
Keypad
Some people have complained that the N80's keypad is not distinctive enough and that it is easy to lose your place when typing. I will confess I have not suffered from this. Typing with the N80 is a joy and with Nokia's excellent T9 system, text messages and e-mails can be blasted through with ease. It's firm, responsive and easy to use.
Yet despite all of these mostly positive features and capabilities I really can't stand the phone and have resigned myself to going back to my old 6600 or buying another new phone.
So what are the problems with the N80?
Battery Life
It's awful. Really awful. I'm often out of the office and make/receive maybe 20+ calls in a day. Combine that with checking e-mail maybe twice and the phone is dead. I recently travelled to London and charged the phone overnight. It was switched off in the plane and even so was on the lowest battery setting by 4pm. I only managed to keep it alive by finding a cafe and plugging it in for an hour.
For a phone aimed at business users, this is unacceptable. Even if none of the mega features or extraneous applications like the media player, camera or WiFi are used, the phone does NOT last through a normal business day without being charged. I have to keep the handset plugged into a car charger whenever I am travelling to a meeting, just take make sure I don't run out through the rest of the day. I used to think the battery on my 6600 was poor, but the N80 plumbs new depths. Of course it has a lot of features and those need power, but dear God, it has to work as a phone first and foremost and with the current battery life, it doesn't.
Build Quality
The phone I have (and it's on handset #2) is not built particularly well. It rattles (thanks in part to the focus switch), the battery cover has an appreciable amount of give and the slide mechanism is so loose that I can't carry it in any pocket - jacket or otherwise, without it opening and more often than not making a call. I've had to create a dummy first entry in my contact list to stop it calling the poor guy who's first in the A's.
On both handsets I have had, the slide has been fairly loose, to the extent it can be impossible to fish the handset out of a jacket pocket without it opening. Fairly irritating if you didn't want to take the call. There's no excuse for this. In most phones with a slide mechanism theres a definite catch, click or lock when the phone is closed. Having seen and played with the Samsung range, which has a beautiful (and secure) slide mechanism, the N80's unsprung and non-locking slide feels distinctly amateur.
It really upsets me. I was the owner of a 7650, which had a better, more secure sliding mechanism. Nokia has really packed the hardware into the N80, but the slider is just far too loose. Combined with the wobbly battery cover which covers pretty much the entire lower half of the back of the phone, the phone feels cheap and rickety every time you open it, or make a call. It spoils the whole experience for me. Plus every time I have the phone to someone for a look, they open it and wiggle it and look thoroughly non-plussed.
Data Port/Connector
The connector port on the N80 is at the bottom of the phone. This is used for the handsfree/headset as well as the PC data cable cable. After using the phone for a couple of months this has started to go slightly. The handsfree can crackle and cut out in one ear when being used (unless it's lying on a desk in front of you). While the PC data cable can sometimes require the cable to be connected a couple of times before it's recognised.
Yes, bluetooth works and the new PC Suite is new, so this isn't a huge hassle for data transfer, but in terms of the provided headphones/handsfree, it makes it pointless to try and use them on the go.
Memory Card
The memory card reader sporadically fails too. On occasion when taking a picture, the phone informs me that there is no card present and the photo will be saved to the phone's memory. Not really a big deal, but annoying none the less, especially if you fill up the phone memory with other things (because the memory card keeps failing). I've so far tried four cards and they all suffer from the same problem. To get the memory card back online, I have to do a hard reset and remove/replace the card, sometimes two or three times. It's far more annoying if you're doing something which requires data kept on the memory card i.e. playing music or opening documents/e-books. In the middle of whatever you happen to be doing, the card reader can fail and leave you standing, swearing and spitting bile at the bloody thing.
Note: It just happened as I was typing this entry. I went to the gallery, which should have 30+ photos in there, but there was nothing. I had to restart the phone and reinsert the card for it to be found.
Network 'Extras'
I upgraded my phone to the N80 through Orange in the UK. The phone came with the default online picture gallery switched on. What this charming little application did was ask every time you took a picture if you wanted to put it in your gallery. Not 'upload' but save it to your gallery. It didn't mention anything about online. I thought the camera was appalling, because it could take up to 30 seconds between pictures. Turns out it was uploading my pictures to an online folder. I managed to rack up data charges for over 85MB of data in the first three weeks of owning the phone. One infurated call to Orange had the charge dropped, but as a default setting, it's outrageous. Indeed you couldn't turn off this option through the camera, you had to go into 'My Own' and do it from there. Lovely.
Conclusion
The N80 is a powerful little thing. It does a lot of things very well and I would be sad going back to a phone without WiFi, which couldn't stream music or download podcasts. However, the flaws and problems with the hardware are just too much to bear when you use the phone a great deal. It's simply not reliable. It can open and make calls when you don't want it to. It can be opened unintentionally, meaning you have to take calls you'd rather skip and you can often have problems accessing data held on memory card. It feels cheap and the battery life is laughable.
I returned it to Orange recently for replacement, as the memory card problem was deemed a technical fault. So for about a week I went back to my old 6600. I missed a lot of the newer S60 capabilities, along with the music side of things. But after a couple of days I realised I wasn't worrying about the phone any more. I knew it wouldn't be calling anyone, or that I might run out of batteries after a couple of long-ish calls. It just worked. All the time.
So the N80 is going back to Orange, or will be sold, or passed on, or otherwise buried and ignored.
It's a shame that such a nice and capable handset was spoiled for me by these ongoing, niggling problems. I will probably stick with S60 and I will probably stick with Nokia too, since the P990 looks just a wee bit too big for comfort, but the N80 is the first Nokia I've ever had that I regret buying.
