S60 stuf

So since Qt for the Symbian S60 platform is well on its way I figured I should set aside my Blackberry and use my Nokia N85 as my main phone for a while. Here are some of my thoughts about the experience so far:

E-mail - Well... it's not a Blackberry thats for sure. It's "ok". Maybe good for people who don't have a Blackberry lol.

Calendar/to-do - The calendar and to-do list are integrated into one application which at first I didn't like, but having used it for a few days now I think it's nice. I use these feature a lot, so I was glad to see that it could keep up with the Blackberry versions.

Web Browser - Overall the web browser is pretty nice, navigating full web pages is slightly easier than on my Blackberry 8220 because it kind of jumps to the form elements in the page. I have encountered an occasional site that didn't work to well, but overall it's pretty good.

Skyfire - Skyfire is a 3rd party browser for S60 which supports a wider range of websites and content types (like flash). I downloaded it because Hulu.com worked with it, however hulu.com seems to have started blocking Skyfire for whatever reason. Oh well at least it's still useful for watching, umm, other flash stuff on my phone.

Gravity - Very good Twitter/identica application that does pretty much exactly what you would expect such an app to do (and does it better than some desktop apps).

SpbTV - OMG this was so worth the $15, something like 100 TV channels from around the world streamed to your phone (a lot of it is news and the like, don't expect to watch CSI on your local station on here) in two different quality levels. I highly recommend checking this application out, they have a trial version on the Handango website.

Google Maps - I like that this has free traffic info, unlike the Nokia maps program but it's not as useful for actual driving usage as the Nokia maps program.

Nokia Maps - Good for walking, and OK for driving, but totally not a replacement for a "real" GPS system for driving. I wouldn't even consider using this instead of my Magellan GPS if I were driving someplace unfamiliar. Something that would make this app really cool though would be if they would partner with Dash Navigation and upload traffic data from your car so that traffic info is available for every street.

Nokia Map Loader and Maps Updater - The desktop programs to update the map software and to install new maps are totally different applications, these really should be one. Also the Map Loader is horribly ugly and has flashing text :-/

YouTube - The YouTube app for S60 is great. It does exactly what I would expect it to do.

PhoneLocator - Neat little app that runs in the background and uploads your GPS position to a server which then plots this info on googlemaps. Some people could find some major privacy concerns with this, but it could be useful if your phone is lost because you can see where it's going.

mShell - An on-board programming environment and compiler. Pretty neat, however with on-board Python now it would be silly to learn the "m" programming language even if it is pretty C-like

Python - I love the geek factor of having a Python shell on my phone! I actually took the time to tap out a small test program to pop up some menus and such directly on the phone. Seriously though, being able to write little apps in Python is a big plus for the Symbian platform. (of course you would normally write them on your computer then push them out to the device, not tap the whole thing out using multitap).

Ovi Store - I have bought a few things from here, and it could be cool but it's almost impossible to navigate. For instance under the "Audio & Video" category, the sub categories are "Music", "Podcasts", and "Video". If you select Video you get about 100 pages of video clips which are not categorized any further, making it very very difficult to find something interesting. I have also had trouble with the actual buying stuff process, more than once when I tried to purchase something I got an error message saying they were having trouble with their payment service please try again later. The one really big complaint that I have, though, is the lack of integration. Right now you have the Ovi Store and the Music Store and you can't download maps/voices for the GPS application through either. I assume Nokia intends to start integrating all this stuff into one place, but it's not there yet.

Music Store - I found several things I wanted to purchase here from major artists, but during the checkout process I was supposed to click a button to confirm purchase after entering my credit card details, but the button wasn't there and there was no obvious way to complete the transaction. Thinking it may have been a one-time bug I quit the app and re-started and tried again, same thing... that was kind of frustrating. Also having to sign up for a separate Music Store account after just signing up for an Ovi Store account was a bit annoying (why can't they use the same login at least?)

Handago InHand - Easier to navigate than the Ovi Store, but not much in the way of content. The Handango website has a lot more stuff for my phone.

Podcasts - The built-in podcast app is pretty good, it does both video and audio podcasts in several formats. It does not, however, play ogg files and yet the "podcast directory" on the device still lists podcasts which use ogg.

Typing - The thing I miss the most from my Blackberry is the SureType keyboard, this T9 stuff just doesn't cut it for typing anything longer than a couple sentences, where on my Blackberry I could easily type several paragraph emails.

Facebook - or lack there of, WTF? There is no Facebook app for S60v3. On my Blackbery the Facebook app would automatically add people to my contact list, update their photos, update their contact info, put their birthdays into my calendar, etc. It was great! I really miss this... this plus the typing thing makes me think about upgrading to a Nokia N97.

Consistency - Blackberry applications are very good at being consistent from one app to the next, Symbian apps not so much.

Overall - Some good stuff, and some stuff that still needs a lot of work. Maybe Symbian v5 addresses some of the issues *shrug*. I can say that this version is a heck of a lot better than Symbian version 2 was!