Paul Jacobson

I’ve had a Nokia N900 for a couple weeks now. Initially the idea was to try it out and share my thoughts and experiences but with the understanding that the N900 would not be available in South Africa for sale. That changed shortly afterwards and I received word from Nokia’s Tania Steenkamp that the N900 is going to be on sale in South Africa in the second quarter of 2010, thanks to efforts by Nokia SA’s general manager, Mathia Nalappan, to have stock allocated to SA.

I adopted an Andy Ihnatko approach to the N900 and switched to it from my N97 completely for the first few weeks. I put my N97 back in its box and did everything on the N900. I posted my initial experiences to a FriendFeed channel which I embedded in my first post and, as you can see, using the N900 was a mixed experience. Rather than using devices like the iPhone or Android devices as a comparison, I used my N97 which is/was Nokia’s flagship device. If you are familiar with the current Symbian UI, this video is a great introduction to the much improved Maemo 5 UI:

As you can see from the video, the N900’s interface is pretty different to Symbian devices. In fact, it is a real improvement and one of the reasons I am really going to miss the N900 when Nokia prizes my fingers open and takes it back.

From a hardware perspective the N900 feels solid (I’m not going to rehash the specifications so take a look at thedetailed specifications on the N900’s site). Its viewable screen area is roughly the same as the iPhone/iPod Touch and wide than the N97’s screen. The N900’s screen resolution is fantastic. Everything looks sharper and richer on the N900’s screen (according to the Nokia blog, the N900 has a 267 pixels per inch pixel density, compared to 165 PPI on the iPhone 3Gs and 210 PPI on the N97).

The device feels more substantial than the N97 and, as small as it is, you can definitely feel it in your pocket. It feels compact and substantial. I think about the E71 when I think about the N900’s build quality.

Like the N97, the N900 has a fold out keyboard but unlike the N97, the N900’s keyboard is flat, relative to the screen, and a little more compact. I had the usual finger confusion when I started using the N900’s keyboard and kept typing the wrong characters because my fingers were used to a different layout. I eventually got used to the keyboard and while I don’t think I type as fast on that keyboard as I do on my N97, it works pretty well. You can also enable an onscreen keyboard if you prefer not to slide the physical keyboard out all the time (or at all) but I found the onscreen keyboard a little confusing (it isn’t very intuitive).

The camera is important to me because I tend to use my mobile phone’s camera a lot. It is, after all, the camera that is always with me. The N900’s camera is almost the same as the N97 (5 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens/es) and easily a replacement for your little point and shoot.

One aspect of the device that really impressed me is the GPS capability. The N900’s GPS locks pretty quickly and while I don’t know if this is due to the N900’s ARM Cortex-A8 600 MHz processor doing the necessary work behind the scenes that much faster but it is a welcome improvement over my experience with the N97. The GPS ties in with the camera and geotags photos really nicely. The only time I had a problem with the geotagging was when I had no network signal at all! When you take a photo, it will be tagged with your location on a local, regional and national level. You have the option of limiting the geotags or removing them altogether.

On the subject of photos and sharing, the N900 has much improved sharing options over the Symbian Share Online app. There are configuration options for services like Evernote, PixelPipe, Flickr, Ovi and other services for the N900. The Evernote option particularly appeals to me and it doesn’t seem to be available on the N97 (strong possibility I just haven’t figured it out or found the configuration file). The N900’s share functionality works really well to boot and its very easy to use.

One of the N900’s best features, from my perspective, is the Conversations app. This is the N900’s messaging hub and it combines sms and instant messaging updates into a single conversation for each contact. It is brilliant and it annoys me that the Conversations app isn’t available for my N97.

You can connect to a number of popular IM services including Skype, Ovi, Google Talk, Jabber and SIP in Conversations and both sms’s and IM messages from your contacts will merge into a single contact-based conversation. You can also set your availability status in the N900 like most IM apps and, when you are online, you can also see which of your contacts are also online or available. IM integration extends to the address book where you have the option of contacting your friends via sms, email, IM and good old voice telephony (oh, if you use Skype, you can also call them via Skype from your N900 – haven’t tried this though).

Another favourite is the N900’s Mozilla based web browser. It is a full browser, not a pared down mobile browser and that, oddly, takes a little getting used to coming from my N97. Instead of loading mobile versions of some sites, the browser loads the full web page. This makes it possible to access your favourite sites on this little device and have a pretty good experience at the same time. You can also install a Firefox beta version but I found myself going back to the Maemo browser for most of my Web browsing. Take a look at this video, below, for an introduction to the browser:

Real geeks are going to love some of the geekier apps like the terminal app that comes with the device. There are a couple other geeky apps you can install which I don’t really understand or appreciate nearly as much as a geek who believes that Alpine is the best email application on the market today.

Overall this device is a great device although it isn’t without its shortfalls. I will write about some of those shortfalls in a follow up post in the next day or so.

One of the reasons I complained about the Nokia N97 when I got a demo unit was that it lacked iSync support on my Mac. That immediately made it that less useful to me because I had become accustomed to syncing my Nokia devices with iCal and Address Book. Its how I used to roll and still my preferred way of keeping everything in sync.

Since I started using my N97 as my primary device, I became accustomed to using Mail for Exchange on my N97. I have been synchronising my phone with my business calendar and contacts on Google Apps and although it took me a while to get the hang of it, I finally figured it all out and its been working reasonably well for me. The main downside is that I can only sync one calendar at a time and my choice has been my business calendar (unlike most people, I like to have separate calendars for different spheres in my life).

Today my experience of my N97 got a little better. Nokia SA’s Tania Steenkamp messaged me and asked me if I had tested iSync with my N97. Of course that got my attention because there previously was no iSync plugin for the N97. I rushed over to the Nokia site and this is what I found:

I installed the plugin faster than you can say “Don’t I have other work to do” and starting a fresh sync with my N97 (I opted to reset my N97 rather than wade through a few hundred sync queries from iSync). Like any reset it takes a little while to complete the initial process (around 20 to 30 mins for me). The result is that it worked reasonably well except when it came to some of my calendars. I need to explain how I have setup my calendars though because my setup is probably a bit more complex than the average user.

I have setup my calendars to sync with my Google calendars. My personal GCal actually has a couple calendars for alternative projects, family and friends, home and so on. These are identified as “delegates” and are subordinated to my main personal GCal calendar. The structure is pretty much as you see in the image to the right.

The way I understand it, these other calendars are almost subsets of my personal GCal calendar (the “Paul Jacobson” one in blue). iSync allows me to sync my N97 with the two primary “Paul Jacobson” calendars (work and personal) but not the other ones. This type of setup seems to be an issue for MobileMe too because MobileMe doesn’t sync these other calendars either (I’m pointing this out in case someone feels the urge to tell me to get an iPhone, again). Update: I just checked MobileMe and it doesn’t sync any of my Exchange based calendars at all! Nokia 1 – Apple 0.

I suspect that if I had setup my calendars normally in iCal, my calendars would sync with my N97 through iSync correctly and would also sync with MobileMe. I would just lose the ability to sync with GCal. Ironically, I am not sure I want to give up the GCal sync via Exchange so even though this is one of the features I most wanted from Nokia, I probably won’t take full advantage of it.

Another thing to point out is that I have come to realise that Exchange sync between GCal and my N97 over the air is really handy! I don’t need to connect my N97 to my MacBook to sync, it just happens behind the scenes. Unfortunately that is even more limited than the iSync method because I think I can only sync a single calendar (I have this notion that multiple sync profiles in Mail for Exchange would just scramble all my calendars and ruin my day).

Anyway, the big news is that you can now sync your N97 with your Mac using iSync!

This post has been an idea in my head, bouncing around while I debate what to write about my Nokia N97. I was hoping I could tell you that the phone performs even better than I expected, satisfies all my needs and is undoubtedly the best phone ever … like, ever! Sadly, I can’t do that. I should probably begin with what my expectations are of my device. For one thing I want my smart device to plug into my contacts and calendar and sync with them as effortlessly as is possible. I don’t want to change processes that work well for me although I am open to new and better ways of working.

The Nokia N97 is a great smartphone and Internet device, it really is. It is the top of the current Nokia range and can do just about everything smartphones these days can do (and more) in terms of raw functionality. At the same time, the N97 is somewhat disappointing to me given my initial expectations of the device. I was hoping the N97 would become my one device that I carry around with me and which takes care of my communications, Internet connectivity and media needs. It only really caters for some of these needs adequately.

I am not going to talk too much about the N97’s UI. It isn’t great, there’s no denying it and anyone at Nokia or Symbian you speak to will likely agree that the current S60 user interface is dated and due for an overhaul (expected around 2011). The iPhone 3Gs and Android devices have far more modern interfaces that look terrific. All of this emphasis on the UI did get me wondering about the underlying Symbian operating system and from what I was told, it remains a robust and effective mobile operating system today.

I decided to approach this post from the perspective of an N97 user. I don’t own an iPhone and as I pointed out previously, I have always been a Nokia user. I am also a Mac user and that tends to skew the experience for me. I think I would have a better overall experience of the N97 and Nokia devices if I was a Windows user. It almost goes without saying that I don’t know everything about my N97 and what I can do with it so you may find yourself going “Yes, but, if you look at this menu and click on this setting you can do that thing …” in which case, please comment below or drop me a note and correct me.

Pros and Cons, briefly

To begin with there are a number of things I like about the N97:

• the slide-out keyboard is pretty good although the angle seems just a little off to me;
• the camera is the best I’ve had on a mobile phone and takes fantastic photos in decent lighting (although not so great photos in dim to low light);
• Maps 3 which beats the pants off Google Maps on this device (this is one of the applications I would miss most if I ever stopped using a Nokia device);
• the over-the-air software update application (not news to iPhone users but this is a boon for Mac users who can’t use Ovi Suite yet); and
• the widget framework.

Unfortunately the N97 starts to lose its sheen when I get down to the nitty gritty of my day to day experiences. Unlike my E71 and a host of other Nokia devices, there is still no iSync plugin which means I can’t sync my N97 with my MacBook and update my contacts list and calendar on my device and vice versa. This presents a challenge because much of what I do each day and with my phone depends on up to date contacts and calendar information. I haven’t actually sync’d my N97 since I got it and although there are options available, none of them really seem to put a smile on my face. I have this nagging sense that to truly commit to the N97 I would have to make some serious changes to my productivity processes and systems.

Messaging, messaging

The phone’s Mail for Exchange support does go a way towards alleviating the pain of not being able to sync with my MacBook and I’ve thought about ways everything could just sync with the Google cloud where much of my stuff is. It is do-able, I imagine, but I just haven’t had the time to sit and figure it all out and get it working. The last time I used Mail for Exchange was on the pre-release N97 I used at the end of May/beginning of June and that made quite a mess of my calendars and contacts so I need to psych myself up to try it all again.

The built in email application is pretty basic so one of the first things I did was replace it with Nokia Messaging. That was a bad idea. Nokia Messaging has an improved interface but it installs to the phone memory (distinct from the 32GB drive) automatically and without giving you the option to install it elsewhere. This is a problem because it doesn’t take a lot of mail to take up all the available phone memory and start crashing the device. To add to that pain, I also received an email from Nokia informing me that my Nokia Messaging subscription had been terminated because one of my devices was transferred to someone else. That is a great security measure but I don’t know which device is the culprit. In any event, I had by that time decided to kick Nokia Messaging and go back to the default. Thankfully Nafisa reminded me about the Gmail app for the N97 and that works pretty well for me.

My new media device? And what about all those apps?

I was also hoping the N97 could take over from my iPod as my primary media device and while Nokia Multimedia Transfer does a decent job transferring content across using a sort of iTunes bridge and the Nokia music app works well, the device doesn’t so much sync as shuffle media around. I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks and I haven’t figured out yet if my N97 would carry on from where I left off, leave a marker of some kind where I stop and then allow iTunes to continue from there. I have transferred some media to my N97 and the 32GB of drive space does come in handy!

When it comes to applications I accept that the iPhone and Android devices have better applications, for the most part. Just the same I can still do what I need to do with my N97 and the apps that are available. The widget framework is a little buggy and stops working if it gets annoyed with me but turning the phone off and on a couple times seems to sort that out. The Ovi Store has great potential and I’ve had pretty good experiences downloading and installing apps on my phone using the Ovi Store app. In fact the first app I bought through the Ovi Store was Gravity which is a great Twitter app that really is worth €10 to me. The Ovi Store doesn’t have nearly the variety of great apps that the iTunes store does but I think it will improve in time.

There are other things that niggle (the battery indicator can be a big fat liar and I often find myself with no charge left in the middle of something) and just as many aspects of the phone that I really like (the swooshy call answer thing is nice, as is the touch screen experience – even if it isn’t as good as the iPhone with its capacitive touchscreen). If you look at the N97 in isolation, it is a great device. It really is. When I look at the N97 as an essential device in my day to day life, I can’t help but still feel a little let down. The experience isn’t as good as the hype I built up for myself in the last few months.

Alternatives, for what they are worth

When I look at the iPhone and Android phones like the HTC Hero, I become even more aware of what is missing from the N97 in terms of the general user experience. It does go beyond the UI though. I don’t see the N97 ever integrating with my Mac nearly as well as the iPhone will. That level of integration is important because my workflows begin with my Mac and move outwards. Using Google services for email, calendaring and so on does make it easier to work more productively but the inability to sync my calendars the way I have set them up, for example, gets in the way. In fact, when I consider the services that are most important to how I work, Android devices take on considerable appeal but I do ask myself whether going with an Android device wouldn’t be committing to another platform and modus operandi that is dependent on my using Google services.

As well as the iPhone will integrate with my workflows, I can’t help but feel that I would be sacrificing a number of things that my N97 does well and that I have come to rely on. Nokia Maps 3 with its guidance is an example of that functionality the iPhone just can’t match just yet. That being said there are more and more apps for the iPhone and probably also for Android that enhance those devices to a point where they will do everything the N97 does and more.

Bottom line

Despite all its deficiencies in my eyes, I like the N97. It is a well built device and it generally works well for me. There are probably a number of ways I could tweak the device to fit better into my workflows which I am simply not aware of so any criticism should be weighed accordingly. Then again, there are things that I just can’t do with an N97 that I can do very well with an iPhone or perhaps an Android phone. Using an Android device would ironically mean I would need to change how I do some of the things I do anyway but the growing number of quality apps and the tight integration with the Google services I use could make up for that. The iPhone would undoubtedly fit the best with my MacBook and be the closest to the one converged device I long for but that does come with sacrifices.

For now I am happy to use my N97 and explore ways I can use it more effectively. There are even times I long for my E71 and its slim form factor. On the whole, though, this is a solid phone and it does what I need to do every day. What it doesn’t really do for me is introduce me to even better ways of doing things or better things I can do to be more productive. That potential can be pretty valuable too.

Gizmodo really irks me. I have been reading Matt Buchanan’s coverage of the Nokia N97 and while I agree with some of the comparative criticisms when looking at the iPhone 3Gs and the N97, his posts are completely over the top and sensationalist. Here is an example from his initial review post about the N97 titled “Nokia N97 Review: Nokia Is Doomed“:

I don’t even know where to start the hate parade I want to unleash on S60 5th edition. Nokia’s managed to make RIM’s BlackBerry Storm OS retrofit look like a work of art. And when legacy (sorry, mature) software runs into a crappy half-assed UI, it’s a steaming pile of suck on a slab of garbage toast. All I could think about was how badly I wanted to shove Android onto it. Since I have nothing nice to say, let’s keep this part short.

This sort of writing may appeal to Gizmodo readers but it certainly doesn’t appeal to me at all. Gizmodo is supposed to be one of the authoritative tech blogs on the Web and it seems to need to resort to this sort of junk writing to get attention.

Now, this criticism isn’t based on my disagreement with the criticisms of the N97 when comparing it to other modern smartphones like the iPhone 3Gs. I don’t disagree with many of the concerns raised but I have far more respect for blogs like MobileCrunch and podcasts like the gdgt podcast for the way they discussed the N97’s limitations (here and here, respectively).

Anyway, I did my social media thing this morning and posted a comment to one of Buchanan’s latest posts which I took a screenshot of in case it isn’t published for some reason:

I wasn’t much of a Gizmodo fan before but I don’t have nearly enough respect for the blog now to consider it a worthwhile source of news, for whatever my opinion is worth.

The N97 really seems to have had a rocky reception in the USA in particular. I just read a particularly vitriolic review in Gizmodo where Matt Buchanan declared that the N97’s UI is a “crappy half-assed UI, it’s a steaming pile of suck on a slab of garbage toast”. This was fairly typical of the tone of the rest of the post. I’ve had numerous debates with people about the N97 and how it compares to the iPhone which has become the gold standard in many people’s eyes. The discussion inevitably involves me agreeing that Nokia devices really don’t have the same great UI that the iPhone has or even the range of great applications you can find in the iTunes App Store. I don’t think there is any denying that. It is simply an area where Apple excels and the S60 UI doesn’t.

That being said I have been wondering lately about the Symbian operating system itself. I listened to a great interview with Scott Weiss, the User Interface Technology Manager at the Symbian Foundation which is now tasked with developing Symbian and there are clearly some changes coming which bode well for Symbian. Whether they come too late is another question. What I have been wondering about is this: if you look beneath the UI at the operating system itself, is Nokia using a robust, powerful and modern operating system or is it as dated as the UI? The N97 seems to be running a slower processor and have less RAM but if the operating system is lightweight enough to thrive on those more limited resources then users shouldn’t see too much of a problem with performance. Buchanan commented that the N97 begins to slow down when running multiple processes but he neglects to mention that the iPhone, for one, doesn’t run multiple processes at all and all the power of its processor is dedicated to running single processes.

As far as the N97 and the iPhone 3Gs is concerned, I found two helpful comparative reviews in the last few days. Alec Saunders took the N97 and the iPhone 3Gs for a walk around San Francisco and tested a number of features of both devices. I think his post is pretty helpful if you are deciding between the N97 and the iPhone 3Gs so be sure to read it. Another helpful comparative review is this video review comparing the two devices literally side by side:

Also take a look at Michael’s profile page on YouTube, he has also compared the two browsers on the two devices.

The N97 is taking a lot of heat for its UI and given its competitors the criticism isn’t unwarranted. At the same time it will be some time before we see any major changes to the Symbian UI (Scott Weiss spoke in terms of 2011 or so). Hopefully that won’t be too late for Nokia which is losing ground in the smartphone market and will continue to lose ground, especially to Apple which has priced its iPhone 3G at $99 (on contract) in the US. I imagine we will see the price reduction filter through here eventually and the iPhone pick up more fanatics in SA too.

I was chatting to Craig Nicholson and Chris Onderstall at the end of alt.conference the other day about the iPhone 3Gs and the N97. Craig is in the market for a new device and was debating the relative merits of both devices as platforms and in their own right with me. I told him that if I was faced with a choice which device to buy (on contract or cash), I would be very tempted by the iPhone 3Gs. It is the iPhone I have been waiting for Apple to produce for some time now. It still has a couple limitations when compared to the N97 which has quite a bit going for it too. With this kind of competition, Nokia has its work cut out for it going forward.

I just watched this new ad and it is brilliant. Watch for the variation of the welcome screen at the beginning of the video – love it!

(via @LeoMckay)

Update: I just came across these two videos which are pretty cool too. The one focuses on the N97’s Facebook application functionality and the other on the N97’s kinetic or “flick” scrolling:

and

I just noticed this video showing how your Nokia N97 is assembled and prepared to be shipped to you. This is a rare look at Nokia’s assembly line and worth watching. I linked to this video from the Nokia Conversations blog which posted this background to the video:

Carita, from the Nokia Conversations team, was invited to the Nokia factory in Salo, in southwest Finland, where she was able to watch the Nokia N97 be assembled.

In the video (see below), you can follow Carita’s progress as she follows the Nokia N97 from the assembly table, through packaging, to crating, inspection, batch testing, and onto pallets on the truck.

We think this is probably the first time Nokia has shown any device being manufactured in its factory. We hope you enjoy it!

According to the Nokia Conversations blog, N97s are shipping to 75 countries (including South Africa, I believe) as I type this. They are only likely to arrive in SA stores in a month or two but they are on the move.

I found out about this story from JP Sipponen (he is the man leading the Nokia Nseries team) via his Twitter stream. Be sure to follow him, he had some great insights for me into his team’s development process in a recent interview he was kind enough to grant me in Dubai and which I hope to share soon here on this blog.