Nokia E61
You take one look at the E61, and you’re not thinking smartphone. You’re thinking that this is Nokia’s move to take on the perceived might of the Research in Motion Blackberry devices, and the popular Palm Treo. And you’re probably right. At some point, the smartphone stops becoming a phone, and in fact becomes a PDA. Nokia have been pushing this envelope with the Exxx series of phones, and with the E61 it’s crossed the line.
So what we have here is a pocket computer with a QVGA screen at 320×240 (landscape mode, another S60 first), that comes bundled with 52 applications. 53 if you count the ability to make and receive voice calls. That’s a lot of power in what is clearly the ‘standard’ PDA format.
Let’s go with the physical handset and making voice calls first – after all it is sold as a smartphone. To get the keyboard into the device, this is one of the widest Nokia phones out there. On a practical point of view, it means that you’re struggling to move the E61 to get the best volume from the earpiece, and that sliding around puts a lot of grease onto the screen. Sound quality is more than adequate though, and there have been no complaints from people I’ve been talking to.
When you’re on the dial screen, the highlighted keys for the numbers will give you the numbers without having to change the preferred text entry mode (very useful, even though it’s a simple touch). Compare this with the hard to differentiate green and red call/hang up keys that are both directly under the two S60 standard soft keys, and have the same shape and styling of icon. It’s not clear at all which key does what.
E61Most people are going to be dialling numbers from the built in contacts application, probably synced to Outlook on their PC. There’s a natural assumption from Nokia that the E61 users will be PC based, and using Outlook – and to be fair with the E61 being a business device that’s probably correct – so the services are geared to this integration. This means that synchronising contacts (and notes, tasks and calendar entries) is something I now implicitly trust the software to do. That’s far cry from the 7650 days.
With the landscape screen of the E61, the built in applications have all needed tweaking to take account of the extra number of pixels, and the different orientation. Looking at the contacts application, we can see the tweaks made to shoehorn S60 into the larger space. We still have a bar on the bottom of the screen that labels the two soft keys, but because of the size of the screen, there is a massive blank space in the middle. The background wallpaper does minimize this, but cramping the labels into the corners of the screen isn’t a great user experience, and it looks sloppy. There must be a better way to use this screen space, and I’m confident that we’ll see some third party applications that will in the next few months.
Calling up a menu is just as strange – because this is the first Series 60 phone that doesn’t have the menu taking up the full screen (it takes up the middle two thirds). And it feels so large, mainly because of the use of a super sized font. Given the size of the fonts used for the soft keys, and miniscule icons for battery and signal strength along the top of the screen, the pop up menu just feels out of place.
So why go through all these hoops in terms of the user interface when a much better use of the screen could make it easier for the end user? The answer, of course, is S60 and economies of scale and code. Previously, Series 60 devices have been on portrait sized screens, with roughly the same width/height ratio, so everything worked as originally intended. But with the E61 switching to a landscape screen, Nokia have had no choice but to keep the same UI elements so that applications written for S60 v3 will still be able to run. I just think that a little bit more testing and tweaking needs to be done – and I’d love to see a consistent font size throughout the interface as soon as possible.
The other major point in the E61 is the inclusion of a qwerty based keyboard for easier text entry – which a great choice given the target market of the device. But again like the user interface, the fact that the E61 is a first generation qwerty S60 device (alongside the E70) shows. There are too many little quirks and problems that mean you can’t fully trust the keyboard. The main feeling is a lack of consistency – in number pad mode for making calls, you get the + sign by tapping the blue ‘embedded’ key with the plus sign. Move to the calculator application, and while you can still type in numbers directly, you can’t type the plus key, you have to resort to moving the cursor around and selecting it on screen.
On the whole, the keyboard works as advertised, but you still have to contend with a number of issues that don’t seem to flow correctly. Comparing it to other similarly sized devices such as the Palm Treo and RIM Blackberry leaves the E61 at a slight disadvantage… but it’s still streets ahead of using T9 on just a number pad.
