The Nokia E51: The things that work, and the thing...

Question

Wonderful phone. Let me list my accomplishments and outstanding challenges.
Challenges
* Finding a video player that will play common formats like xVid in LANDSCAPE format. I did find a free app that will download and play anything on Youtube, but again not landscape.
* Need to find a video recorder that records with a better frame rate. Is there one?
* SIP voip calls remain a challenge.. Not sure if the issue is NAT traversal or that I just have the settings wrong or that the issue is the voip/sip provider.. Have been able to get Gizmovoip to work, BUT call quality to land lines is less than I get on Skype-Out (using Fring). With VoipBuster it seems to connect to the service, but when making a call it just sits there without response or connecting or anything else happening. So would still like to do smooth, cheap and reliable SIP.. Any thoughts on providers? Needs to be cheap (or free) to USA, Holland and Thaland.
* Built in Web browser sometimes crashes (vanishes). Sometimes even just after opening it up and looking at the bookmark list, or shortly after opening a basic page like Google or BBC News PDA.
* How to change the user-agent of this web browser.. Some sites are determined to present me their 'light' version. People: "Light" is not good when it comes to WiFi phones, or beer. So need to change the user-agent that the browser presents. Opera Mini goes some way to reduce the problem; excellent little browser that, and the best to use when your connection isn't WiFi (and/or not free/unlimited or slow)
* How to select and copy (to paste elsewhere) text from a web page? Would like for example to be able to use the edit key (#) and drag & select the mouse pointer.
* Nimbuzz is a free program that allows you to chat to MSN, Yahoo Chat (etc, etc) AND Skype chat. It's weird on this phone though, sometimes it just does't start when I try to open it. Can use Fring of course, but the chat function in Nimbuzz is better. Also think Nimbuzz leaks less GPRS bytes in overhead, which is nice when paying by the kilo/megabyte.
* Need to find a Calendar & Todo GTD type program that kicks **bleep**, rather than sucks it.
* Some good games would be nice. Suggestions? Would love a good pinball or other simple yet addictive arcade stuff. I loved the old Nokia 9 Ball Pool as well
* Standby screen sometimes flashes/flickers. It seems it's updating something, but the effect is annoying. It's not a hardware glitch, the background wallpaper remains visible. it's just the Standby items that briefly blink.
* My phone has English and Thai as languages. I *NEED* Dutch T9. Why is finding & adding a couple more languages as hard as the Quest for the Holy Grail? Come ON..
* You can really feel the phone heating up when it's working hard, just as with a Skype-Out call.. I'm not suffering burns or anything, but is that normal?
* On S60 v2 you could go into 'Applications' and set that certain applications were allowed to access the internet. Options included 'always allow', 'ask every time' and 'ask first time'. Where did that go? Some apps have a habit of asking to connect a couple times. I want to just allow them access. (Or ideally, access only when connected to a particular access point or access point group.)
Accomplishments (SOLVED)
- Getting rid of T9 words that I added but that these days become the first suggested word.. Found a way to revert back to the common word 'is' after adding 'HR' (as in human resources) to the dictionary which in hindsight is a boneheaded thing to do.. (T9 didn't used to work that way on my last Symbian phone)
- External Bluetooth keyboard 'justworks' out of the box, great.
- Wifi search, signal reception and configuration is amazing.
- Must-Haves: File system access with the free Y-Browser, Fring chat/Skype calls, Gmail client (lighter than the built in one), emTube (for Youtube vids).
- Also Google maps is pretty amazing, it even tracked my position using GSM triangulation when I was *WAY* upcountry in Northern Thailand.. Sometimes though it says 'position not availabs le', is that a phone thing or a network operator thing that they didn't list the GPS position of their signal towers?
That's it so far.. has it been a week already..?! I just don't know how I ever lived without one.
Message Edited by hantms on 13-Feb-2008 07:26 AM
Message Edited by hantms on 13-Feb-2008 07:29 AM

Answer 1

> People complaining about video player and picture taking
> capabilities should have bought an NSeries.
To a degree I agree when it comes to hardware; like E51 includes a 2 MP camera which honestly is fine for business functions like taking the occasional pic of a whiteboard drawing or the like.
However business people also want to show people pictures of their kids or something, and on a phone that's got plenty of hardware punch it seems just petty to ship it with a handicapped picture browser.
Same applies to music.. On those long flights you do actually want to listen to music..
I think this whole N vs E vs number series is just a case of over-marketing your stuff. I buy E51 because it had all the features I valued at a great price; nothing else enters into it. The next choice would actually have been 6110 Navigator, a number series phone. Or if an N series then probably an N80i, again similarly priced.
> Eseries is or is marketed as a business phone. It should
> perform well when it comes to business yet the most common
> task of syncing outlook email is out of the question.
The irony is that the best e-mail implementation is actually GMail.. Get e-mails in a very lightweight browser AND be able to quickly search and retrieve ANY e-mail sent in the last 3 years or so. Really that's all that's needed. (well, along with better support for attachments, but the server-based model works very well I think.
> PCSuite is obsolete. Even in its 6.85 version as it only
> offers sync with Outlook express while the newer version of
> Windows Mail is something people from Nokia are not yet
> aware.
Yeah I never quite understood that application. There seems so much redundancy there.. I mean you just want to copy files to and from the phone, so if the thing works like a USB drive then that really is just fine to move either pictures or music or anything else. I tried the i-tunes wannabe app once and honestly I don't see the poing of converting my mp3's to whatever it's converting to. The original mp3 sounds just fine and I have plenty of space on the memory card.
And then as a separate there should be sync to Outlook and that's pretty much it.
Backup....: again that's either just copying files, OR syncing. My sync to outlook IS my backup.
Modem/connections: I'd rather just see that as a modem driver for Windows and be done with it.
> I own an E51 and sometimes it fails to see my music on my 8Gb
> card.
Yeah, it's not smart enough to notice by itself that a metric **bleep**ton of new tunes showed up so you have to manually go 'update'. Oh well.
> Switching programs sometimes leaves me with a white screen
> for a couple of minutes.
I don't get that.. UNless perhaps the app crashed in a serious way, usually something pretty beta like Fring.
> Yet I don't complain cause is a new product and a new
> firmware will probably address those issues.
> But not being able to take my Outlook inbox with me
> it's disappointing, frustrating and unacceptable.
I'd be inclined to auto-forward all my work email to Gmail and be done with it. Then you have years of email always with you.
> Come on Nokia you can do better than this.
Are you kidding, they're all working on making their stuff look and feel like iPhone, just like every other phone company out there. Waste time in syncing email and multiple to-do levels? Sorry, not very hip, even for a business phone.
And to be sure, look at all the business people buying iPhones as if they were buying donuts.. iPhone COMPLETELY lacks major and sometimes very basic phone / business features but they don
t CARE as it browses the net, shows pictures, plays music. Again, Nokia tries to over-market and over-segment.. Get a cool 'everything' phone out there and everyone will buy it, business people included. Heck, 'business functions' just means 'business software'. For sure there's no such thing as business hardware..