B. Mann Consulting

Dave Olson caved and got an iPhone, so the Nokia N78 he was testing for Roland has now made its way to me (my previous phone has been the Nokia N80). Thanks to both for making it available to me.

Here is the Nokia N78 on Nokia's website for full tech specs etc.

First reactions:

• much slimmer! almost half the height of the N80
• not a slider ... I had gotten used to the convenient / easy lock and unlock that the slider activates. Guess I'll be download AutoLock again.
• wow, the keypad on this is incredibly annoying! bye bye high speed texting ... I feel like my fat German peasant fingers have to use the edge of my fingernail to use them
• speaker and sound is awesome. Regular headphone jack, yay! FM tuner, very cool, I'm going to make a lot of use of this. Dedicated volume buttons, also great. There is much more music functionality to explore here...
• comes with FM antenna headset thingie with remote volume and playback controls, as I said, music quality is very good, although the ear plugs are slightly small for my ears
• lightly tapping the back button seems to not close the app you are in, but bring you back to the menu. The menu / app switching seems easier, but at the same time confusing. Why not make the funny asterisk symbol the same as the Nokia "menu" button that is on all their phones?
• the camera is much fancier -- only slightly more megapixels, but all sorts of autofocus features that make it feel more like a "real" digital camera; the flash is three times the size of the N80's
• video much improved -- now at 640x480, with excellent focus and sound quality
• USB data connection -- yay! not using standard USB mini connection -- boo!
• can the USB connection also do charging? don't know, it did come with a charger
• comes with a 2GB even-smaller-format memory card (I've given up on remembering the names for different formats ... I have three or four different "mobile" memory cards, plus SD for my camera...)
• there is Share Online which lets you connect to Flickr, Ovi, and some other stuff out of the box. Not quite set up yet.
• GPS! Haven't wandered around outside to test yet, but first impression is that it is very slow to get a GPS lock. After installing Google Maps app, the cell tower only location put me in the middle of Howe Sound (I'm on Bowen at the moment) -- I actually still consider that pretty good. Definitely going to be doing more experimenting with this.

My other "first reaction" is that it's clear that I've been a Symbian S60 user for a long time: there are certain apps that I always download / setup. I'll be cataloging those in another post, in part for my own use so I can go to one page and quickly download all the apps that I want on every phone. Like my experience in setting up a fresh install / new Mac, this would seem to indicate a certain level of maturity in S60. Or perhaps a clear line of what they will include and won't with the base OS, so there are distinct areas where third party apps flourish.

For those on the Mac, the N78 is not supported by default. You'll need to download the N78 iSync plugin from Nokia Europe (thanks to Carniumology404 for being the first hit for that).

Back to installing apps...

My friend Stewart Marshall took the plunge and also got an E61 after seeing mine. He ended up ordering from Expansys -- they look like a really great online store to order mobile gear from in Canada. I had noticed them before and will probably be getting a cheapo GPS unit from there to experiment with.

In any case, Stewart was asking about syncing with the Mac. There isn't an E-series compatible plugin for iSync yet, but there are various instructions for enabling this floating around.

I used the very geeky instructions from Mac OS X Hints. There is also a free plugin described here, although some people seem to have trouble with it. 

Yes, I finally got a new cellphone. My Nokia 6630 lasted me 2 years, and has been a great phone. But, I'm finding the need for a smartphone -- calendar, to do's, and email at my fingertips. Hence, sticking with my favourite platform, the Nokia E61 was the best choice for me. If I wanted to do more multimedia with my phone, I would have held out for the Nokia N95, with 5Mp camera and integrated GPS, including geotagging of photos on the fly. *drool* If I had wanted a phone with camera in the same price range as the E61, my pick would have been the Nokia N80 (which is what Kris just picked up to replace his Sidekick).

Regardless...I will miss having a cameraphone. I'll have to see what kind of camera or picture taking workflow will make it easy to still upload photos on the fly.

Even better, I didn't even have to travel to Europe to actually buy the phone. I got it at Cellular Baby, just a few blocks from my house.

My first impression of the phone: fast! The UI is very responsive, and it comes loaded with applications. I haven't had much of a chance to add extra applications. I'll be putting Opera on, even though the built in browser is surprisingly usable in some ways.