Cell on steroids gets even better
David Shapshak
While the tech world has been clamouring to produce the ultimate convergent device blending a cellphone and personal digital assistant (PDA), Nokia has been doing it for years.
The 9000 series phones have distinctively featured a flip-open screen and miniature keyboard, and have gone from strength to strength. Devoted users of the PDA market-dominating Palm have been known to abandon their stylus-palm touch screen in favour of the Nokia phone. Their reasoning is simple: the phone has all their contacts and they can easily make a call to them. Any other PDA/cell combination still requires keying in a number.
However, the Communicator range of phones has struggled to gain a kind of critical mass and has often been criticised for a black-and-white screen, not being powerful enough and not having the capacity to upgrade.
The latest phone however puts all of this behind it.
The stand-out feature of the new 9210 is, obviously, the colour screen. But what a screen.
I’m accustomed to the clear resolution of my PalmV and have toyed long enough with colour screen models, but am still astounded at the 9210 screen. Even more admirable is that the screen shares space in the top flap with the phone and its external keypad and screen, making the screen very thin.
Using one of the available accessories a small and light digital camera I took a few cutesy pictures of my sleeping cats and was truly amazed at how easily I transferred them by infra-red to the 9210 and how clearly the screen displayed them. Although the beaming is somewhat backwards in that it requires you to individually transfer images, it is very quick, taking a few seconds an image.
The second impressive feature of the new phone is the Windows-like functionality of the operating system, emulating many of the familiar features. A “menu” key, when pressed in any of the programs, drops down a version of the well-known menu structure letting you open, save, edit, and so on. There is also the option to swop between open programs.
Slimmed down versions of Word and Excel, a PowerPoint-like presentation viewer and a file manager are on the phone and do a good job of imitating the desktop versions. All of these function exceptionally well. The mini-Word, for instance, handled a large document with multiple images very easily, while I dumped the most complex spreadsheet I had into that program and it viewed fine. I typed much of this in mini-Word before the small spaces between keys got too much for me. I then easily transferred the file to my laptop and finished it.
In fact, that is the only factor that counts against the 9210: the difficulty in typing long documents. However, even though a two thumbed approach was very successful, the phone is seemingly more suited to carrying such documents for opening elsewhere than it is for inputting them or writing them from scratch. It is also very useful for sending and receiving e-mails and short messages (SMS), which are quickly and easily written using two thumbs. Having a keyboard does make a significant difference in this regard.
I was particularly impressed by the way the 9210 handled Web pages. It pulled up the Daily Mail & Guardian home page quickly and loaded the HTML without any problems, as well as all the pictures on the page. For those of you who’ve tried this before on a variety of so-called Web phones, this is nothing short of awesome.
E-mail is similarly impressive. Cleverly, the phone has a variety of settings obviously designed around the fact that a data connection over South Africa’s cellular network is still very slow including one which lets you pull down only the e-mail headers (that is, who it’s from and the subject line), giving you the option to download the whole message or not.
As in previous models, a set of “function” keys across the top of the keyboard launch the main programs, including a useful calendar, which synched easily with my Outlook, as did the contacts. Having all of your contacts information on the portable device, of course, adds another aspect of functionality to the messaging option.
I was equally impressed by the way the phone synched with my computer, using a serial cable. I could drag-and-drop files and documents easily across devices. The 9210 features extra storage space through a multimedia card, which can also be used to install a variety of third party software and applications.
Am I gushing? This phone certainly deserves all the accolades it will get.
l The Nokia 3330 is another new phone that was recently launched in South Africa. Unlike the feature and functionality laden 9210 for the top-end business user, it is aimed at the youth market. Traditionally this younger, hipper market has been thought to be happy with changeable face plates (covers) and the ability to have ring tones and screen logos.
Now, however, Nokia is betting they will want more than to just personalise their phones.
The 3330, which is still essentially Nokia’s entry-level phone, now comes with a WAP browser as well as the two things that appeal most to the youth market: messaging and chatting.
Both of these have proved immensely popular on the Internet, while short messaging service (SMS) is one of the “killer apps” of mobile phones letting users send short text messages which are cheaper than calls. In Europe SMS is a major contributor to network earnings and is one of the most significant uses of mobile phones.
The 3330’s chat function enables a similar kind of chat function as Net-based chats, except using SMS, with a history of the messages and who sent them. The phone also allows for something that is not well known but is likely to take off in the same way SMS did: picture messaging. This is iconic and pictorial messages (say a cake to send to someone on their birthday).