I remember my first cellphone. It weighed me down like a full nappy, and was about as entertaining to play with.
It was a Nokia something-or-other (the numbers didn’t matter in those days — we all just called it a Brick) with a little aerial peeking out the top like a baby’s thumb. It rang, you answered it, spoke and hung up. Sometimes you picked it up, dialled a number, spoke and hung up. That was it.
And “it” was enough. We got along just fine, my phone and me. Sure, the ring was a little jarring, the reception poor and the phone-book memory pathetic. But it was a status symbol and it was mine.
I must confess that if I had been asked, back then in 1995, to draw up a list of things I needed or wanted to do with my phone, taking photos certainly wouldn’t have been in the top 10. In fact, I’m fairly sure that even today it wouldn’t feature on such a list. I don’t try to make phone calls with my camera.
But over the past 10 years, phones have grown smaller, then bigger, then smaller again. They’ve folded and unfolded, they have become fashion accessories, indicators of “cool” like no other, and SMSing has become the curse of the teaching profession. They have chorus-like ringtones, they all seem to have cameras as standard, their manuals toss out acronymic jargon with abandon — GPS, GPRS, G3, Wi-Fi, Wap, Wig and Java. But one thing hasn’t changed. My phone has always been a Nokia.
OK, that’s not entirely true, I did have a brief flirtation with an Ericsson. It lasted four months (the flirtation, not the phone).
But apart from that, it’s been the Finnish giant all the way. I love its phones. They are easy to use, they are easy to use and they are also easy to use. I’ve never had a reason to change, but I’ve been open-minded enough to allow myself to be tempted.
And tempted I was by Motorola recently, when its new E1000 model crossed my desk. Well, it lumbered more than crossed — at 140g it’s a good 50% heaver than my current phone.
It’s a stylish beast, not particularly beautiful but with a dollop of charm. Its screen and sound are superior to just about every other phone in its class, and it is fully 3G-ready (as long as you are).
On the downside, it has no infrared capability (although it has Bluetooth) and I found the menu joystick a bit fiddly and difficult to master.
My big disappointment was the menu structure, though. As a lifetime Nokia user, its menu has become second nature to me and it just feels natural with everything in its rightful place.
I didn’t find the E1000 to be an easy transition and spent more time clunking my way through the wrong menus and choosing the wrong option as my thumb pushed the joystick in the wrong direction.
I also battled with the transition to Motorola’s iTap (their answer to Nokia’s predictive text messaging). It doesn’t come close to Nokia for intuition and simplicity. Perhaps time and practice would make these changes easier; the question is how much time you are prepared to spend on it, given its other flaws.
Foremost among them is the appalling battery life. Unless you charge it each night, it will curl up and die on you halfway through the next day. There is nothing more stressful, unless you’re trying to avoid calls rather than take them.
Another niggle is the navigation through your phone book, which works on a first-letter search basis with no further refining beyond that. Add to that the fact that each number you add for a friend becomes a whole new entry rather than an additional number within an existing entry, and you’re left with a clogged phone book that’s difficult to get through. A bad combination.
So, I would rank the phone poorly for the business user. But for the multimedia fan, the phone is definitely worth a closer look … particularly if battery life isn’t an issue for you. Its 1,2 megapixel camera is a dream — it comes with 8x zoom and a built-in light. There’s also a front-facing camera for self-portraits or video calls. It takes better pics than most low-end cameras and it’s also a pretty nifty (although heavy) MP3 player.
I’m in two minds about the phone. It’s a good, solid, high-end phone that does the job well. But somehow that doesn’t feel as though it’s enough.
Like it or not, Nokia is the dominant player and competitors should play by the existing rules rather than disregard them. While I’ll admit that’s not great for innovation, it is good for the consumer. And even those who just need a phone to be a phone have a right to be heard.