Helmar Rudolph, the well known African republisher of
Ensemble, had a chance to preview the new Nokia smart
phone at a trade show. Following is his review cross
posted from comp.os.geos:
From : HELMAR RUDOLPH
To   : ALL
Subj : Nokia 9000: first review!
For all those who are still subscribing to this newsgrop ;)
I had the chance to get my hands on the first working model of the
Nokia 9000 today at a Computer Faire in Cape Town.
One of the cellular service providers had one available, and it was
"manned" by a beautiful woman on top of that. So I spent two and a
half hours playing with the goodie - enough to get a good impression
of what it can do and what it can't.
My opinion in a nutshell: it is indeed a really nifty device, but the
data connection part needs to be polished before it can go on sale. In
addition, I somewhat question the usefulness of the data part
(Internet, fax) on that device.
The limited GSM speed of 9600 baud is one factor, but the often lousy
line quality will (as was the case while testing) cause plenty of lost
connections. This is a huge drawback. The other thing is faxing. If
you have seen what a fax file looks on your PC (in terms of size) you
can imagine what this does to your cell phone.
I managed to call up my outdated Internet Africa home page, which
obviously looked rather odd on the small screen, so if they want to
make it _really_ useful, they _have_ to develop their own web pages.
Who will do that for such a small audience, remains to be seen.
Well, let's have a look at the goodie: If you have seen the device
opened, you have the green control buttons on the top of the keyboard.
The _fax_ button is the second from the left. Pressing it will open a
screen (which usually takes app. 1.55 seconds) where you can view
received faxes, write new ones, etc. You have the option to change the
style of the text to Mono, Sans or/and Roman, change the size of it,
the alignment, and can also make it bold and/or italic. Very much GEOS
like, if I may add. There are shortcuts for Bold and Italic, too. This
process is very straight-forward. You can then call up a recipient
from the system-wide list. As far as I could make out, the list has
only those activated that are relevant, means if there is an entry for
an SMS recipient, you won't be able to select it. (I might be mistaken
though).
The way you write a fax is almost identical to writing SMS (short
message system), notes and emails. The SMS is limited to 160 chars,
though. So you open a clean window, type your stuff, select a
recipient and send it. You can queue it or send it immediately.
The SMS feature comes up with a cute envelope on the screen, which is
fairly well visible from any angle. Again, you type your message,
select a recipient, whose details will then be filled into the right
part of the envelope. Press a button and send it. It has main menu
options for own texts, received messages, standard messages and
business cards. All these features have an outbox where docs are
stored until you connect and send them. The outbox is a global
feature, that shows all items, be they SMS, fax or email.
The Internet part is certainly the most interesting - also from a
technology point of view. However, it needs plenty of work before it
can be released - means used effectively. For the lack of addresses, I
haven't tried the Telnet feature. Terminal worked fine as far as I
could make out. The email feature is also very simple and
straight-forward. You compose your message, select a recipient and
either send or queue it. An idiosyncracy, however, was that I wasn't
able to get back to the message window after finishing with the
recipient and/or CC and subject information on the separate mail
header screen. You could only send or cancel the message but not edit
it as such. The other thing is that you cannot jump from the Mail
section to the Web section. The N9000 closes the connection down, for
you to dial again from the WWW section. Doesn't make much sense to me.
I managed to send a message once, but haven't checked my account
whether I got it. The other attempts to browse and mail were
unsuccessful, as the system refused to operate properly.
The same is true for the web. I loaded my page, where the graphic
looked quite cute. The handling (scrolling) works, but the display is
anything but acceptable. There is sort of a cursor available, but I
couldn't figure out how to use it effectively. Images are displayed,
but the whole process including scrolling usually ends up in something
useless. The test is displayed properly but I wasn't able to jump to
another link. Also, on the model I tested, it wasn't possible to leave
the web section back to the main Internet menu without switching off
the device. It just locked up. In summary: a nice toy the Internet
feature, but anything but useable, especially if one looks at the
connection quality. If you are unhappy with your desktop modem
connection, this is way worse.
The next button is the _Contacts_  button. Another screen opens with a
simple contact manager. Haven't played around with it at all, so no
real comment here.
The _Notes_ button allows you to create notes. When opened, it shows
you a list of everything of "note". Faxes, emails, notes, SMS. So from
there you can either create a note or jump to another section.
The _Calendar_ is quite cute. One the left it shows you the calendar,
and on the right the hourly schedule - very much like in GeoPlanner.
You can skip months, and there's also a to-do-list.
With the _System_ button you can set up your ...system. Passwords and
other goodies are there for you to play with - you can see that I
didn't spend much time with that.
The same is true wth the _Extras_. There were two or three items
listed, but nothing that attracted my attention.
Another word to the Internet part. You can create a whole list of ISP
accounts, as well as a list of URL addresses. So if you are at another
location, you simply select another ISP, and voil. You can also
allocate different ISPs to different URLs, which makes it a bit easier
if you select a specific page only from one location. As said, this
part needs major improvements, but I am sure they will be able to fix
it. I dunno, though, what they will WRT the lousy GSM quality.
If you want to connect to the mail server, you simply go to Mail and
move the highlight to "Remote server". Then you press the top right
"connect" button and it will send and receive the messages as
applicable. I was only able to send some, but the receive process
didn't work properly. Same here too: probably teething problems.
If the phone rings, a message window opens up and you can talk with
the device open. It looks quite cute when you talk to the keyboard,
which makes it the ideal toy for yuppies. ;)
There is a simple help function that is almost too simple to be of any
help. They keyboard is, as you will have guessed, not pleasant to work
with - it's just too small. I don't know if one can get used to it,
but hey, an _Omnigo_ with the N9000's comms features would even get me
excited. ;)
The device is very pleasant to handle, and neither too bulky nor too
heavy. Onlookers were visibly impressed - I think many just couldn't
believe their eyes. Most of them wanted to know how much it would
cost, and the answer was about R7000-7500 which is app US$1700. Much
depends on the contract you take out, though.
Summary: great technological advancement, cute toy, interesting
information assistant, but presently only _very_ limited usefulness as
far as any data communications are concerned. It's not reliable
enough, and the time it takes to connect to your ISP will both raise
your frustration level (especially if it disconnects without warning
or results) and drain your battery. Apropos battery: I played with it
for more than two hours on end (if it wasn't three), which brought the
battery to an end. If you call this "talk time" then I think it's ok.
--- Platinum Xpress/Wildcat! v1.2k
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