Hi folks,
Picked up an E61 yesterday, and although I find the keyboard to be very usable, the joystick is just horrible. It's the worst navigation stick/pad I've used in any Nokia up till now. I find it really unresponsive. I sometimes have to push it very hard to make it move in a direction. And it's 'creaking' quite a bit, which makes me think it is going to break or stop working any day now. Am I the only one hating the joystick?
The E61 is a non-keeper for me. When the UI relies that much on a navigation stick and that stick is so hard to use, that's a deal-breaker for me.
Well, actually that's not all. I've found so many UI annoyances, too many to list. I would've thought that Nokia would have got S60 right by now, but no, the UI is almost as annoying to use as ever. Especially in the E61 which could've been so much more with a well polished UI.
Not to mention the poorly implemented W-LAN. I had trouble keeping a connection, got various connection errors, it made the device hang and restart several times.
And it took forever to get the stupid e-mail client to function properly, btw.
To sum it up, the E61 did really not live up to my expectations. The 9300 and 9500 are so much more usable business devices. Of course the E61 does have an excellent browser, screen, well built, good size and a really affordable price, but when it comes to usability it plainly sucks, in my opinion.
Toodles.
I agree... Joystick is bit difficult to use
Connecting to the network and restart often does happens, also some time I keep getting the screen refreshing with a blank white screen, particularly if I access some media files from memory card.
One more thing even though they have good size screen and working well webbrowser, still the screen fixing is not with it, which is really annoying to run around left & right and up & down.
I can't really comment that much since I've only it briefly but personally I thought the joystick wasn't too bad.
I actually like the S60 UI a lot (and the E61 seems fine to me), but I do think more consideration for the fact that some things should be changed more between different resolutions / physical screen size would be nice. I know Raven hasn't liked S60 in the past (and really not that much changed in terms of how it works in 3rd Edition).
Usbaility is a subjective area. I honeslty think the E61 is good compared to many of its competitors. The one handed usage in particular. But if you're not into one handed usage and like pen interfaces then I suspect the E61 and the current S60 offerings are going to be to people's liking.
I have never had one single restart or white screen or problem connecting to any gprs or wlan network.
This phone has been great so far...
The joystick is not the best, for sure, but not too too horrible.
Yeah, it's true I've never been a big fan of S60, but one of the reasons I chose this phone was in fact for the 'one handed usage'. And that aspect of S60 is quite good, but (IMO) it very much depends on the navigation Stick/pad to be comfortable to use. The E61's screen isn't touch sensitive, and that's fine by me, but it would benefit A LOT from having a scroll wheel/jog dial and better keyboard integration with shortcuts etc. As I see it the E61 is the 'next generation' S60 device, being more PDA/data centric than the other S60 models. Therefore it should, IMO, at least be on par with current S80 and UIQ devices (UI-wise/navigation-wise). The lack of integration between the QWERTY and the UI in the E61 is a problem for me. In S80 this is handled magnificently. To me, the E61 has left me with a feeling of Nokia doing a half-arsed job this time. Being that S80 is dying and S90 is already dead and buried, S60 must be made more 'PDA-friendly' to replace those two great platforms.
I still have the E61, and I have gotten more used to it's quirks by now, and there are certain things that I really like. The true-colour screen is simply amazing and really shines when playing back a video, browsing the web or viewing pictures. I also find the keyboard to be very usable, and the battery seems to last forever. The built quality is excellent, and I generally like the form factor. It is a little wide, but the 'thinness' makes up for it. Besides, I suppose the keyboard would suffer if the device was any less wide.
My problems are mostly software related. Overlooking my personal niggles with S60 as a UI, and some minor software bugs - which will undoubtedly be fixed in a firmware upgrade, my problems are related to the W-LAN. When I mentioned the restarts earlier, that was probably due to the battery being low on juice at that time. I don't face such instability problems now. Still, I just cannot get the W-LAN to function properly. At first try, it connects fine and downloads/uploads ok, then it will just hang there (connecting...connecting) when I f.ex click on a new link in the Web browser. Either that, or it will disconnect with a 'time out' error, or some other weird connection error. However, sometimes it does work fine for a while. So I really don't understand what's going on here. The signal is strong, no problems with the network itself. It's really frustrating. Fortunately (E)GPRS works great though.
The joystick is equivalent to the BB tracking wheel. I felt the same way when I switched from a PPC to a BB. Now going to an E61 it will take a little time to get used to its sensitivity or lack there of but it's a smoking piece of hardware compared to an BB 8700 (which I love, too) but I can only dance with one. So it's the E61 for me.
But isn't the joystick not the same as on the Nokia 6600? You have to be used to it and then it 'll be allright.
I think about the E61, it's the first phone in that genre from Nokia so they have a lot to lurn. A lot of firmware upgrades later or a newer BlackBerry like phone will be better.
Regarding the W-LAN problems I've mentioned earlier, well, I no longer have any. 😊 It turned out that all I had to do to get it working properly was to simply reboot my router. Don't I feel like an arse... :redface: Now it works marvelously.
I've also discovered how great the E61 is as a pocketable video player. I've encoded 23 video clips (the biggest file being 375MB) and they all play perfectly using the default RealPlayer (forget about SmartMovie). It's just like watching videos on a (tiny) PC screen.
My opinion on the joystick is still negative, and I doubt that will ever change. And I still think the UI could use some optimisations, but all in all it really is an awesome device. :icon14:
Raven wrote:Regarding the W-LAN problems I've mentioned earlier, well, I no longer have any. 😊 It turned out that all I had to do to get it working properly was to simply reboot my router. Don't I feel like an arse... :redface: Now it works marvelously. I've also discovered how great the E61 is as a pocketable video player. I've encoded 23 video clips (the biggest file being 375MB) and they all play perfectly using the default RealPlayer (forget about SmartMovie). It's just like watching videos on a (tiny) PC screen.
My opinion on the joystick is still negative, and I doubt that will ever change. And I still think the UI could use some optimisations, but all in all it really is an awesome device. :icon14:
well im glad you finally got to like it 😊 because your opinions as a symbian guru really count
thanks for the update!
since i do have experience with the E61 I must say that joystick is so much worse then the one on the 6600. I don't understand why they didn't use the same as 6600