Ah, the customary spare moment for Steve to update his smartphone Grid, now with the addition of the Nokia 5500 and Palm Treo 750v. Which one is now the best smartphone for you? Plug in your prefs and let the javascript decide!
Read on in the full article.
When is the N73 going to hit the grid?
I cannot see how you can give the Nokia e70 a 10 for one handed operation, when you type on the two keyboards using both of your thumbs!
I reckon the 5500 should have gotten 11 out of 10 for durability... 😊
Steveap, the E70 has a normal keypad too that you can use one-handed, it's accessed by folding the full-size keyboard away:
I'll add some more devices when I get a moment..... I think I might need to tweak the code to handle more columns 8-)
Steve
It's very nice, this smartphone-grid, but I don't quite agree with all the rankings... I don't yet own any of the phones, but I've tried a number hands-on in the shops.
I don't understand why, for instance, the SE P990i gets a lower score for text-entry speed then the E61 or E70 when both have a qwerty-keyboard; a qwerty-keyb. moreover on which I could type one-handedly.
For me, the P990i would score at least as high on text-entry speed as the Nokia solutions and for me, from my limited testing in shops, it scores better on one-handed usage then the Nokia E70.
Such things are of course highly personal, but I do feel that the E70 gets a too high score for one-handed usage: the QWERTY keyboard is not usable one-handedly meaning you have to fall back on T9 input on numeric keypad in situations where you can use only one hand.
Only this morning I was walking to the station while writing a lengthy SMS on my Nokia S40 phone and in such situation I don't want to have to use 2 hands to type, but I do really want a qwerty keyboard to make writing faster.
Occasionally needing two hands to do some operations is OK as long as I can type that msg using 1 hand -- perhaps there should be two options?
A score for overall one-handed operation, and a score for one-handed text-entry? (The latter is, I think, most important to me)
Another entry that should be split is "screen size / resolution": E70 has the highest resolution of all, but a rather small screen. P990i has perhaps the biggest screen of all and I absolutely loved it.
I'd like to know a bit more also about criteria for rating devices in the category "music playback"; an important thing for me here is for instance that the SE P990i can have memory cards of up to 4GB (in future 8GB but those are not yet available).
BTW, I would also like to have more weighting-options available; with so many features to choose from it doesn't do for me that I can only specify "not/quite/very important". I'd better be able to express my priorities when there are 5 weightings available:
1 - don't care at all
2 - nice but not a must
3 - quite important
4 - very important
5 - essential
I don't know how much work it would be to adapt the javascript on the website for that?
Currently, the smartphonegrid tells me that the winner is a Nokia 5500 and the runner-up an E70 but I'm actually not even considering the Nokia 5500 and the E70 has already dropped off my list for not better-than-average one-handed text-entry!
The P990i is my current favourite despite reported problems with stability and battery life, which I hope will be fixable via future firmware-upgrades and being careful about how I use the device. (I do rate these issues as very important for me, making me rather hesitant about getting the P990i, but it just seems to be so good on many other fronts...)
So given my preferences, and given what the Grid tells me, I feel that there's room for improvement in the Grid and I hope that I've given some constructive feedback on that!
Another nice-to-have would perhaps be extra informational text that pops up when you hover the mouse over the name of one of the criteria, and absolute tops would be if there's an additional popup explaining how each phone got it's rating when you hover the mouse over the individual ratings.
I understand that that would be quite a lot of work but it would help explain how each phone gets its score.
Cheers,
--Tim
Wow, a lot of feedback! 8-)
>>I don't understand why, for instance, the SE P990i gets a lower score for text-entry speed then the E61 or E70 when both have a qwerty-keyboard; a
I've tried all three and the P990i is much fiddlier to type on.
>>Such things are of course highly personal, but I do feel that the E70 gets a too high score for one-handed usage: the QWERTY keyboard is not usable one-
The one-handed use attribute isn't just about text entry, it refers to using the device in all its functions with one hand.
>>type that msg using 1 hand -- perhaps there should be two options?
A score for overall one-handed operation, and a score for one-handed text-entry? (The latter is, I think, most important to me)
I'll think about it 8-)
>>Another entry that should be split is "screen size / resolution": E70 has the highest resolution of all, but a rather small screen. P990i has perhaps the biggest screen of all and I absolutely loved it.
Yep, ditto.
>>the SE P990i can have memory cards of up to 4GB (in future 8GB but those
Can't you also get 4GB miniSD now?
>>5 - essential
You want everything, don't you? 8-)
>>The P990i is my current favourite despite reported problems with stability and battery life, which I hope will be fixable via future firmware-upgrades and
Of course, I'll adjust the ratings when Sony Ericsson finally get round to fixing the firmware etc.
>>Another nice-to-have would perhaps be extra informational text that pops up when you hover the mouse over the name of one of the criteria, and absolute tops would be if there's an additional popup explaining how each
I don't think I can do pop-ups. But yes, it would be nice to have attached notes to each device entry.....
Steve
slitchfield wrote:Wow, a lot of feedback! 8-)
>>the SE P990i can have memory cards of up to 4GB (in future 8GB but those
slitchfield wrote:Can't you also get 4GB miniSD now?>>5 - essential
You want everything, don't you? 8-)
Did I claim anything different? 😉
Really, it's the number if different criteria that you can apply which makes 3 weightings insufficient for me. For instance, I want to be able to send the occasional e-mail and browse the web for public-transport schedules, but overal these features are not so important to me. However, document editing / spreadsheets / databases I really don't care about on my (smart)phone.
Calendering functionality is very important to me (not just 'quite important'😉, but not as important as one-handed operation.
I could go on, but I hope you see my point. Currently, I changed a lot of things to "not important" because I see that all devices have the feature in question with a 'good enough for me' score; however it doesn't really reflect what I want.
slitchfield wrote:
I don't think I can do pop-ups. But yes, it would be nice to have attached notes to each device entry.....Steve
I could help you with some javascript for popups, it's not difficult to do, but it's gonna be a lot of work to get all the information in. Especially if it's a static HTML page instead of generated from some database or so.
Cheers,
--Tim
Sounds good. Drop me an email!! steve at allaboutsymbian . com
Steve
I can't work out why the Treo 650 only gets 7 for 'Battery life and options' when the E61 gets 10. I had a 650 before my E61. It has an 1800 mAh (user-replaceable) battery, no 3G and no Wifi. The battery lasts for ages! Best battery life of any phone I've owned. I also think there's a much bigger differential between the Palm and S60 v3 calendar apps than 10 vs 9 implies. On the other hand, I don't know how the Treo 650 gets a 10 for 'Local connectivity options (Bluetooth, infrared, UPnP)' - the BT is only 1.1 and you can't, for instance, use a BT GPS and a BT hands-free kit at the same time. BT range is a bit crap too.
The UPnP was a bit irrelevant actually. I simply count 5 for ir and 5 for BT. Maybe I should factor in the different Bluetooth standards. But there are only so many hours in the day! 8-)
w.r.t battery life, I can't remember why I gave it that score, but I do remember hearing some horror stories about Treo battery life from users......
Steve
slitchfield wrote:The UPnP was a bit irrelevant actually. I simply count 5 for ir and 5 for BT. Maybe I should factor in the different Bluetooth standards. But there are only so many hours in the day! 8-)w.r.t battery life, I can't remember why I gave it that score, but I do remember hearing some horror stories about Treo battery life from users......
Steve
Thanks, Steve. I realise now my post was really a bit negative and certainly doesn't give any impression of how much I appreciate your work with this great site. The E61 is the first Symbian device I've owned and I learned a huge amount here. With respect to the grid, I don't think you can run it by committee (you'd get far too many differing opinions) and you just have to call it as you see it.
These rankings are quite wrong. It says a P990 has a better still camera than the N73, the Treo has a better browser than Nokia models and the P990 has better screen than the N73, all of which are not true. And that's just at first glance.
elfguy wrote:These rankings are quite wrong. It says a P990 has a better still camera than the N73, the Treo has a better browser than Nokia models and the P990 has better screen than the N73, all of which are not true. And that's just at first glance.
You guys really like mixing it up with me, don't you? 8-)
The P990 has a much better camera than the N73, I did exhaustive tests for PDAE magazine in different light conditions. (It's better mainly because it uses CCD rather than CMOS technology). The Treo 750w has Pocket Internet Explorer, which is marginally better than Web NG on the Nokia 5500, mainly bevause the 5500's screen is so small that web browsing is appalling. And the N73 has a better screen in all conditions, I agree, which is why I gave it higher scores. I think you got confused reading along the columns 8-)
Steve
