In defense of the 'Cargo Cult' Communicator

I see you're using the American spelling of defence... 😉

Great article though. I wouldn't take Andrew Orlowski too seriously, he very often expresses provocative opinions (for example he said some EXTREMELY rude things about anyone who uses a Blackberry-style QWERTY smartphone) and that's his general style. He's more of a "shock jock" than a measured journalist. A lot of what he says is intelligent and thought-provoking, but he also sometimes goes off on one... 😊

There won't be any 3rd party fax application for the E90, because there is no hardware in the phone for faxing at all! :icon1:

But I'm agree. Who the hell want to fax at all??? :con?

I was a Reg reader for many year's until it's continual symbian bashing just got nausiating.
I noticed a direct correlation (not scientifically proven 😊 ) to the level of microsoft advertising, negative symbian reviews and positive CE device reviews on their site
Symbian devices certainly aren't perfect but they aren't as bad as El Reg makes out
I find Orlowski is a bit overly negative when it comes to symbian matters these days

Totally agree re Orlowski; he wrote a greatly illuminating piece on El Reg about the tragedy that was Psion but I recall having to reply an article he wrote on the same site 'reviewing' the e90 and motorola Z8 prototypes in which he rubbished the Commie's keyboard and OS in favour of the Moto.
He is right that a lot of us would have preferred Nokia to update the Series 80 UI and migrate it to Symbian 9.x and the new real-time kernel but we've had to move on in the hope that the 3rd-party app developers will join Nokia in optimising screen usage of their apps plus develop keyboard macros/shortcuts that are 'signposted' in the same way Psion used to and your screenshot illustrates.
Re Psion, if the latter had actually released their Netbook/Series 7 in the shell of the Series 5 with Buetooth and GPRS modem together with a similarly Bluetooth-,GPRS-, USB 1.1- and SD card-eqipped colour screened Revo 2, they'd probably still be selling the (updated ) versions today!! Releasing a subnotebook-sized device with EXACTLY the same OS and features (assuming one chooses not to bother with the WinMob/Linux derivatives on the CompactFlash card) was an exercise in futility from a sales standpoint.
As I recall, VodaFone had designed it's email/mobile data via GPRS partly around the promised updated Series 5s and Revos! For huge numbers of us, this would have been ideal, especially as the wide screen aspect ratios encourage reading Office files i.e. Word,.pdf.Excel etc unlike WinMob devices which are almost exclusively still stuck on QVGA to say nothing of the peerless KEYBOARD.
To learn that the problem was NOT financial just underscores the debacle; incredibly stupid management decisions including them not developing the handhelds with ERICSSON instead of Motorola robbed us of great devices and left NOKIA with a clear run in the 'connected PDA based on Symbian OS' space which they have exploited in a leisurely fashion offering incremental improvements in hardware capabilities until now.

Hi Steve,

I beg to differ a bit on your analysis of the E90.

1) Series 80 being tied very much to Symbian OS 7.0.

I don't think this is true. A Symbian OS user interface has very little to do with it's inner workings. Because of the modular design of Symbian OS, it is possible to have number of different UI's on the Symbian OS, witness UIQ 3.x and S60 3rd ed on Symbian OS 9.1, and UIQ 2.x, S60 2nd/1st and S80 on earlier versions of the OS. I don't see any technical reasons not to have Series 80 on Symbian OS 9.1.

2) The hotkeys and the menu.

Hotkeys are necessary for power users, and power users are the ones using the E90. Witness the number of S60 apps having shortcuts, even the builtin ones.

True, on Psion there were so many hotkeys that you couldn't learn them all, and true, not all apps were using the same ones for the same task.
However, Psion made it very clear which shortcut was for which action. Professional developers generally followed this guideline. Nokia did exactly the same for Series 80, BTW.

Now with S60 hotkeys not being standardized at all, you get a much bigger mesh. Without guidelines or consistent examples from Nokia, everybody is just messing around. '*' is zoom in in the webbrowser, '5' is zoom in in Galleries. '*' is full screen in Galleries '2' is full screen in Real Player.

Had Nokia standardised on shortcuts, they could easily used Symbian Signed, or their own approval program, for enforcing the shortcuts, eliminating more confusion.

Not all apps show the hotkeys in their menus, and those who do so all use a different method (before the command name, after the command name, between (), between []). This is ugly and it looks unprofessional. This is a 700 euro device and what do you get? You get ascii art 😉

That the menu structure works very well for the E90 in closed mode isn't the point. You buy an E90 because you can open the clamsheel and have a querty keyboard and a big screen.

3) Faxing. If the lack of faxing is a dealbreaker for many potential E90 customers, I'd certainly be worried if I were Nokia. The people that complain in these fora are likely to need faxing on a regular basis, that's why they complain about the lack of it.

Sander van der Wal
mBrain Software

(Hi Sander 😉

Allow me one simple fact about "fax": with a build in fax, you have a perfect way to print your files while on the move. Wherever your are, business wise, there's always a fax on hand. All i did was print using the fax to the nearest fax, et voila: a hardcopy :icon14: Unfortunaly, forget the option of a build in fax. It's stripped in S60.
Using E90 (proto's) for a long period, (i think Rafe's first sight on a E90 was mine, beginning this year), i have to say that the E90 is absolutely not an ugrade of 95/9300. It's a much different device, begging for third party add-ons. They will come for sure (faster if Symbian/Nokia makes it easier for them, especially in the process of signing and documentation. And costs!). I understand all of you comparing E90 to earlier Communicators. I did too, but i stopped doing this. It took me a while to get used to it, and even a longer time to start liking it. I learned how to use it, create workarounds, and while all doing this i start to realise it's potential might be a lot bigger than "out of the box". It's a new concept, and it uses an UI that was originally not ment for such purposes, but i think it's a good start. Looking very much forward to its future. Let the dedicated apps (for E90) come fast...

Fax uses circuit-switched data, which disappeared from Nokia phones yonks ago.

Nokia have produced a range of devices in order to suit all requirements. They won't produce the perfect device, because that would deprive them of their future market for an improved product. Failure to spot this may have been part of Psion's demise.

Hi Sander...

Totally agree with you on the fax. If people bring it up, it means there is a requirement.

Steve.. For you to say that you haven't used fax for over 15 years doesnt mean that there are no faxes are used.

As I have mentioned earlier, here in Asia I have seen many companies that are truly mobile whereby the 9300 and fax rulez OK 😊

Faxes are required by banks etc especially when doing confirmations for large sums of money. Faxes are less open to frauds. It's more convenient to fax a hand drawn map. etc. etc.

I think Nokia blew it by leaving out fax. The E90 doesn't communicate.

I found the original S80 UI excellent for the form factor and double thumb entry. I've yet to see a better contacts display and searching. The 9300 and 9500 were always a bit slow and lacked a decent note editor (but I use mobile mind for s80 now ).
The only thing i missed on my 9210 was GPRS and BT.

You also have to appreciate that the 9500 UI and Symbian release were completely different to the 9210, based on 7.0s and "Hildon" UI.
The 9500 was basically the hildon UI with a 9210 skin on top. So the guts of the software can change radically if enough is investment in a platform.
I got my GPRS and BT, but it was even slower and now all i wanted was performance improvements and 3G.

I think the problem with the E90 was that the original 9210 was designed first, built later - and then updated for the follow on products. Whereas the E90 was approached as "here is S60, how can we make use of the extra width".
So the path nokia took was the least effort to release a credible device, My feeling is that this approach is a huge risk if it sacrifices usability.
In my opinion, nokia should have invested in E90 specific versions of the key S60 applications, mirroring the design of the 9210.

Re-use of S60 has many advantages not least for developers who can have a much easier time of porting between E90 and other products. But that's not good enough for me, i need a UI that is a joy to use.
The E61 did an ok job at scaling the s60, but the calandar and contacts where absolutely rubbish compared with 9210 even. It's very disappointing to see one step forwards, two step backwards.

As for shortcuts etc. the original psion series5 aimed to give a familiar environment for those used to windows/pc. That's why they retained the file menu, control panel etc. That strategy surely works well for an enterprise phone.

The first s60 phone, the 7650 was marvelously design - following in the footsteps of S40. It was consistent, clear and practical - i never felt lost. These days S60 is running the risk of being generically bad for each form factor... a design by committee classic.

"I think Nokia blew it by leaving out fax. The E90 doesn't communicate."

Perhaps they should include a Telex facility as well? Some parts of the world still use that too. 😊

Or there could be a hole on the side of the case to release smoke signals.

Great article, but even if it wasn't it would be worth it just for that last quote: "And pass this message on to the next guy who insists he wants to send your Communicator a fax... he'll thank you in the long run...".

About s80 vs s60 on the E90. I've virtually no experience compared to all the pro's leaving comments here, I've never used a communicator and my N73 is my first s60 phone, so I may be dead wrong.
Still I feel strongly that the real revolutionary aspect of the E90 is the fact that its built around an OS thats made for phones. So its not a mini lap-top, it's a mobile phone/multimedia computer. You can do the same actions with the clamshell open or closed. It's not meant to micro-manage your life, it's meant to connect you to world while on the go, adding tons of functionality but never losing that feel of a mobile phone. I'd feel much more comfortable with that than with a s80 commie.
I'd love to hear the opinion of those lucky bastards out there who've actually used the E90. Am I totally off the mark?

I wonder what a fax would have cost to add? I think you need some extra in the modem hardware to allow it. I know the demand for a fax is high in some market - Indonesia is a good example - I think Nokia is including some extra software in this market.

Not that it works as well, but there are a number of rather good email->fax and fax->email options out there including some that give you a real fax number that can be used to send you faxes and appears on your outgoing faxes.

The S60 vs S80 debate is an interesting one. However I feel that that using S60 was inevitable. It did make sense to have something separate when software platforms weren't well established, but these days it doesn't. I do think S60 needs work to be optimised on different interface / screen size paradigms (looking at UIQ they've got an interesting take on this).

Come to think of it, you CAN send a fax with almost any mobile phone, it's one of the options in most phones' text messaging applications.

For example in S60 it's under "options > sending options > message sent as" on the message editing screen, you can choose text, fax, paging or email.

It will just be text though, it won't be a scan of a piece of paper, so it's no use for sending signatures etc. For that kind of thing you could perhaps use email and attach a photo.

the iPhone beats the E90 by miles. it is the one true 'Communicator' device. i agree with this guy Orlowski.. e90 is a horrible device.

Nokia should have upgraded the hardware in the E61i and launched it as the E90. That would have been a new flagship Eseries device. Keep the 9xxx line going with true S80 OS. its not an Eseries device, its the Communicator range of devices.

The current E90 is a device with a traditional design physically built for the S80 operating environment, but with an S60 UI. It doesnt make sense.

Whats the big deal?

The larger keyboard? Can't really touchtype on it, and the E61/61i QWERTY suffices nicely as a thumbboard.

The larger screen? OK, its nice, but how much of an impact does it really make in the long run? You're still gonna squint, and youre still gonna breathe a huge sigh of relief when you look at a real laptop/desktop size monitor afterwards.

And you can do everything on the outer S60 screen that you can do on the larger inner one. Whats the point? Isn't it overkill, without real purpose? Wouldn't it be better having a more basic new S40 (which rocks, btw) outer screen with telephony and basic functions, and an inner screen which you open up to a drop down menu driven S80 OS?

This is an obvious faltering of having a company like Nokia simplify its main product range into only 2 basic types: Nseries and Eseries. Does everything HAVE to fit into only these categories?

Well, I have to say I was VERY excited when I everyone was talking about the upcoming communicator. I am a former Series7 owner, and I had been looking to jump to a smartphone for a while (my latest PDA was disappointing). I drooled over the information as it leaked, until we finally saw the results... I was so disappointed, I purchased a 9300 just as they were disappearing from the shelves.

Most of what I hear about on the E90 makes it sound half-finished. While many things can be fixed in software updates, as you say, I made the mistake of believing that with the Opera browser on the Series 7, and ended up with a bug infestation. It is especially bad as I live in the US, where even now I cannot get the latest firmware for my 9300, no matter what it fixes. "We'll fix it in a later update" just doesn't do it.

Your article comes off as rationalizations. You make fewer features sound like a good thing because it simplifies the menu system -- who needs all those pesky options! Huh? As for the shortcut keys, I agree that I never remember what ALL of them do, but it is damn helpful for the three or four functions I use on a regular basis.

Of course, I'd love to have the larger screen, 3G, etc. The software sacrifices were big, however. Add in the MUCH higher price tag, and there was no question which I was going to buy.

I'd agree 100% with Sander.

It's wrong to say that S80 had any specific tie to v7.

If you are a user, what factors that have led up to Nokia's decision to drop S80 is irrelevant, hence that part of the defence is irrelevant.

Not having a style guide for S60 is a major issue. Psion and to a lesser extent S80 had that. This of course didn't stop Nokia from making a number of serious UI errors also on S80.

For instance, not having the common calculator keys +-�� as first keys in calculator mode is plain stupid; placing the Menu key as far a way as possible from the root of the Menu, moving the ',' and '.' off from their usual places and having no space between Caps and 'A' key (alternatively saving one key by putting it under Tab like in Psion) are either entirely counter-intuitive or typo-error-promotional.

Fax then. It might not be important for us Europeans, but in Asia, the fax feature is one of the most sought after. And Asia, if I remember correctly, have previously represented close to 50% of global Communicator sales.

Macboy wrote:the iPhone beats the E90 by miles. it is the one true 'Communicator' device. i agree with this guy Orlowski.. e90 is a horrible device.

I work in the film industry in locations department. My job takes me all over the world regularly. Steve Litchfield TAKE NOTE: fax is VERY much alive and well, esp when dealing with governments and municipalities. And that includes UK and Europe. Arrogant statements like that make me mad! I'm a power s60 user and fax would make my life a LOT easier.

Oh, I just love AAS debates 8-)

Two things I'll comments on: (ok, three if I include the observation that Macboy is starting to get mindlessly irritating)

1) Yes, I know Series 80 is, in theory, just an interface, and yes I know that Series 80 v2 was a skin over a next generation interface under the hood. I was trying to simplify the situation for readers though. Although there are no technical obstacles to working to getting either brand of Series 80 up and running on top of Symbian OS 9, I bet it would be a huge endeavour - and it would, as I say, split Nokia's resources. So I stand by my albeit simplistic analysis.

2) I hear what you're saying about fax, especially in Asia (and I still think a 3rd party app could provide fax functions, emulating any missing low level fax hardware in software - can a developer comment?). But, again, I stand by my comment that I haven't seen a fax machine now in over 10 years, anywhere I've been in the UK. I haven't sent a fax in over 15. And only twice in the last 10 years has any company asked me to fax them - and in each case I sent an email and they were perfectly happy. Fax still alive and well? Maybe it's a cultural thing....

Steve Litchfield

The programmer documentation is a bit vague on the subject, but it does say that all fax-related headers have been removed from the SDK. Looking at the libraries in the SDK, the fax-related ones seem to be there (they have fax in their filenames, which is very convenient).

There is a mention of S60 3rd edition supporting the Bluetooth FAX protocol. Never heard of that but at a guess it looks possible to connect to a bluetooth-enabled fax device or something emulating it. No idea how this looks like at the user level (print to fax?, send to fax?).

Symbian OS 9.1 itself does support faxing, in the same way as it did in earlier versions.

Whether it is possible for a third-party to add fax support? This is a bit hard to say. The SDK has the necessary libraries, but not the headers. Whether the libraries are actually in a real device is unknown, as you cannot look in z:/sys/bin. The Messaging program should list the FAX as one of the available transports, but it doesn't. So either there is no FAX transport, or Messaging deliberately hides it.

People with a program that shows running exe's can try looking for the faxsrv on S60 3rd edition phones. If that doesn't exist, changes are ISV's cannot add fax support.

Sander van der Wal
www.mBrainSoftware.com

Steve,

You must live in an alternate reality in the UK to the one I live in. Just dealing with "normal" organisations like banks, insurance companies, phone companies etc. they have all mentioned "fax" for some reason or other at some point.

As for not seeing one. The company I currently work for has them, as did the last company I worked for as did the one before...

Even have one at home as part of an all in one scanner printer thing.

By the way, I'm not one of the "why no fax" complainers, just amazed that you have come across faxes so rarely !

By the way, I love the idea of being able to use a fax as a printer. Never occured to me before. Very universal and conveniant. Can we have fax on the E90 please 😊

Zuber

Actually, that's a fair point. I bet a lot of the 'printers/scanners' I've seen in homes and businesses were also fax-capable. I guess I meant dedicated fax 'machines', like I used to see in the 1970s and 1980s ....

Steve

Macboy,
as usual you are talking cr*p. Interestingly, given that you believe the iPhone to be the best phone ever (do you own one, or are you just an apple fanboy-wannabe?), apple's share price actually dropped after the "spectacular" iPhone launch weekend...

Initial reports/reviews of the iPhone complain of poor call quality (actually quite important in a mobile phone!), crashes, problems with syncing, poor data speeds and rubbish on-screen keyboard. But hey, it's got an apple logo, so it must be brilliant. And it's got to be worth the $1800 price-tag...

I'm not an apple basher, having just bought my wife her 3rd iBook/MacBook, but your pathetic drivel is becoming very tedious and just confirms what an undiscerning moron you are...

Since I nowadays work for a company that, amongst others, manufactures Bluetooth OEM systems, perhaps I should fill in on the Bluetooth fax. Yes there is a Bluetooth FAX profile. This is straight from the introduction to the Bluetooth profile specification.

Fax Profile (FAX)
The FAX profile defines how a FAX gateway device can be used by a terminal device. FAX is intended to provide a well defined interface between a mobile phone or fixed-line phone and a PC with FAX software installed. Support must be provided for ITU T.31 and / or ITU T.32 AT command sets as defined by ITU-T. A typical configuration is a personal computer using a mobile phone as a FAX gateway to send a FAX transmission to an arbitrary recipient.

Think about what you are doing - using ETel telephony server to make a FAX call and stream the fax data in real time over the link.
It's fraught with timing issues, and would need to be verified against each modem/TSY/processor.

I'm sure it's possible, but the ROI for small company would not make it worthwhile.

But c'mon, we can do a bit better than that. You can pay a monthly fee to use a service such as "efax", you simply email doc, pdf or just text a #### at efax.com and it will send it as a fax to number ####. You can a fax number which you can give out to clients and faxes are delivered to your inbox.

If i was a smart company i would develop a thin client for E90 which uploaded data over IP. do all the faxing using a fax card in a PC on the server.

Been reading this site for years and never felt moved to comment before but...

The iPhone is a consumer electronics device and a superb one. It has its flaws (bizarrely the calendar sync is wonky on both my iMac and MacBook Pro - both fully updated) and the email function is not all that friendly but it addresses THE fundamental issue facing mobile devices - how to enable users to interact with high density data environments through small screens and keyboards - very very well.

BUT, it is simply not comparable to the E90. The E90 is designed for a completely different audience. It's like comparing a family estate to a seven-ton truck: of course one is not going to be useful to the other's audience most of the time. The notion that the two are comparable is absurd.

The E90 (which I've only played with) seems to me a very worthy evolution of the Communicator line. S60 isn't perfect but it appears to do the job well enough and while it would be nice to have standardised keystroke combinations that's rare on any device (desktop, handheld etc etc) these days. Incidentally, the iPhone doesn't have standard inputs across its applications either (i.e. the thumb 'gestures' change between applications).

I suspect much of this debate is really only important to those really interested in the evolution of phones. For the average user, the ability to use email, browse the web and interact with documents in a superfically familiar form-factor and via a superb screen will be more than enough - the quirks are things that we have all got used to from new technology - and while fax may be an issue in parts of the world, it'll be a dead format in a few years.

Greetings!

As a owner and user of the Nokia E61, E70, E61i, E65 and 9500/9300i I can share for business email access via Microsoft Exchange or BlackBerry Connect the above E Series does not compare with the 9500/9300 in terms of compacity and overall performance.

The E series does have a better internet browser and VoIP capabilities. Also, the calendar function is faster.

As for fax alternatives - I think that the lack of Circuit Switched Data (or CSD) support by the Cell Phone companies is a factor - it is my undersanding that CSD is being phased out related to support under G3?

There are many eFax services that work well with the E and 9500/9300 handsets which do not require CSD capabilities.

The Nokia 9300/9500 are wonderful tools and will be missed. If only they had a bit for memory and CPU speed they would be almost perfect!