So you've a messaging-focussed Nokia E61i smartphone and you keep eyeing up the models in the rival Nseries? Is it possible to have the best of both worlds? To whet your appetite for MWC, at which I hope that at least one crossover device will be launched, here's my guide to (nearly) turning your E61i into an Nseries powerhouse. Qwerty and media? No problem.
Read on in the full article.
Good article! I've actually done most of these things already. However, I do switch my E61i off at night to save battery power. I don't see any problem doing this. Fine, it has to boot up in the morning but why is that a major problem?
Hi Steve,
Nice article but i am don't really understand why you are surprised that the N series sells more devcies than E series. Buisness take up of smart phones must be virtually at saturation point if not there already, IMO all the growth we will see will be Multimedia led in smart phones and this is why the N series sells and will continue to sell more devices than the E series.
Personally i have stopped my hunt for the ultimate converged devcie which is why i carry an iPod for my Music and a E series for my smart phone needs be it an E90 that does everything a N series does and better except for the Muisc Player hence the iPod which by the way in MO is better than any smart phones built in Muisc Player as well.
Marc
I did almost everything you said here with my E61. Working fine... It's going to be the phone I'll keep the most ever...
>Steer clear of push email... If you want most of the benefits of push without the hassle or processor hit, just set Messaging to auto-retrieve emails in the background (every 30 minutes, between the hours you specify).
I'd really like too but if I set email to do this, the GPRS connection doesn't quit after the periodic retrieval. As my email provider (fastmail.fm) uses push email, it means I get emails all the time the connection remains active.
Anyone know how to get mail to actual close the connection?
(Strange, as it does close the connection if I manually disconnect from the mailbox).
Great post steve! Looking forward to see what's being announced next week.
i jus sold my 7months old e61i...
although i loved my e61i but the slowness of the device (menu, gallery, msg,etc) really bug me like crazy...example, when u open messages (even with hardly any msgs stored), you have to look somewhere else for few seconds then look back at the screen, or worst when you open gallery, i takes ages!
believe me, i've tried ALL form of optimization methods (including those mentioned in this article), i even went as far as resizing all my gallery pics to 320x240pixels, deleting all msgs in inbox, barebone theme w/o wallpaper, hard reset every once awhile, etc, etc.
but, i had enough.
i jus bought n82 for USD420, and the diff is amazing, the snappiness of n82, the killer camera, the quality of the pictures, the DVD movie recording, all the goodies of Nseries, the smaller but 'crispier' screen (weird, i know), the You-can-open-70apps-at-the-same-time-without-any-problem size of memory..i don't see any good reason why we should deprive ourselves from this goodness with little bit of extra money and sticking with a snail-paced and underpowered e61i...
epo.fm wrote:I'd really like too but if I set email to do this, the GPRS connection doesn't quit after the periodic retrieval. As my email provider (fastmail.fm) uses push email, it means I get emails all the time the connection remains active.Anyone know how to get mail to actual close the connection?
(Strange, as it does close the connection if I manually disconnect from the mailbox).
What I really want in my E Series is to have Lifeblog .
Anyway to get Lifeblog in the E Series ???
epo.fm wrote:>Steer clear of push email... If you want most of the benefits of push without the hassle or processor hit, just set Messaging to auto-retrieve emails in the background (every 30 minutes, between the hours you specify).I'd really like too but if I set email to do this, the GPRS connection doesn't quit after the periodic retrieval. As my email provider (fastmail.fm) uses push email, it means I get emails all the time the connection remains active.
Anyone know how to get mail to actual close the connection?
(Strange, as it does close the connection if I manually disconnect from the mailbox).
malerocks wrote:What push email app are you using? I am using mail for exchange and have set it to retrieve emails every 1 hour (frequent enough for me). It always closes the connection after the retrival. The only occassion where it does not disconnect automatically is when I am in a low signal area and the connection is not working at an optimum level.
Hi,
I'm just using the built in Nokia email app.
I have a personal loathing of installing microsoft apps (which I really should get over). Although I think I'd miss the intergration of the built in client with the flashing LED & standby screen etc.
Great post, knew just the buddy to mail it to!
snoyt
Superb article... I've also liked the physical design of the Eseries, but the disparity in software between it and the Nseries annoyed me, but as you said, these apps certainly help bridge that gap.
I upgraded from the E61 to an N95.
Needless to say, i didn't sell the E61 and still use it where the larger screen and querty keyboard come in handy - just unlocked it and put a payg sim in.
I was planning to sell the E61, but couldn't part with it and the additional usability thet the N series seems to miss slightly.
I certainly wouldn't recommend using the built-in email S60 application to any non-technical person. It's just far to flaky and unreliable. As much as I dislike Java application, Google Mail Mobile is definitely the way to go for any non-technical person who want to access their emails on the go. It doesn't have an automatic retrieval feature but at least it's dead simple to use and it works flawlessly. In practice it's also much faster than the built-in email client, which takes ages to do just about anything despite being a native application.
Being one of these technical person, I decided to try out Messaging on my E90 and set it up for my 2 GMail account via IMAP4 with auto-retrieval every 5 minutes between 9am and 6pm. It's just an endless stream of problems.
For a start, Messaging usually displays HTML emails as garbage. No matter what you opinion is about HMTL emails (and I certainly despise them), they there and they're here to stay. The only way to get these emails to display properly is to select "Attachment.html" and open it in the web browser. Sure, it's more of an annoyance than a real problem, but it's hardly the most practical, intuitive and user-friendly feature.
Problems start to arise with the auto-retrieval feature. Every-time Messaging fails to connect to the email server (which obviously is not a rare occurrence as mobile networks are inherently unreliable), it will purely and simply disable auto-retrieval for you. So you think that your phone is checking your emails every 5 minutes and that it will alert you whenever you get a new email when in fact your phone is sitting idle doing absolutely nothing. The only way to solve the problem is to open your inbox, go to the email settings, go the auto-retrieval setting, re-enable auto-retrieval and exit. In practice, I'm doing this 2 to 3 times a day.
The biggest problem though is that sometimes Messaging simply gets stuck and stops updating your inbox without telling you anything. This has started to happen after a few weeks of automatic retrieval and is almost a daily occurrence now. You get back home at night thinking that you've had no emails during the day only to realize when you switch on your PC that you actually received 15 emails. Messaging appears to be still connected but won't download any new email. Selecting Options->Disconnect has no effect. Killing the GPRS connection has no effect either. The only way to get Messaging to work again is to either reboot the phone or go the email settings which forces the connection to close and then re-connect. A bit of a joke for a �600 business device.
And of course, as soon as you've got a few hundred of emails in your inbox, which happens fairly quickly, Messaging starts to choke and takes ages to update the inbox. Even if there's only one new header to download, it can take several minutes (yes, minutes!) for Messaging to update your inbox no matter whether you're connected via 3G or Wifi. Clearly, they never tested this application with more than of couple of emails.
On my E61, after having accumulated a few hundred of SMS and email (can't remember the exact number), Messaging refused to launch at all. It would constantly crash with an out-of-memory error when trying to display the inbox. I managed the salvage the situation by rebooting the phone to free as much RAM as possible, starting Messaging and deleting everything (it took a few attempts but luckily it worked at the end). Else, I would have had no other option than a re-format and at least half a day wasted to re-install and re-configure everything.
That's how good Messaging is. Do not give this to newbies or they'll run away from S60 as soon as they can.
Nice article!
I feel N's get a little too much hype. People trade N93's for N95's, then those for N95 8Gb? For the money that ain't much different!
Remember when good engineering was cramming 2 cassettes onto a Commador 64???
Well, I like articles like this which stretches the value of good smartphones.
Good job, Steve!
@elp: I hear you, nice rant. I suspect you're right and Messaging has never been tested to destruction in the real world way you describe. it's fine for accounts which get cleared by a desktop app on each mail check AND for non-HTML emails, but throw in IMAP4 or GMail POP3 or HTML and you're in trouble.
And yes, I use the GMail Java app as well most of the time. Wish they'd do a native S60 version though!
Steve
nice description,
i would add resco photo viewer to you list, i was amazed by the speed it can review photo and display also full sized, maybe ten times faster than the built in app without loosing too much memory. can crop or resize photos before sending to a blog with opera full version (mini4 is great for surfing fast yeah).
I would also add lonely cat games "profimail" software. their app is quite efficient. I could use it this summer when i was receiving tons of span during my vacation for i don't know why reason and its rules helped me at a wifi hotspot filter several thousands of email. It can read easealy html email.
I did not test their gmail handling, for this i was sticking to the java version, but this one was going nuts lately (not version 1.0, the second version which is better but slower, on the first version deleting emails delete the wrong email).
I whish Gcalendar could be easealy synchronised over the air to the device. in the meantime i do it manually with the quite speedy and well designed handy calendar (but not very complete for heavy use). And i configure Gcalendar to sen sms reminder for double protection 😊
You can sync over the air to Google Calendar - just use GooSync - I've been doing this for over a month now. See my article on it here on AAS.
8-)
i have switched to Google Mobile homepage to access my gmail than the java Gmail app..its much faster and uses so much less memory.. i personalized my gmail inbox to appear in the Google Mobile Search homepage..i will switch to Gmail app if they ever built a native s60 version as what mentioned by Steve.
another tips for the e61i camera is to change the white balance to incandescent or flourescent from Auto each time you snap a pic, it make the pic colors nicer and less blue..
you can also snap really nice black and white pic with it..no worry bout noice and stuff 😊
to edit pics, search the net to download and install the same editor in nseries for cropping and resizing
I got an E90 but I read this article and found it very interesting.
But I don't see the point about the difference between the E and N series.
My previous phone was an E61 and that one was really business qualified, but you could still have movies, mp3 and games.
The E90 is just the same issue, you can do anything you can do with an N series aswell.
I appreciate this article. In fact, it's really difficult to switch out off E61i. While new Nseries phones have many fantastic features, it miss the full QWERTY keyboard and the large display like E61i. I think it's hard to leave E61i, even if I miss multimedia features on it. I enjoy its practicality and its computer-like feeling, while I'm not business man. The easiest example is that I type this comment from it using it's great and easy keyboeard, from the Operamini application.
@slitchfield i had already seen your article on Goosync but i feel reluctant already to leave everything in the hand of google, so adding another webserver in the loop... Also many function i would need are not free. I would prefer a solution like on my linux box, taking the ics file from google, for example each night when i am near my wifi/adsl box.
My question is quite opposite... I am giving up of my E61i for N95, probably only until E71 becomes available. I was aware of no qwerty and I know I will miss it a lot, but I was not aware that the phone is so limited in what it will let you do.
Example:
I needed XVID codec for a friend's laptop, but the computer didn't had any wireless stuff enabled. So, when I downloaded the install file to my E61i, I transfered it via bluetooth to N95, since it uses standard USB cable and will be able to connect to the PC via cable, only to find out that it will not allow me to open the INBOX message with the attachment as it does not "understand" the file type.
Ok, then I wanted to re-download the file directly on N95, only to find out that it's browser has the same issue with file in question (PC EXE install file), it is UNABLE TO DOWNLOAD IT, as it does not know it's type...
So, I have a couple of hundreds euros worth N-series powerhorse ("what computers have become"😉, which is not capable to download a 600k file on it's 8GB storage media.
How can I make more like E-series?
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Killer Article!! Quick question for anyone using the Nokia Internet Radio program on their e61i like i am...Which version would be best for the e61i, in regards to the screen function keys? Thanks.
Great reading, ...I have tried a number of e-mail apps and like Nokia's Mail for Exchange as it is a Symbian app, wich provides an integrated display of of your latest e-mails on the E61's first screen, just above your meeting reminders and things to do list. This app requires Microsoft Exchange Server....the trick is to set up a mail account on mail2web.com, and then set up GMail to forward all e-mails to your e-mail [email][email protected][/email]. You can also set up a rule in Lotus Notes, to forward all mail to your address@mail2web. This way all your e-mail is accesible on your phone in one app. I would schedule checking your mail every half hour or so, any more frequent syncs will use up your battery.
At the end a mobile is really meant to make phone calls, and for this I would recommend Truphone. I bought my wife the E61i and for my son and myself the E61. With Truphone I can make free VoIP calls to land lines and gsm handsets to over 40 countries, when I go on business trips I can call my family using truphone. The truphone SIP or VoIP number can also be contacted from Google Talk. It is noteworthy that all three E61's together cost less than a single N95 or E90 handset.
What I would like to know is how to set-up push to talk or make calls using radio signals or bluetooth, when within range i.e. Also referred to as a terra network.
The link provided in this article to download the Nokia maps application is not working anymore.
Does anybody know where I can find this application or which equivalent I can use from Nokia website?
thks,
Manu