I just made the leap to S60 (E63). Nice piece of hardware, very impressed at the price.
Then the first huge and nasty shock. The E63's built-in calendar doesn't support categories. Now I've done a search of these forums and I realise this topic has been discussed before. But it does raise a more general issue which doesn't seem to get an airing.
Can the E-Series really be considered a business phone if it doesn't support categories, specifically Outlook categories? Outlook is still the number one email client. More than one in three people who use email (desktop or online) use Outlook.
I doubt you'll find many users of Outlook in the corporate arena who don't use categories. They're hugely useful. I know I'm guilty of not doing my homework before switching to S60, but it never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that the built-in calendar would not support categories.
So I began a hunt for third-party programs that support Outlook categories. The developers of SBSH Calendar (formerly Papyrus) unsuccessfully beta-tested a possible solution some time ago. What's interesting is that they stopped development partly because there was a lack of interest from users.
Also interesting is that, apparently, since 9.1, Symbian added the capability to add categories to the calendar -- they just haven't been implemented....
And without going into any more detail, I'll just add that I quickly switched to Profimail for my email -- a big improvement on the built-in client.
All of this suggests that, for all the marketing noise, Nokia (even with the E-Series) isn't really aiming at businesses. Which makes me wonder just who they are aiming at...
Many features from bussiness devices are overhauled by so called consumerphones : Voicerecorder , Calculator , Converter , GPS , Camera , Notes , eMail (fax) , etc.
The E Phone doesn't differ that much anymore :
1) Quickoffice
2) Data-encryption
3) Qwerty
That's what comes to mind ( including errors 😉 ) .
Many bussiness devices must be tailored , since we are talking confection/mass products . Luckily , smartphones can be tailored to some extend !
😊 Regards jApi NL
Hmm. Initially I was with you - c'mon, I want my categories... but now that I have not used them for some time, I don't miss them all that much.
Does the BlackBerry support categories? The last BlackBerry device I used for more than a couple of days did not and it was at the time very frustrating, but I did get used to it.
None of my colleagues use categories. All apart from me use BlackBerry devices; I'm using an E71, being a former Palm user (and I still miss my Treo very much, heh).
I used to use categories, but once upon a time I spent too long using categories and not enough time using the information :tongue: so spent half a day writing clever Outlook rules, so as to have it do it for me, only to start synchronising with Google Calendar, to find that my categories weren't synchronised across, so on and so forth...
For what it's worth, I am currently using Google Sync via Mail for Exchange with Google Calendar. I synchronise to Outlook and Exchange via a Bluetooth wireless sync when I am in the office, having my email forwarded to me via another address. That's mostly because using Mail for Exchange to sync my data would always screw up my voice dial...
So, it isn't perfect then 😊 but it's a good fit and it isn't a BlackBerry, which I didn't want.
Sure, it's not the end of the world. I can live without categories. But to my non-programming mind, this seems like something that would be (relatively) trivial to implement and would benefit many E-series users.
And why did they add category support to Symbian 9.1 if they weren't going to use it?
IMHO, in the end, it's the general quality of the software available that determines the long-term success of any platform, desktop or mobile. Nokia have some great hardware, but compared to WM or Palm the PIM solutions seem underpowered.
Hi! 😊 It's a gud leap...at present gud... but the older version is sticky problematic... fully agree wid words of DervMan.
It's not perfect then....but now it is gud..,keep it up...