They might have well started flying a kite in lightning, because this is going to raise some eyebrows. Nokia’s latest blog post on the Conversations site starts out with “My name is Ian and I prefer buttons on my mobile phone.” You can probably guess where the conversation is going, because many people believe that the only form for a smartphone is a touchscreen slab. It should be a good debate!
Read on in the full article.
I want a T9 keyboard on my smartphone along with a touch screen.
Fact is he is speaking about something different. It's not because both smartphones and plain phones both allow to make phone calls that they are the same beast.
If all the guys want is to make phone calls, I do 100% agree his is best.
My smartphone allows me to do plenty (agenda, web, apps, photos, ...) and, BESIDES THAT, also allows me to place phone calls.
It's the difference between guys who had a PDA before and those who didn't...
Hardeep1singh wrote:I want a T9 keyboard on my smartphone along with a touch screen.
+1.
I want a sliding T9 with a 2.8" or (maximum) 3.0" touchscreen, .. which doesn't yet exist.
(Aino would be the closest, but it's not Symbian, not full touch and it doesn't have the DPad on top)
I don't understand the "can't do things one-handed" comment that people keep bringing up.
I've been using a touchscreen-only phone for a couple of years, and touchscren phones in general for a lot longer. I've also used non-touchscreen phones, of course.
I can just about reach all the screen with my thumb while holding it one handed, but it's a bit of a stretch. The thing is, I don't need to. If I'm walking in the rain, I'm not really going to be wanting to play games. If I need to phone or text someone, I can easily do this one handed while keeping to the lower half of the screen which is easily reachable one-handed.
I'd say that you do have to look at the screen when typing with a touchscreen phone (at least I do) but with the error correction on modern touchscreen QWERTY keyboards, or just using a T9 or 20 key keyboard, it's not difficult to type one handed on the move.
the n97 mini is best. touchscreen and qwerty heh 😊
I find that my iPod Touch harder to operate with one hand as opposed to two. I've never used a Nokia 5800, but it looks narrower than the iPhone/iPod Touch. I would bet that one handed operation would be easier. Anybody have some thoughts on this?
5800 is fine one-handed (with my average-guy size hands). I only use two hands when I flip it sideways to type on the full-screen QWERTY. The relative narrowness of the phone leaves less screen space, but makes it very nice to hold and use one-handed.
I use my phone for text, calls, email, twitter and sports tracking. The E72 is perfect for all of these and I love the form factor. I don't have any real need for a touch screen (and I prefer hard keys for those emails, and yes I can do emails one handed with the qwerty keypad and frequently do).
The downside is that
a) the E72 is buggy as hell - mostly because S60 3.2 is being neglected in favour of touch versions
b) there are some nice apps about which shouldn't really be touch exclusive, but the concentration on touch means few decent apps are available on S60 3.2 platforms (and this includes most new apps from Nokia).
In short, for business users, the E series is great and would be fully complementary to the touch models, but Nokia has been so obsessed with chasing Apple and Google (a race they cannot hope to win) that they are neglecting their user base.
I'd rather they abandon the touch side with Symbian, go with MeeGo or Android for that, and put the rest of the effort in making top of the range business emailers to compete with RIM and polishing their feature phones*
* - and funny enough there is a huge market for people who just want, well, a phone!
Koying wrote:It's the difference between guys who had a PDA before and those who didn't...
I guess Ian is trying to be humourous in his rant, but when starts saying that his button phone can do this and that better than touch screen phones, he starts to sound childish. It's not like anyone is holding a gun to his head and telling him to use a touch screen phone. There are a large variety of handsets available on the market to choose from and a good portion are button phones. It just sounds like someone with a touchscreen phone showed him some of its features and he got envious and came back with "well, I can make calls faster and with one hand." Is that the best he can do to try to one up me? Like it's going to make me feel like I wasted my money because it takes me a second longer to dial a number.
Some of the things he is saying isn't even accurate. I can dial a number on my N97 one handed with no problem. And how is sending and receiving emails faster on a button phone faster? Does he not use punctuation in his emails? I've struggled with sending text messages on my old Nokia 6126 when I want to use various punctuation, symbols, or capitalise letters for acronyms or proper nouns. With a QWERTY keyboard or even a virtual keyboard, I would expect that you can type and send an email way faster than on a button phone.
Whilst there are plenty of 'button' smartphones out there the point really is that the majority of apps and services are being aimed at touch phones. The hard button phones are being largely ignored, even by the manufacturers (certainly Nokia).
I queried with Nokia why Point and Find isn't the on the E72 and they told me plainly that Nokia are concentrating most development on the touch experience and suggested there's no demand on devices like the E72. Though that doesn't explain why they released a version for the E71. I'm finding the same with a lot of stuff Nokia release now, and even with frequency of bug fix releases (or just fixing bugs at all, where in some cases they're fixed on 5th edition but they don't bother on 3rd), and same goes for third party app developers.
I have not had time to read the original piece this refers to, but my observation, from most if not all of Nokia's not buttons phones is.
Yep, that's obvious 😊