The Future of Symbian

If you have been keeping up with the U.S. tech blogs for the past year or so, you would probably have been lulled into thinking that the Symbian platform is old, outdated, lacking in countless departments and should simply go hide in a corner and die. Recent reviews of Nokia smartphones running the Symbian OS have largely been lukewarm and focused on bashing Symbian and Nokia for choosing to stick with a platform that has gained an unhealthy reputation for itself as being just second to Windows Mobile 6 in terms of its degree of obsolescence. Many critics of Symbian often draw comparisons to the iPhone. I will be commenting on why such a comparison is biased and unfair in a bit.

Despite what those tech blogs tell you, Symbian is far from dead. In fact, the Symbian platform has been in a state of reinvention for a while now, ever since the Symbian Foundation was formed in mid-2008 with the goal of shipping a totally-rebuilt, open-source Symbian platform known as Symbian^4 by 2012. Since then, almost 2 years later, the Symbian OS has since gone free and fully open-source in the hope of attracting more developer talent and manufacturer support, thereby increasing the level of innovation on the Symbian platform and spurring the development of Symbian devices from companies other than Nokia due to the entire OS being essentially free to use, both in terms of cost as well as from a legal point of view. This is essentially the first step towards sustained Symbian dominance in the future and places itself in direct competition with the also open-source Android platform. However, a key difference, as Lee Williams, chief executive of the Symbian Foundation, notes, is that only a third of the Android codebase is open-source as opposed to the now 100% open-source Symbian platform, thus giving developers and hardware makers even more freedom.

In my opinion, Symbian market-share is likely to remain steady in the next few years and perhaps even increase with the release of new versions of the Symbian OS and an even greater variety of devices to choose from. There are two main types of mobile device platforms available today. Firstly, we have the platforms that are specially designed to be used on devices aimed at specific segments of the market (usually the high-end), and in technical speak we call such platforms “vertical” platforms. These platforms have a relatively narrow target audience and the devices that run on these platforms are usually concentrated at the high-end of the market – a ready example that comes to mind would be the iPhone OS. There is only one high-end smartphone that runs the iPhone OS and it is called the iPhone. Despite Apple selling tons and tons of iPhones in the U.S. and elsewhere, the iPhone is no match for the behemoths like Nokia and Sony Ericsson in the mobile industry – we have to keep in mind that the mobile industry very much spans the entire globe and these expensive iPhones are simply priced out of range for many people around the world. Another example of a “vertical” platform would be Windows Mobile. Again, Windows Mobile devices are usually concentrated at the high-end of the market although there are exceptions to the rule such as the HTC Touch 2. Nokia’s “other” platform, Maemo, is also a “vertical” platform in its current state and will probably remain “vertical” for a long time to come.

We also have the platforms that are designed to be used on a wide range of devices that span across the entire market and appeal to many target audiences, and these platforms are known as “horizontal” platforms. To date, Symbian is the only smartphone platform available on the market that has truly accomplished its goal of being a “horizontal” platform and the significance of this fact should never be underestimated. Not only does Symbian run on the widest array of devices on the market today spanning different price-points and specification levels, it also has the advantage of being backed by the largest mobile device company in the world (no, the largest mobile device company in the world is NOT Apple) which ensures its long-term relevance and survival. One cannot deny the vast reach of Symbian and the wide variety of Symbian smartphones available today. Nokia recently slashed the prices of its Symbian devices such as the low-end 5230 down to GBP 99 sim-free in the UK, and this further exemplifies the fact that the Symbian platform is moving downmarket and enabling more people to own smartphones, in turn spurring the growth of their own Ovi services like the Ovi Store and Ovi Maps. Credit should go to Symbian (and Nokia) for commoditizing the smartphone and making the technology more accessible in terms of price-points for an even wider group of people. Nokia has repeatedly made clear the fact that Symbian devices will gradually become mass-market products at the same time as Nokia’s flagship devices gradually drop Symbian in favour of Maemo, and this can only be an added advantage for Symbian on the whole.

Fundamentally, the Symbian platform and the iPhone OS do share more differences than similarities and are designed for different purposes, which makes most comparisons between these two platforms unfair as Symbian is designed to run on every class of smartphone from low-end to high-end, which makes it impossible for the Symbian user interface and level of performance to be on par with the iPhone’s, simply because these two platforms are aimed at different market segments and do not directly compete with each other. This is why the presence of Maemo at the high-end will certainly help to alleviate much of the bad rap that Symbian has been subjected to – the Maemo platform is in essence the true competitor to the iPhone OS instead of Symbian, and we are already seeing some great work being done with Maemo even as it is just beginning to take off as a smartphone platform.

But what would the future bring? As we continue to survive with our Symbian^1 smartphones that continue to suffer from a relative lack of free RAM, the first devices running on the first release of the next-generation Symbian platform, Symbian^3, will start appearing on the market in the second half of this year. Some mock-ups of the Symbian^4 user interface have already been released, and the Symbian Foundation has been making great efforts to engage users and developers in a variety of ways such as holding regular user meet-ups in various parts of the world as well as the Symbian Ideas website at ideas.symbian.org which encourages the community to contribute and vote for features to be implemented in Symbian^3 and Symbian^4. It is definitely refreshing to observe the level of transparency and open-ness that the Symbian Foundation puts forth in comparison to other companies such as Apple, which on the other hand insists on keeping all information on upcoming products tightly under wraps and makes next to no effort to engage their community of users to play a part in their products. On top of that, we can certainly expect a lot more good news from the Symbian Foundation in the year ahead and beyond. Having the entire platform go free and open-source is merely the first step.

Is the OS running on your computer all that important?

I don’t usually discuss desktop operating systems and full-blown computers – I consider myself a proficient Mac/Windows user and I do know enough about computers to tinker around with them on a daily basis, but this has never been a field in which I dabble in too much. However, in line with my current stay on the ‘dark side’, I thought I’d do a little essay on whether traditional operating systems (OSes) are as important today as they were in the past for actually getting work done.

Most computer users can easily be divided into three camps; Windows users, Mac users and Linux users. Each of these camps are comprised of people with very different workflows, abilities and needs and it would be rather unfair to state which OS is better than the other because these three main operating systems all have their own strengths and weaknesses. Much has been said about the advantages of one system over the other and what OS should one choose, but at the end of the day is the OS on your computer all that important anymore? Does the OS really matter to the average user anymore? Do note, for the geeks who are reading, that most non-technical types don’t even have any idea of what OS they are using – they, more often than not, simply use “what came in the box with the computer”. Fundamentally, aren’t the tasks that one can get accomplished with a desktop or notebook computer largely similar across the three main platforms that exist on mainstream consumer machines today?

I’m sure there are many geeks who will scoff at my computer usage and chastise me for not being a ‘real’ geek as I hardly have any need to use applications such as Final Cut, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom or even Adobe Flash CS4. Honestly, looking at how I use a computer from a macro perspective, my needs appear to be very basic indeed. In some ways, I could probably get along just fine using a netbook such as the Nokia Booklet 3G as my main computer. I hear you laughing? Netbooks are in no way suited for being used as primary machines? Here’s what I typically do with my computer:

1. Keep up with everything that’s going on in Facebook
2. Skim through my RSS feeds with Google Reader
3. Read through all those news articles that manage to catch my interest
4. Grab my email through the Gmail web client
5. Write posts and manage this blog through WordPress
6. IM others using Windows Live Messenger (Adium on the Mac)
7. Watch and post to Twitter via TweetDeck
8. Listen to music and sync tracks to my Nokia 5800 with Windows Media Player (iTunes on the Mac)
9. Watch the occasional feature film using either Windows Media Player or VLC
10. Write reports and design presentations with Microsoft Office (iWork on the Mac)

Yep, that’s it. Of course, I occasionally fire up Photoshop CS4 as and when needed as well as screw around with photos in Windows Live Photo Gallery or iPhoto on the Mac. Perhaps more astonishingly, a good half of these ‘common tasks’ are done with nothing but the web browser (Google Chrome on both PC and Mac) which perhaps signifies the decreased reliance on the OS and the apps that run on it for getting things done in our everyday lives. Little by little, Web 2.0 apps are taking over the traditional role of desktop applications for many less-demanding tasks – I guess it would not be long before we see the idea of an ‘application’ confined to expensive, pro-level software packages that we will probably continue to rely on for a long time for particular niches of users. Yet, the insurgence of web apps, as well as even platform-agnostic apps built on Adobe’s AIR such as TweetDeck and the bulk of desktop Twitter clients available today, cannot help but encroach on the territory that platform-specific applications used to stand on – after all, it definitely was not too long ago when cross-platform compatibility for many apps was rather weak and we still relied very much on desktop applications to add to our computers’ functionality.

How much have web apps taken over from desktop applications in the eyes of the average user? Microsoft Outlook used to be the de-facto email/PIM client on the Windows platform, but today unless one absolutely needs to access an Exchange server in a business or enterprise setting, most of us now rely on a combination of Gmail and Google Calendar for all our email and scheduling needs because these two services are not only easy to understand and use, but are also mostly free of glitches, do not need user maintenance and remain in the same state across multiple machines, which is an important factor to the rise of web apps as most of us now use more than one computer in our daily lives. Another prime example would be desktop RSS readers such as NetNewsWire and FeedDemon – online alternatives such as Google Reader has pretty much removed the need for a desktop feed reader especially since it is much more convenient to have the same feeds appear across multiple computers rather than have to struggle to keep everything in sync, which is always a pain for the average user and a hassle for the geek. If I were to cite one more example, it would be Google Docs – this web-based office suite has become a legitimate threat to Microsoft Office as the capabilities of Google Docs are often just enough for everything that an average user would like to do, and furthermore Google throws in a dead-simple method of having multiple users collaborate on a single document which further increases its appeal. And as HTML5 goes mainstream and web apps become increasingly capable, the appeal of consumer-oriented desktop apps will further decrease, eventually being limited to consumer media creation suites such as iLife and Windows Live and other applications that simply do not translate well to the web, such as media front-ends like Windows Media Centre.

Which brings me back to the original point – is the OS that runs on the computer you are using right now all that important in terms of your overall experience? It really depends on how you use your computer, but at least for me, a student and part-time blogger, my overall experience of getting work done is, to a large extent, not affected by my choice of operating system. After all, when half of the things I do on an average day is done primarily in a browser window, what does it matter? In the end, for most of what we would normally do on a computer, we continue to use the same applications and access the same websites irregardless of whether we do it via a PC or a Mac. Are we nearing a point where the OS serves no other purpose other than to run a web browser? If you asked me, Windows 7 comes mighty close. Not even a built-in email client!

The Unthinkable Switch: Moving from Mac to PC

Some of you might be aware of the fact that I’ve been a diehard Mac user since 2006 and have never intended to pay any more attention to Microsoft’s dominant OS, Windows, and the PCs that run this OS, especially with regards to the complete trainwreck that was Windows Vista. However, with the release of Windows 7, I have decided to cease being such a Mac bigot. I’m sure you would have read at some point in time about PC users switching to Macs and being a whole lot happier than they were before. You might be a little shocked to hear that I have decided to switch back from a Mac to a similarly-specced PC for some time in a bid to form an unbiased opinion on the two platforms instead of succumbing to biased views like certain Apple- and Mac-oriented websites on the great interwebs.

When I originally announced my plans on that social networking website known as Facebook, I received a comment almost instantaneously that stated that my action would represent an ‘ultimate betrayal’. Well, it’s really not as bad as that sounds because I feel that unbiased views on the age-old Mac-or-PC debate need to be based off extensive usage of both platforms and I’m sure I should give Windows 7 a chance to be my ‘daily driver’ and to impress me with unparalleled freedom, competent reliability and its slick eye-candy Aero UI. Furthermore, I won’t be entirely abandoning my Mac – during this time period it shall be serving as a media server, responsible for delivering music and video content over the wireless network to my Dell notebook which I shall be basing my experiences upon because I can’t be arsed to copy 35GB of media to the notebook’s relatively small 80GB hard disk.

But everything else that I could ever do with a computer shall be done in a Windows environment within this period of time – browsing the web, grabbing email, skimming through my RSS feeds in Google Reader, audio and video playback, instant messaging, Twitter, creating documents and presentations, editing photos… even updating this blog each week. As I’m typing this, the switch has been in effect for almost 4 hours and it has actually not been too bad. In fact, it wouldn’t be too far off to say that Windows 7 as it is today does manage to provide a good user experience overall and I’m not feeling too constrained by the perceived lackings and limitations of Windows. Stability might have to be assessed over a longer period of time but so far everything has been humming along smoothly and fluidly and I’ve never been faced with many slowdowns which is saying quite a bit for the overall performance of a rather-dated notebook that was originally intended to run XP.

So far, I must admit that the only applications I’m really missing from the Mac platform is the iLife suite of media creation apps – the Windows Live equivalents are not a patch on apps like iPhoto and iMovie and this is clearly an area which Microsoft really has to continue working on – iLife continues to be a major selling point for Macs and rightly so. I can’t say I’m really missing iWork because Microsoft Office might be a little less user-friendly but has a much richer set of features anyway. Most of the other apps I use on the Mac are cross-platform such as Google Chrome, TweetDeck, VLC, QuickTime Pro and Photoshop CS4. In addition I also have the PC-only Nokia PC Suite installed (not really willing to make the jump to Ovi Suite just yet) as well as the absolutely-necessary Adobe Reader 9. Malware protection is taken care of by the built-in Windows Firewall and Microsoft’s free Security Essentials, a free antivirus and antispyware solution.

It wouldn’t be too unreasonable to state that my initial impressions are rather positive, especially after all my bad experiences with Windows Vista (though it must be said that some people I’ve talked to in the past have absolutely no problems with their Vista-running PCs). The user interface, while definitely not as sleek as Mac OS X, still manages to look attractive and modern and Aero works as smooth as butter even on a relatively-limited PC like mine in terms of specifications. Windows Media Player 12 is fast and rather straightforward to use even if its library interface wastes copious amounts of screen real estate and the general feel of this app is definitely not up there with the high standards of iTunes. Heck, it doesn’t even look as good as its predecessor, but it more than makes up for it with media synchronization to any Media Transfer Protocol device and automatic library updating and its instant streaming capability to any other PC running Windows Media Player. Windows Media Center is worlds ahead of the simplistic Front Row media interface in OS X. And my Xerox printer does not require alternative drivers to work on Windows unlike on the Mac.

This could turn out really good after all.

Ovi Maps 3.3

Ovi Maps has always been one of the better services that Nokia has been betting upon under the Ovi umbrella, and with the release of the new Ovi Maps 3.3 last week, Ovi Maps has become the best mobile phone-based GPS navigation solution available today. Initially supported officially on 10 devices, Ovi Maps 3.3 marks another nail in the coffin for dedicated PND (personal navigation device) makers such as TomTom and Garmin and instantly surpasses Google Maps for Mobile in quite a number of ways.

What’s the big deal? Let’s start with free voice-activated turn-by-turn drive and walk navigation that works both online and offline in many regions around the world. Add free access to premium services such as location-aware restaurant recommendations and Lonely Planet city guides. Then throw a shiny new user interface on the whole thing, a vastly-improved search function and Facebook integration and quicker performance. All of a sudden, a mediocre GPS navigation solution I preferred over Google Maps merely because of its offline capabilities became THE best navigation solution on any smartphone platform, period. It even bests Google Maps Navigation due to its non-region specific nature (Google Maps Navigation is only officially supported in the States) as well as its afore-mentioned ability to work completely offline with the exception of the premium services, saving a bundle on data costs. Simply put, Ovi Maps has transformed from a nice extra preloaded on GPS-equipped Nokia smartphones to a strong selling point – at the moment, no competing smartphone platform can boast of such a full-featured, capable navigation app out of the box. PND and phone manufacturers alike should sit up and take note – Nokia has changed the game.

I’m certainly by no means exaggerating when I’m talking about how good Ovi Maps 3.3 is and how Nokia has done a wonderful job with this app. On a more personal note, coupled with the recent v40 firmware update Ovi Maps 3.3 has made me love my 5800XM around three times as much as I did before. I’ve never bought a navigation license for Ovi Maps in the past for various reasons and this limited the utility of this app to an extent – without a license I could only view directions and track my position on the map and search for landmarks. In the past, full Ovi Maps functionality out of the box could only be had if you bought a device such as the 6710 Navigator, but all that has now changed. With Ovi Maps 3.3, full GPS navigation capabilities has now been commoditized – even owners of the typically free-on-contract 5230 can now experience full voice-activated turn-by-turn navigation while on the go, and it might even make more sense to buy a device like the 5230 without a contract solely for in-car navigation due to the low cost of the device, the ease of use of Ovi Maps itself as well as the additional functionality of the 5230 in addition to its navigational prowess instead of going for a traditional in-car navigator such as a TomTom, Garmin or Magellan.

I installed Ovi Maps 3.3 on my humble 5800 the day it was released and have had quite a few opportunities to play with the app both in a car as well as on the street. Fundamentally, navigation has pretty much remained unchanged except for the added option of defining a ‘home’ location which is a welcome addition and improves Ovi Maps’ usability quite a bit. Otherwise, most options have remained the same as its predecessor. Launching the app now displays Ovi Maps’ homescreen instead of displaying the map directly, with a grid of icons for access to address/landmark search (this feature has improved 10x since I last used it with a mix of utter frustration and tears), position display (displays the map centered on your position marked with a red dot), saved landmarks, drive mode, walk mode (both types of voice navigation can now be accessed directly from the homescreen which cuts down on the number of taps needed to initiate a session) and the raft of online services available right in Ovi Maps. Ovi Maps now seems to be able to get a satellite fix utilizing AGPS quicker than its predecessor which is certainly a good thing – no more standing in the middle of the footpath pointing your phone desperately at the sky. There have been a few user interface changes apart from the homescreen, the most glaring being the removal of all options menus. For example, in the Settings panel, the left soft-key is now occupied by Menu instead of the usual Options; tapping this will take you back to the homescreen which could be a little disconcerting for seasoned Symbian/S60 users.

The entire experience of navigating using Ovi Maps 3.3 could be described as mostly faultless – I’d have loved for the map display to be updated a little more frequently as it is actually a tad jerky especially when travelling at moderate speeds in a car. Voice instructions could be a little louder as well but for the most part it is adequate to be heard in most situations – just don’t turn the car stereo up too much, or even better simply turn it off. There are various view modes that can be switched to by swiping left and right during navigation but most of us would be pretty satisfied with the default 3D-oriented view. The map is automatically oriented in the direction one is heading except during walk navigation in straight-line mode. The usual 2D and 3D standard, satellite and terrain maps are present together with Night Mode which changes the map’s colours so as not to cause too much glare in dark environments. It does look a little strange in terms of colour choice to me but I’m just nitpicking here. Ovi Maps navigation, for the most part, is actually on par with a dedicated PND especially on a large-screened device such as the 5800 – it would be spot-on perfect if the map was a tad less jerky than it is right now. The voice prompts are available in quite a few European and Asian languages and are rather neutral-sounding and lacking in natural tone but at the very least they are clear enough. Time to bring on more natural, human-like voices, Nokia, not to mention those novelty voices you can get for TomTom PNDs!

As I alluded to above, searching has been vastly improved on Ovi Maps 3.03 and is no longer a crappy, frustrating and downright stupid experience. Most landmarks such as malls, schools, hotels and other points of interest can now be searched reliably, and Ovi Maps is now able to recognize and display an address such as “215 Bishan Street 23″ which used to be an impossibility in the past. It’s still not up there with Google Maps standards but search does at least work now, unlike the rubbish that existed before. I was horribly frustrated with Ovi Maps searching in the past, but all that is now a distant memory with Ovi Maps 3.3 that I guess they must have implemented a completely different search algorithm or at least a drastically-improved one in this release. It’s so much better now that it’s just amazing what we put up with before.

Considering all the other improvements and added functionality, the now-free premium services in Ovi Maps seems like a mere bonus, and in my view they are indeed there simply to complete the entire package to an extent. For example, the Weather service seems rather unnecessary given all the ways one can get a weather forecast on a Symbian phone, and the Lonely Planet city guides may not be that useful in the real world given the high roaming data charges overseas. However, local restaurant listings (HungryGoWhere in Singapore) and Events (upcoming movie showtimes, concert venues, theatre productions and more) might prove to be really handy while on the go, and coupled with Ovi Maps’ navigation prowess these location-based services could turn out to be really useful to many people in range of a WLAN hotspot or those lucky enough to have a data plan. As for myself, the continued lack of any data bundle on my contract relegates these web-based services to mere curiosities.

In conclusion, forget Google Maps and all other existing free GPS navigation solutions right now – Ovi Maps beats all these apps hands down and has turned into a key selling point for GPS-equipped Nokia smartphones overnight. If this is the first sign of what’s to come with Ovi in 2010, colour me really excited. Now bring on Ovi Store 2010!

Ovi Maps 3.3 by Nokia can be downloaded for the Nokia N97 Mini, 5800 XpressMusic, 5800 Navigation Edition, X6, 5230, E52, E55, E72, 6710 Navigator and 6730 Classic from here as well as from the Ovi Store as of 24/1/2010. Support for N97 coming 28 Jan 2010. Support for other GPS-equipped Nokia smartphones coming soon.

Monologue

(dejected) We tried our best, didn’t we. I mean, we made the best decision according to the circumstances. We tried. From our point of view, this was a problem. We just wanted to solve it and get them to understand the situation and make the correct choices. We didn’t like to tell them all that either, but we felt we had to do it. And they listened. I guess they understood where we were coming from. And even he…we do get into some rather heated discussions at times but for him to say that…it really touched me. It really touched me to know that he was all ready to defend my position and convince others to do the same. And him as well. That unpleasant call was meant for me but he bore the brunt of that outburst instead. He could have avoided all that if I’d just answer my phone. But I didn’t. So he took it all in. He should be the one being affected most, not me. In fact, my conversation with her was calm, amicable even. What right do I have to be dejected? How can I even lose my spirit during times like this? Maybe I’m just a weakling, a sick bastardized weakling. I’m really grateful towards their gestures, and I’m not really that good with words but I really do appreciate what they have done for me. (determined) But I can’t be like this. I can’t be like this, we’ve all got to move on and so do I. No point dwelling on it. And I didn’t do anything wrong. We didn’t do anything wrong. We meant well, didn’t we? I never meant to force them. I was somewhat driven to strongly persuade them to make what we thought were the correct choices but right from the outset I never wanted to force them. I pleaded. I didn’t force. I explained. I didn’t order. Were we in the wrong? Were we? I don’t know. All I know is, that caller really got it all wrong. Maybe that caller wanted to understand the full picture and get some confirmation and hence he called her to clear things up. He was rude. Like, really rude. She probably lost it because of that. He didn’t understand what was going on. She didn’t understand what was going on. And she took it out on him. She apologized later, and so did that caller, but was it already a little too late? Maybe I’m just being too cynical. Maybe she genuinely feels that she had really over-reacted and could have dealt with the situation in a calmer fashion. And we shouldn’t be so dismissive of her, she’s got a role too. We should consult her a tad more often too. But all that happened doesn’t matter to me anymore. Maybe those who go the extra mile to resolve issues are meant to receive this sort of treatment. But never mind. I’ll still do my best anyway. I mustn’t be disillusioned. Not right now. Not in the future. Never. (resigned) Hopefully things will be better in the morning.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and v40 firmware

In the blink of an eye, 2 months have passed since I first unboxed the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and switched it on for the first time, complete with its old v21 firmware. Since then, I’ve been using the 5800XM to its maximum capabilities, eventually having to do the dreaded *#7370# complete system wipe a number of times due to various issues that later cropped up with my heavy and demanding usage. I’ve also needed to format the external memory too, which was certainly a frustrating experience especially with repeated occurrences of various forms of data corruption. This device hasn’t been exactly glitch-free and I’ve lamented about the complete lack of flick scrolling in the user interface as well as the paltry amount of free RAM after booting, the insufficient internal memory capacity and unreliable theme effects (I was so pissed with these that I kept them turned off no matter what).

Since then, I’ve applied 2 firmware updates to the device – I went right ahead and applied the v31 update when it finally became available for my product code as well as the amazing new v40 update just two days ago, which is actually not officially available for my specific product code as of 16 Jan 2010. How did I get the update then? Well, with a little bit of magic with a Windows PC, the 5800’s USB data cable, the device itself and a handy Windows app called Nemesis Service Suite (Google it), it is possible to change a device’s original product code in order to get firmware updates more quickly (Google how to do this if you are interested), especially for carrier-branded devices or even Nokia’s own Comes With Music devices (note that you probably won’t be able to use Comes With Music again once you’ve changed the product code to a non-Comes With Music one, so refrain if Comes With Music is really important to you). I resisted changing my product code in order to get the v31 update, it being incremental and everything, but with v40 and its many new features I simply couldn’t wait around any longer. I took the plunge and changed my product code to 0559476 (APAC1 RED), which has English, Chinese, Malay and Indonesian language support as well as v40 update availability. Anything broken? Well I can no longer access the Nokia Music Store, nor do I see the yellow-and-blue-striped Comes With Music splash screen upon startup. Honestly, I’m not missing any of these ‘features’

I wouldn’t feel any need to write the above paragraph if Nokia would simply scrap having over 50 different product codes (these are 7 digits long and can be found under your battery) for a single device (these codes are even colour-specific), different regional variants of the 5800, or simply bother to enable all product codes to receive a particular firmware update at the same time, especially for updates such as the recently-released v40 firmware with loads of new functionality. Until then, all you non-technical types will simply have to sit around and wait for Nokia to actually get it out to your specific product code while the tech geeks who know their way around or those more-adventurous souls will have to continue fiddling around with Nemesis and product codes just in order to be able to download a long-awaited firmware update.

But whatever the case, I’ve been playing around with my v40-equipped 5800 ever since I applied the update the day it was released and in short, the 5800 with v40 is flat-out amazing. v40 adds so much new functionality to the mature 5800 that it’s so hard to imagine how I actually put up with the 5800 in the last two months, first with the v21 firmware then v31. With v40 installed, the 5800 is now twice as enjoyable to use as it was before, and I’m sure that by the end of this post you’ll be absolutely convinced that you should do the v40 update regardless of whether you’ll need to kludge around with product codes.

At this stage, v40 is probably the last major firmware update for the 5800, completing a long series of these updates since launch. Regarding Nokia smartphones, the more popular a device is with the masses, the more well-supported it will be – that is exactly why the amazingly-popular 5800 has received so many updates and even a couple of new colour schemes after its launch back at the start of 2009 and the niche E90 has not been updated for a long time and continues to be without a direct successor. Yet, v40 is likely to put a smile on many 5800 owners’ faces; it singlehandedly fixes many of the remaining issues of the 5800, the useless Contact Bar homescreen for instance, and brings the features and user interface of Symbian^1 on the 5800 back up to par with the later Symbian^1 XpressMusic smartphones such as the 5530. After all, it made no sense that a lower-end model should have a better software package than its higher-end sibling, which made many of us clamour for a new 5800 firmware update for a long time. It was a long wait indeed – at one point in time I thought it was never going to happen (foolish me) – but now we have it.

Theme: Stripes Red (default 5530XM theme) from here

So, what exactly was the 5800XM’s Symbian^1 implementation missing from its counterparts? Well, firstly it had neither the enhanced Contacts Bar homescreen from the 5530, 5230 and X6 nor the widget homescreen from the N97 and N97 Mini. It was missing flick scrolling (swipe up to scroll down and vice-versa) which had already been done throughout the user interface in the N97 (from v20 onwards) and the N97 Mini and to a lesser extent in the XpressMusic devices. Switching between the full virtual QWERTY keyboard and the alphanumeric keypad was a real clumsy experience. Enabling transitions (theme effects) meant that the 5800 would boot up with a paltry 35-40MB of free RAM. If you currently own the 5800 and hate it, perhaps the v40 firmware update will change your mind.

For starters, the 5800 has received flick scrolling throughout the user interface except in the main menu. It is now possible to scroll through lists, dialog boxes, option menus and even the photo grid in the Gallery without having to resort to using the scrollbars on the right, making navigation a breeze and resulting in a user interface that’s twice as fun to use. In fact, I sometimes flick through my list of contacts just to see it fly by and eventually come to a standstill. I really don’t know how I tolerated the absence of this feature in earlier firmware versions. However, the scrollbars are still present and available if needed, which is a good move in my opinion – it makes scrolling through long lists a lot easier than having to swipe at the screen again and again. This is definitely one of the headline features of the v40 firmware which has been requested by 5800 users ever since Nokia proved they could implement it in the 5530 and N97. Even if you don’t care for the new homescreen or the other enhancements, the presence of flick scrolling is already reason enough to make the jump – once you try it you’ll be amazed. The motion is smooth, quick and fluid – definitely no complaints here.

v40 also brings an improved version of the XpressMusic-exclusive Contacts Bar homescreen to the 5800, which you previously saw on devices such as the 5530 and 5230. I guess almost all of us found the original Contacts Bar homescreen all but useless – you could only add a maximum of four contacts and it wasted a lot of space – you couldn’t have app shortcuts and your favourite contacts at the same time nor could you even see what song was currently playing in the Music Player. In a nutshell, it sucked, forcing me to use the standard Shortcuts Bar homescreen which displayed four app shortcuts, a search button, an email notification, the title of the currently-playing song in Music Player and as many calendar entries as possible. With the improved Contacts Bar homescreen, up to twenty contacts can be added to the Contacts Bar, there are four app shortcuts at the lower region of the screen, the same email notification as well as a widget for the Music Player with playback controls and album art display. I’ve been enjoying this homescreen a great deal, despite it seemingly a little glitchy from what I’ve read – it’s another landmark feature of the v40 firmware and I’ll probably never use the Shortcuts Bar homescreen again. The only omission with the new Contacts Bar homescreen is any sort of calendar display but it’s arguably not such a big issue for me – it’s certainly important to many people though.

One of the biggest bugbears of the 5800 before the release of v40 was that switching between the numeric keypad and the virtual QWERTY keyboard during text input was a real kludge – these two input methods needed to be accessed via a pop-up menu, and rotating the device from portrait to landscape only resulted in a landscape numeric keypad which was simply pointless to have around. That behaviour has now changed; rotating the device from portrait to landscape with the numeric keypad displayed will automatically switch to the QWERTY keyboard. This has been a really nice addition – it’s now a whole lot more convenient to switch between these two input methods, and it’s now easier to use the numeric keypad to bash out quick texts and the QWERTY keyboard for longer text entry sessions. Again, I don’t know how I could bear not having this feature.

The N97 introduced a new incoming call screen when the phone was locked, with two sliders that could be swiped to either answer the call or unlock the device. This call screen has also been added into the v40 firmware and it’s definitely a big plus, both in terms of eye-candy as well as in terms of functionality. Slide the top slider to answer the call; slide the bottom slider to unlock. Arguably not as essential a feature as say, flick scrolling or the new homescreen, but it definitely gives Symbian^1 some much-needed visuals.

The 5800’s new firmware also brings some under-the-hood changes, including slightly more free internal memory out of the box and slightly more free RAM after boot even with transitions turned on. Expect around 50MB of free RAM after boot with those spiffy transitions on – a full 5MB increase from before. It doesn’t really compensate for the general lack of RAM in the 5800 but it does help a little bit in alleviating the situation. And if you turned off those transitions in the past due to their RAM usage, you can feel at ease enabling them now and enjoying all that eye-candy. The touchscreen has become a tad more sensitive and is now just as easy to operate as the N97/N97 Mini’s touchscreen – a huge positive in my book. Moreover, the v40 update is said to bring increased stability – it’s too early to tell right now but I’ll report back on this.

Running apps: Best ScreenSnap 2.0 and DeviceInfo 2, occupying 7MB of RAM between them

Lastly, every firmware update has its fair share of smaller and less significant changes and this v40 update is no exception. The icons for Share Online, Accessory setup and Phone setup have been changed, finally ditching the old pseudo-3D icon style. Application update has been renamed to Software update and has a slightly-changed user interface. The Settings app now has a direct button for Phone switch instead of hiding it in Settings>Connectivity>Data Transfer. RealPlayer has received a minor update, and Ovi Contacts is now preinstalled in ROM, possibly helping to boost usage of the rather useful BlackBerry Messenger-like service.

That’s really about it for v40. The only problem I have with v40 is that I’ve run into a perplexing problem: Nokia Multimedia Transfer on the Mac no longer recognizes the device when plugged in and Salling Media Sync displays it as a ‘Nokia 5800w XpressMusic’, though Nokia PC Suite, Ovi Suite and Ovi Player on the PC continue to work absolutely fine. I would have loved to see the new Music Player like on the N97/N97 Mini as well as the X6 but well I guess we can’t have everything. v40 has really made me enjoy my 5800 twice as much even after just two days and I would recommend that all 5800 users waste no time in doing the update even if a change of product codes is required. It’s really not hard, and the benefits of updating to v40 now far outweigh any disadvantages that exist.

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic v40 firmware update is available now on selected product codes via Nokia Software Updater only (Over-The-Air support likely to arrive soon). Have you done the update? What are your thoughts?

Oh, Thank God It’s The Weekend.

I’m not writing about anything tech-related for this post. After all, CES is overflowing with ebook readers and 3D TVs and other useless products, none of which I’m interested about, and the Nexus One launch (which confirmed much of what was rumoured for weeks before that) was pretty much the only noteworthy event of the past week but let’s face it, it is the best Android device that has ever been released but it isn’t any revolutionary game-changing device and I’m not a fan of its exterior.

Hence we’ll leave tech aside for a moment. I haven’t ranted for quite a while, have I? Let’s do a nice stress-relieving rant, then. That reminds me that I still have to gurgitate a journal entry tomorrow for work.

I guess my earlier predictions that my workload would increase exponentially in 2010, forcing my work on this blog to take a backseat have turned out to be totally true. The first 5 days of Sec 4 life has just passed and I’m already wishing I could zap myself back to Sec 3. I can’t help but feel I’ve just wasted my secondary school life away, looking at the things I wish I could do right now but can’t. Keeping up with my 8 subjects, my work with the Drama Society and my other pursuits such as this blog has just become a lot more difficult and I suppose this is when sacrifices have to be made. One can never have everything. I guess it’s time to make drastic cuts on the amount of spirit I put into my non-work related activities and as the year goes on I’ll pretty much be forced to do so. There’s no more choice left. Even if I wanted to sink my heart into this blog, as the year goes on I’ll probably have to take a hiatus from posting. I don’t like it, but for the sake of my future I really mustn’t waste whatever little time I have left to start taking my studies really seriously.

Don’t worry, I’m not turning into a hardcore study freak like certain people *ahem*. Yet.

Any casual observer would notice that I’ve been heavily involved with Drama lately and for good reason. I hate to sound as if I’m putting on airs about my not-too-casual role at the Drama Society but I thought that for this post I’d talk a bit about what I do there, the people I work with and my views on both, spread over a series of posts, this being the first (most obviously).

Nothing personal, so if you’re currently reading this and work with me, don’t fret too much.

It seems like everything was pre-planned now that I think of what happened and how I got to where I am today. I’ve mentioned the date April 22 2009 as a very important milestone in my life many times in the past but I really only described half of the story back then. Sure, there was The Incident and all the accompanying consequences of that event, but April 22 2009 was not only symbolic of my turnaround, both in terms of my character as well as in my identity, who I was as a person, it was also the date when Drama Society’s 2009-2010 EXCO interview was held. I still remember that afternoon’s events very clearly, just as how I still remember every detail of what happened on the very same morning. I was instantly hit by a deluge of emotions as I recounted one of the many details of that morning during an activity we were having as part of our holiday training at the end of December. I guess I made an impression on a few of our members, who saw, for the first time, their leader blinking back tears.

April 22 2009 not only marked the end of my old life, it also marked the beginning of my turnaround.

That afternoon I appeared to be interviewed looking visibly shaken due to all that happened that morning. I still fondly remember T telling me to put aside everything else and just put all my energies into this interview. I remember myself sitting opposite our three wonderful teachers-in-charge, currently reduced to two. I remember asking me what was the best thing that happened to me that day. At the time I lacked the foresight to come to the conclusion that The Incident was the best thing that could ever happen to me, not just for that single day but in my entire life, hence I replied that my day had been so bad that it really couldn’t get any worse. The interview was rather short and soon I found myself with the rest of the guys outside the interview area.

Months dragged on before we actually knew the results of the interview, and our current EXCO only took over the reins from the outgoing EXCO from the end of August onwards. In the weeks leading up to the handover, the hints started dropping until I heard it directly from the horse’s mouth – I would eventually be at the highest point of responsibility in the entire Drama Society and I was asked whether I was ready to take it up.

What else could I say?

Let’s fast forward right to the present. All of us have already been in our respective positions for quite an amount of time. Our predecessors have long relinquished all responsibilities. We are running the show now. But how good are we at doing our jobs? Are we actually doing our best for our members and ultimately the Drama Society? That remains debatable. I’m not one to be overly pessimistic, but I fully agree that it is important to know one’s weaknesses and strengths equally well.

It all stems from the fact that I haven’t yet found my motivation for doing what I do at the Drama Society. If you asked me to frankly state if I enjoyed my work, I would probably give a negative answer over a positive one. I can’t say that I really enjoy my role very much. Most observers point out that I should be very happy that I’m at the top of the hierarchy as far as students are concerned, but I’m just not feeling it. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t hate my job and to be perfectly honest I’m happy to do my best for the Drama Society. Being at the top just doesn’t strike me as something I should particularly enjoy or revel in. There’s really no shine associated with being where I am – at the end of the day it means a boatload of responsibilities, quite a bit more work and a lot more to think about. Sometimes I slap myself and ask myself why I was just so damn good at my job to be instantly elevated to such a precarious position. Yes, precarious is the word – I’m accountable not just to those below me but to those above me as well. There have been recent nights where I scrapped my whole religion-agnostic facade and *prayed* that things would go well the following day. Out of character? You bet.

The stress and pressure associated with being a Sec 4 student hasn’t helped matters either. 2010 will be insanely challenging on both ends. Let’s hope we’ll all make it through. No, scrap that, we probably will. But all I know is that right now I’m so tired, stressed and on the verge of falling ill.

I’ve never been a huge fan of hierarchies. In fact, I probably can’t spell the word “hierarchy” without a spell-checker. Heirachy? Hierachy? Heirarchy? I can never get it right. Unlike the vast majority of people who believe that success means ascending up the organizational chart, I have always disregarded the idea that a hierarchy has any bearing on the innate capabilities of a person. A hierarchy means nothing to me. It’s the reason why I haven’t felt any need to form an organizational chart for Drama Society, with my name unashamedly right at the top. I’d cringe. I don’t like being represented as so much more important than the rest because I feel that the many talents that I work with are just as important, if not more important, than myself. We are all collectively responsible for the Drama Society’s destiny and that is a cold, hard fact. The members matter a great deal too. Everyone has at least some degree of importance in the Drama Society because we are all responsible for each other. Screw hierarchies, it doesn’t matter one bit. In fact, it’s all due to the excellent guys that I work with, both EXCO and non-EXCO, that I’m able to fulfill my roles and responsibilities. I really couldn’t do it without the rest of them and that should be an important note to those in equivalent positions who think they’re so damn great and thus can lord over their subordinates and abuse their powers to varying degrees.

At this point, some of you still reading this post will probably draw a preliminary conclusion that I’m lacking the confidence that I’ll be able to lead the Drama Society to greater heights, thus I am spreading the responsibility around and downplaying the importance of my role in terms of putting across the idea that we shouldn’t even have a hierarchy and that everyone in the EXCO has similar responsibilities. However, it is a fact that even those right at the top depend heavily on teamwork to get things done and it has been proven many times and even experienced personally that the guy at the top cannot survive on his own. His team members are just as important as himself in many ways.

Some of us believe that the moment we are promoted into leadership positions is when we stop working so hard, sit back and allow the rest to do more than us. I don’t believe in that. In fact, the moment we attain leadership positions is when we start doing even more for our members and take up more substantial responsibilities. Despite being right at the top, I’ve never intended for anyone to work for me – instead, I should be working with them. I’m not one who feels it right to go all hands-off – I feel plain uncomfortable when I’ve got nothing much to do and everyone’s busy with their assigned tasks. I want to get down with them and work with them whenever possible simply because it’s the better thing to do as a leader and not choose to let others do all the hands-on. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is up to you to decide. I never saw my position as one where I was free to slack off despite whatever happened before.

Another key concept I’ve always stood by is that I should openly admit any points of negligence that I have committed or any areas I’ve failed to address in my attempts at fulfilling my responsibilities. In fact, I don’t wish for anyone to keep mum about my flaws, especially the Drama Society members. I want to be criticized. I want them to tell me how I can do my job even better and I want to make that happen. The days where members criticize the leaders behind their backs should have ended long ago because much of this criticism is usually valid but almost always go unheard which amounts as a great loss. Indeed, I’ve committed quite a few gaffes already, including frantically making calls at 11pm in order to spread the word about an important meeting at 9am the following day. I’ve never felt the need to cover any of my mistakes up and pretend I had not made these mistakes in spite of the potential dip in reputation that is a possible consequence. No one is perfect and I don’t aspire to be perfect. Even those at the top aren’t anywhere near perfect and I hope that everyone who works with me can accept that as a fact of life.

But I’m already at risk of turning this post into a long-winded mindless bit of writing that no one wants to read, so I guess I should end off here. I guess I’ll find the satisfaction in what I’m doing for the Drama Society with time and I know I’ll probably adjust rather nicely to this hectic, busy life. Like it has so often been said, it’ll all be better in the morning.

Oh, what, it’s Sunday already?

My 10 most significant phones of the decade

Honestly, I’m not the best candidate to be doing such a post because I only really got into phones a couple of years ago, so how could I even expect to do these retrospective posts all that well? But I’m going to try anyhow, and you might even agree with some of my picks listed below.

So, the 10 most significant phones of the decade. 10 phones, regardless of manufacturer, regardless of whether they run native apps, regardless of price upon launch. These 10 phones either made a huge impact on the market, became massively popular, represented a new direction for its respective phone maker, were a technological breakthrough or redefined expectations of what a smartphone could do. Bear in mind that this list is not in order of merit – different devices have different target audiences and different aims – it’s hard to justify which of these devices made a larger overall impact on the world because they made their impact in a multitude of ways.

1. Apple iPhone (2007)

Before all of you haters start bitching at me, let me explain why the iPhone is one of the most impactful releases this last decade. Just imagine how game-changing this device has been, turning the entire mobile landscape upside-down – it started this whole touchsceen revolution, it made app stores popular such that just about every platform now has an app store, it was the first truly user-friendly smartphone (and arguably still is the most user-friendly smartphone), it represented a huge change in how touchscreen user interfaces worked (remember Palm OS?) and it has singlehandedly changed everyone’s views of how a touchscreen device should look and work. After the iPhone was launched, every other major phone manufacturer rushed to develop a competitor with varying results. The iPhone is merely the beginning of the future.

2. Nokia N95 (2007)

Ah, the Nokia N95. Many will probably agree that the N95 represented the first truly usable camera phone, and it had such a glowing spec sheet upon release that even today it can still hold its own against newer and better competitors. The N95 offered a huge amount of functionality in an unassuming squat-looking dual-slider and offered more features than anyone would ever need – getting an N95 meant that you’d never want anything else for a long time. To many people, especially non-technical types, it was the first sign of successful convergence – as Nokia put it, it wasn’t just one thing in your pocket, it was many. Together with its immediate successor, the N95 8GB, Nokia went on to shift tons and tons of units to everyone from the geeks to the stay-at-home mums, and is arguably still Nokia’s most successful high-end smartphone ever.

3. Nokia 7650 (2002)

This device was far before my time, being released in 2002, but it deserves mention due to it being Nokia’s first Series 60 (later S60) smartphone, Nokia’s first camera phone and one of the first slider form-factor handsets. Its design was so futuristic that it wouldn’t look out of place today. One of the first devices to have Bluetooth built-in as well as a colour screen, it truly made a huge impact in a world of boring monochrome-screened flip-phones and monoblocks with bright coloured shells. Exceedingly rare today, which is a pity (I’d love to own one!)

4. Nokia N90 (2005)

Again, before my time, but one of the first camera phones that actually produced acceptable results instead of being simply for ‘casual’ use. 2 megapixels and autofocus might not seem very much these days, but it instantly quieted all the skeptics that camera phones would never succeed and were merely gimmicks. Amazingly, in just 4 short years, we’ve got the 8-megapixel Nokia N86 and 12-megapixel Sony Ericsson Satio. My, how far we’ve come. The form-factor wasn’t well received, it was bulky, it didn’t have a vibrating alert and it didn’t sell well, but the N90 was an amazing device nevertheless.

5. Motorola RAZR V3 (2004)

This is a rather controversial choice – the V3 didn’t bring anything new to the table technologically speaking and its success ultimately contributed to the near-death of Motorola’s mobile phone division. However, it had a stunning design, stunning build quality, it turned heads instantly and it is truly an iconic device despite the V3 being a bog-standard feature phone on the inside. Metal casing, metal keypad, large and high-resolution internal screen (during its time), a really slim profile – which of us wasn’t totally taken aback by the RAZR considering Motorola’s previous pudgy clamshells and monoblocks? The RAZR ultimately spurned dozens of mundane revisions, was copied by other manufacturers (countless Samsung flips and the Nokia N76) and sold exceedingly well. Regardless of the long-term effects of its success, it certainly deserves to be one of the most significant phones released in these ten years.

6. Sony Ericsson K750i/W800i (2005)

These phones were released at around the same time as the behemoth of a N90 and they were both significant launches in different ways despite being almost exactly the same device with matching internals. The W800 marked the beginning of the mobile music revolution, coming with a high-capacity memory card and quality earbuds in the box, while the K750 had stunning camera abilities for its time, setting an entirely new benchmark in terms of how far a mobile phone could replace a standalone digital point-and-shoot camera. They are arguably the most popular Sony Ericsson phones ever, and it is certainly not uncommon to see these pair of devices still in use today. Sadly, Sony Ericsson devices are no longer the technological leaders they once were; Cybershot-branded devices don’t provide the best image quality available in a phone and Walkman-branded devices aren’t the best-sounding or the most compatible phones in terms of connectors – their stubborn reliance on the much-reviled Fast Port has pretty much allowed Nokia’s XpressMusic range to overshadow Walkman devices, offering more bang at a lower price.

7. Motorola ROKR E1 (2005)

The ROKR E1 was an ultimately unsuccessful collaboration between Motorola and Apple that had the aim of creating a mobile phone that was compatible with iTunes-purchased music, but this device, in spite of its eventual failure on the market, was significant for a number of reasons. Firstly, it showed that if Apple really wanted to do an ‘insanely great’ phone, it would have to be a solo effort. Secondly, the ROKR E1 was the perfect example of how not to build a music-focused handset during a time where the category of music-oriented devices was just taking off – simply rebadging an existing design wouldn’t do, nor would setting arbitrary limitations on the number of songs that could be imported into the music player regardless of total memory capacity, nor would sticking a clumsy, hard-to-navigate interface on the device. A slow USB connection served to further limit its appeal. The iPhone is in many ways the antithesis of the original ROKR, and after three iTunes-equipped phones Motorola decided to drop the concept entirely.

8. BlackBerry Pearl 8100 (2006)

The original BlackBerry Pearl was certainly a landmark device for Research In Motion (RIM), kickstarting RIM’s inroads into the consumer space in addition to the business and enterprise worlds where BlackBerry devices traditionally dominated the landscape. It was once the forefront of RIM’s corporate identity, and was the first BlackBerry to ditch the side-mounted trackwheel for a more versatile trackball and fully aimed at the average consumer instead of the stodgy business types as RIM traditionally catered to. New consumer-oriented features such as a 1.3-megapixel camera, video recording, microSD card slot, music playback as well as the Pearl’s similar appearance to an average monoblock feature phone certainly helped boost its appeal a great deal. With the Pearl, it was cool to own a BlackBerry all of a sudden, and RIM quickly followed up the initial effort with devices like the Curve 8300 and 8320.

9. PalmOne Treo 650 (2004)

For many of us, especially those coming from a traditional Palm handheld, the Treo 650 was the ultimate combination of Palm’s excellent PIM software and a mobile phone. Its immediate predecessor, the Treo 600, offered a first taste of the future but was let down by a low-resolution screen, but the Treo 650 signified Palm’s future in many ways as a phone maker rather than a PDA maker. The Treo 650 was an hugely popular, all-round excellent device and released to rave reviews, but like Motorola, Palm decided to stagnate in terms of technology and continued to churn out what was fundamentally the exact same device with a few improvements here and there, such that the Treo 680 released two whole years later was basically a Treo 650 with the antenna stub taken off and a slightly more streamlined design. Again, it was the case of a highly-successful device ultimately causing the near-failure of a phone maker, but Palm has since made a comeback with its highly-rated Pre smartphone and will certainly continue to improve its offerings in the year ahead.

10. Nokia N900 (2009)

I kid you not – the N900 is the first Nokia device that truly got my pulse racing in a long time and with good reason. Stunning specifications, amazing hardware, excellent software – the N900 is one geekfest indeed. Never mind the resistive display and not-so-great keyboard – the OS on this thing is reason enough to get out and buy this phone as soon as it arrives on local shores. Maemo 5, though still rather immature and in need of much optimization, is the first mobile OS I’ve come across that actually takes after standard desktop OSes in terms of its overall capabilities. The OS itself is still under active development and is backed by a passionate community of users. Sure, it may seem rather daunting to use at the beginning but pretty much every aspect of this device seems to be simply awesome. Can’t wait to get my hands on one!

Honourable Mentions:

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic: OK, so I own this device, but the sheer popularity of the 5800 can never be underestimated – it was, after all, the most popular touchscreen smartphone in the world at one point in time, owing to its attractive pricing and the value-for-money factor. More than that, however, it opened up a whole new market for affordable touchscreen smartphones and introduced a huge number of people to the possibilities of a touchscreen device for the first time, especially for those who wouldn’t have considered a touchscreen smartphone before. Loving mine a great deal, and I’m sure many other owners share the same sentiments. It made me realize that a touchscreen device wasn’t that bad an option after all.

Motorola MILESTONE: This Android smartphone, together with the DEXT, marks Motorola’s comeback as a top phone maker and not a company that is merely satisfied with churning out rehash after rehash of the RAZR. It has been particularly well-received, especially in the U.S. where it is termed as the second-best alternative to the iPhone, and has pretty much helped push the Android platform further into the mainstream. Kudos to Motorola for pulling this off – I really can’t wait and see what new devices they have up their sleeve this year!

And that’s about it for the 10 most significant phones of the decade. Agree? Disagree? Anything to add? Do sound off in the comments!

-Alvin

Is Flash on a smartphone really that important?

Of all the criticism lobbied at the iPhone, the absence of Adobe’s Flash platform probably stands out as one of the main complaints about this device. The iPhone is unable to display Flash content on websites or run standalone Flash apps as it does not have any Flash capabilities whatsoever, be it full desktop Flash or the mobile-oriented Flash Lite. This, together with multitasking, probably stands out as one of the major weaknesses of the iPhone and many tech bloggers and industry journalists have weighed in on the issue. I thought I’d give my two cents’ worth too.

As you probably do know, I use a Nokia 5800 as my daily driver. Most Symbian smartphones, the 5800 included, are able to display a subset of Flash content, either as an embedded item in a webpage or a standalone .swf app. The Android-based HTC Hero and Nokia N900 running Maemo 5 is also capable of displaying Flash content in the web browser. These devices, theoretically at least, can play Youtube videos straight from its full desktop site. Yet, is this capability really that huge an advantage? I’m not sure. Is it really that important having Flash (or Flash Lite at least) running on a smartphone? Is the lack of Flash that huge of an issue for devices such as the BlackBerry and the iPhone? I don’t really think so. And here’s why.

It starts from performance. Virtually no smartphone capable of displaying Flash content actually does it well. The Hero chokes on it. The 5800 can barely manage it. And from what I’ve read about the N900 so far, the experience isn’t exactly great even on such a high-end smartphone. I don’t know about other smartphones, even Symbian devices, but the 5800 simply doesn’t seem to have enough oomph to do Flash at a decent pace. It is slow – really slow. I don’t know whether I’m just expecting too much, but I’ve simply turned off all Flash capability in the web browser because the performance is simply not up to par and the web browser will more often than not simply give up on trying to load Flash-heavy websites and even unexpectedly quit as a result. And remember – this is merely Flash Lite. Makes sense – my Mac sometimes has trouble doing desktop Flash, with Safari’s CPU usage shooting all the way up, the amount of RAM used skyrocketing and the internal fan spinning up. There’s, after all, a reason why BashFlash exists. Disabling Flash on the 5800 instantly improves the web browsing experience by leaps and bounds – advertising banners are not displayed and scrolling around the page is less tiresome and laboured. Perhaps the lack of Flash is a good thing after all – hey, no annoying Flash banners!

Apart from performance issues, having a smartphone display Flash content also causes even slower pageloads due to the added chunk of Flash content (again, usually nothing but annoying advertising banners) that has to be downloaded. The total size of a webpage with Flash content versus. one without an inch of Flash content will certainly be much greater – something you don’t want if you’re on a low-capped data plan rather than one of those new, excellent 12GB data bundles available right now. Not having any Flash content being downloaded ultimately results in faster web browsing – if your smartphone only has Flash Lite built in, most of what you’ll be seeing in terms of displayed content would be advertising banners and don’t we all hate those? Of course, there are still a sizeable number of websites out there that depend entirely on Flash for all content – InwardBound’s website is one such example. Without Flash support, you probably won’t be watching online streaming videos either, at least not without a dedicated app. Hulu is out, ESPN’s video content is off limits, you won’t be able to do YouTube desktop-style, Vimeo will be pretty useless and you simply won’t see any video on Last.fm. Before you cry out that watching streaming videos online is exactly what you’d love to do on your smartphone, why not take a moment and consider whether an average smartphone, say the 5800, is really built for browsing desktop online video sites and watching Flash video straight off a webpage without a dedicated app?

I’ve remarked in the past that panning around huge desktop-oriented webpages is really cumbersome on a small-screened smartphone. The same rules apply to watching online streaming video on your smartphone straight from the browser – it isn’t going to be a very smooth or enjoyable experience. So why this clamoring for Flash support when it would probably be a more enjoyable and painless experience watching online streaming video through a dedicated app like the many apps out there for YouTube such as the iPhone’s built-in Youtube client, MobiTubia, Google’s own clients for Symbian and Android as well as HTC’s Windows Mobile YouTube client. Playing these videos through dedicated apps like the aforementioned will definitely be a whole lot better in terms of overall performance as well as ease-of-use, and not having to rely on Flash will also reduce the chances of it bringing your entire device down.

Hence, the value of Flash on a smartphone is vastly overrated in my honest opinion, though I know I’m among the minority who also thinks that mobile-oriented websites are better and easier to navigate around than desktop-oriented websites. It’s really not all that important at the end of the day – coming from a Flash-capable device, I’ve certainly not had much reason to make use of the Flash support. In fact, leaving Flash turned off in the web browser has its perks – it doesn’t load Flash content by default, so it loads pages much quicker while taking up much less RAM, but all the Flash content that was not loaded by default can still be viewed with a tap on the empty areas in the page. Not allowing the web browser to download any Flash content by default does reduce the chances of the browser crashing by a considerable amount.

In conclusion, having Flash support on your smartphone might not be such a huge advantage, at least for now – most smartphone hardware is not yet at a level of performance where any kind of Flash content can be displayed without hiccups. Let’s see if things improve in the year ahead.

Strange glitches and rough times

So, I see that we’ve moved into a new year. New Year=back to writing posts on this blog. So here I am – I hope all you readers have had an excellent holiday season and are looking forward to the new year. Me? I’m excited at the possibilities of the year ahead, the potential developments that might very well come into fruition, and the time I’ve got to actually do more. Without a doubt, 2010 is going to be an exciting time in the mobile space. Nokia’s efforts in both their software and service offerings might very well propel them back into being well-regarded by the U.S. tech blogger. The first Android smartphone from Sony Ericsson, the Xperia X10, is around the corner. Motorola is bound to release more Android devices in order to boost its smartphone lineup which currently consists of the DEXT and MILESTONE. Palm’s success at reinvention may continue this year depending on how their cards are played. Leaving mobile aside, 2010 is going to be a really interesting time in my life.

I’ve never bothered with New Year resolutions because they are nothing but impossible to-do lists in my eyes. However, I’m going to ditch that mindset for this year. That’s right – I’ve been bitten by the resolution bug. (No, I’m definitely not referring to pixels, though I’d say that this year, 800×480 screens and 12 megapixel cameras on smartphones will cease to be restricted to purely high-end devices) I will definitely be a lot busier in the months ahead – that is in itself an inescapable fact. Hence, I probably (most certainly) won’t be able to blog more than twice a week at best. Sucks, doesn’t it? I’m not to overjoyed about it either. But look – it allows for more focused posts (I won’t have to deal with writer’s block) and it can only increase the quality of the content on here. Hence, one resolution I’m determined to stick to is to write a new post at least twice a week over the entire 52 weeks of 2010. That would work out to a total of 104 posts in 2010, which is not too shabby indeed. In addition to that, I shall be limiting my posts to a maximum of 1400 words – that’s my second resolution for 2010. Gone are the days of long and winding essays that take quite some time to read through. Not everyone has the time for that these days.

I’ve had the 5800 for almost 2 months already. It’s been fairly good to me and I do still love this device a great deal. Sure, it isn’t the latest or greatest nor is it the best at anything, but it’s great as an everyday device, as a reliable companion. Yet, I’ve had my share of frustration with it as well – quite a bit of frustration in fact. The 5800 isn’t entirely glitch-free. I’ve had to do a complete wipe of the device twice and format the memory card thrice. I’m just waiting for someone to come along and berate me for pushing the 5800 too hard. But it’s a smartphone. A smartphone is supposed to take a beating, perhaps not always physically but in terms of its software, its functionality. It’s meant to be pushed. It’s meant to be running 10 apps all at the same time. Yet, I’m afraid the 5800 continues to disappoint when its pushed. Try extending its limits and it fights back at you. Maybe it just hates me.

One morning I awoke to find an ‘Out of memory’ error message that I couldn’t get rid of. Out of memory? Probably not referring to RAM – I don’t leave apps working away through the night. Doing what every exasperated smartphone user does, I rebooted the device. It was horribly unstable once booted – apps wouldn’t launch and all I could really do was open the dialer. Out of memory. I decided to check the state of the internal memory, and to my horror there were exactly 0MB of internal memory left. It ought to be kidding me, I thought. I had 30MB free just last night. I plugged the damned device into my Mac and deleted all user-accessible files in the internal disk, but to no avail – the 30MB seemed to have been eaten up by a black hole. Right, I’m just kidding, but trust me – I was thoroughly baffled. Not finding any other plausible solution, I pulled up the dialer and entered *#7370#, formatting the internal disk and returning the device to factory state. I proceeded restoring my calendar and contacts, feeling rather miffed. Could it been have a misbehaving app? I have entirely no idea. I shudder to think how a normob, with no backup of their smartphones whatsoever, would react to such a situation. They certainly wouldn’t have any way of restoring their important data in such a situation – which is why I continue persuading all of you to do periodic backups of the content in your phones, either by using an online backup solution, desktop synchronization or even making use of Symbian’s built-in backup and restore functions (Look for the Memory utility in S60v3 and the File Manager in Symbian^1). You never know when it’ll be your lifesaver.

Over the course of a week, I installed a whole bunch of apps – over 50 of them in fact, from the useless (Bubbles by Offscreen) to the useful (Psiloc World Traveler) to the really cool (Qik). Noticing that the 5800 was being a little sluggish, I decided to give it a kick in the ass by rebooting it, clearing all accumulated temporary detritus in one fell swoop. Guess what – the device couldn’t get past the initial Nokia logo, even after a 30 minute wait. This is bad, I thought. Ejecting the battery didn’t help matters (all that struggling with the bitch of a battery cover was for nothing), neither did repeated reboots do anything. Ejecting the memory card, the device booted successfully and worked fine. Seems like it was a memory card issue then. Too many apps? Maybe. What a stupid glitch that was, forcing me to spend an hour reloading my 5.5GB worth of media content back on the memory card and reinstalling all the apps I simply couldn’t do without. Again, did this happen due to excessive tinkering? Should this even happen in the first place?

I have since decided to quit using the Ovi Store and going back to sideloading. This for a very simple limitation: Ovi Store does not allow re-downloading of apps if these apps were installed on a memory card that was later wiped. I’m completely serious. If you spent real money and bought an app from the Ovi Store, installed it to external memory, and later had some reason to format the card, you won’t be able to redownload the app (the Download button will be greyed out no matter what you do). Instead, in addition to wiping the external memory, you’ll also have to wipe the internal memory in order to be able to re-download your apps, instantly doubling the amount of hassle in this situation. I’ve had it with the Ovi Store to be honest. Let’s wait and see what Nokia’s Ovi Store 2.0 brings us in March.

That’s not all. At times, a reboot is required for the 5800 to initiate a USB connection. The USB mode selection dialog appears, but the connection refuses to happen. Other times, the music library gets corrupted and does not refresh correctly – deleting all tracks from the memory card through the file manager has no effect on the music library which continues to list tracks that no longer exist. Web continues shutting down as and when it likes with no apparent reason. All the Nokia devices I’ve used don’t ‘just work’. Not to mention all the random slowdowns and freezes that happen due to low memory or related multitasking issues. Heck, maybe I really am trying to do too much with this thing. It’s been working perfectly fine for a fortnight without me trying to install a ton of apps or get it to do 10 things at a time. I guess it really isn’t so much of a powerhouse after all.

I continue to wait for the ‘power-packed’ 5800 firmware update that gets us kinetic scrolling and the newer Contact Bar homescreen but I no longer hold my breath. Maybe it won’t happen after all.

Man, I really, really want to love my 5800. Let’s see how it goes from here.

-Alvin