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JudoGeek Blog
So... I've had my E90 for a bit over a week and thought I'd jot down a few thoughts on it and how it suits me.
The E90 is definitely as most people (Steve Litchfield for example) have described it a refinement of the Communicator series rather than a radical change a-la the iPhone. Yes, moving from series 80 to series 60 is a big move, but from a user perspective it's not a big deal.
As a former Nokia 9500 user I have lost the use of my thumbs for texting/typing, which is what made the final decision when it came to what phone to get. And the keyboard on the e90 is quite nice, a bit stiff and my space bar is almost impossible to tell if it has been pressed or not. Maybe thats just it being new, or maybe a design flaw, I don't know.
Size-wise, its a smaller, slimmer package than the 9500. yes bigger than the average phone, but not as monstrous as the 9500 was. Which makes me look less like some guy with a 80's mobile phone, which is nice.
Some things I have been impressed with are...
The fact that I can start an application on the outside screen, and then flip the phone open and the same application pops open. Also, built is is automatic email checking, so every half hour my phone pings my pop3 server. You could do this on the 9500 with some freeware from the same Steve as above, but it's nice Nokia have included it.
GPS is a great addition also, yes it takes a while to get a signal, but so did my external GPS previously. What I don't like much is paying extra to get voice navigation after spending so much on a phone with GPS. Minor irritation, but an irritation none the less.
Which brings me to Google Maps (v. 2), which it awesome! Stunning even! The my location feature is amazing and very cool to show folks. It is the location finding via cell towers and it works pretty darn well, especially in London. Unlike GPS, the google feature worked inside a restaurant in London, and was pretty accurate. Being able to load all the satellite imagery is cool as well and be able to zoom right in is great.
I left it running all the way from Basingstoke to home one night and it was very cool watching the the dot representing me traverse satellite imagery of the M3. I had it zoomed in pretty close so it showed things like the chevrons where lanes merged, which was amazing.
If Google Maps had better navigation, that kept up with where you were and importantly had voice, I would not have bothered buying the same feature for the nokia software.
One bug bear on this is that the Google software could do with some caching on the maps, it downloads them via GPRS/GSM so is pretty data hungry, so a cache on the ample memory of the E90 would be great.
One other app I have loaded and was impressed with is Agile Messenger, which I had on the 9500 and love. They earned massive brownie points as I don't seem to have had to get it relicensed. I thought that with a new IMEI I would have to but it must be tied to my SIM or something I guess. Guys, thanks! Seamless is a big plus. It adds better voice and video support on the E90 I think so that is cool. One weird thing though is that when I use the inside screen the command buttons seem to be opposite to what is shown. It is much nicer on the outside screen anyway so no biggie!
Finally, I have also loaded Python as it seems to have taken the place OPL held as development language of choice now days. Not done Python before, so should be fun. There is a book on Python for Mobiles ( Mobile Python: Rapid prototyping of applications on the mobile platform: Rapid Prototyping of Applications on the Mobile Platform ) which I shall probably get. Maybe then I can help Dirk with a location aware client for Noserub eh?!
Anyway... in summary. The E90 is very much a happy purchase for me, glad however I got it of eBay not from a Nokia/Vodafone/retail store as I got it a lot cheaper than the 600-800 notes regular channels wanted. (and yes I know Expansys have it for about 300, but I didn't pay much more than that and didn't need to change contract etc.
Lance.
The E90 is definitely as most people (Steve Litchfield for example) have described it a refinement of the Communicator series rather than a radical change a-la the iPhone. Yes, moving from series 80 to series 60 is a big move, but from a user perspective it's not a big deal.
As a former Nokia 9500 user I have lost the use of my thumbs for texting/typing, which is what made the final decision when it came to what phone to get. And the keyboard on the e90 is quite nice, a bit stiff and my space bar is almost impossible to tell if it has been pressed or not. Maybe thats just it being new, or maybe a design flaw, I don't know.
Size-wise, its a smaller, slimmer package than the 9500. yes bigger than the average phone, but not as monstrous as the 9500 was. Which makes me look less like some guy with a 80's mobile phone, which is nice.
Some things I have been impressed with are...
The fact that I can start an application on the outside screen, and then flip the phone open and the same application pops open. Also, built is is automatic email checking, so every half hour my phone pings my pop3 server. You could do this on the 9500 with some freeware from the same Steve as above, but it's nice Nokia have included it.
GPS is a great addition also, yes it takes a while to get a signal, but so did my external GPS previously. What I don't like much is paying extra to get voice navigation after spending so much on a phone with GPS. Minor irritation, but an irritation none the less.
Which brings me to Google Maps (v. 2), which it awesome! Stunning even! The my location feature is amazing and very cool to show folks. It is the location finding via cell towers and it works pretty darn well, especially in London. Unlike GPS, the google feature worked inside a restaurant in London, and was pretty accurate. Being able to load all the satellite imagery is cool as well and be able to zoom right in is great.
I left it running all the way from Basingstoke to home one night and it was very cool watching the the dot representing me traverse satellite imagery of the M3. I had it zoomed in pretty close so it showed things like the chevrons where lanes merged, which was amazing.
If Google Maps had better navigation, that kept up with where you were and importantly had voice, I would not have bothered buying the same feature for the nokia software.
One bug bear on this is that the Google software could do with some caching on the maps, it downloads them via GPRS/GSM so is pretty data hungry, so a cache on the ample memory of the E90 would be great.
One other app I have loaded and was impressed with is Agile Messenger, which I had on the 9500 and love. They earned massive brownie points as I don't seem to have had to get it relicensed. I thought that with a new IMEI I would have to but it must be tied to my SIM or something I guess. Guys, thanks! Seamless is a big plus. It adds better voice and video support on the E90 I think so that is cool. One weird thing though is that when I use the inside screen the command buttons seem to be opposite to what is shown. It is much nicer on the outside screen anyway so no biggie!
Finally, I have also loaded Python as it seems to have taken the place OPL held as development language of choice now days. Not done Python before, so should be fun. There is a book on Python for Mobiles ( Mobile Python: Rapid prototyping of applications on the mobile platform: Rapid Prototyping of Applications on the Mobile Platform ) which I shall probably get. Maybe then I can help Dirk with a location aware client for Noserub eh?!
Anyway... in summary. The E90 is very much a happy purchase for me, glad however I got it of eBay not from a Nokia/Vodafone/retail store as I got it a lot cheaper than the 600-800 notes regular channels wanted. (and yes I know Expansys have it for about 300, but I didn't pay much more than that and didn't need to change contract etc.
Lance.
So I finally decided not to get a iPhone and have replaced my Nokia 9500 communicator with it's big brother the Nokia E90. Rather than get ripped off by the normal channels I used bought it through eBay for half the price.
It's a terrific piece of kit, a refinement on the 9500 in everyway. Smaller, stronger, tweaks everywhere. It's got GPS built into the phone, it's got a 3.5 mega pixel cam, S60 operating system, etc etc etc.
I had a few problems to start with, namely that it was/is a O2 phone and I use Vodafone as I had terrible experiences on O2 back a few years back, and love Vodafone and especially the new (almost) unmetered data tariff for seven fifty a month. Anyway... what this meant was that none of the internet settings were in the phone so it took a while to get web access working. (I got the shakes I tell you!)
Anyway.. it's pretty much as I want it now and I've had a chance to use it, and all in all I love it.
As has been covered on the blogs, the GPS is slow to get a signal which is a pain, worse than my external Tom Tom receiver. Which I have discovered should work with it too, so I shall be trying it next week. What is cool though is Google's map application!!
Version two of Google Maps has a "My Location" feature which works out you rough location from the cell mast and it's almost instant! It's also pretty accurate (depending on where you are) and works indoors, unlike GPS!
The web browser is much improved and does not crash half the time like the old one did in the 9500. Also I love the BACK button in the browser, you click it and it's almost like expose on a Mac, you get this screenshot like interface. It's so cool!
I've installed a bunch of apps and shall be playing with them in the next week and shall update the blog with what I like and don't like. This will include Jaiku I think as I am interested in how it works. Hopefully soon, Dirk over at www.noserub.com will have developed a presence/location tool which I can't wait to play with.
So, a couple of days into using the E90 I love it!
gripes... well battery life to be honest, but then again I have been using the phone ALOT but it didn't last the day on Friday. Anyone know if I can get a bigger battery than the BP-4L it arrived with. GPS was slow and not having all the Vodafone settings was a pain!
It's s60, so let me know what apps you can't live without.
Lance
It's a terrific piece of kit, a refinement on the 9500 in everyway. Smaller, stronger, tweaks everywhere. It's got GPS built into the phone, it's got a 3.5 mega pixel cam, S60 operating system, etc etc etc.
I had a few problems to start with, namely that it was/is a O2 phone and I use Vodafone as I had terrible experiences on O2 back a few years back, and love Vodafone and especially the new (almost) unmetered data tariff for seven fifty a month. Anyway... what this meant was that none of the internet settings were in the phone so it took a while to get web access working. (I got the shakes I tell you!)
Anyway.. it's pretty much as I want it now and I've had a chance to use it, and all in all I love it.
As has been covered on the blogs, the GPS is slow to get a signal which is a pain, worse than my external Tom Tom receiver. Which I have discovered should work with it too, so I shall be trying it next week. What is cool though is Google's map application!!
Version two of Google Maps has a "My Location" feature which works out you rough location from the cell mast and it's almost instant! It's also pretty accurate (depending on where you are) and works indoors, unlike GPS!
The web browser is much improved and does not crash half the time like the old one did in the 9500. Also I love the BACK button in the browser, you click it and it's almost like expose on a Mac, you get this screenshot like interface. It's so cool!
I've installed a bunch of apps and shall be playing with them in the next week and shall update the blog with what I like and don't like. This will include Jaiku I think as I am interested in how it works. Hopefully soon, Dirk over at www.noserub.com will have developed a presence/location tool which I can't wait to play with.
So, a couple of days into using the E90 I love it!
gripes... well battery life to be honest, but then again I have been using the phone ALOT but it didn't last the day on Friday. Anyone know if I can get a bigger battery than the BP-4L it arrived with. GPS was slow and not having all the Vodafone settings was a pain!
It's s60, so let me know what apps you can't live without.
Lance
Recently I had the great pleasure to meet Dirk from www.noserub.com who came over to barcamp3 in London. I managed to arrange to be in London on Friday and met up with him and enjoyed his company for an hour or two.
Noserub, is a decentralised open source social networking protocol, which at present is being developed as an application developed on/in the CakePhp framework. I really like the ideas behind Noserub, I want to social network but I want to retain control of my data. This is becoming perhaps a more popular view as Facebook sells out it's users. :(
I also like the idea that Noserub can/will become my central address book and source for my friends blogs, social networks, photos, everything. It's a really new project, so everything is new and exciting, lots of new ideas floating around.
Sitting talking with Dirk I had a brilliant time chatting. We discussed all sorts of ideas for Noserub as well as lots of other things like the Jaiku mobile client, Plazes future directions, CCTV, traffic congestion, public transport, etc. Very very enjoyable!
So, Dirk, thanks for meeting up with me, it was terrific.
The other side of this post is that I have started work on the RWJL and have been using CakePHP to do the development. I have never used CakePHP before, so it's been a bit of a struggle to get to understand it all. So far so good, I have created the basic structure and am about to really get into it. I am just trying to understand how "associations" work and specifically how I can associate two fields in one model with the user model. :)
If anyone is a CakePHP guru and interested in helping me get the RWJL started please do let me know.
Lance
Noserub, is a decentralised open source social networking protocol, which at present is being developed as an application developed on/in the CakePhp framework. I really like the ideas behind Noserub, I want to social network but I want to retain control of my data. This is becoming perhaps a more popular view as Facebook sells out it's users. :(
I also like the idea that Noserub can/will become my central address book and source for my friends blogs, social networks, photos, everything. It's a really new project, so everything is new and exciting, lots of new ideas floating around.
Sitting talking with Dirk I had a brilliant time chatting. We discussed all sorts of ideas for Noserub as well as lots of other things like the Jaiku mobile client, Plazes future directions, CCTV, traffic congestion, public transport, etc. Very very enjoyable!
So, Dirk, thanks for meeting up with me, it was terrific.
The other side of this post is that I have started work on the RWJL and have been using CakePHP to do the development. I have never used CakePHP before, so it's been a bit of a struggle to get to understand it all. So far so good, I have created the basic structure and am about to really get into it. I am just trying to understand how "associations" work and specifically how I can associate two fields in one model with the user model. :)
If anyone is a CakePHP guru and interested in helping me get the RWJL started please do let me know.
Lance
Tonight I have managed to get some coding done on the RWJL project.
I have been decided to go with a PHP framework called www.cakephp.org which I have not really used before, but it is a MVC framework with what seems to be a good community around it.
Dirk & Poolie are using it to build www.noserub.com as well, which was a large contributer to my decision to use CakePHP. I am hoping that the development work I do on RWJL will help me get a handle on CakePHP which will in turn help me with Noserub. Thats the theory.
So far I have just created some of the database tables and got CakePHP installed and working.
CakePHP has a "scaffolding" feature that helps as it builds some basic functionality and views automatically for you.
This is handy for me as I want to build a prototype pretty quickly and let people look at it and throw ideas at me as to what is cool and whats not.
Tonight I also, managed to fit a 4 mile run in, so all in all a pretty productive evening.
:)
I have been decided to go with a PHP framework called www.cakephp.org which I have not really used before, but it is a MVC framework with what seems to be a good community around it.
Dirk & Poolie are using it to build www.noserub.com as well, which was a large contributer to my decision to use CakePHP. I am hoping that the development work I do on RWJL will help me get a handle on CakePHP which will in turn help me with Noserub. Thats the theory.
So far I have just created some of the database tables and got CakePHP installed and working.
CakePHP has a "scaffolding" feature that helps as it builds some basic functionality and views automatically for you.
This is handy for me as I want to build a prototype pretty quickly and let people look at it and throw ideas at me as to what is cool and whats not.
Tonight I also, managed to fit a 4 mile run in, so all in all a pretty productive evening.
:)