Bits and Pieces of Life…

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic in Red

It’s been a while since I am thinking to replace my good old Sony Ericsson W810, which has certainly served me well for the last 2.5 years. It was a brick – literally. I have dropped it to ground unintentionally gazillion of times, and submerged it fully into a small pool of water once (also unintentionally), the phone just refused to stop working.

3 weeks ago I met out with a friend (you know who you are!). He showed me his wife’s new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic (nickname “Tube”) in black with red linings. It is a 3G touch screen phone (Nokia’s 1st?), no physical keypad, and the screen resolution is really good. I played around with it, but really just checking the menu system and figure out how to navigate it – I haven’t used a Nokia phone before! I was told there is GPS too but I wasn’t impressed by then as I haven’t tried out any previously (yea yea I know I am outdated).

Did some online research when i was back home. The phone has everything that I need, and more. Price is not really cheap but not prohibitively expensive. I went to Digital Mall @ SS14, Petaling Jaya after a few days of consideration, and purchased the phone within 15 minutes.

The Good

• the screen is superb, 3.2″ @ 640×360 resolution
• It runs on Symbian S60 and not Windows Mobile. I hate Windows Mobile. The Symbian OS is responsive enough, and very easy to get used to. The only thing I missed from Windows Mobile is the game Bubble Breaker.
• WLAN, Bluetooth, 3.5G HSDPA – all these connectivities become necessity once I start using this phone. The only drawback is my phone bill will be more expensive due to higher data usage via packet data network. In places where WLAN hotspot is available, most of the applications will be able to use WLAN connect to the Internet rather than using packet data network.
• It comes with 8GB of micro-SD. Big enough for me. At least for now.
• supports Java, Flash, and have “copy & paste” function – the latest iPhone firmware is catching up on this regard!
• GPS. Once I get the hang of it, it is really fun using it. Forget about Nokia Maps and Google Maps. Garmin Mobile XT is the way to go. GPS is my least-care-about feature before I got the phone, but it become indispensable now.

The Not-So-Good

• The phone is thick.
• The screen looks oily 99% of the time on mine. Not sure about yours.
• 3.2M pixel camera with Carl Zeiss lens? The photos taken by the phone turned out to be just so-so, nothing to shout about. The night shots are so noisy that I am thinking to throw away the phone immediately. On top of that, the lens is not wide enough, maybe at 38mm equivalent or so. The only consolation is that the latest firmware supports native geotagging, which needs to turn on under “Camera – > Settings -> Show GPS info “On”.
• can’t SMS while driving due no physical keypad, and thus need to have an eye or 2 on the touch screen in order to type correctly.
• Most of the applications did not take advantage of a long-press to show context-sensitive menu.

The Ugly

• OS hangup after some software installation, that require reboots, and at one time, needs a hard reset (see below). Symbian S60 5th edition still needs some polishing, so expectantly the first few phone model users, like myself, are guinea pigs.

My Top 10 Applications on the Nokia 5800

Nokia 5800 Application menu screenshot (with iPhone theme)

• Garmin Mobile XT, with free and very good Malaysian maps from http://malfreemaps.com/
• Phone Torch: turn the phone into a super-bright torch!
  
• Gmail
• Screen Snap: Capture screenshots, but doesn’t work well in landscape mode though
  
• Y Browser: good replacement for the built-in file manager
  
• Sudoku
• Talking Dictionary (English to Chinese or vise verse, pronunciation at both languages): 80MB!
• World Mate: Have resources like weather, maps and currency rates at your fingertips. Handy while travel.
  
• Fring : talk and chat on the go to most of the social networks like Yahoo!, MSN Messenger, Skype, Facebook, Google Talk etc
• Opera Mini: Good alternative web browser for the built-in one
• Converter, Calendar, Calculator (built-in)

Mac and the Tube

• iSync works after installing a plug-in that can be downloaded here at Nokia website. However there is no option to select the sync direction for both contacts and calendar items.
• BluePhoneElite 2 works after installing ‘BPEnabler’ into the Tube. This is done automatically once the software detected the phone is connected thru bluetooth. Works flawlessly. My previous Sony Ericsson W810 sent SMS’s lose their timestamp once transfered into BluePhone Elite2. No such problem for the Tube.
• Nokia Multimedia Transfer is kind of like PC Suite but not nearly as much features. It allows automatic media transfers from iTunes (songs and movies), iPhotos and Safari Bookmarks. Useful for me to download playlists from iTunes. Works with either Bluetooth or the USB data cable.
• Nokia Map Loader for Mac: Found this in Nokia Beta Labs, but it didn’t work with the Tube! Luckily I am not using Nokia Maps.

A-GPS, Garmin Mobile XT, Nokia Maps, Google Maps

I will leave this to another blog post – this post is long enough to bore everybody! Screen shot of my home location in Garmin Mobile XT with maps from http://malfreemaps.com/

My Home! Garmin Mobile XT screenshot

Hard Reset

I have had one encounter, that after upgrading Gamin Mobile XT from 5.00.30 to 5.00.40, the home screen’s 4 shortcut button icons gone missing. Clicking on the now-empty area will not launch the applications anymore. On top of that, the DIaler and Contacts button icons at the bottom of the home screen are not working anymore. Even the Green button won’t work now. After rebooting the phone multiple times, removing the battery for extended hours, it remains the same.

I tried to reset to Factory Settings (Settings -> Phone -> Phone mgmt, or type *#7780#) but lock codes found online (12345, 0000) didn’t work. Typing *#7370# for hard reset will also require the same lock code that I don’t have. After some Googles, I finally found a way:

• Turn off the phone.
• Press on Green, Red and Camera buttons simultaneously.
• Turn on the phone, with the 3 buttons still depressed until the Nokia touching hands appear. It takes a while, maybe 10s or so.

After this process, the lock code screen will still come out, but I just need to click Cancel. I was asked to select my Region, after that the phone boots up but with everything wiped out in the C: drive, including all the contacts, calendar items, user files etc. So make sure you have backed up all the important items before doing this! The phone works like a charm now!

Last But Not Least…

I love the Tube – it can’t make coffee or do laundry for me, but other than that, it fits my daily needs perfectly:

• Sync: I sync the contacts, bookmarks and calendar items from my home iMac to the Tube, and to the company Dell laptop. Everything in sync. Yea I know Google Calendar can sync with iMac and the Dell, but I have since ceased to use it once I have the Tube.
• Calendar: I had it show up on the phone’s home screen – I will be on time to go to the boring meetings.
• Gmail, Fring, Web connectivity on the go. Very handy when I need it, like in those boring meetings…
• Weather forecast – AccuWeather.com widget: great for local destinations as well as the places that I plan to go – 7-day forecast
• GPS Navigation: Garmin Mobile XT is great, coupled with free maps from http://www.malfreemaps.com, getting lost in town is never again easy! With Assisted GPS turned on, time-to-first-fix (TTFF) is as short as 10~20s. Of course it will incur some packet data cost, normally <5kB, which is equivalent to RM0.05 for Maxis network. A very small price to pay, indeed.
  
• Music on the go: the Tube becomes my iPod in my car. I am connecting the Tube to the Aux input of my car to listen to songs I transferred from my iMac via Nokia Multimedia Transfer software. No need to burn the MP3s into CDs.
  

As much as I love the Tube, the timing of my purchase is really bad. The Apple iPhone is officially launched in Malaysia (with Maxis mobile service package) just 2 weeks after I got my Tube. Tube is great but it ain’t iPhone killer, and the iPhone will work so much better with my iMac. But then iPhone is not perfect, yet.

Maybe the next time I blog about handphones, it is about iPhone.