dug 
I ‘ve recently switched from my shiny new Nokia N73 back to my ropey old Nokia N70.
The N70 was my second Symbian handset and to date, it is by far the best in software terms (the keypad layout on the 6600 was waaaaay better). Over the last two years or so it’s experienced loads of heavy lifting use as most of the mobloggin on Donkey was done on it. It runs stacks of software I use everyday and with a bit of configuration it can really compete with the latest smartphones.
Sometimes it feels like Nokia makes a point of taking a step backward for every cool new feature they come up with.
Like everyone else I was really psyched by the N73 and bought one as soon as it became available (I even ended up getting a Vodafone contract to get my hands on one). Anyway, I ended up returning the handset. Twice. The firmware just isn’t up to controlling the phone properly and even with the latest update from Nokia, the phone still remains borderline unusable.
The only thing wrong with the N70 was the lens cover. It just opened too easily exposing the lens to fluff. In the process of improving the handset, here are a few of Nokia’s bigger steps forward and back.
- The N73 has a Zeiss lens:-)
Yippee, except the imaging software is crap. The white point default is way to close to 6500K verything comes out with a depressing blueish hue (this on all three handsets and two versions of the firmware). Unless you only shoot in tungsten lighting. The N70's lens is rubbish but the imaging software is great (or appropriately configured out of the box) so quality pix a plenty. - N73 has a 3 megapixel chip :-)
But in such a small form factor, the end result is more garbage in the blue channel. Add to that, the increased file size and costlier uploads, and the 3meg chip becomes a complete waste of processor cycles (and bandwidth).
Still, I mustn’t grumble, the N73 has a much better lens cover. Yes indeed it does:-)
So anyway, here are the configs I mentioned earlier:
- Go into "tools" and find the "media key" app. Set the key association to "contacts"
- In settings, change the right-hand soft key to your Gmail application
With the Orange home screen app, from picking up my handset to reading my address book I have three actions: scroll, click, click. With the media key configed, that reduces to just a single click (on the talknow/symbian media key key).
The Gmail soft key thing has two benefits. Firstly, with one click to Gmail who needs a Blackberry? Another benefit is you longer launch that anoying web-browser a hundred times a day when all you were trying to do was cancel an action…
Anyways, I think I’ll go away and do a usability comparison of the 6600, N70 and N73 keypads now, more later…