Diaries of a Nokia Fan Boy

So testing another client, lets see if this one handles photos any better. Although both clients seem to be fairly nice. Of course I never used the photo feature on my Nokia N95 8GB, so it may be difficult to compare.

And just found a bonus to this app: support for tags!

So I finally found an Android client for posting to Wordpress. Actually I found a couple and this is the first one I decided to test.

-Nokia FanBoy
Posted from my HTC Magic (Android)

So this post is a first on many levels. For starters this is the first post I am writing on my computer, since I haven’t found any apps to do so from the Magic. Also, this is the first time I am trying out a Magic! And finally, this is a first post in a series of reviews of the Rogers branded HTC Magic.

I will immediately apologize for the poor quality of the photos, as this is my first review, and it is 3:30am. My future reviews will have better quality photos.

Well why don’t we start with the obvious question: Why?

The answer is really quite simple, I wanted to try out something other than what I’ve been used to for a while, and Android seemed like a logical choice. At the same time I wanted to try out a touch screen device to see how I would like the interface.

Overall:

Well a quick overview of the phone revealed some nice features and some discerning issues:

• Solid construction, with a great weight balance
• Good screen, with sensitive and responsive touch
• Pleasant operating system, considering its still in its early stages
• No 3.5mm jack!!!
• Incoming messages show up as 3 hours ahead
• Short battery life

Well read on for more details on this, but I must say that overall I am pleased with the phone so far.

First impressions:

When I first picked up the phone I was surprised just how small the box was, even though all the same parts as usual were there. As soon as I took out the device I thought of how sleek it looks with that all glossy finish, and the second thought was, naturally, how much of a finger print magnet it is.

HTC Magic - Retail Packaging

Turning the phone on seemed to take for ever, however the initial set up was quick and painless. I was impressed with how little set up is required for this phone. You take it out of the box and you can use it immediately. Being connected to Exchange made it even easier as I didn’t even have to load any contacts.

Construction:

HTC Magic - Front

The phone’s consutrction feels quite solid with the exception of that matte gray plastic that runs the entire side of the phone: it creaks when you put pressure on it. The glossy black plastic gives the phone a refined and sleek finish and really makes it look like a toy to get excited about. Unfortunately, it’s already gotten some scratches on the back side, so I’ve already put it in a silicone case and ordered an Invisible Shield to protect it further.

Thankfully the buttons aren’t left out in the construction of a touch screen phone: the press needs just the right amount force, and is confirmed with a confident click. The trackball I’m not too sure about – it seems to really be excess in this phone, and i’ve rarely had to use it so far. However I understand the need to go to it: differentiation. The volume rocker on the side, on the other hand, is not solid and has a lot of play in it, however the play doesn’t feel cheap, simply as if its supposed to be like that.

HTC Magic - Rear

The port on bottom of the phone is the only physical way to plug into the device. While I’m all for using less ports in the device I do not understand why HTC did not include a 3.5mm audio jack. This makes the phone much less valuable to me as I have to spend money on an adapter so as I may be able to use my favourite headphones with it. And speaking of headphones, the ones that came in the retail packaging are complete rubbish, making my ears hurt after barely 30 minutes of listening to them. I understand the need to save money, but at the very least having the microphone as a sort of extension cord / adapter would have made them infinitely more useful as I would be able to use my headphones right out of the box! This is coming from the remote control / adapter that comes with the Nokia N95, it is extremely useful.

HTC Magic - Bottom/Right	HTC Magic - Top/Left
HTC Magic - Front with Si Case	HTC Magic - Rear with Si Case

Screen:

Well the screen on this phone sort of impressed me. The colors are fairly vivid, however they didn’t really jump out at me as amazing. The resolution is quite nice, however could be higher – HTC Diamond was released by that time with twice the resolution. What is also quite upsetting is that the screen tends to lag a fair bit, especially considering that the Diamond didn’t seem to lag any less (performed by turning on the camera on both phones and moving the phones side to side to see the screen refresh lag).

The capacitive touch screen feels nice – the actions smooth, and the construction high quality. While the hardware should support multi-touch the operating system does not. I do not see this as much of an issue since its not quite as useful as one would hope it to be. The touch screen is quite sensitive and responsive, making it feel even better.

Media Playback:

Unfortunately, the phone lacks in this department. The audio player has nothing in the way of equalizers, and lags a fair bit when dealing with large lists of artists, albums, or songs. The speaker in the back sounds tinny, and becomes useless in an environment even slightly noisy. For example: I used my Nokia N95 8GB to listen to music while in the shower, the Magic doesn’t get loud enough, or give out enough base, to make it audible while in the shower. Much in the same way, showing a video in the mall I had to cup my hand behind the phone to create an acoustic mirror so that the audio could be heard.

Messaging, Gmail and Exchange:

This part really confused me. While the software is nice, typing is easy, there’s a very strange error: incoming text messages are time-stamped three hours ahead! After searching around online I realised that this isn’t really Magic’s or even Android’s fault, and is likely an issue with the provider. In order to solve this problem I had to download chompSMS, which managed to correctly keep track of my conversations, and displayed them in nice bubbles.

I was very pleased with the Gmail integration of this phone, with the exception that I was not able to select not to synchronize my contacts or calendar. Since I do not use my Gmail contacts, having an extra 300% of useless contacts is rather annoying, and the same goes for calendar.

Exchange integration, on the other hand, I was quite pleased with! The emails looked great, even supporting HTML and text formatting. The contacts were downloaded with complete sets of data, including pictures! And the calendar synchoronized perfectly, including repeating entries with some of those having been modified. I should note at this time that I am using MS Exchange Server 2007, as earlier versions may not support features such as contact image synchronization.

Programs:

As I am still getting used to the phone and downloading and trying out software I will need to make a separate post for this, based around Android as opposed to the Magic. I will note, however, that the Facebook app is great, but would be nice if I could leave comments on wall posts, status changes, etc.

Web Browsing:

The browser is quite  impressive, having come from a non-touchscreen browser. However it is upsetting that the browser does not support flash, considering my almost outdated Nokia N95 8GB plays embedded flash without any issues. Besides flash, the web pages look fantastic – paragraphs are automatically resized for landscape/portrait orientation, entering URL’s is easy, and clicking on links is a joy.

The only down side in this, as in most browsers, is the inablity to select a picture and save it on the phone. If I was able to do that then more of my posts would have photos in them.

Conclusion:

So far, I really like the phone. Its got some glitches and some poor design choices, but I like it. I guess we will have to see how this will go on for the next month or two.

The only thing I wish someone could tell me: What is the target market for the HTC Magic? If anyone can enlighten me please do so, as I am really confused.

-Nokia FanBoy

For once, not posted from my phone.

UPDATE:
This post has already been updated and the update can be found here:
Rogers HTC Magic (Android): Days 7-14 (Updated)
A new update will be coming fairly soon, as well as I will start daisy-chaining my posts from now on to avoid confusion.

-NFB

Ok, this is the last update on the keyboard, I promise.

I was using it for sending SMS and found a couple strange issues. Namely some people were complaining that they were receiving blank messages or that the message was some garbage with a strange triangle in the middle. I didn’t really understand why it was happening and later noticed that as I was typing, every now and again the counter would drop by about 100 characters. This didn’t seem to make any sense as it seemed to occur completely randomly. Also, keep in mind this only happened when I was using my keyboard, and has never happened before.

So as I was typing up yet another message, carefull watching the counter so as not to send another screwed up message, I found the culprit: Shift + Space.

Don’t ask me why, I really have no idea, but I would really like to ask Nokia as to how that got past testing and just what is causing this. So, if you know why, please do let me know and I will make sure to give you the appropriate credits.

-Nokia Fan Boy
Posted from Nokia N95 8GB

Posted by Wordmobi

So I had to make an SSH connection to some Lunux computers for one of my assignments at school. I usually use Putty on my computer but I decided to try and use my phone and see how that goes.

Well while I can’t tell you which version of Putty I was using (no about action in the menu), I can tell you that it was quite usable. Of course it would have been completely useless without the keyboard.

One of the issues that I’ve found, the screen on my N95 was too low resolution to really do anything. Although I think if I were to use it on the N97 or 5800 it would be quite usable for something even a little more than just a quick fix. Of course the creators tried to correct that by allowing you to make the font smaller, and while this helps, no questions asked, it doesn’t beat a nice big, high-res screen.

The second issue would be the input method. If you don’t have a keyboard then don’t even think about using this for anything except, well, anything. With the keyboard that I was using (Nokia SU-8W) I was fairly proficient and didn’t have too many problems, but a full size keyboard is unbeatable if you’re using it for long periods of time.

So can you spend hours using it? Probably not.
Is it useful for network admins (or the like) that sometimes need quick access to their network to check up on some info? Totally.

To be honest, I don’t really use Putty that much, or SSH connections for that matter, but the bottom line is that using Putty on my computer and using it on this device only really differs in the screen resolution and the smaller keyboard. But if you can get a device with a higher resolution and then get used to the keyboard you’re set. In the small amount of time that I used it I stopped seeing those things as a problem.

-Nokia Fan Boy
Posted from my Nokia N95 8GB

Posted by Wordmobi

So I decided to write a little update on things that I didn’t necessarily know during the first review of the Nokia SU-8W keyboard.

Missing row:
This seemed to be a minor issue considering the size of the rest of the keys and of the keyboard itself. And it is. However I’ve found that when I need to write something with a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols, my typing speed is turtle slow compared to what it would be given that extra row of keys.

Battery:
After using the keyboard for countless hours, I’m still on the original bettery that came in the packaging. Needless to say batteries will last you a while. Of course by the same argument we could consider why Nokia didn’t include a small Li-Poly battery, which would be able to power the device for the same amount of time in a smaller form-factor, thus reducing the size of the keyboard, but seeing as how its been ages since they first introduced the keyboard its safe to say that a number of issues have changed

Final thought:
Nokia, great job on the keyboard but its Old! Make something New already!

-Nokia FanBoy

Posted by Wordmobi

So I figured that its about time to review the keyboard, and since I haven’t really had a chance to look over the posting software I guess its the only thing I can do

There are a couple parts that I would like to touch on, some things that I found to be very useful and some things that I think can be improved.

Starting with the most basic: Keyboard
I found it to be a lot more usable than I expected after I first saw it. Granted, there is a little bit of a learning curve, and the numbers/symbols aren’t positioned entirely perfectly (this is where that extra row would come in useful), the keyboard is very quick to pick up and you end up quickly getting to a level where you make very little mistakes.

The keys have a very nice tactile feedback to them that I found to be very similar to a keyboard of a laptop. The keys are big enough that hitting several at a time becomes a very minor issue. The divided up space bar takes a little getting used to, but overall its not bad at all.

I do find the keyboard to be a little on the narrow side, so it won’t be comfortable to type up books or essays, but I guess we’re going to see what its like to write a blog on it when I’m done

Surprises:

• Something I wasn’t expecting was shortcuts.
• Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V, Ctrl+X even, all work.
• you can hold down Atrl or Alt and press the arrow keys to control the built in music player
• Shift+arrow keys will select text
• Ctrl+Alt+Del brings up the profiles menu (same as pressing the power button)

I’m sure there are more, but thats what I found so far without really trying to look for them.

Physical size/weight
Taking into account the age of the keybaord, I found the size to be very impressive. I like to carry mine in my jacket pocket, and while its a little on the heavy side, its really not that bad.
In the next iteration I would definitely expect to see something much thinner, and lighter.
To build on the keyboard being very narrow, I think it could have been greatly improved if the keyboard had a hinge that could let it “scissor”. This would allow you to keep your arms at a more comfortable and ergonomic position and I think would improve typing speed as well.

Connection
I found the bluetooth connection to be very quick and stable. It takes maybe a couple seconds to connect, and I haven’t noticed any lag between keystroke and screen change. The connection hasn’t had to buffer and type sentences later, and really it seems as if it was a hard connection to it.

Overall Usability
I think the biggest downturn of this keyboard is the screen size and resolution of the phone. This makes sense why keyboards like this one haven’t taken off yet, but I believe that they will be in higher demand as cell phones’ resultion and screen size improves.
Typing on it is very easy and very fast, and even after typing up this long post my hands only a little tired, I could probably type up twice the length without having to take a break. That said, however, it does seem like typing for hours every day would create some wrist problems.
I was debating betwee this keyboard and that virtual laser keyboard, and I’m glad that I picked this one because having the physical feedback from the buttons makes it much easier to type.
While the size and weight could be greatly improved, as well as ergonomics, I think for when it was created, and compared to what’s out there, its an excellent choice.

Word of warning though, I’m not sure how many of the keyboard shortcuts were designed for Symbian specifically, so if you use a different operating system you may run into problems with the dedicated keys and shortcuts listed here. Take a look at some bluetooth speicifications for the HID profile and some compatability charts, before you make the purchase. I was lucky to get they keyboard for $60 from Amazon, and it really is worth twice the price.

So trying to post from WordMobi 0.6.1
I’ve tried another client and it didn’t work (I could write and save drafts but it crashed when I went to publish), and the website keeps crashing my browser…

But if you see this post then it means that the program worked (and hopefull it will continue to work for bigger posts)

- Nokia FanBoy

Posted by Wordmobi