Nokia Search 4 as the ultimate mobile shell

Sometimes it's rewarding to step out of defaults.
What's good for majority may not be so good for you, smartphone power users.

And it's just dawned on me that there might be another thing on your phone, a powerful piece of software which is under-rated and under-used.
It's called Nokia Mobile Search 4.0 and I think it can be used not just for search, but also as a shell for navigating your phone.
It has advantages of it's own and I will demonstrate it now.

Here's my active standby screen shot:

Shortcuts are a prime power in "marketing" phone software to users and I don't think defaults do justice to the power of S60 here. Luckily, S60 is highly customizable.

Of course, Search is already accessible from your Active Standby screen, but I prefer single-button launch for such often-used actions as navigation. Doing more clicks than one would be waste of time.
So I quickly followed the path: "Settings - General - Personalization - Standby Mode - Shortcuts" and have set the right standby softkey to Search.

As you can see from my Standby screenshot, I still have access to Contacts and Messaging from the Active Standby Apps bar.
You may also notice that I replaced "Create New Message" with "Messaging" - this combines both New Message and Inboxes into a single entry, and frees up one softkey (the other softkey is also freed by removing redundant Contacts shortcut).
Widsets has it's own clicks to do (Access Point selection) and is more of a platform, so it takes one of softkeys.
Where once was Lifeblog (sic! I prefer the PC version now), I placed Search.

What does it give me?
Well, simply "access to everything", if I don't enter search terms!

Unless you press some numeric/abc keys, you have categorized, sorted access to all you phone's content:

- Music (same structure as Music Player, sans podcasts)
- Contacts (consider simplicity of options there)
- Calendar (only items shown, no day/week/month view)
- Messages (Inbox and Sent items are combined)
- E-mail
- Images (albums supported)
- Videos (albums supported)
- Applications
- Notes
- Bookmarks
- Files (turned off by default)
- Landmarks
- Mail for Exchange
(more plugins are possible with Search SDK, it's up to developers now)

And if you start pressing dialpad keys, you enter a search term and you search across all those "domains"!
Once you get into that shell and start navigating, you notice nice sliding transitional effects, neat un-cluttered Options menus, scrolling text that makes long phrases usable, all that at a speed that will not disappoint!

Surely, this one "shell" cannot replace each and every function, but still I find it pretty usable for getting back at my phone's content. Some of you may already use applications that give you access to stuff by typing first letters.
I don't know if those use Search engine, but why not try the original?

It's free and you can switch off unneeded sections in Search Options, to speed it up even further.

Try it, you may like it. Even if you're bad at T9 as me, you still can "just browse" in Search...

Links: Nokia Search demo, FAQ and tutorial

The end of XPERIAments

New month, new hopes.
As you probably know, Nokia has just introduced a new flagman device, N97.
Looking at the demo and UI of that device, I could not stop myself from thinking -

"This is the end of SonyEricsson XPERIA, there's so much more behind Nokia's offering...
Now XPERIA looks like another custom WinMo device, with that Panels user interface which is niche by design".

"Seriously - who wants to have multiple Panels? Why would a normal Joe User want a different view and UI every now and then?
To make himself accustomed to new ways all the time? Really, for UE junkies only."

Besides, it tries to push a new concept on you, one that all apps are just panels on the Panels Home screen (and there are multiple Home Screens!), and this would require developers to learn new things about panel setup, usability, coding. Not every one of those plain vanilla WinMo developers would just jump into that.

Another concept not only for user, but for a developer, too. Another API to learn.
Why would they invest extra time to support a tiny fraction of a WinMo market?
This is geek-only UI, utterly niche, more so than Apple was in the 90s."

I have my doubts that X1 will have success. I have had them even before N97 announcement, now they're even stronger.
XPERIA user interaction concept is bad example of when a feature hunger led to less ergonomic (although more flexible) design.
X1 was announced pretty long ago and I remember my buddy's excitement. He was an SE fan (like myself 5 years ago) and he wanted to get X1 badly. But he could not wait and got iPhone instead. Come on, Apple ships them for 18 years already, and only now Nokia and SE can put out an answer, besides both of them have had touch-screen devices for quite some time.

It will still take them some time to reach the same slick level of user experience and simplicity in access to advanced functions. Was Mr. Jobs right in his bravado about iPhone being 5 years ahead of any competitor?

N97 will also finally compel all existing N95 users (including myself) to upgrade.
A new era, indeed.

With UIQ let down, in 2009 we will have only those platforms competing for our (and the developers') mindshare and markeshare:

Google Android
Nokia Symbian
Apple iPhone
and Microsoft Windows Mobile

Ewan from AllAboutSymbian put out very similar thought about the market - it's tightening up - less players and more competition.

Will Nokia, like Microsoft, come in and take away Apple's crown, and put them back into smartphone niche?
Time will tell.
My POV is "Developers, Developers, Developers..." plus do something to consolidate app exploration, purchase and installation

Maybe it's a good idea for Nokia to provide free classes for Symbian developers?

Nokia Comes with Sex

Yes, really.

In the sense that the newly-announced Nokia E63 comes in two colors, one for each sex: blue for males, red for females :)

Nice, huh.

It's good that Nokia recognizes a good form-factor (E71) and continues to build new devices around that.



We have seen worse cases where achievements were dropped as evolution continued (I mean P-series of SonyEricsson, especially P910i -> P990i).

Glad to see that this is not so with Nokia.
Good move.

Apple almost halves iPhone 3G production plans

Just a quick passing comment - let me speculate about the reasons behind
a slower sales of the Apple iPhone 3G.

1. Financial Crisis, of course.

On a more user-centric perspective:

2. Can it do video calls?
Steve did not include that functionality in his use cases demo. This does not create enough upgrade incentive for 2G users.

3. Still no MMS, no video recording.
This does not create enough upgrade incentive for 2G users.

4. No modem capability out-of-box.
This does not create enough upgrade incentive for 2G users.

All the value added in the new iPhone 3G was a higher speed, at the price of a faster battery discharge.

No wonder it does not go as far as expected.

I personally thought that iPhone 3G will be a revolution, at least a huge stimulus for 3G UTRAN usage, but, having omitted utterly important use cases (videocall, modem) Apple did not become the "3G Saviour"; neither they have stimulated existing iPhone users to upgrade, nor attracted enough of those people in the smartphone market, who were "sitting on a fence".

Nokia 5800 Tube effect

Hello dear pundits,
As you probably know, Nokia has recently propelled it's beloved and enamoured Symbian-based S60 into a new era - era of analogue control. Analogous control may not be new per se (think of volume knobs, sliders, or even computer mouse manipulators), it is definitely new when applied to, arguably, the most ubiquitous thing on this planet - a mobile phone.

I will delay detailed usability analysis until the time that S60 Touch device lands in my hands, and this is probably for the better sales...
Let's think of it in more visionary way - what this means to the whole mobile market.
Now, here I do not share Mobile-Review's point of view, that this will surely crush the competition (Sony Ericsson UIQ, iPhone, Windows Mobile); neither do I think that devices like Nokia 5800 won't change much of the game.

I strongly believe, and see a reason behind such beliefs, that S60 Touch will change much of Nokia's own game.
It will certainly be elevated from XpressMusic line on to the N-series line of models, and thus will overtake significant portion of the current N-series users.
While it's too early to say much of whether the careful and confident approach of Nokia to creation of analogous control devices will capture many _new users_, one thing can be said right now - the S60 Touch platform will retain many of the current Nokia users.
In this sense, I see it much as a defensive move, not innovation.

And, amongst all of the possible defensive moves, Nokia chose the most conservative approach - not to change the user interface, but rather augment it with a touch screen enablement.
They could have decided to develop a new UI, or to shoehorn Maemo into cell phone devices, but what we see in 5800 is more a strategic move - new Symbian version, new S60 edition, a touch-based control of the old-style S60 UI, and two new features - contact bar and the media menu, which look as "strap-ons" to the existing UI goodness.

I am not trying to say that was wrong decision! That was a very careful and considerate, and wholly in line with Nokia's style - when you've got mammoth legs, move slowly but very assuredly.
Check your every step, so as not to fall and lose existing user base.
This is very considerate of us S60 users.
This is also very considerate of the S60 developers out there.
Apparently, Nokia sees S60 as it's greatest asset ever...
They are not carrying out revolutions a-la Guy Kawasaki, who once said (and still says so): "Kill your cash cow."

There have been previous attempts of Nokia to market touch-based devices, such as Nokia 7700 and 7710.
I don't know what went wrong with S90 - this looked very promising and innovative (for those times) devices.
My pure guess is that S60 had more Nokia people going to vote for them, in a political sense.
Bad luck, I must say. By now they might have been deeply entrenched into touch devices.

Should Nokia have decided to continue with S90 evolution,
There could have been no possibility and no market for iPhone!

Now I myself, personally used SonyEricsson P910i.
It was a remarkable phone, and in many ways that was the top usable device of those times.
I even consider it top usable device of SonyEricsson's all-times line.

It was a great pity and a great looming mistake, that SonyEricsson decided to drop UIQ2.1 and break all compatibility, and develop and debug on top of new UIQ3, which happened to be a flop, mostly due to the extremely buggy P990i.

Come on SE, I wanted hard to get a new phone to upgrade my aging P910i, but I simply could not make myself to buy your new crap.
It is incredibly wise and great that Nokia decided to go their different path, and not break compatibility (at least for some apps), and not to "revolutionize" S60 with completely new interface, which would almost inevitably have it's own sizeable share of bugs.
Here in 5800 we see beautiful evolution - precious time & effort spent on debugging the code is not lost, just the new features added.

Obviously, there have been people (even me) who tried to reason [for many years] for the renewal of the shut-down line of Nokia touch-screen devices.

But only Steve Jobs' voice was heard.

Now, 16 months after the iPhone, we can finally welcome Nokia to the analogue control game.

Would you use your PC/Mac without a mouse?
If in few years I would ask you "Would you use a smartphone without touch-based control?" my bets are that your answer will not be any dfferent.

(Yes, I remeber the old arguments from the DOS guy who would never use a mouse - but where are those now?)
We, humans, are analogue creatures. By nature.

Christmas wishes from N95 S60 firmware

It's Christmas time soon, so I decided to put out a brief series with humble "wishes for improvement", the features that I would like to have as Christmas present from Nokia Santa (if there was one)... well, there's hope... Lapland is there in Finland... :)

The first round is, actually, about things I hate most in my current N95 v30.0.016.

Frankly speaking, S60 firmware team have made great progress in term of both the code stability, speed and power consumption. Kudos to the hardware guys!
You are a reason for Nokia to rock.
But there's not much done in terms of improved user experience.

Sad to say, but almost 2 years have passed since it's flagman phone was out, and some pretty obvious "features", those that derail the user experience from the "happy thoughtless bliss", have still not been fixed.

I know, I know, we geeks are all so adaptable to anything, but as a pro with an "eye for UI" I still refuse to adapt and still I go reminding all you S60 PM and the coders alike - this is what will make S60 (and so my N95) User Experience very much better:

1. Access Point preferencing, please Santa!
We still have to answer to each bloody application, which bloody AP to use.
Please please please Nokia, make the system-wide panel of preferenced Access Points, and the future strategy of each app is to either (a) respect the system AP pref, or (b) well, there's better be no (b)...remove all AP settings from zillion places in zillion applications (N-Gage, VideoCenter, E-mail etc).
So far, only some WAP bookmarks in browser need a separate AP, and of course MMS sender/receiver.

2. Don't lock my phone, please Santa!
Like I already ranted here, there are smarter ways to know if your keypad needs to be locked.
For a start, unlock the phone if any cable is being inserted (the phone is not in a pocket or a bag, it's in the hands),
then, keep the phone unlocked if it's being charged (it's surely not on the go, either).
In other words, think of ways to keep the phone accessible...
To skip keypad autolock in such situations would be nice, for example.
This would let the user implicitly lock the keypad, if so desired.
The current behaviour makes usage of phone in home/office fixed locations miserable - just to read new SMS fast we need to click 4 times (two for unlock, one to close confirmation, one to show message).
Keypad lock/unlock confirmations are a nuisance! They hug my workflow for 2 seconds! I feel punished.
Why we need them at all, when the key sign in the upper panel is the indicator already?

This is pretty burdensome and counter-intuitive. Imagine sliding your finger to unlock iPhone, and then boom! 2-second modal dialog to confirm...yuk

I would very much appreciate it if you'd unlock the keypad for me, when I insert a USB cable or an Enhancement, so that I could choose the mode RIGHT ON. Me and you know I can't insert something when my phone is in my pocket (and thus, under danger of erratic key presses).

And while you're there, please make an option to switch off connection warnings in all apps which use network (MOSH, Download! etc).
I don't like to be pestered by warnings, that's the Microsoft Way...









3. Permit my signed Java, please Santa!
With all those certificates, there's a reason to think that it did filter out the unwanted (malicious) unsigned programs during installation phase, and now we have only perfectly legit java MIDlets installed.
Now, what with pestering me out with incessant requests for permission of network access etc?
I know, you know, that Opera mini has to get the network, otherwise no fun. I know, you know, that it was signed with a certificate for all those access things.

Then why there is no persistent permissions for my installed java applets? A simple checkbox would let the phone memorize my trust settings and do not ask me every launch. In fact I do believe in defense-in-depth, but are we not paranoid here? Maybe we can let signed apps do the things they want?

4. Lifeblog will Sound, please Santa!
Lifeblog is the best thing that happened to S60 in all it's time.
It is the focal point of data aggregation, and the underlying interface for Ovi services, it's the technology which can (and should) be adapted for every phone, maybe even merged with Search 4.0 functionality.
There is support for Sound Recordings in Lifeblog. You have to start them from the Lifeblog, and they appear on the Timeline, and they get synced with Ovi or PC Suite, and they go to your PC!
But - when you make recordings straight from Voice Recorder app, LifeBlog does not see those sound files.
Come on, this is an omission. Should be fixed, IMHO.

It would make great sense to include the 'normal" recordings in Lifeblog, and not force the user to create them in Lifeblog, thus separating and isolating Lifeblog from the data which is already generated.

How many of you created at least one sound rec from within Lifeblog?

For ex. when you take photos straight from the Camera, or send SMS straight from Messaging, Lifeblog sees them all.
But not when you make the Sound Recordings. This eventually leaves a lot of sound bites out-of-sync, you never see them on PC, unless you do the hoola-hoops jumping to get them specifically via some other process (hunting down, copying, deleting ...yuk)...
Would be wiser to join them into the Lifeblog circle of things.





5. Lifeblog will Note Me, Santa!
Now, I had written previously about Notes sync here, and the dead is still not done. I have also filed bug requests during PC Suite beta 6.85 and 6.86 about incorrect timestamping of Notes during sync. Nothing changed so far.
This time I will speak from the firmware team perspective - how to treat them on the phone.
And I mean the Lifeblog strategy and features here.
Right now - we have two sets of Notes - the ones on the phone and the one in LifeBlog.
Lifeblog notes can be created, seen and managed only in Lifeblog. I think this is the second most important Lifeblog problem - since the rest of your "normal" notes in elsewhere, and so - kept out of normal Lifeblog sync cycle.
Timeline is the best presentation you can get, to see things in a time-sorted order.
Here it would be very nice to see the Notes that we already have on the phone, and not to force us to create new ones from arcane Options menu.

How many of you created at least one note in Lifeblog? I doubt there are many such geeks...

Why there was such need for note data fragmentation is quite unclear.
Would be wiser to join "normal" notes into Lifeblog circle of things.
This would make the Lifeblog the powerful all-absorbing one-stop technology for all user content, except for web/e-mail and 3-rd party.
Integrate Search 4.0 into that - and we have a killer app, nothing similar exists on competitor symbian-based products (Apple has Spotlight and iMovie/iPhoto/iSync)
Also please Santa, make a LifeBlog app for my Mac! I still have no automatic way to backup my messages and notes and sounds there. (OK I know that one's too much to ask by Christmas, just count me in for the Ovi Mac Suite beta)

6. Better Podcasts, Santa!
There are few deficiencies in current Nokia Podcasting application.
One of them is the the podcasts titles stop scrolling as soon as I start downloading at least one podcast. This makes selection of some other podcasts to download impossible, if the podcasts have long titles. A good example is our Mobile-Review site.

Second drawback is that there seems to be some sync lacking between Podcasting app as such, and the Music Player's "Podcasts" section.
Since you can play podcasts in both places, but each of them keeps it's own DB of podcasts status - "played" or "not played" statuses are separate in both apps for the same track.
This makes up for user confusion when you see tracks as "new" although you've actually heard them all...

This is explained by the following scenario:
(a) You open Podcasting download two podcasts (podcast1, podcast2) from, say, "Voice of S60"
(b) Now you can see the Yellow (unplayed) status of both podcasts in the Nokia Podcasting apps
(c) Going into Music Player now, you can find both podcasts in the "Never Played" section
(d) Play the podcast1 in Music Player, and you see it disappear from "Never Played" in Music Player
(e) Going to Podcasting, you still see yellow color of both podcasts, as if they never played.
(f) Play the podcast2 now in Podcasting, and see the color change, and the icon change to black checkmark
(g) Going back into Music Player, you still see the podcast2 in the "Never Played" category

I should notice here also that Podcasting app handles Russian (and maybe other international) titles well (ex. Mobile-Review),
but the very same podcast titles looks as boxes in the Music Player, which, apparently, uses a different code to render MP3 titles.








Can't you Santa do some code re-use? :) I simply can't read it like that!


[update] There's also difference between Podcasts and Music Player in marking listening position.

Music Player (not Podcasts!) marks the place where you left off/stopped playback in each podcasts, and gracefully resumes playback, should you try to play a podcasts which was not "rewound" or listened to the end.

Podcasts, on the contrary, makes you start from 0:00 every time, which annoys me because I expect I could play podcasts while I manage them, download new episodes, navigate directories.
Seems like to do this, I have to leave podcasting and start Music Player instead.

All said, would it not make sense to disable playback option in Podcasting, once and for all?
Or... make that option switch to Music Player instead?



Such are my humble wishes to Nokia Santa, if there was one. I do not ask just for myself, neither I need more Nokia hardware.

Just please "play nice" with those "dumb" and "tired" users like me, will you, please...? :)

SDHC 4G Flash corruption on N95 Lifeblog [updated]

I found out a very unwelcome behaviour of on-the-phone LifeBlog in my Nokia N95.

It corrupts the flash file system (FAT32) on my 4G microSD.

At first I thought that this could be either Camera app, or the Gallery app, or the LifeBlog app.
My normal workflow would be to take N95 out of my pocket (keypad locked), open the camera shutter, look to see if the Camera started [if not, curse and close and reopen, up to 3 times], then take some pictures, press Back, optionally go to lifeblog to see the photos from there, then close the camera shutter and put the phone back into pocket. If I needed to see photos in more detail, I would usually go to Gallery, but on most occasions I pressed the right soft button which was assigned to Lifeblog.

And I noticed that with such workflow I lost many photos. On the worse occasion, I lost 98 photos out of 212 taken.

The symptoms depicted below.





These photos were seen OK by the Gallery, but only before I opened LifeBlog and it started to build thumbnails needed.
Of course, I did not stand still there and I browsed to the left or right in the lifeblog while it did the preview building, but should it corrupt the filesystem because of that???

As a result, the whole folder of the previous day was lost, and some corruption occured inside some today's photos. From a technical standpoint, seems like it corrupted the huge 4G FAT table while doing FS operations. Neither Camera nor Gallery exhibit such nasty behaviour.

Needless to say, I am stopping using the LifeBlog on the phone until Nokia clear up the problem in future firmware updates. My current f/w is 21.0.016.

Oh and yes, I checked my microSD card on PC, and reformatted it already 2 times, but problems still appear (are being introduced into perfectly working media gallery) only after LifeBlog!

[UPDATE] All this behavior was only due to Kingston SDHC card, which are, according to N95 User Guide, not listed as compatible. Also of note, that there are classes of SDHC cards, like class6 or class9...
The higher the class, the faster is the card. The effect of flash memory classes on operation inside N95 is not yet studied.
There's no SDHC-specific warning in manual, so take my post for it.