gali

What’s In A Phone?

Jan 21st, 2010

The phone I want most at the moment is probably the Nokia N900. It has amazing hardware specifications, and a pretty funky operating system and software community behind it. However, it doesn’t appear to be available on O2 and while it is expected to appear on O2 unlike other recent Nokia flagships, there’s presently no ETA.

But it got me thinking… if I find myself looking to other handsets, possibly even outside the Nokia box, what do I actually need in a phone? What do I actually use in my current handset that I would ‘feel’ the lack of?

There are a number of features that I use in my phone on a daily basis, and others that I use from time to time but could maybe live without.

It’s Upgrade Time for me, and while I find myself quite happy with my Nokia N97, that doesn’t mean I want to pass up the opportunity to get my hands on a shiny piece of new hardware. After all, the sooner I upgrade, the sooner I can do it again next time around – and Symbian^4, Maemo 6, the next Android and iPhone and who knows what else should be out by then.The phone I want most at the moment is probably the Nokia N900. It has amazing hardware specifications, and a pretty funky operating system and software community behind it. However, it doesn’t appear to be available on O2 and while it is expected to appear on O2 unlike other recent Nokia flagships, there’s presently no ETA.

There are a number of features that I use in my phone on a daily basis, and others that I use from time to time but could maybe live without. Here I shall consider them, largely for my own reference…

Phone: Clearly I need a device that can make and receive calls. It also needs to be able to store contacts, totalling in the hundreds, with details beyond just their name and number (such as email address, address, notes, photos, etc)
Messaging: The ability to send and receive text messages is also a given, including those longer than 160 characters. Similarly, the device needs the capacity to store a few thousand messages (I never delete anything) without grinding to a halt – being able to archive old messages into folders is good too. I don’t use MMS often, but it’s nice if it’s there.
Decent Camera: 2 or 3 megapixels is not enough. My experience is that a phone needs at least 5 megapixels of camera goodness so that they are of good quality where I need them. More megapixels makes little difference in this regard, but less is no good as they will likely be unpleasantly grainy and awkward to make usable. Decent optics helps – something that only Nokia have really pulled off, unfortunately.
Touch screen: Ever since my Psion Series 5, I had been missing a touch screen in my ‘main device’. My N97 brought back the touchscreen to my world, and I would rather not go without again.
Good text input: I’ve never met a good on-screen keyboards – not a proper keyboard anyway. My N97 has a decent hardware QWERTY keyboard, and a good onscreen method of text input through reproducing a phone keypad including T9 predictive text (therefore allowing one handed input). If I had a good hardware QWERTY, I could probably live without the onscreen T9, but the next point may come into play…
One handed operation: I could probably live without this. With my old Psion Series 5 it wasn’t an option, and I found text input on my first mobile phones a little irritating. I’ve now got used to predictive text with one hand, but more and more with my N97 I find myself sliding out the keyboard and entering text with two-thumb typing once again. A year ago I would have said I can’t live without being able to use a phone one handed… now I probably could, at least as far as text input goes.
Microsoft Exchange support: This includes integration with my email, calendar and contacts. I need to be able to see upcoming appointments I have from my homescreen, along with new emails, and I need my contacts to be sync’d with the server. Changes made on either my device or a PC should be kept nicely in sync.
Twitter: I probably could live without this one, but I’m spoiled by Gravity, which probably offers the best Twitter experience on any platform, and is especially good on a mobile display.
Third Party Apps: Symbian is currently lagging in this area – even Android is making more progress with its App Market. Nokia are promising a major overhaul of their Ovi Store in coming months though, so we’ll see. Either way, access to more software is a must, preferably including things that don’t need to be approved by a major corporation first…
GPS, Maps and Navigation: I don’t need these very often, but there have been a number of occasions when it has proven invaluable since my Nokia N95.
SSH/Terminal software (for free): My current phone has Putty. I use it to sign into my server regularly, mostly to connect to an existing screen/IRC session. This one is a definite must.
Tethering: There are two sides to this point. When I’m travelling on train, the ability to connect my laptop via my phone (by Bluetooth or cable) to the Internet is incredibly useful. For shorter periods, there’s a fantastic little tool called JoikuSpot for Symbian that lets me turn my phone into an ad hoc wireless network that shares my Internet over wifi with other devices (such as my iPod touch).
Web Browser: Ideally with Flash support and decent rendering, but I think (at least thanks to Opera) this is available – perhaps less the Flash in some cases – for just about every mobile device out there. I was most impressed when I saw 100/100 come up on my phone’s screen for the Acid3 test.
Podcasting & Music & Storage: My Nokia N97 can happily store 32Gb of data, which I’ve about half filled with mp3s, podcasts and media from iPlayer. I can live without iPlayer, but the rest I’ve come to rely on.

There’s probably more… I’ll add it as I think of it. Certainly some games would be nice, and the ability to at least view PDFs would be great (but I’ve not had a phone succeed well at that yet). There’s nothing else specific that leaps off the page yet though…