In the same vein, I signed up for Twitter to fall in behind other tech-enthusiasts everywhere. I posted occasionally, but tried to keep up with my friends’ activities more often. This was assisted by my Nokia N97 after purchasing a license for Gravity. This made using Twitter an absolute pleasure, and I found myself posting (slightly) more often and glancing at the updates from others throughout the day. However, I then shifted over to my Nokia N900, and its inability to run any Twitter apps even close to Gravity in quality and features…

I tried a number of apps written for the N900 – Mauku and Witter to name a couple. They did an OK job, but generally felt a bit clunky or scruffily presented. It then dawned on me that the N900 is designed to be ‘always connected’ and has a blindingly good web browser built in, so I tried out dabr. This site claims to be a ‘mobile web interface to Twitter’s API’, and it certainly succeeds at that. In the absence of Gravity it would have been a fantastic tool for use on my N96 or N97 in the past. For the N900, with the high resolution screen, the text was just too small and the links were far from finger-friendly.

It was at this point that I started to consider writing my own Twitter client. My development skills for Maemo are far from perfect, and I came to the conclusion I wanted something that I could use on multiple platforms anyway, so something web based seemed to be the way forward. I decided it would have to be finger friendly, but ideally in a way that wasn’t too intrusive when I used it from a desktop browser.

PHP and Javascript are my current languages of choice for web development, so I set to work on decyphering the Twitter API (not a difficult task) and exploring code examples for actually pulling data out of Twitter.

It was around this point where I happened upon TweetGo.net, which already seemed to do the basics of what I was planning – a finger friendly UI for Twitter. However, it’s also in its early stages, and lacks a few features that I’d like to see in a client – which would recreate a lot of the functionality and ease of use of Gravity.

And so, GaliTwit was born. You can check it out in current (also early) form by following this link, or from the link I’ll shortly add to the navigation bar at the top of this site. I’ll hopefully write some more posts about it in due course to cover what features it already supports, and what I plan to implement in the future.

The decision did not come lightly, but it was a long time coming. I love Symbian, and will continue to do so. I expect that in 18 months time when my contract next comes up for renewal, I will be tempted to go back.

As I always do as my current contract comes to its end, I looked at what I do with my phone on a daily or weekly basis, considered what I was interested in being able to do, and then looked at the options out there. A previous blog post looks at some of these things.

It was obvious that I was going to look at a new smartphone, with plenty of functionality and software that would break it out of the ‘phoning/texting’ device and into the realms of an always-connected mobile computer. Ultimately, it became quite clear that most of the ‘popular’ smartphones out there wouldn’t satisfy my needs. I wanted to stick with a large, high resolution touch screen (Blackberry out of the question, iPhone weak). I wanted an open platform that would let me install a range of applications, ideally chosen from a pool of useful tools that weren’t blocked by a strict QA process (iPhone now out of the question). It needed a decent camera, hardware keyboard, plenty of on-board storage and generally good hardware supporting a responsive, well thought out UI.

While the N900 lets itself down in a few arbitrary areas (why is there no MMS support, Nokia?), it was quite apparent that it was the only device that satisfied the things I was looking for. In fact, the only other device that came close was the Nokia N97 (and its little brother the N97 mini), and I wasn’t keen on upgrading to what I already had. A look at the internal specs of the N900 and some visual reviews of its blindingly quick interface had me sold – no more jerky interface or RAM issues that had been plaguing my N97 when I really pushed it.

Given I spend a fair amount of time on the web, the iPhone did get a brief consideration, based on its supposedly having the best mobile browsing experience out there. So I looked at the n900′s browser a little more closely, and what followed cemented my decision. While the N900 lacks multitouch gestures, its browser makes up for it by essentially being a full, lightning fast version of Firefox (albeit with no Firefox branding) with full Javascript and Flash support… and the N900 has the hardware to handle it well. It doesn’t quite manage 100/100 on the acid3 test, but it gets close. Combine it with the very nice 800 pixel wide screen and it was onto a winner.

So, I’m happy with my N900. I’ll probably be even more happy once I’ve stopped installing random junk and experimenting, and have something that I can use on a day to day basis. The biggest risk is that I will hack into place a number of bits and pieces that aren’t possible outside a hackable-Linux environment and will ultimately put myself into a position where I cannot go back to Symbian. On the other hand, maybe Symbian in its journey from Symbian^1 to Symbian^4 over the next year will get its user interface sorted and earn its place at the top once again (despite it never actually letting go of it in terms of sales).

And as a passing note, the N900 seems to succeed where just about all other Nokia phones fail by having a battery meter that represents how much battery is genuinely left, rather than a seemingly arbitrary scale that’s apparently adjusted based on current use.

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.

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. 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…

Regardless, I was keen to put the stats of these four devices side by side for my reference at least. In cases where items could be compared to some extent, I’ve highlighted the perceptual ’best’ and ‘worst’ entries in a light green and pinky red respectively (I’ve not declared a winner for the display row as I can’t find details of the Nexus One’s colour count and I’d argue that the N900′s higher pixel density counts in its favour over the Nexus One’s bigger display. The processors can probably fall under some debate due to extra GPU power that I’ve not considered, or the different multi-chip ARM hardware is used in different devices).

*Wifi positioning available via 3rd party product

I should note that while the table suggests that the N900 and Nexus One have a similar number of plus points compared to the other devices, it’s worth comparing the text in green to the text in grey – some devices only just have the edge over others, and others are still highly spec’ed enough for most people (after all, who is really going to see benefit from a device supporting 802.11n wireless when others can manage 802.11g).

The amount of red in certain columns certainly is interesting though. Some may accuse me of bias – when I created the table I was certainly not looking for bias, and I’m happy to add other rows if I’m provided accurate data for all four devices.

I learned soon after that I needed to be well and truly out in the open the first time I wanted to use GPS, and that I should stand still and let it work out where it was for several minutes. And, sure enough, after 5-10 minutes of standing around, my N95 worked out where I was quite accurately. It also seemed to be clever enough to retain something from this experience such that – as long as I hadn’t strayed too far from my original location – it could get a lock faster in the future.

Two and a half years later, the technology sadly doesn’t seem to have improved much when it comes to Nokia devices – at least, not out of the box.

Assisted GPS came along, which improved initially lock times by implementing the pretty simple idea of talking to a server online to get some clues as to where the GPS satellites were in the skies. My N96 and N97 both came with this included out of the box, and sure enough getting a lock did seem quicker than the original N95 experiences. However, the time needed was still often measured in minutes, which wasn’t that useful for a quick search when out and about to work out how to get from “here” to “there” (AAS offer a good news post with some advice and explanations regarding slow lock speeds).

Then I got myself an iPod touch. I heard that the iPhone had a reasonable GPS chip in it, but I was a little surprised about the presence of a Maps applications on my new shiny iPod, as I was under the (correct) impression there was no GPS. And then I was even more surprised when I launched Maps and it pinpointed where I was almost exactly, and almost instantly.

A little research demonstrated that the iPod touch (and iPhone) support a technology based on the positions of wireless networks, without actually connecting to them. Some clever people somewhere have worked out where different wireless networks are around the country, and built a network which allows their software to triangulate your position based on the SSIDs of wireless networks that are visible at any given time. They even included in the technology the ability for it to maintain itself, presumably by updating their database from networks visible to devices that have already reliably determined their location.

All is not lost for the world of Symbian however! The good people of Skyhook who put together the WPS network used by Apple’s devices have created an application called Maps Booster, which has been made available through the Ovi Store for a number of devices (including for my trusty N97). This brings the same technology to a number of Symbian devices. Unfortunately, it’s not free. Given how much it improves the positioning of the device, especially considering how the devices compare to competition without it, I would have liked to see Nokia subsidise the price at least a little. But a few quid is worth it for the improvement, especially if you live in a built up area where the service works well.

As icing on the cake, Maps Booster just works. Install it on your phone, and it integrates itself with the handset’s built in positioning so that its available to all software that might use it. When combined with an application like ARound (a great little ‘augmented reality’ technology demo for Symbian), it even helps give the Symbian platform some ‘wow’ features for showing off to your friends.

The lack of kinetic scrolling beyond the web browser is disappointing (at least until the v20 firmware is released), especially given I own an iPod touch with all its omnipresent smooth scrolling. The QWERTY keyboard, while being something I missed since the days of my 9210, is probably the worst Symbian powered keyboard I’ve had the pleasure of using – 3 rows, and interesting choices of placement for some common symbols slows down text entry. Gone are the days of the Psion Series 5′s amazing keyboard that I could thumb type on almost as quickly as I could my PC. And on top of all that, while Symbian is well established, familiar and pretty robust, it is still growing into the world of the touch screen.

And yet, despite the various little quirks that irk me on occasion, especially when I consider the competition, I still feel I made the right choice in paying full price to buy a N97 off contract, and that it is perhaps the best handset I’ve used, and a better choice than the competition for the range of jobs I need it for.

I’ll now move onto the biassed part where I cover the things I feel I need in my phone. I’m the first to admit that this is strongly influenced by previous handsets I’ve had – I’m very much of the opinion that when I upgrade my phone, I shouldn’t take a hit for any hardware or software features that I’ve taken for granted from my previous handset (which was a N96 for a few months, preceded by my ever trusted N95).

So, here are the features that ‘make’ the N97 for me (in no particular order)

5mp camera

Years ago I had a ‘proper’ 2mp digital camera, and the decent optics Nokia puts on its handsets have proven to be far superior time and again. Of course, this is a silly comparison, but for quick picture taking, I’ve not been let down since my N95, and I wouldn’t want to take a step back. If an image ends up a little blurry, then I can shrink them and have something perfectly reasonable for a web site (or Facebook, Flickr or wherever). I don’t feel I could get this from a handset with fewer megapixels. More would be nice, as would a more substantial flash, but that would mean sacrificing other features.

Large, high resolution touch screen

I missed the big screen of my 9210. I was jealous of the vibrant, large screen of the iPhone for a while. Looking back through the years at my N96, N95 (original, with the smaller screen), and further to the N70 and even my trusty old 3650 with its odd circular keypad, I don’t know how I coped with such small displays, despite remembering being in relative awe of them at the time.

Further, I’ve longed for a touch screen since my Psion Series 5 (though the n800 kept me quiet about this for a while). Why did they fall out of fashion so much? The opportunity to get a touch screen, with a vibrant display and a full 640 pixel resolution wasn’t one I was going to pass up again. No other handset at this time offers this without sacrificing other features.

Always connected

My service provider deserve some of the credit here for providing me with all the data I can chew on. However, to be able to reach into my pocket and have everything I could ever want from my connected life at my fingertips in seconds is something I don’t know how I’d go without now. From text messaging to Twitter to Facebook to browsing the web to email to anything online. The technology has only improved, and the N97 is probably the best device I’ve had so far in this respect. With a little care to get things set the way I want them, it (relatively) seamlessly hops between 3.5G and the various wireless networks I might be in range of so that I get the speediest connection where I am.

At this juncture I shall add that I let my phone connect whenever it wants with an almost complete disregard for battery life mostly because I charge my phone every night by ritual and plug it into my laptop/desktop whenever I sit down by habit. Sure, I can drain its battery if I really put my mind to it, but day to day use doesn’t come close and my email is always there waiting for me to read.

Media player (with lots of storage and podcast management)

32Gb is more than enough storage for the amount of media I actually want to listen to. Over the years I have collected a significant number of mp3s, but the number I actually want to listen to are far fewer and easily fit into a handful of Gb. Podcasts use up more space, so having plenty to spare is always a plus.

The sound quality is great through the headphones (which I will always be using), and its playlist and podcast management do just fine for my needs. Nokia include headphones with a small remote on the wire for basic media functionality as standard with a lot of devices these days, which is always nice.

Quick and easy PC connectivity

PC Suite does its job pretty well, even if it is still a bit clunky round the edges. But once its installed, I can just plug my phone in and copy content to and from it without more than a few seconds notice. It works fine as a USB device, and is happy to let me use my the storage space to store whatever I want.

I’ve avoided mentioning other handsets by name up until this point, but I feel I must mention here that I loathe having to transfer content to and from (well, not so much from) my iPod. If I work the way Apple wants me to, iTunes ties my hands, insisting on analysing any media I give it awareness of, and it stops me from effectively synchronising content from multiple computers without losing something (or everything) each time. There’s a good reason my iPod contains half a gigabyte of media and several Gb of applications.

Easy working with common file formats

I hear Microsoft are planning to bring mobile Office applications to Symbian next year. However, until then, QuickOffice’s software a very good job for working with Office and PDF files. It’s a shame you have to pay for editing of course (gone are the days of Microsoft Office compatible editors being a standard on Psion/Symbian devices). It’s more of a shame that you have to pay for the PDF viewing functionality after the trial expires. But, it’s all there, and it works. You don’t need to spend ages trawling through an app store trying different things that may or may not cost before finding something that doesn’t quite work.

Tethering

Years ago I was mocked for tethering my laptop to my phone over infrared, using a dial-up networking connection to give myself Internet on the train. It was a painful 10 minute wait to load a simple web page, and the day I tried to connect remotely to my desktop at home was a painful one. And yet now it’s a feature many take for granted, and those that can’t do it are jealous of. Bluetooth or cabled, laptop or netbook, a reasonable speed full-browser experience is always no more than a few seconds away.

Multiple input choices

I originally started this item as ‘one-handed input’, but I feel this would downplay the fact I do value the keyboard, especially for if I want to type more than a few dozen words. However, the ability to tap out a text with one hand, aided by T9 predictive text, is invaluable to me. It’s quicker than messing around with a keyboard in that form factor. My only gripe is that Nokia seem to be trying to make predictive text progressively more clever. On my N96 it seemed ideal – it didn’t ‘forget’ words, and it had a good sense for the words I wanted. On the N97, if I put too many commas in a text message, it often begins to offer me commas instead of full stops for the next couple of texts I type. But, for the most part, it does work just fine.

Overall though, the option of switching between one-handed predictive text input, two handed keyboard input or simply touch screen navigation suits me fine, allowing me to tailor the way I use the device to the situation at hand.

Thumb lock

Gone are the days of having to press one key and another to unlock the device. The thumb lock on the side of the N97 is perfect. It’s resistant enough to not get pressed accidentally, and allows you to instantly unlock the device without multiple key (or screen presses). Anything that allows me to do simple tasks as quickly as possible is good in my books.

Putty

A geeky one here, but having Putty (or some other free SSH software) on my phone is critical to me for connecting to one or two remote servers on the move.

Exchange support

I will remain resistant to Nokia’s latest Messaging tool, but the Exchange integration allows me to work with Email, contacts and calendar in unison with all of the computers I use. I can put a calendar entry onto my phone, and it’ll be on my desktop at work within minutes, and vice versa. I’ll grant you that most devices can manage this these days, of course, often with a little more setup.

Alarm clock

I rely on my phone to wake me up in the morning, it’s as simple as that.

Multitasking

This may seem like a gripe at the iPhone, but I really do need to be able to launch more than one application and switch between them without the first being closed down, even if it is able to save it’s ‘state’ for when I want to go back to it.
To clarify, I agree with reviewers, both positive and negative. No phone out there absolutely excels in every area I would like it to. There is good reason I carry around an iPod touch with me, own a n800 Internet tablet, and regularly take my Asus eee 901 netbook with me. The N97 does, however, single handedly manage more of what I want than the alternatives I was aware of at the time.

As far as scoring the Nokia N97 is concerned, it’s likely to do well. My lifestyle has been influenced by the evolving Symbian operating system and Nokia’s hardware over the years, and when I looked into the N97 and its competition, it was clear that the N97 was ticking the boxes. I’m not sure that Symbian will keep it up though. While still a Nokia device, the N900 lacks Symbian and looks mighty tempting…

So, here are my scores and summary comments…

The purpose of Gali will be to look at a range of gadgets, technology, hardware, software and perhaps a little entertainment media along the way. There’s always room for another blog in the vastness of the Internet, but I intend to very much focus on the actual use of things to achieve certain results, mostly pertaining to day to day life.

A blog that takes the newest technology and reviews the areas in which it excels and disappoints is useful, and a number of these will go on to describe who these factors might appeal to. My intention is to review, examine and discuss technology being applied to certain tasks. In fact, I hope to actually review each piece of technology from the perspective of the task, rather than the genre of technology in which it fits.

If I’m speaking in riddles, its perhaps because this isn’t the type of writing that comes easy to me at almost 1am. I shall offer an example therefore. I am considered among many to be a fanboy of Nokia or Microsoft products. Despite this, I have been exploring other technology to see whether I can make aspects of my daily life easier, more efficient or simply more convenient. Take, for instance, the task of finding out some information while out and about (just the other day, I was discussing with friends the NQT year a teacher must undertake to qualify to teach 5-16 year old children in the UK). The readily available wireless networks and pocket sized devices that can connect to them makse accessing the information easy in this modern age.

To find out what I needed immediately, I had three options: reach for the netbook in my bag, reach for the iPod touch in my left pocket, or reach for my Nokia N97 in my right pocket. I opted for the iPod touch. It allowed me to launch a web browser, and along with Google allowed me to search for what I wanted within seconds. For more in-depth research outside of a social situation, the netbook would have been better suited, but would have taken time that would have interrupted the flow of conversation at the time. The N97 would have been more than capable of searching for the information, and may have been the device of choice away from a wireless network. However, despite the higher resolution screen and the advances of Symbian’s web browser over recent years, it simply doesn’t live up to Apple’s offering for a quick check.

Of course, this is just a quick example. I plan to write more detailed, reasoned reviews of activities and the tools used in time.

As a final note for this first post, and it may go without saying, but this blog will contain my personal opinions. Comments are welcome to disagree with them, and I will try to remain unbiased as much as I can, but I am quite aware that I do not have access to every piece of technology out there, and that I am writing purely on the basis of my own experiences.