Android, Symbian, iPhone

Experiences from all major mobile platforms. I've been playing with Android, Samsung S2 and new Sony Ericsson Mini Pro and I have to say, it's too complicated. I get frustrated with Android from time to time, simple tasks like calling and writing sms's, just too many moves and eye candies all the time. With iPhone, it's too restricted. I need music, I need images. I need them now, on the go and with linux. No iTunes available all the time.

Symbian Anna on my E7, better but sluggish. Email is quite responsive but gets stuck from time to time. Needs rebooting. Calling and texting is breeze. It's big, but robust. Best hardware at this point, even software is lacking.

I think I will give up on these phones soon. Reach me with IM or Email.

Symbian Anna

After quite steady weeks with my iPhone, I was excited to notice that Nokia has come out with Symbian Anna (finally). I took my only Windows workstation out of dust and launched Nokia software updater and rolled Anna in to my E7 and N8.

It worked well, even I realized just a bit afterwards that there were couple extra packets to install (1/2, 2/2 updates). But it was for me quite breeze. No worries in there, like few others I noticed.

After Anna update my E7 received my sim and there I was, back in Symbian. Keyboard is fantastic to use after trial and error on iPhone. And symbian felt quite smooth after update. After this update, I think Nokia is only lacking integration with outside services like Twitter and Facebook. Even I just resigned from Facebook, I believe current Anna implementation of these services is bit outdated. I don't know.

I wish Nokia would have believed in developers in 5 years ago, given them a hand and tools to implement. Things could be different. Still I miss Jabber integration from my E7, like it was in N900. Skype is not for secure communication.

Nokia's Dive

Back in 1995 I had Psion 5. It run EPOC operating system, which later turned to be Nokia flagship Symbian.

In 2007 when I took this picture I thought that why Nokia acquired EPOC for smart phone platform and made it ten years too late for try out to public consumption. Ever since I have just wondered why Nokia is not capable to do right decision, they kept back Maemo team's with N800/N810 which was superior product on those days. They were too tied to operators and that obsolete EPOC variant in their main products and were afraid to fly with Maemo.

But still, there is one major factor which is affecting to iOs and Android dominance and volume. It's well kept secret and who know how long it will stay like that.

Why there is no good phones available anymore?

I am stuck. I am stuck with all these mobiles in my life. It seems that there is just no good mobile phone available at the moment, I give you short intro what I currently have and why they are not usable;

iPhone4

• Missing keyboard
  
• painfull ecosystem, I want to copy those MP3's and images without itunes.
• Multitasking sucks still (I want real Jabber IM client)
  

Nokia E7

• Symbian sucks
• Camera is bad
• I need wifi accesspoint functionality which does work
• I have also Nokia N8, which I occasional use because of it's camera. It's so good, but still does not help for other issues (keyboard, symbian, accesspoint functionality).
  

Android's (HTC Desire Z, Ericsson X10 (&PRO), Samsung 5 and others)

• Keyboard, yes desire Z has that but it sucks. Android is not designed to support keyboard well enough (yes, that tiny entry field for SMS's for example) and Z's keyboard is really pain if you compare to E7's. And Z's design is not so good.
  
• OS is candy, too candy to be usable. Too much complication and somehow cluttered outfit of everything gives me headache.
• I have done some coding with SDK, which is nice. But conceptually my target is to produce something professional and since I don't know when OS decides to close my tasks things turns again unacceptable. Any clue for me related to this?

Nokia N900

• This was best as long as it lasted. Elop killed a dream of Meego and successors of this wonderful device. Only disadvantages were battery life and display, which were a bit outdated.
  
• SDK functionality could have been lot better, giving users access to all telecommunication api's like android. Why it did not happen, I don't know.
• Basically this N900 was really exciting device, which gave me and still does some very intuitive UI approaches.
  
• IM integration, native Jabber support for corporate security audited IM infra was 10+ for our business, cross platform usage of IM was breeze with this.
  

So I am juggling between iPhone, Nokia E7/N8/E72 and various Androids, making every night prayers for something like N900 to appear. I seriously checked out Aava's products and other phone hardware to support native Linux because all of this confusion in field. I believe I end up building my phone by myself.

Nokia could have scored with Meego devices, but they ended up to play with evil. How can they believe that we could pay 10k€ for microsoft msdn development stuff to get started, while others offers us open source approach. Think about it.

And yes, seriously I started to follow mr. Jääksi again. I really hope that he gets some air to breath in HP and is able to push something open enough for all of us. Please continue from what you left behind with N900 team.

So, now I am after a good phone at least with these features;

1. Open, Linux able operating system with decently supported and free SDK and with future proof vendor.
   
2. Standard Jabber IM integration (no, gtalk and microsoft communicator are not secure)
3. Keyboard (Like E7/N900, not like Desire Z
4. Wifi accesspoint functionality
5. Easy to connect (USB mass memory storage support, micro SD's etc)

Anyone?

Ubuntu 11.04

Colleague of mine entered in office, and noted my freshly installed Ubuntu 11.04. Linux guys have Christmas more often than others. I like new release, my Thinkpad EDGE and HP Mini, it just rocks. Main desktop is not yet upgraded, because phasing evolution makes it a bit more predictable. I found this new release suffering only this bug, which makes my window manager to freeze from time to time. I tweaked some settings and now it seems to work again. Something related to compiz and kernel. I hope upgrades brings good things for that.

But from unity I switched to classic gnome, not because unity was lacking but somehow I am more productive under familiar gnome. I believe that I go again with unity, by steps.

Dumpped Mac Air

After a lot of travelling, I find myself sitting in front of Ubuntu capable Thinkpad EDGE again. While Mac Air is wonderful travelling companion, it's just too small for serious computing, which does include SSH mounts and administration of various Linux developments.

I think I stick with Mac still on travels, but seriously computing along a way - I just need Linux. No other operating system is in that level.

iPad 2

25th of March, two hours after I landed from London, I found myself in line at Stockman. To acquire iPad 2. On that trip, among many others - I have found that tablet computing is a way to go. I have used iPad 1 for months, and this new one is definitely a move forward. Some how I found my calendar and emailing very easy to use with tablet device, compared to any phone I have owned. Including iphone4.

I ordered a month access to Helsingin Sanomat, local big news paper iPad version to find out have my earlier thoughts changed. Not much. Even there is good journalism available, stories in digital format feels like short, I have noted this before with other printed vs digital media stories. It remains to see, how frequent reader I develop myself.

Today I also read a news entry that Apple is going to be big in near future, bypassing IBM and others soon. I certainly can see that happening, while other manufactures are struckling with bad decision or with need to please everyone. Sometimes it just requires strong hand. Nokia is something along that same road, dying together with microsoft. Which is shame, I remember myself being employed by Nokia back in 80's and we got toilet paper on discount with company badge. Those were the days.