Experience tells me that - "When you put all in one, you tend to compromise on all things". I believe this and advocate this. What I find with this N73ME - a great effort to put all in one. And I must agree that it a brave effort again (from days of 3230, where Nokia made another effort to put everything in one package and sort of failed).
Firmware version- V 3.0705.1.0.31. Again I am sure that people who used to S60 phones will enjoy another S60 phone when they upgrade. For the people who want to upgrade from Nokia 66XX series - Well, N73 comes with new Symbian version 3.
Following are the pros and cons related to this OS version-
Pros - Faster compared to old S60 V2 (worth upgrading your old S60)
Cons – Kiss goodbye to all those .SIS files (apps) which you have collected over the years and flaunted!. Those apps won’t work with new platform.
Agonizingly even the free apps for N73 may require certificate signing to work!. What a pain.
It took me a day to get all the apps I need for my purpose. As the time progresses we would indeed get more apps to V3. So, upgrade from 66XX to Nseries!, so that you get latest OS- and its fast.
Phone functionality –
Voice quality looks smoothened. Excellent reception and call quality. Typical S60 phone functionality, a unique experience (either you like S60 or hate it).
*Hardware look and feel –
*Pros –
Nice to hold. Excellent bright display (320x240). Second to none. Good in style, deserves second look. Can use normal headphones through adapter.Excellent and loud surround speaker phones.
Cons –
Feels plastic and creeks. But back case gives rubberized feel.
Poor headphone to adapter connection (already a loose contact!, have to go to service centre). Cancel button of old S60 is moved down and replaced by music button. So, while text deleting, we have to move thumb to the end of the phone to reach C button. This may cause us to loose the grip on the phone. No USB charging yet!.
One small flashing blue LED. I can turn this off, but turning this off will put the phone out of standby thus consuming more battery – whatta logic!!!
This blue flash is annoying while trying to get some sleep and I have keep the phone belly down to get rid of this.
*Why blue LED?-
*This is to save battery. You may ask, how blinking a LED will save power?. Here is my version of explanation. By default, all advanced computing devices are not stable. Infact, a fighter pilot would argue that the instability of the fighter plane is needed for high maneuverability.
The N73 goes to standby and when it does it- the whole display becomes blank. There is no way for user to know whether phone is dead or alive. So, the blue LED tells you that the phone is alive.
I have a auggestion here - the Nokia could have made the LED much more smaller and less brighter, so that it could save more battery. I agree that running this LED takes less power compared to running LCD screen with screensaver.
*Software and usability –
*Calendar, contacts and PIM functions are bit enhanced compared to old S60, now with more fields!. Active desktop Icons- a good concept and also shows running music file.
*Why smart phone? -
*Main points to get a smart phone are - esay contact management, sync notes, schedules, ability to view notes- word/pdf docs and quick browsing/emailing.
One thing I liked here was the richness of contact fields. Following are the new fields you can add for contacts -
internet tel (now people use this more!)
internet tel home/buss.
SIP/FAX(home/buss.)
web(home/buss.)
Bday
Note
*Multimedia
*Built in Music player with 5 band equalizer (customizable) with visualization. I am planning to develop some more visualization.
Music through Nokia headphone – Good (3 out of 5), have to set stereo widening on for some files though!.Music through dedicated your fav. Head phone – just about V.Good (3.5 out of 5). See my audio quality test section below. I am yet to finish this.
Camera – Good in daylight, poor in low light. Camera is bit slow on image capture. Indoor low light photos are poor. It needs daylight to take good pics.
Video – CIF format but only 15fps (so, not good if you capture bit fast moving objects).
*Audio quality test –
*I will do an objective test on this. When I have time (I need special audio instrument for this).
Well, the audio preliminary test -
As I mentioned, the audio quality is "listenable". If someone want to give their PMP (portable media player) a skip because they have N73, this won't work. Again as I mentioned this phone is another all in one effort by Nokia and they failed in audio support.
Preloaded songs with SD card:
Oh, gosh! Nokia thinks that the people using these phones are crypt experts or what!.
The phone comes with about 100 pre loaded songs under "legends of India" folder. All the songs are in AAc format. If you play them, it says "no activation key found...". All these songs are encrypted.
You have to call the customer care and then they will send the key to decrypt these songs through SMS. Even then some songs didn't play. Caution - you will receive keys as individual SMS - so ready to receive 100 SMS! (I turned phone to silent after talking to the customer service rep.).
Now, all the above songs are free!, but don't prematurely celebrate!, why?.
ans: The quality of all these AAC songs are very ordinary. Probably all are encoded in low bit rate.
I still think, for the price we pay - Nokia has to improve its audio quality. This is not justifiable.
However, I am getting better quality for my MP3s encoded in 192kbps/44Khz or more.
*Battery life –
*New series of battery finally. I am getting 2.5 days with following – 4 hrs of music, 30 mins camera and 45 mins talking.I shall put more data later. I rate battery life to be V.good.
Update : Now, with moderate use I am able to push the phone upto 3 days.
I think, turning 3G off may save some battery, but haven't tried it yet.
*Glitches –
*S60 phones are always great with one caveat – software malfunctions and N73 has it too, though tolerable.
1.) Out of memory indication while zooming even if I have 10MB RAM free.
2.) Just phone itself takes 33MB out of 44 MB RAM.
I can understand the pressure on engineers to release the product on time even when there are some annoying bugs. Hope next firmware will sort this out.
More note on memory -
Well, If I turn off and turn on the phone- I see that about 18MB RAM is free!!. Over time after using for a day, the memory comes down to only 9 MB free memory (with all apps closed). This shows that there is lot of memory leaks (programmers forgot? to clear memory when the app was closed). This explains why phone cribs if I zoom the stored pics.
If you need a very good phone (top call quality, with style, good battery and super display), a working camera, listenable music output which won't make you to run to your PMP (personal media player), then N73ME should be at the helm of your choices!.
Again remember "when you put all in one, you tend to compromise on all".
