After ditching the notion that a perfect mobile phone can exist and lugging around a slew of devices, can the new N97 finally convince guest writer Justin Berkovi that the perfect phone DOES exist? In light of the Palm ‘Pre’ and new iPhone 3GS how does the N97, in his opinion, match up?

History in the making

It’s funny when you look back at mobile phone history and remember the excitement that every ‘new’ or ‘groundbreaking’ mobile device bought to the table. Handsets that spring to mind – the ‘Matrix’ phone (Nokia 7110 – First mobile with WAP browser and in 1999?!!), the small Sony Ericsson T68i with its colour screen, GPRS and email… and more recently the all singing all dancing N95 8GB and related spin offs such as the N85, N96 and so on… not to mention, of course, Apple’s industry shocking iPhone.

It is incredible what a mobile phone can do nowadays – shoot HD video, upload pictures instantly to online photo albums in one click, tagging them with your location, read full HTML email, Skype, instant messaging… the list is almost endless and you start to realise that phones are replicating or even taking over from computers or everyday tasks. We once used hard-wired phones at home or on the street (payphones, remember them?) but now use our mobiles, even when not ‘mobile’. Cast your eyes over your email inbox – how many mails have ‘sent with my iPhone’ or Blackberry on them? IM, Twitter… how many status updates are now sent using mobile devices?

So, with this mashup of awesome functionality, has one device got it made? Being a sucker for new technologies, and also an early adopter, I often champion the ‘new’ and then realise a few weeks down the line that some tiny caveat has stopped me shouting on rooftops about how brilliant it is. And as one device adds a particular feature then this becomes a must have on other devices. Are we forever going in circles in search of the perfect mobile?

I thought the Nokia N95 8GB was pretty close until I realised that tiny things began to bug me. When viewing messages I wanted to see a large list of emails but the screen, and the fact that on this device Nokia didn’t allow the ‘1 line view’ in the messaging app, meant that I could see only 5 email headers at a time. Pah. I then found that however much I championed my blazingly fast T9 fingers, typing an email to a client was a little laborious. I also loved the camera but, whilst fine at screen resolution on sites such as Flickr, when it came to printing out pictures and framing them I thought something was missing.

So how DO you choose the best smartphone if none of them will do everything well? One word – priority. Sit down and write out on a list the top five things you use your phone for and the main use of the phone outside of calling. It could be the camera – you take your mobile everywhere and want the best camera possible. Right now that is possibly a Samsung such as the i8910 HD and you’ll also get HD video! Or maybe it’s email? If so then you’ll want a decent qwerty keyboard with auto correct – The E71/E72/E63 is one of the best for email especially when using SEVEN – the free Beta Software that pushes mails to your phone. Or maybe you want HTML email and a snazzy UI along with seamless integration with your iTunes music library – an iPhone?

By prioritising my feature list I realised that email was the main feature I used on a mobile so I switched to the Nokia E71 (because I can’t stand the Blackberry OS), I bought an iPod Touch (for music and video and other ‘apps’) and the superb Panasonic LX3 point and shoot camera (for decent photos – the E71 has a dreadful camera) as well as a fancy 'man bag' to carry all of this around. Months later I’m fairly happy with my bag of tricks but recently the ‘one device does all’ phenomenon has started to tempt me again. Things have changed a lot since the Nokia N95 – surely one of these new phones will be able to do everything I need? I can’t always take all my gadgets with me and there are times when I really do miss having a useable camera on a mobile – look at this dreadful example of how poor the E71’s camera is:

I stood here watching the most beautiful dusk scene but the E71’s camera can never capture the moment as a camera should.

And then compare it with a shot taken from my small Panasonic LX3:

So whilst the E71 is brilliant for messaging and sports a lovely form factor and decent Qwerty keyboard, it’s multimedia features are fairly poor – in other words quite a compromise.

Trusty E71 but lacking decent multimedia features 

A hot mobile summer

This summer might be overcast and topping out at 20 degrees but for the world of mobiles it’s blisteringly hot. This week has seen the launch of the new iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre and the much hyped Nokia N97 (In USA, UK on 19^th June).

Which of these devices is worth getting and which can best replace my bag of gadgets, if at all? In order to do so I need a cracking camera, a brilliant business phone for emails and texts and a media powerhouse that can store all my data.

First up – the iPhone 3GS. Firstly, should I get one? And secondly, if you already own an iPhone is it worth the upgrade? Like many I was not surprised by Apple’s lacklustre update to the iPhone. If you check the UK Apple Store website, the comparison table makes for interesting viewing between the outgoing model and the new ‘improved’ version. There’s not a massive difference, especially when you consider than many of the ‘new’ features have been available on ‘jailbroken’ iPhones for a while now. In addition to this, O2 customers in the UK are being penalised – there’s no upgrade path and existing users will have to either wait until their long contracts come to an end or simply take out a new line to get the new iPhone. Worse, tethering is not ‘free’ and carries a penalty that costs more than an equivalent O2 broadband dongle! There’s no other way to put it – it’s a raw deal.

I can’t say I wasn’t disappointed with Apple’s ‘new’ iPhone. Even the case is the same! At least a matt finish would have been welcome. The iPhone 3GS is apparently superfast and sports some amazing software and an App store that is just brilliantly executed. Nokia’s OVI store is much better than the ‘Download!’ app of old but just cannot compete with Apple’s offering here. In terms of software execution, I think the iPhone is pretty much the reigning king – in use it appears light years ahead of anything else, at least in terms of the user interface. However, in virtually all other areas the iPhone is playing catch up.

So features such as video, MMS, turn by turn directions and so on have all been implemented in mobiles for quite a while now. I’ve been using a friend’s iPhone for ages and own the latest iPod touch, which I find pretty slick but frustrating to type on. This is the clinch for me and many other users in that because Apple are so insistent on ‘touch’ being the modus operandi of the iPhone they limit buttons/keys deliberately. Using the iPhone with one hand is almost impossible hence you’ll find many iPhone users having to stop in the street and complete their text message (Oh, and now luckily maybe an ‘MMS’!).

I was hoping for something a bit more radical. Whilst the new iPhone 3GS software is brilliant (mainly because Apple have made sure everything is simple to operate and actually ‘works’ without too much fuss) I still find it lacking the following: One stop upload to Flickr, turn by turn directions from the get go (why should I have to buy a TomTom utility?), a really decent camera, a decent mode of text entry, including alphanumeric T9 not to mention the ability to run whatever app I choose in the background.

Next up is Palm’s PRE. I’m fond of Palm as a company and I did own one of their Palm Pilots AND a Sony Clie (running the Palm OS) years ago. I can’t believe it has taken them so long to get back into the industry but they are doing so with a unique and very interesting device, the ‘Pre’. It offers much better multitasking than the iPhone and sports a hardware keyboard as well as a slick OS with some excellent notification processes and usability. But whilst I’ve a soft spot for Palm, I’m just not sure… I’m scared of the ‘unknown’ and will software developers flock to it like they have done with Apple’s iPhone? Only time will tell.

Of all the manufacturers, though, it is Nokia that is currently stealing the limelight with their much-hyped N97. Is this finally the ultimate Nokia or indeed the ultimate smartphone? On paper it seems possible and the past few weeks have seen bloggers and phone sites alike go mad for any photos or snippets of info on this exciting launch. It seems that Nokia have all bases covered with the N97 and if you write down your list of mobile feature priorities it surely has them all. A hardware keyboard for messaging, a brilliant multimedia feature set including a decent camera, hi-res screen, huge storage for pics, videos and other data, a great form factor and intelligent home screen using widgets to implement notifications and social media… I could go on and on.

I read initial reviews of the N97 and my heart did sink a little – the keyboard came in for criticism and there were some odd software issues that confused me and I wondered if it was going to suffer the same fate as the original N95, which crashed often and had a terrible battery life. I must mention that prior to me viewing the N97 I’d spent some time with Orange’s i8910 HD but had not been hugely impressed. The spec is decent but the UI design was uninspired and the physical size of the i8910 HD isn’t comfortable – I question cnet’s opinion that the icons are great, I found the whole design of the UI on the Samsung clunky and not cohesive at all.

Itching to get my hands on an N97, I thought I’d have to wait until the 19^th July (Official UK launch date). However, I was lucky enough to spend around an hour with the N97 at Nokia’s flagship London store today – thanks to Robin the store manager and his colleagues for being so accommodating. Was I holding the perfect smartphone?

I decided to go for the jugular and immediately slid open the keyboard but, contrary to my preconceptions, it worked very well. It’s worth noting that the hardware qwerty keyboard DOES sport predictive word completion, as on the E71. This won me over and let me then explore the other aspects of the N97. I won’t go into detail here as the guys here on All About Symbian are doing a great job of that, but does the N97 deserve the title of the world’s best smartphone? In a word, yes. The hardcore amongst us will wonder where the wideangle top spec camera is, where the HD video function got to and why the build quality doesn’t surpass that of the Nokia E71 not to mention the lack of free RAM. However, for the masses out there the Nokia N97 finally offers a unique and appealing rival to the iPhone – it sports a feature set that equals or betters the iPhone in many areas and the inclusion of social media widgets will make the N97 an absolute killer product for those addicted to Facebook and the like.

It’s worth mentioning that the groundswell of hype on the N97 is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in Nokia’s history. Times have moved on so much since the launch of the N95 - do a search on Twitter under ‘nokia n97’ and you’ll find thousands of people chomping at the bit for this phone. This can only bode well for Nokia. I posted some pictures of the N97 on my Flickr and Facebook pages and was amused to see people I’d never considered ‘tech heads’ comment on my posting – they want one! Apple’s iPhone has brought the notion of the smartphone to the masses and it seems that this has had a knock on effect here with the mass market believing that Nokia is about to deliver an iPhone killer. Indeed, as I spend time with the N97 in the Nokia Store there was a steady trickle of people (of all ages, which I think is worth mentinoing) wanting to have a look at the device.

So have I found my perfect smartphone? If Nokia’s Car Menu software becomes available on the N97 and if SEVEN’s push email service works then yes, I’m getting one. Because technology is always one step ahead of product delivery you can’t expect the N97 to be at the cutting edge – but it does a great job of everything you could possibly want on a mobile right now.

For the future: what does intrigue me though is what now for the Eseries? Surely they’ll have to adopt the touch version of S60? But then what could surpass the N97 from a business point of view? Possibly slicker notifications? Business widgets? Wider qwerty keyboard with no d-pad? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime my deposit is paid and I hope, next Friday, that they don’t run out of handsets! 

Justin Berkovi, Predicaments Ltd, and All About Symbian 15th June 2009