It's commonly accepted in the mainstream media that Microsoft and its smartphone partners have more or less caught up with Symbian with the release of Windows Mobile 5.0. Yet I've been putting together an extensive group test of 'multimedia smartphones' for PDA Essentials magazine in the UK (issue 46, out in January) and I was hugely surprised by how far ahead Nokia's new N series Symbian smartphones were.
Without wanting to prejudice you to buy (or not buy) PDAE and without wanting to step on Ewan's toes in terms of an upcoming dedicated preview of the Nokia N90, I couldn't resist sharing a few details and findings, if only to dispel the myth above.
The flagship of the Windows Mobile world is being represented in the test by the Orange M5000, you know, the one with the great open-and-twist display. It's also got a great keyboard, on a par with the Nokia 9500's, and a proper VGA display. Yet I found my 400 words for PDAE totally inadequate to describe all the things I was disappointed with. From buggy applications to having to reset it twice a day, from a very 'noisy' camera to poor quality video recording, from music output whose volume was just too fiddly to 'improvements' in ActiveSync that mean I have to fiddle with my firewall just to that the PDA can see the PC, I started out with high hopes and had most of them dashed.
M5000 video frame, taken at random - - - - - N70 frame, at random, in the same room, same light
(the N70's footage was smoother and faster, too, at 15 fps compared to 10fps)
In comparison, Nokia's N70 and N90 smartphones, although theoretically having similar multimedia specs, produced vastly better pictures under all light conditions, were able to record video that was smooth enough and clear enough to be watchable on a TV or PC monitor, and played music that I could actually hear above the traffic.
Windows Mobile 5.0 may be a huge step forward for their 'smartphone' devices (just keypad, no touch screen), which were looking very weak beforehand, but in my opinion it's still not ready for the prime time. Nokia gets criticism here and there for the idiosyncrasies and bugs in their own devices, but trust me, Nokia and Symbian are still a generation ahead of the competition.
(Hopefully Sony Ericsson can join the party with their impressively specced P990i!)
To read the whole of my 6 page group test (including also the SPV C600 and SDA II), you'll have to wait for PDAE 46. For more N series previews, stick around on AllAboutSymbian!
Steve Litchfield
3Lib and AAS