Nokia has had lots of PR nightmares in recent times – and I daresay that ALL of them have been self-inflicted. In this article, I want to focus on the subject of their continual pushing out of phones with outdated software.

By outdated software, I mean Symbian S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition. Is it that those versions of Symbian are non-functional? No; they are.

But they are outdated in the sense that something much better is already out there – SymbianNext (that’s my generic term for Symbian^3, Anna and Belle).

When most people complain of Symbian, they are mostly doing that from the standpoint of Symbian S60. Take a look at this recent complaint springing from my review of the Facinate app for Facebook on Symbian phones:

This is what i hate about nokia, so my E5 can not get this… Oh yes i paid 43,000 and i cant get a single decent facebook app, anytime i hear them better the new symbian while leaving the other ones outside makes me doubt if i would ever get a nokia device again. When did this phone come out that its nw dead, make no mistake it has a 600mhz process and 256 mb ram so am pretty sure it can run better apss…..

As a nokia fan i tell you that they abandon their phones like too early, remember that symbian carla will nt come to n8, e7,e6… E6 when did that come out that its called nt eligible.

Nokia is highly confused…… And this should def be my last with them i have had it. Ps i bought E5 january this year and by march it was already outdated……… Talk of trash

Note that a valid complaint has been made. But note how that valid complaint has been easilly mixed with invalid thoughts.

It is not true that Nokia abandons their phones early. Till today, Nokia is still supporting S60 3rd Edition and 5th Edition with upgrades.

Also, note that the app he is complaining of was not made by Nokia. An independent developer was responsible for that app – and chose to ignore 3rd Edition (and we can’t blame him for that; who wants to keep supporting old software when the new is here and much better?).

But here is the point – Nokia is responsible for this mess. So valid or invalid, Nokia continues to generate complaints from users. Read: public relations issues.

How is Nokia responsible?

I said earlier when Symbian^3 was launched that Nokia should simply stop rolling out phones with older versions of Symbian. That way, the issues of apps incompatibility and fragmentation can be put aside in the shortest possible time.

Also, everyone who went to the market for a Nokia would be getting the newest version of their Symbian OS. The benefits are all too clear. Whatever other business considerations informed continuing to push out older software, the demerits are grievous and costly in the open market.

But, No. We have a mishmash of 3rd Edition, 5th Edition and SymbianNext devices. Unfortunately, the average user cannot tell the difference. He buys a phone running 3-year old software, gets burnt using it and simply screams blue murder! Rightly so, too.

All the best apps are on the most up-to-date versions of Symbian. Devices running older firmware will get ignored one way or the other by developers. As long as Nokia keeps pushing those older firmware, users will keep screaming, whether or not all of the noise is valid.

Your comments and thoughts!

As part of my review of the Nokia E5 QWERTY candybar smartphone running Symbian S60 3rd Edition, I have prepared some screenshots for your convenience.

In this gallery of screenshots, you will catch a glimpse of the full editing QuickOffice suite and Nokia’s Chat application which supports multiple chat services. But that’s not all. There’s Facebook, Hi5, Friendster, MySpace, Twitter, Ovi Sync and YouTube, among other extras – making the E5 an excellent social networking tool.

If one must be straightforward, the E5 packs a wallop with a long list of built-in functionality. Those others will be examined in a subsequent review article.

For now, enjoy the following screenshots:

From Nokia E5 ScreenShots, posted by Yomi Adegboye on 8/28/2010 (12 items)

Generated by Facebook Photo Fetcher

It really has been a long time since I used Opera Mobile for anything, but I do remember that the browsing experience with version 9.5 on the Samsungs i780 and i900 was beautiful.

Perhaps that is why I am so unimpressed with what I saw of version 8.65 for Symbian when I tried it out yesterday. For the purpose of information, Opera Mobile 8.65 is the stable version available for most devices. The newer version on steroids, version 9.5, is presently available for only a small range of devices, specifically on the Windows Mobile platform (small wonder too, Pocket Explorer sucks big time!!).

Anyway, Opera Mobile 8.65 simply reminds me of the teething days of the mobile web. Virtually ALL formatting is lost when browsing websites on this browser – font and layout inclusive.

Here are a few screenshots:

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After the first browsing session, I shut down the application. On returning to play with it some more, it simply refused to launch. A re-installation did not help either. I remember this same thing happening when I tried out Opera Mobile 8.65 on another S60 device some time back. I am not sure what is behind this phenomenom. Anyone?

I just got my hands on the Nokia E75 slider QWERTY smartphone. The E75 runs on Symbian S60 3rd Edition OS and is being marketed by Nokia as a descendant of the Communicator dynasty (I’m not convinced yet).

Here are my first impressions:

• Very good hardware build; feels solid in the hand
• QWERTY keyboard is good; though quite different from the E90, last of the communicators
• Nokia has made efforts to touch up the interface, and it is beautiful in some places, but still relatively sluggish and of course comes nowhere close to what you find on the iPhone or an Android device
• Email interface is better
• Firmware update OTA is sweet; updated to the latest firmware in 3 minutes right on the phone
• The E75 auto-detects your SIM network, configures and uses the corresponding internet connection
• Good battery life

Those are my first impressions for now. I am playing around with customisation and will have more detailed reviews available ASAP. If you have questions about things you’d like for me to test out on the phone, post them below.

Due to be available towards the end of quarter three of this year, Nokia on Monday announced the successor to the highly popular E71 – the Nokia E72.

The Nokia E72 continues the design tradition of the E71 with a candy bar QWERTY keyboard. It also has essentially the same software elements albeit enhanced – s60 third edition feature pack 2. The new kid on the block builds on the success of its predecessor, while at the same time bringing a few new things to the table. The upgrade in my opinion is not in any way revolutionary, rather, it is an incremental one.

This latest E-series device comes equipped with a 5.0 megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash, an upgrade from the 3.2 megapixel camera on the E71.

Nokia has implemented an optical Navi key (track pad) in the centre of the D-pad of the device for a more intuitive and animated scrolling in the menu. While this is new for Nokia E-series, the technology is not new as this has been implemented by Samsung on a few of their devices.

One of the new things that the E72 brings to the table is somewhat of a surprise. There’s now a chat application pre-installed called Ovi Chat that is integrated into the contacts application. What it means is that from the contact menu you can chat on Yahoo and GoogleTalk. This is highly welcome as there will be no need to install a third party application to do chat.

Another surprise that the E72 springs on us is the inclusion of the N-series style image and video gallery. I am truly happy about this as I hope that it marks the end of the old and boring image gallery that E-series owners have been subjected to in the past.

Nokia messaging is on-board out of the box, with support for multiple e-mail accounts. The interesting part is that there is a lifetime license for Nokia messaging on the E72. There is also a life-time license for Ovi Chat.

Other upgrades include a digital compass embedded in the map application, QuickOffice editing suite is now up from the 4.3 version to 5.3 with support for Microsoft office 2007.

Is the E72 a true upgrade from the one year old and very successful E71? While I was hoping for the Symbian foundation OS, I am of the opinion that the E72 has come to take the shine from the E71.

Here’s a stunning theme for your s60 3rd edition smartphone from TehkSeven.

Download N86 (Solace)

The Nokia E71 and E63 are both business-centric smartphones from the stables of Nokia. They are both candy-bar, QWERTY-keyboard devices. They are both powered by Symbian OS 3rd Edition. At the core, they are one and the same device. I had already laid a basic foundation in my article on my first impressions of the E63. Simply put, the E63 is a cut-down version of the E71.

Here is a concise comparative review of the two devices.

Areas where the E71 trumps the E63

1. Camera: the E71 is equipped with a 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera, while the E63 comes with a meagre 2.0 megapixel fixed-focus camera. Naturally, the E71 takes better photos than its younger cousin. As if to spoil things further for the E63, the highly intuitive N-series-like camera interface implemented on the E71 was dropped in the E63, and in its place Nokia decided to take us back to the days of the Nokia E61i.

2. Connectivity: the E71 has full connectivity options: Bluetooth, Infrared, USB, GPS, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS (3G), HSDPA (3.5G). On the E63, infrared, GPS and HSDPA are both missing.

3. Audio Quality: the E71 beats the E63 hands down in this department. While both devices have their speaker grill in the same position at the top, the E71′s speaker is physically bigger and produces louder and better sound than the E63.

Areas where the E63 trumps the E71

1. Price: this is a very important win for the E63 as the price difference between the two phones is between N15, 000 and N20, 000. Honestly, this difference is much considering that the E63 is an E71 with a few compromises.

2. Typing: both devices have full QWERTY keyboard, but the letter buttons of the E63 are slightly bigger than on the E71 and I find them more comfortable to use. Also, some characters like ( ) can now be typed directly from the keypad, while you will have to open a character menu to type them on the E71.

3. Flash Light: this is a first for Nokia smartphones and a very welcomed one at that, especially for those of us in this part of the world. The LED flash which works in camera mode only on the E71, works both as a camera flash and also as flash light (outside the camera mode) on the E63.

So is there a clear winner between the two devices? I think each device will win depending on what individuals are looking for.

If you’re not one of those who care about owning a good looking mobile phone, you don’t care much about taking stunning photos with your phone, and certainly don’t need top-end entertainment features on your mobile device, the E63 is your baby.

If what you’re looking for is a robust, stable, functional and inexpensive device that gets the job done, then the E63 fits that bill perfectly.

The Nokia E63 is the more affordable cousin of the E71. I picked up a unit today and decided to present my first impressions of this budget smartphone.

Unboxing the device quickly revealed why the phone is relatively inexpensive. In order to make it affordable, several essentials that we have come to expect in the sales package of Nokia’s smartphones – especially their enterprise devices – are conspicuously missing.

Missing in Action

First on the list is the software CD usually included in the sales package of Nokia’s smartphones. Now this came as a shock to me. Because this was the last thing I expected would be thrown out of the sales package. In case you don’t already have Nokia PC suite installed on your PC and you are considering buying the E63, you might need to borrow from someone else who has a copy.

Secondly, the USB data cable is also missing. In 2009, this is unforgivable, but then what do you expect from a smartphone in that price bracket? Something definitely got to give. Sigh!

Everything about the E63 is geared towards cost reduction. Everything. The top grade material used for the E71 was abandoned for a cheaper plasticky material. The E63′s casing is all plastic.

Continuing this cheap theme, there’s no volume key and no dedicated camera key.

Okay. Okay. This is not supposed to be a full fledged review of the phone. That will come after I have had enough time to playing with it.

Watch this space for the full review and possibly a comparative review between it and the E71.