Gamaze

We all know Nokia, it is the leading mobile phone brand and is heavily pushing to stay there. Unfortunately, the huge corporation is seriously struggling with keeping up with the user experience in the smart phone area and competition from Apple, HTC, and now Palm with its new WebOS. They are all a few steps ahead currently. As a previously devoted Nokia user I’ve collected a few simple ways to improve the Nokia S60 user experience to a more acceptable level. I’ve been testing these out on the Nokia E71 and partly on the new N97 as well.

Anyway, the top 5 top 6 list below is a current snapshot of my best findings. If you have found any other great tweaks and application suggestions I’m more than happy to try them out and update this post accordingly.

1) Web browsing: Install Skyfire Mobile Browser

Looking way back, Nokia has really improved the browsing experience for mobile phones with the Webkit based S60 browser. But that was before the Apple entered the mobile phone market and not much has happened with the Nokia S60 Web browser from a consumer perspective in the last 3 years. Currently, compared to the iPhone or Android Web experience, Nokia’s browser (even on the N97) feels like using a WAP browser from the 1990’s. The easiest way to improve the experience is to install Skyfire, a free web browser that makes the most out of the Symbian S60 Web experience and feels really great to use. Unfortunately, I’ve not found a way to make Skyfire the default browser in S60 after installation so clicking links in messages will still open the Nokia Web browser.

2) Navigation: Install Nokia Maps 3.0 and complement with Google Maps

Nokia Maps 3.0 is a huge improvement to previous versions. The user experience is actually very good when it works – with emphasis on when. After using this is several countries across Europe and the US I have two serious complaints that has made me lean towards Google Maps for S60:

• The search functions Nokia Maps is very weak. I have serious trouble finding simple street names or POIs even in online mode. I would say that 30% of the tries I’m not able to find my destination address in the the Nokia Maps search. It is really necessary to install Google Maps as well in order to be able to find your way to the destination, the location search is just excellent compared to Nokia Maps.
• Beware if you are abroad and using Nokia Maps 3.0. Even with all the maps installed locally on the phone and network assisted positioning off the application tries to initiate a data connection when starting up or loosing the GPS connections (e.g. Italy and France are crowded with highway tunnels). For me this resulted in a €1 data roaming charge each time the phone tried to make a connection, regardless if data was transferred or not. Luckily, I realized this already after a couple of days when driving around the French RIviera. And was able to limit the unintentional roaming charges from Nokia Maps to €30 something – that still equals hidden charges of about €500 a month for daily usage.

As a summary, If you want to avoid uncontrolled, high data roaming charges and do not really need turn based and voice assisted navigation, switch to use Google Maps on your Nokia.

3) Email: Replace the ancient Nokia Email client with Nokia Messaging

Email is one of the most important features in a smart phone – still Nokia seems to have forgotten this. Even on the E71 business oriented phone the email client feels like its from another decade (and it most likely is . Main issues for me is the lack of support for HTML based mail and the wallpaper background instead of “industry standard white” when reading emails.

Nokia has its new consumer email approach in the oven, called Nokia Messaging that provides a lot of improvements to the email experience. It is not perfect but it will do what it is supposed to. You will need to sign up for an account and configure your email accounts on the Nokia Messaging Website before you get access on you mobile. still I have not yet figured out why this email service account is completely separate from your Nokia or Ovi email account.

4) Automatic Switching Between Wifi and 3G/EDGE/GPRS for All Applications: Birdstep SmartConnect

It is amazing how complicated Nokia has managed to make the whole Wifi and 3G connectivity concept in their S60 phones. Any other smartphone on the market there automatically switches between known Wifi hotspots and 3G, but Nokia decided that no one really want to use the Wifi feature and just in case each application has their own access point settings so configuring options is multiplied by the number of networked applications. Luckily, Birdstep has kindly put an end to this with their SmartConnect application. After installation the app lets you configure an access point that you can add all knows hotspots and cellular network access points in prioritized order. It then handles the switching between them and hides the complexity from the user completely – simple and very needed. Just make sure you configure your networked apps to use the new SmartConnect access point. 

5) Mobile PC Internet Connectivity: JoikuSpot

Nokia provides its PC Suite or Ovi Suite for PC connectivity. It is great for phone maintenance, software updates etc. If you need to connect your laptop to the Internet over the mobile network, I feel the PC Suite software is complicated and the connection speed is crippled by using Bluetooth (I hate to use the separate cable). Fortunately, this can all be easily solved by installing JoikuSpot, free software that makes your phone a Wifi hotspot. JoikuSpot is a great piece software that takes away the need for a separate 3G USB dongle or data subscription. There are two versions available, the free Light version that allows you to freely surf the Web and the Premium edition that also allows using email protocols and encrypted connections. Just make sure you have a flat rate mobile data subscription and don’t use this abroad if you have a sensitive wallet.

6) Internet Communication and Social Networking: Fring

Skype is now available for Nokia S60 phones. I tried it out and realized that it will always call a local number to initiate the calls, even to other Skype clients. This is not how I expected it to work. There are also other service providers providing VoIP calls for Nokia, but Fring is clearly the winner here. Fring supports the most popular services such as Skype, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, This works seamlessly over a Wifi network and while travelling I often use SkypeOut to make cheap phone calls and avoid outrageous roaming costs. Additionally, Fring integrates into social network services like Facebook, Twitter, Orkut and more. It also has one of the best automatic roaming between known Wifi networks and the cellular network that I have seen on a Nokia phone and runs well as a background applications.

Bonus tweak: Appearance: Install the Prestige (Solace) Theme

I have no clue who made the decision to make the default theme on E71 look like something from the 1970s. If it was intended to be a “retro look” theme it was a complete failure. My first impression of the phone was serisouly degraded by the graphical appearance of the screens.Fortunately, there is a huge community building great themes for S60 phones but scanning through all of them is a never ending story. I spent some time trying to find a modern and nice looking theme without compromising on user experience. Of course, these are a matter of personal taste but I suggest you have a go at the great looking Prestige (Solace) from Tehkseven (the version with the Ovi icons look better to me as the theme matches the familiar Nokia experience in the Web and on the PC as well). For those of you who are exposed to a vast amount of bright sunlight there is Prestige Light (Solace) version available for better screen readability in direct sunlight.

With these quick changes I’m still good with my 1 year old Nokia E71 until my new Android based HTC Hero arrives. I’m eager to see how the user experience of that matches the one of Nokia N97 and the iPhone OS 3.0, but based on the preview videos beating the competition seems like a walk in the park for HTC’s tweaked Android Cupcake smart phone.

Mattias Digital media, Mobile application, email, media, navigation, Nokia, S60, smart phone, software, user experience, web browser