Exodus

Exodus: Alright. Movement of Jah people! Oh-oh-oh, yea-eah!....

When Nokia launched their latest version of the Internet browser it looked very promising, having used it extensively on my E61 I have found that that demonstration put lipstick on a usability pig.

My friend Ian Wood has been a long time advocate of the Opera browser. I had previously tried to use it on a Nokia 6111 with no success but gave it a second chance whilst at home in Liverpool since my web withdrawl symptoms were that acute.

Unlike the first time with the 6111, both application packages installed with no hassle at all. The application was easy to configure to get on the web.

So far I have found that pages get rendered much faster and more faithfully than the Nokia browser. The picture above shows how Opera rendered the top of this blog on my E61.

More information here on Opera Mini.

Major Malfunction

I got tired of my Palm playing up decided to move away from the platform as their quality control has gone out the window. I picked up a Nokia E61. Nokia have crafted together a nice looking no-nonsense Treo competitor and its priced competitively as well from what I see on the interweb.

In terms of product design Nokia have made a damn sexy piece of kit, most of the shell is metal (I am guessing aluminum or an alloy), with a nice big screen and the nicest responding keys that I have felt on a handheld device.

Where things start to go wrong is the software. The Nokia E61 cannot take much more than 1,000 contacts - that's right its a business phone and yet when I synched over 5,000 contacts into it I started to get memory full messages.

I spoke to Nokia support and they claim that its a firmware issue and they are working on writing an update but they don't know when it will be fixed. . In order to get the update I will need to have my phone reflashed at a Nokia Service Point.

I know its unbelievable, so I will run this past you again: the Nokia E61 has a known fault that will directly affect business users because it will not hold as many contacts as a chavtastic Palm Zire PDA. It has sailed into production and they are only now thinking about fixing it.

And in order to further inconvenience their long-suffering customer base the firmware update when it becomes available can only be installed at a Nokia Service Point, leaving the customer without their phone. Nice, this makes the device about as much use as a liberal arts intern in a PR agency.