Recently bought a Nokia N80 from Vodafone Portugal, at 199€. Here’s a quick review based on my experience so far:
The Good
- Excellent LCD. At 352×416 resolution the pixels are so tiny that are barely noticed.
- WiFi support. The browser that comes with the new firmware does a very good job rendering and navigating desktop-oriented pages on such a small screen.
- Battery life. There is much rant on the Internet about this device having an extremely small battery duration. This is not true (or at least in recent firmwares). I suspect most people carries it around with WiFi surveying turned on, or with 3G reception in areas that don’t have 3G (like USA). I charged it fully in the day I bought, and the battery lasted for more than 48h. I listened to MP3s, surfed the net with WiFi for more than 2h (browser, messenger…) used bluetooth for Python console, established calls, used TomTom and a bluetooth GPS; everything one can do with a new gadget. I personally believe that 48h under this kind of use is *very* good.
The Bad
- Because some sites try to apply mobile CSSs, the browser cannot be used to it’s full potential. This must be related somehow to the user-agent. Maybe an option to specify which user-agent the browser should send would do the trick.
- User interface is slow. Not critically slow, but slow enough for beginners to make the same action multiple times thinking the device didn’t respond.
- I don’t like the navigation pad. While I believe to be a matter of adaptation, pressing the ‘middle’ button is so odd that I sometimes press the ‘left’ key (I’m right-handed; probably left-handed would press the ‘right’ key).
The Ugly
- Whenever the device needs to connect to the Internet, it asks if you want to make a connection, but doesn’t ask the user WHICH connection it should use. Sometimes, even after establishing a WiFi connection, it attempts to connect with UMTS. For example, when clicking a link sent by SMS.
- With such a big resolution, there should be more space left in the screen to show more things. Still, everything is scaled and there is no option to work around this. Why can I only see 3 messages (SMS) in the list at a time? Same goes for every PIM application. There is too much screen simply wasted… While I understand that not everyone have good eyes to see small fonts, can’t imagine why this can’t be customized.
- Speaking of PIM, I believe it is time to develop a decent built-in calendar (syncronization with iCal wouldn’t be bad either). I’m already tired of the pre-established business-oriented hardcoded categories. I want customized icons, I want customized lists, I want customized categories, I want filters, I want a search function (btw, a GLOBAL Search wouldn’t be bad either).
