This seems to me the most appropriate place to comment on the 9500, as I can't see a way to give feedback to Nokia directly. Sorry if it's a biggie, but I've been thinking about it for a while.
I recently had my 9110 stolen, so I decided to 'upgrade' the replacement to the 9500.
In most respects the 9500 is a far superior device, thanks to the many extra technologies employed (Bluetooth, Wi-fi and GPRS, to name the most useful ones). Also, the way things work are often improved, e.g. the calendar function and in particular event repetition is much more flexible and thus useful.
However, it saddens me to notice how the 9500 has taken some steps backward compared to the humble 9110. Namely :
- keyboard shortcuts vary greatly between applications, making them far harder to remember and consequently almost useless.*
- there is no longer support for such tremendously convenient keyboard shortcuts as {Chr}-{arrow} allowing movement as page up/down, or to beginning or end of line. This is particularly frustrating when trying to navigate through long lists like the communication log or contact list.
- nor is {Ctrl}-'backspace' supported, another very useful shortcut to delete whole words at a time.
- there are no square brackets (i.e. '[' and ']' ) on the keyboard nor within the 'Chr' functionality - at least not in the Italian version; a serious omission in my view.
- when preparing messages for sending, but off-line (phone off, or out of network coverage), on the 9110 the messages would go into the outbox and wait for when a connection was available - i.e. the communicator was 'aware' of the phone component's status. On the 9500, there is no awareness, the communicator blindly fires messages in the outbox at the phone regardless of whether connected to the network or not, and after a few failed attempts it gives up completely. To my mind this is a serious retrograde step.
- when writing/editing anything that goes beyond one screen (documents, faxes et c.), the on-screen position of the caret often does not reflect the real position in the text. The result is that inputs/deletions can take place on the wrong line in the real text, even though all looks fine on the display. When a screen refresh is forced, you get to see the real text again and that the input/deletion has occurred on the wrong line. Incredible, but true. The problem can be avoided by scrolling up and down the text a lot after every bit of editing, in order to force a screen refresh, but this is obviously inefficient.
*: these problems are to me a result of having separate teams developing different applications, therefore the fault lies with lack of control and direction by management.
One suggestion for future improvement that should be considered, is allowing 2 SIM cards to be placed in the device. Many people travel most often between just two countries and of course it makes sense to change the SIM card over for each country. This procedure has always been an annoyance as the battery has to be removed. It would be far better to be able to select the SIM card in use, through software control. Such a feature would also be attractive to people living in countries with poor network coverage, in which case having 2 SIMs of the same country would allow easy switching to whichever SIM has network coverage, maybe even automatically.
This is a heartfelt wish for improvement of the communicator, WITHOUT already useful features being lost by the wayside. If you gain some while you lose some, you're not really moving forwards, only sideways.
The communicator has always been superior to devices such as PDAs with entirely pen-operated software-only keyboards. I have won over at least two people to adopting the communicator, instead of PDAs.
However, a close friend of mine and devoted communicator fan, has recently found favour with a new PDA which includes a proper keyboard, so it's the best of both worlds : a concealed, proper keyboard revealed by lifting the cover, and a large screen cover which can be twisted to be on the 'inside' or the 'outside' - if that makes sense! There are also a number of features of this PDA which the communicator lacks, but could presumably have, which might make more people ditch their communicators.
I'm sure it's hard to lead all the time. All I can say is : keep cramming in features - but don't forget your roots! Existing features should be ADDED TO, NOT SUBSTITUTED.
I get the impression Nokia are taking notes from Microsoft and its maxim of style over substance, wow-factor over reliability. In the long run, you risk losing a hard-earned reputation for quality, something very hard to gain again.
Best regards and good luck
Ulric Schwela
EDIT: removed contat details
Message Edited by karim on 14-Jul-2006
11:15 AM
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