I used to use my nokia n81 8gb to listen music read books and play games 'n stuff like gba emulator and surfed everywhere in the web using built-in web browser and, in some cases, opera. It worked seamlessly, disregarding some little easily fixable bugs and tweaks like pencil button functionality for that media button. When bying a new phone, i expected the same experience, and even better, because the tech specs were better. Imagine how frustrated I was finding my beloved symbian os been awfully ported from non-touch devices. I will list the things that make my blood boil lower, hoping that you, nokia guys, will do something about them. And i'm not talking about ^3 and not about n95 or c6, i'm talking about the low-end - 5800, 5530 and so on. I have my nokia 5530 xm on the latest firmware available, v32.0.007 and I will mention flaws that were not corrected since I bought it a year ago.
- task manager: since the dark times of symbian 6.0, the best feature of it was true multi-tasking, and the interface of task manager was simple - just select an opened app and press (c) to close or kill it. But now, you must hold on the program icon to open submenu what says [open] and [exit]. Here starts the funny part - why do we even need this submenu? To switch to an app we can just tap on it, we don't want wasting our time holding on a while and then pixelhunting a small [open] button, especially, if we're on the go. Now, about the app closing. We must hold, then pixelhunt [exit] and after all that arsepain we get a popup question if we want to exit %appname%. Hell yes we want - We holded for a while on the icon and pressed the tiny exit button, it is impossible to perform this accidentally!
Suggested solution: get rid of all this submenu stuff and make it simple: short press switches to the app, long press kills the app. And if newfags will start to complain that they accidentally closed the app, tell them to RTFM.
-browser: Minimalism, please! As we are into touch now, screen space is essential. Opera did a great job with their touch interface and functionality. Screen space utilisation in a built-in browser is performed through the auto-fullscreen thing, that can be exited by pressing two-ways-pointed arrow in the right lower corner. There are three things that are awful about the browser, and that arrow thing is the first one. In fullscreen mode you must have fast access to back button and menu button, which contains less frequently usable things like refresh\stop button. No exit fullscreen buttons are needed. The second awful thing is what that arrow button brings you to. Theese five buttons that are ungodly rectangular and ungodly uncomfortable. And (imho) they seem just ugly to me. The third thing is the lack of user-controlled tabs.
Suggested solution: Long press is ignored - use it for submenu with options like [select text], [open in a new tab] (totally a ripoff from opera, but this is a great rational solution). Fullscreen mode should be default and the only one. It should contain two semi-transparent buttons: back/close and menu. Menu button must bring up that overlay window that is brought up by three-parallel-line button. it must contain adressbar, searchbar (the global search app sucks really hard), tab switcher, settings button (that shall contain the browser settings, obviously, and other options like [save page], [bookmark manager], [rss feed manager] etc.). I enclose my handdrawn picture of how it could look like. And a little remark about tab switcher. To close a tab, hold it in the tab switcher, to switch to another tab, just press on it. To open a new tab, hold the switcher button.
The browser itself is pretty decent with its flash lite and speed is rather good than bad, but it lacks the usable and comfortable interface.
-global options softkey: it’s all right about the ex-softkey itself, but there is not about what it brings to us. The option [show open apps] is unnecessary. I personally never used it. Maybe it is for multitasking promotion for average newfag - but Sire, RTFM! The annoying thing is that it even exists and is always first. And the selection. Since the same dark times of 6.0 select\cut\copy\paste functions were realised through the pencil button, that was ignored on latest symbian 9.2 and 9.3 devices, but you still could use theese functions by binding the pencil button on another unused button, like light camera press or unnecessary media button. But now we are facing a problem - even if selection is now easier, cut\copy\paste functions are not global and are usable only where available in the options menu or where they pop up after selection. But if nokia will make swype a default keyboard - it will bring theese options everywhere, where keyboard is being popped up. It solves the problem for text editing, and even for cross-app copypasting.
-multiple entries selection: besides the fact that selection of text is better by touch, multiple entry selection, like contacts or messages or files in a file browser, cannot be selected so easily due to lack of the same pencil button. You need to stop the selection cursor on it, than press options, scroll until [mark\unmark], select it, then select [mark] or [mark all] in an appeared submenu. That complicated process delivers lots of pain to 5th point of user’s body while organising contacts or deleting tonns of smses from your ex, that are mixed up with vital business info that cannot be deleted by selecting all sms.
Suggested solution: Heil, long press! Use it to select one entry. Let the [select all] option stay in menu.
-menu,homescreen&music player: I just love organising my apps in the right dir and in the right order. I like how it’s realised now, through [options]->[organise]. Just think that it could be realised simpler through my beloved long press. I think i heard that on n97 you can just drag’n’drop icons in menu, but the organise thing is much better, cause you can uninstall app right from the menu. Or you could add a long press submenu of options to every menu icon containing something like [open], [open minimised] and [delete] for apps and renaming options for folders. that would be very nice.
And homescreen. Contacts carousel sucks. It is inresponsive, slow and laggy. It behaves like it wasn’t made for you, but you were made for it. Various homescreens would be appreciated. And also support for widgets and landscape. You made it for ^3 and c6. 5800 and others feel insulted. Cooked Fw can resolve it - c6’s was already ported to 5800. But we want it oficially, goddamnit. Deliver it to us through beta labs, even if it will be laggy, even with limited options. BUT WE WANT IT GODDAMNIT! Don’t make us pay another fortune for a new ^3 phone just because we bought a phone with firmware, that has no such feature, it’s just unfair.
About music player: Music quality is great. Just don’t like the interface. The same 5 ugly buttons are really uncomfortable to use, especially when they accidentally switch to landscape. they are too small and in the wrong place - it is uncomfortable to use next\prev song buttons on the go. Also, the player doesn’t like massive files. It is ungodly slow while selecting the playback position manually in long tracks. For example, last time i decided to listen a 2h-long dubstep mixtape from its middle, the player seeked this position approximately 40 sec. Also, searching a little track by scrolling a list of over 2k entries is not so comfortable, even with first letter appearing aside. A search option would be really appreciated.
I would be really glad if my ideas will be useful to you, Nokia guys, because I love symbian os, and all theese lags in compilation really frustrated me and hurted my feelings. I hope that nokia will correct symbian flaws and it will gain back its fame, that was taken away by android and ios devices.
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