I received a Nokia Asound on loan that I’ve used on and off over the last few weeks, in order to bring my friends a review. The phone runs on the T-Mobile network in the US, and this was the first time I’ve tried T-Mobile in a very long time. Nokia provided a pre-paid SIM for the trial (worth about $30 for disclosure purposes, though if I used $3 worth of calls it was a lot). The phone was returned after the trial.
Initial impression
This is a smallish phone – smaller than an iPhone 3G and tiny compared to my DroidX. It feels pretty solid. The display is very clear, bright and has good color.
Setup was a bit of a challenge, as was almost anything I needed to do in the software – the Nokia Symbian OS feels unnatural to me. I admit I still try to figure out what some things do in Android and where certain settings are. But the Symbian controls are a bit buried in the menus. For someone used to a feature phone and not a Blackberry, IPhone or Android, a lot of this would be irrelevant. I’m a techie user and I like to be able to get at the controls, and that wasn’t as straighforward.
As always, I’ll tell you the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
The Good
As I mentioned, this is a solid phone with good display. The call quality was very good. I tried calls in NYC, in the suburbs, and in areas of Boca Raton, Florida. I never had trouble getting a signal and I didn’t drop any calls which was better than I expected. I also had pretty good data coverage everywhere. I was careful with the data since the pre-paid card only had 30MB (Hey T-Mobile – $30 for 1500 Talk and Text is great, but 30MB of data? Please.)
I was able to connect one Gmail account with it’s contacts and calendar without too much hassle. The calendar and contacts took a while to come in – but once they did, they were pretty up to date. The phone only allows one “Exchange” type account so I couldn’t get other calendars or contacts from multiple accounts like Android allows.
I’m glad that in this phone they seem to have solved the issue that I found when I tried an N95 – specifically that the phone was either on Wifi or the network and you had to switch it. There was no challenge with that. Wifi coverage was solid and easy to set up.
There were several games pre-installed, including Angry Birds. It played well, but one feature that you find on iPhone or Android – the ability to pinch-zoom the screen to see the whole game board – was missing. Fruit Ninja worked just fine. There is the ability to have RSS widgets to see headlines from CNN, for example. There is an App market for the Ovi/Symbian world, but I didn’t try it out.
One of the best features is the camera. Nice LED flash with an 8MP camera. Very close shots are tough, but at usual distance to infinity, the photos are very very good.
The web browser was adequate and handled a lot of sites quite well. The phone has “Flash Lite” which may help with some flash-enabled sites, better than iPhone at least.
The Bad
Let me say, there was nothing really “bad.” Just annoying or “I really wished this worked better.” You get the ability to customize your 3 home screens. I found the icons tough to configure but eventually was able to do what I wanted.
The phone comes with Ovi Social as a main front screen widget – a way to connect to Facebook and Twitter, but no other social networks. It seemed to forget my Twitter password all the time. It did remember my Facebook password, and I would see people’s face icons go by and as well as *very* short portions of their updates. I couldn’t find a way to make the widget go back – so if you miss that person’s update and you want to find it again you have to wait for the phone to cycle it back. I really wanted to make this widget double the size so I could actually read the updates. Not critical, but an annoyance.
The fact I could only connect one calendar and set of contacts and have “push email” from one account was annoying – again, this is more of a consumer phone or a step up from a feature phone so not a problem for people with only one email.
The on-screen keyboard is small – it is for smaller fingers than mine. I suspect a teen or woman with more narrow fingers would be fine with it.
The map and directions feature was no where near as good as the Android/Google Maps navigation. I wanted to go to a place about 9 miles away and avoid a certain road that has traffic during the afternoon. The phone suggested that road, since it was the fastest route. I deliberately chose a parallel street and the phone kept trying to get me back to its original route.
Additionally, when I was driving “with the traffic” the phone was like a nagging nanny telling me I was going over the speed limit. I couldn’t turn that feature off while I was driving and never did find the switch to turn it off in general. I think I would like to make that mandatory when my kids learn to drive, but again, annoying and tough to configure.
The Ugly
Modality. More specifically, having to click multiple items to accomplish things that most other phones do with a button or a more simple interface. My biggest example – email. I open an email to read it. To reply I have to choose “Options” then pick “Reply, Reply All or Forward.” Additionally, the delete, move, mark as unread and some other options are under “Options.” Why aren’t these buttons on the screen? Everyone does one of these things for every email. My Blackberry from 2004 did this. This problem of making people click multiple buttons to get to features or settings is just the way the Symbian OS seems to work. And again, it is not “bad” – it just is not the way I want to work anymore. It almost reminds me of command line interfaces.I have another Nokia I bought on a trip to the UK last year for £4 (About $7) and it has a similar interface – I expect that. For a $299 phone ($49 with contract) the user experience and interface could be better.
Conclusion
I think if you’re a narrow-fingered person looking for a great camera phone with occasional web and email use, this is a good phone to check out. Upgrading from a “feature phone” this is going to feel good and powerful. If you’re used to an iPhone or an Android device, this phone is going to feel like a step backward. The phone calling was solid, and the T-Mobile network was surprisingly better than I thought in areas where I live, work and vacation. Be aware that Nokia’s partnership with Microsoft means that this OS may be the end of it’s line, even though Nokia has spoken about keeping it going.