A Smartphone or a Got-Potential Phone
When I was a high school student, my parents often heard teachers say about me “he’s got potential, this kid, but he’s not fulfilling it”. On the way home, my parents would ask me why am I’m not exercising my “potential”. I would told them that school is boring. Truth is, I was just being lazy. Other students in my class had perhaps less “potential” but they did their homework and prepared for tests. Eventually, these do-it-right students got better grades than me.
These days, I feel the story repeats itself (no, I’m not back at school…). Replacing the “got potential” and “do it right” students are my cellular phones. I used to carry around simple (some would say primitive) Nokia 6021. This phone doesn’t have 3G, WiFi, advanced OS, GPS or even a camera. I used it for 3 main operations: alarm clock, calendar reminders and – duh! – calls. The phone excelled in all 3 operations. Really. 
Alarm always went off at the times it was set, reminders were easy to set and read, and, yes!, it even made and received phone calls (SMS included). All that, while not depleting the battery after mere hours. Life were good.
About three weeks ago, I replaced my mobile phone at work. I had 4 choices (all Nokia): E51, 5800 XpressMusic, 3120 and 6210. I decided 
to go with 6210. It has HSPA connection, GPS, Symbian 9.3 and 3.2Mp camera. Since then, I sometimes find an analogy between my school potential and my new smart phone. Sure, Nokia 6210 got potential, but, does it show? Is it better than my old even-not-feature phone Nokia 6021? I’m not so sure. “God is in the details” Albert Einstein once said, and boy was he right! On many basic functionalities, Nokia 6021 performs much better than 6210. Let’s take for example the alarm clock. On 6021, I would simply set the alarm and that’s it. On 6210, the alarm’s setting automatically set the alarm to be repetitive which I don’t need. Cancelling it requires few more clicks on the phone. What’s more, I want the delay period to be 5 minutes like 6021’ settings and not the 6210’s 15 minutes.
Calendar. There’s no option to set a time for a memo reminder. Only a date. I want to set my reminders at the time I want to. If I have too many reminders I could miss an important one because the calendar will not alert me. An even more important issue is that there is no option to set a call reminder. This is an option that Nokia 6021 (the primitive one, remember?) has but 6210 Smartphone (?) don’t. How silly is that? I’m used to set call reminders quite often with 6021 but now I can’t.
My final grunt, about calls, is more about the contacts application than the call itself. Usually, we call our friends either from the call log (pressing the green button shows previous calls made) or from the contacts. On 6021, I look for my contact, find it and press the green button. On 6210 it’s not that simple. Remember, we have a Smartphone here, and we need to demonstrate its potential, right? Right. If your contact has several phone numbers (mobile and home for example), 6210 will show them to you. Why not automatically select the first number as the default like 6021 does? Pressing the green button when the contact is displayed will trigger the call to the default number.
Another issue with 6021is that if I search for a contact, select a number and call from it, the next time I want to use the contacts, it goes back to the contact I previously called. This is stupid. Why not return to the main screen of contacts (again, as 6021 does)? This is exactly where the smart-but-lazy-phone fails. Sure, its applications can run in the background and you can return to them instantly, unlike those ‘primitive’ phones. Still, sometimes, the simple things works much better, like in 6021.
Conclusion. Nokia 6210 Navigator is indeed smart. I like installing applications on it like TwitterMobile and Waze. I would definitely suggest users upgrading their phone to consider it as an option. However, looks like Nokia made a few mistakes in the UX department. It’s difficult balancing potential with simplicity, but I would expect Nokia to do better. If you’re “old-school” and just want to use your phone to make calls, stick with Nokia 6021.
Tags: 6021, 6210 navigator, Nokia, s40, Symbian, user experience
August 14th, 2009 at 15:25
Hi Tsah,
I had great time reading your article and simultaneously I was playing with my n95 and I found out they had followed the ’smart phone’ version except the alarm clock – it is quite simple to choose if you want to use repetitive function of the alarm clock – which I like as I am lazy and usually wake up every working day the same hour. But it is true that the old ones were the best in their times. Yep and the memo sucks. The technology progress should be about improving the bad and weak and not about erasing the working and good.
August 14th, 2009 at 17:59
Sivan, what’s up?
You’re absolutely right. Nokia should have kept the good-old UX behavior while adding cool new feature and capabilities.
August 16th, 2009 at 13:14
What’s up Tzahi?
U r so right! I am thinking a lot about how nokia and all other companies except apple stopped making usable phones. The older ones where easier to use… (I own a Sony-Ericsson w980 now).
And another point to think about – most companies have plenty of models to on the offer however they tend to the same phone and differ only in the plastic case that contains the phone! They are all the same!!!
August 16th, 2009 at 13:18
Hey Reshef,
I totally agree with you. Many phones has the same set of features. They differ in the way the manufacturer wrapped them in the casing.
BTW, when is your site due?