Tzah 2.0

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.

Following my previous review about Twibble mobile application, I was asked to try out TwitterMobile. The application is produced by Tricast Solutions from UK and is written in J2ME so it should work on many mobile phones in the market. However, currently it works only on Sony-Ericsson and Nokia S60 240*320 devices. Lucky for me, I have a Nokia 6210 Navigator phone which have the right screen size, so I could try the application.

Unlike Twibble, installation process is easy and user friendly. The user selects his phone type, enter his email and phone number and press the download button. Next, the user receives a special SMS message with a link to download the client. Pressing the link open-up the a mobile download page with a link to download the actual client. BTW, the mobile page seems to recognize the mobile model, but it turns out that’s due to the link. Meaning, the mobile site does NOT recognize the device’s user agent. This might cause problems for users who didn’t put the right model at the beginning of the process. It also means that Tricast could have saved 2-3 clicks till the actual download, but, it’s not a biggy.

Download completed, it’s time to test the application. If I had to describe the application user-experience in one word, it will  have to be – Wow! The GUI is beautiful, just like Tricast say in their site. Using TWUIK reach media engine, the application flows elegantly between tweets and application options. The menu is not your conventional left-button-opens-a-doll-menu, but rather, a cool, mac-like graphic choices. Great job there Tricast!

However, this is where the complements stop and the complains begin; and there’re quite a few of them. First of all, the user is not given a choice to save his password locally. More secured? maybe, but it’s annoying to type my 10-characters password. Next, the phone’s security manager prompt the user many times for web access approval. This is because the application is not signed-in with a certificate. Oh well, I could live with that (still, the GUI make up for it).

We’re not done though. Unlike Twibble, Twitter Mobile doesn’t have the option to open a link inside a tweet. But wait, there’s more! if you want to tweet, you can but there’s no option to attach a picture! How lame is that?! I mean, the main point (at least for me) for having a mobile twitter application, is to tweet about an interesting event and add a picture to it. That in itself was enough to persuade me to stick with Twibble, but it’s not over here.  Want to check your @replies or your @direct-messages? Sorry. You have to pay 1.99£ for that. Yes, you heard me. A fee for a free service. No way,  José.

The bottom line is that the application gets an A+ on the cool factor but fails in usability. Perhaps Tricast is using the client to demonstrate its TWUIK technology, I don’t know. I do know that if they hope to make serious money from the application itself, they will have to enable picture attachment, URL linking and most importantly, free basic services in twitter.

As an avid Twitter user, I’m hooked to the service. I use it mainly to learn abut interesting news as they happen but also to learn what my friends are doing. Twitter 140-only-words strength is somewhat a limitation when you want to capture your friends’ status. That’s where services like twitpic helps a lot. A picture is worth a thousand words and with Twitter, about  7.14 tweets! So, the best way  to convey your personal experience is by adding a pic link to your tweet, and preferably, as close as possible to the time of happening.

That’s where mobile twitter applications comes into play. I recently installed Mobile Twibble application on Nokia 6210 Navigator and used it to update my status. Here’re my thoughts:

Installation is not easy to the un-experienced mobile user. The user has to go to a general installation page on http://m.twibble.de. The page provides downloads to a dedicated BlackBerry application or a general J2ME application. The page is filled with semi-professional terms like jar and MIDP2 which are confusing to the novice user. Twibble would be best to recognize the device by its user agent header and provide step by step instructions on its web site.

Another issue with the application is that there are actually two J2ME versions. Signed and unsigned. A phone without the proper certificates will fail the signed version, leaving the user confused. True, Twibble works best with signed application permissions (we’ll get to that later), but again, proper instructions with images on the web site would clarify the troubled user.

Once installed, the application is very intuitive to use. the Navigation keys switch the view from your friends tweets to replies, Direct messages and customized searches that the user can configure. Still, if you follow more than 100 users , it’s not easy keeping track with limited size screen.

Tweeting, on the other hand, is very easy. with one key short cut, the user sees the update page where he can set his status. The application also enables the user to add a picture from his saved images. However, for un-signed applications, finding the right image is difficult.

First thing the user has to do is to find the folder where the images are stored. On my phone, it’s located in the somewhat enigmatic folder name E:/Images/100_2009/. Another problem is that usually, the images  themselves have un-friendly names like 20090721_004.jpg which makes it difficult selecting the right image. The application does provide the user with the option to view all images as thumbnails, but, un-signed application requires permission from the user before opening each image. This is quite an annoyance. However, since we’re tweeting live events, most likely the image the user wish to attach will be the amongst the last images taken.

I wish Twibble would build a native Symbian plug-in that will add an option to tweet a picture directly from the native gallery application.

In summary, once passing the installation hurdle, it’s easy to tweet your on-line events and attach pictures, especially if you installed the signed version.