(It still seems to have everything though)
I
t was time, time for an update! My old lg kg320 had played out its part and it was now time to find a replacement. A replacement that could deliver the basic functionality now lacking in my old workhorse. If one may call it that when I almost never got to use it - not much of a social life you see. And since calls are so rare in my life I have come to value them immensely. Making the need for a new mobile phone immediate.
A small fact of life that has always annoyed me is the illogical way in which mobile phones are dispersed among the populous. The smallest phones tend to end up with the technology-savvy mobile enthusiast while the larger clunkier models find their way to the casual users. The casual user who may not use their mobile phone very often, but rather wants it for availability, should opt for the smaller phone since it would be less obtrusive. While the enthusiast should be the one who ends up with the larger phone. Larger meaning room for more features.
I, at any rate, ended up getting the "Nokia 5500 Sport". Admittedly it was not my first choice (the new Nokia e90 communicator looked pretty good to me) but as it turns out fancy, posh and perfect phones don't do well in grease-laden industrial environments, not at all unlike my own workplace. And so I felt the need to revise my plans slightly. A tougher more rugged phone seemed advisable...
In this new "gem" of mine, a couple of features stood out:
TTS - STT Tapping Text To Speech and Speech To Text. The ability to have a computer-generated voice read me my text-messages never ceases to make me happy. I take every chance I can get to fire up my own HAL 2000 and marvel at the current state of technology. And "yes" I am easily amused ;^)
The device automatically makes a voice-record of all of your contacts. Press down the right "soft-button" for a second and a half, say the name of the contact you wish to call and the phone will dial their default number. This feature also extends to a few of the applications, like the voice-recorder and bluetooth manager. One can also add other applications manually.
TappingOnce set up one can easily play, pause, skip forwards and backwards by tapping the phone with your fingers. Two taps on the bottom of the phone pauses playing music or plays paused music, while tapping the right side of the phone skips to the next tune, tapping the left side skips back.
Tapping the phone within 30 seconds of receiving an SMS makes the TTS-system read the message for you. When in sports mode; tapping makes the TTS tell you what your current training statistics are.
3d-accelerometer Through which a flurry of applications are derived. The 5500 Sport has the ability, by virtue of being angled at active people, of functioning as a workout tool. After entering your own personal data like height and weight etc. the built in pedometer will calculate how many calories you burn while "power walking" to work every day. A feature more likely to be used is the Groove game. The game consists of a maze through which the gamer would angle the phone to navigate a steel ball. I found the game seriously addictive and along with the new 3d rendition of the Snake game (Snakes) I have all I am going to need for a long time.
Operating System The phone uses Symbian 60 3rd edition. I have already downloaded oggplay that enables me to play my ogg-files and a small horde of apps that might come in handy one day, including putty for ssh.
Gmail Works! The phone supports SSL which makes it possible to check your gmail account. My old phone did have a mail-client but lacked TLS/SSL.
The Browser is Nokias own xhtml-browser. And it is EXCELLENT! It is definitely better than ie6 at rendering web pages and it will do css. If the page is larger than the screen, as it always is, a thumbnail overlay will appear to show you where your at. click at the picture above for an example.
Python!!!
This really blew my mind. My phone had a python interpreter preloaded on the included microsd-card. This opens up an entire new world of opportunities.
Wrapping up
All things said I am very happy with my choice of mobile phone, except for these "few" points;- Connecting the phone to computer over USB
My desktop computer summarily refused to mount the
telephone as a usb mass storage device. I use Ubuntu 7.04
(Feisty Fawn) as my desktop. The solution? format the card!
After formatting the MicroSD-card in the phone it was found
by the mounting software. Now it all works.
- The awkward placement of the menu-button
I'm constantly tricking myself into pushing the
contacts soft button. Silly me! but everything else works so
nicely I just had to say something about this.
- Battery life
If one uses all of the phones features; e-mail,
mp3-player (or oggplayer - oggplay), play a few games and
browse the web your battery won't last for more than a
day! Summa sumarum it's all good and well having all this
functionality - as long as you don't use them, the price to pay
for the size of the phone I gather.)
- The ad-45 hands-free adapter?
The hands-free adapter that was included in my box, namely
ad-45, is a bit short on perfection. The cable is so
short; that I have to carry the phone in the belt-clip.
- No software cd included!
Normally this is not a problem for me. I generally
never use the included cd but since all of the
software is PREinstalled on the accompanying 64MB
microsd-card (not nearly big enough) it would be nice
to have access to the cd. Moving installed programs
from the old card over to my new 2GB card could prove
a bit tricky.
If all of the software-packs were available online then I would side with Nokia and consider the cd superflous but... They aren't!
Nokia 5500 Sport
Python!!!
Screenshot
Scalable Vector Graphics
Live at sticky fingers.
