From UIQ 3 to S60: Part 1

With the new Symbian unified platform coming up, I imagine a lot of people will be considering migrating from UIQ to the new S60 based platform. I myself am one trying to grapple with a new UI over the Christmas break. Having switched from a Sony Ericsson G700, I expected a bit of getting used to a new UI in the first week.

I mostly used my Nokia E71 for scheduling activities, checking emails, texting and calling over the last couple weeks. As a start, I had trouble transferring my contacts from my Mac to the phone using the tools downloaded from Nokia’s site. It was frustrating, but using the development version of our own vcard import tool finally did the trick.

Using the E71 Calendar

I was planning to see some friends over the holidays. So I used the built-in calendar to arrange meetings and organise my week. I found inputting activities quite easy on the E71. The qwerty keyboard makes input without a pen a pleasant experience.

Month view is my favourite among all the viewing options simply because it shows the day’s activities names all at once. In the week and day views, I was only able to see details of a selected entry at a time. Unselected activities are shown in their occupying time slots, but there’s no label or title to suggest what those activities may be. I thought this rather defeats the point of an overview. So time and time again, I went back to the month view to get a better idea of how my particular day looks. I like the way the list of activities is shown alongside the calendar month in the month view. I also like how the list of activities moves up and down so you could see everything on the selected day if the list gets too long.

Linking Calendar and Contacts

Having moved to another city for quite some time, I wasn’t as familiar with where my friends live as I used to be. I found myself constantly looking up contacts details especially addresses when I went to visit them. While the built-in contacts does a good job in finding contacts, the inability to link it to calendar entries is a big let down for me. It’d be a lot easier if I could just see contacts and location details from the calendar entry. Without that, I had to go to Contacts to search for the contact and copy the address, then switch back to the calendar entry and paste it on the location field. As it can only copy a single field, the minimal details that I need including address, suburb/district and phone number would require copy & paste and switching back and forth 3 times at the least. It’s manual, time consuming and I didn’t bother doing it again. This really makes me appreciate the convenience and benefits of being able to access contacts details from within the calendar like in DreamLife.

The lack of integration also creates other inconveniences. For example, I was running late a few times and wanted to let my friends know. As many would do, I searched for the contacts to call or message. It’s not difficult per se, it’s just the hassle that I’d rather do without. If Contacts and Calendar were linked, a calendar entry could contain filtered or selected information that I need. I could simply and easily call and contact the people involved without looking them up again. It’s convenience that I’m after and having less key presses or fewer steps is what defines it for me.

Posted January 9, 2009