Bender,
To evaluate the phone you have to consider 3 areas: The physical device, the OS, the human hard/soft interface.
The OS:
- CPU efficiency
- Memory efficiency/management
- Choice of 3rd party software
- Can you modify it, upgrade it
- Is it complete. (eg. Can you cut and paste)
- Big fixes: Are they bother fixing stuff or will you have to yet again upgrade to another phone to escape from the bugs.
- On going support from the vendor (make sure they dont' cut off your legs) related to can you modify the OS.
In terms of OS and patches and features I am sick and tired of these big vendors, Nokia/MS/Apple/Google thinking they can get it right. No one has. Either things are unstable, a mess or you their slave, jail break the phone or what ever.
So whilst I probably I am not going to like the N900 as physical device it is the first serious choice we have at being able to tell the mobile phone makers to shove their software or have the flexibility to change part of the OS/UI, features, Human interface, phone or switch to another OS all together.
The UI human hard/soft interface
- Human interface eg the T9 input system
- UI, is it responsive,
- fast to do things with.
- How well do physical functions tie into access or use of soft functions.
- Battery duration
Despite it shortcomings of Nokia's OS, it has nailed some basic human interfaces which are not available on newer smart phones. Eg: I hold down a button and dial my g/f and just have to shove the phone on my ear without looking at the screen., I can be holding the phone down and type sms without looking at the screen as the T9 input is great. These things save you time. Look at the million man hours that are being wasted world wide by people "trying" to make a phone on their iPhone. It is just silly.
The hardware device
- How many functions it providers,
- weight,
- impact strength.
- Does it actually effectively work well as a phone, can you dial.
- cpu/memory
- battery duration
For me a phone has to start with great hardware, ie it has to be able to talk to anything and be able give you a good choice of being able to interface with the phone.
The SE P990 UIQ3 is as stable as Windows98 was, if you want to have stability and high up times you have to know what the phone is doing and when it is going to commit harakiri and stop it. Still no other phone has: 2 keyboards qwerty and a T9 keypad, sizeable touch screen, removable memory cards, 2 cameras, flash/torch.roller wheel, wifi, infrared, blue tooth, FM radio and An a nice LED that blinks and tell you when you have missed a call or actually have to pick it up or do something with it. There is a tonne of accessories from Sony (one thing they do get right), like blue tooth speakers.
If you evaluate the iPhone based on the above:
- It has a touch screen a camera and 1 button. Though it looks slick.
- A pretty UI
- A mediocre human interface that is very good at certain things for others it is shit. (same goes for the physical interface).
- It is a poor phone to call and sms with, something that most iPhone owners will admit.
- A closed locked OS and tied to iTunes.
- A big software shop, (only geeks like me should give a crap about this).
For the masses Apple is the right choice, for me it is poor physical device, less open than Symbian and also puts you in a social group that I just don't want to see myself part off.
Evaluating your phone.
Many of us maybe looking at our phones and try to tell ourselves we have made the right decision owning this small box, the reality is that we haven't, most phones have different degrees of compromising. Most phones are a compromise, and with the iPhone you compromise in many areas.
Next week I am getting an N900 which is clearly compromised physically but the OS and the UI I am going to get to decide how good or bad it is, for the first time. I am sure later nokia will bring out better phones which are phone.
The N900 is just a new compromise. I am going miss T9 and my roller wheel.