I’ve got a Nokia 7610. I like it. I use Cingular, and so far, I don’t hate them.
My phone runs the Symbian OS. It’s a Series 60 device. There are a whole lot of applications I can install on it. A whole bunch of applications.
I’ve installed a bunch of applications on my Nokia phone. I still manage to make and receive calls just fine, and I’m 99% sure I’ve never disrupted the Cingular network in any noticeable way. If an application I’ve installed misbehaves I usually just delete it. There is at least one app I use that doesn’t quit, and I use another utility to force it to quit. (Hmmm, my Mac does something similar with applications that get stuck.) There is one game I installed that froze my phone so bad, I had to remove the battery to reset it, Luckily, removing the battery was very easy, and I don’t use that application anymore. Besides those two bad app(les) they other two dozen applications I’ve installed work just fine.
Just fine…. Just like almost all the other phones out there that people have installed applications on.
I didn’t just randomly pick this phone, I got a Nokia phone so I could take photos, shoot video, record audio, and transfer the things I created to my computer under my control. I can create my own ringtones at no cost. I can sync the calendar with my desktop calendar (though I do need iCal in the loop to make it happen.) I can sync my contacts with my desktop contacts. Damn, it’s pretty good. Things work. I like my phone and how it works.
Nokia is a big believer in open source. I like open source. I like to use my phone (which is really a mobile computer) for all sorts of things Nokia and Cingular probably don’t care about. Have you seen the Nokia 770 or N800? Those are cool devices, very open to new applications and new ideas. All of the Nseries devices look interesting.
Remember, we still have choices, and we vote for those choices with our dollars and our words.
3 replies on “Nokia Makes Phones I Like”
I just read on plasticbag.org that Nokia requires all those applications to be signed, which seems to lend some credence to the security concerns. I lost all interest in buying an iPhone as soon as I heard there will be no 3rd party apps. But I think a reasonable case can be made that it wouldn’t be profitable for Apple to spend the time to approve 3rd party apps. I know it takes them weeks to approve Dashboard widgets listed on Apple.com.
I agree with Scott. I was quite disappointed that the iPhone wouldn’t support 3rd party apps. Some have pointed out that you can make web applications primarily for the iPhone. But then you’re still losing out on a lot of interface features. All in all, it’s too expensive for me anyways.
I’ve been a Nokia user for years and had a 7610 about…er…3 years ago. They’re good phones – especially the Symbians. When you upgrade those ones, they can import most of the information over to the new phones and they have progressed upwards from the 7610, through the 6680 (where it went 3G) to the N70 and N73.
While I don’t use a great deal of extra apps – in Europe, we’re just text messaging addicts – they seem good although using ones that access the cell company’s networks can end up being costly.
The N95 looks to be the “bees knees” of phones with GPS and mapping and 3.5G. On a more low-key thing though, I recommend customising the hot keys (the left and right ones below the screen) in Settings-Phone-Standby Mode. Often the keys get set to something a network wants to promote, rather than what you’ll find convenient.
Hopefully, one of these days, the US cellphone networks will catch up to the European ones. The ones here are still bastards but bastards that give you lots of features and want to give you every opportunity you use them – rather than ring fencing you in.
Have fun!