I agree its another option, its just not one that would make me buy one phone over another; "this phone is better because it has WhatsApp".

Its a toy for a certain market that doesnt play a part in my social or business circle. In fact I cant think of a single customer or client or friend who says have I got WhatsApp.

I mean what is easier than an email address or a phone number (which you have to know/have in address book to use WhatsApp), both of which support messaging. And on my plan I get like a million text messages free so free messaging is not a draw for me.

If somebody spent $500 on a mobile phone just so that they could use Whatsapp, they deserve to have ***** tatooed on their forehead.

I only cited Whatsapp as one of (many) reasons I enjoy using the E7 over the N900. Both phones do things the other can't. I enjoy the best of both worlds. Stop thinking I'm anti-email or something! I use it every day!! On both the E7 AND N900 believe it or not. I know...crazy!

The reasons for posting this here are many. The main being, as I stated before, that with N900 no longer being made people will migrate and would be best helped here, where they read, and not lost on some E7 forum - they already know how it is, and reviewing it is yawn-worthy.

Widgets are somewhat useless. Vlingo is cool for about 5 seconds. Never used again. The email widget is there with a mission - that mission being that once the ding from a new email is heard, one can unlock, read the subject and sender and lock back - meaning you immediately know whether it is important or not. At least, that's what it does for me.

Social is useless, I agree. Still, if you have very few friends (I have separated my personal account from my public) it is useful. Plus, it shows a count of messages, notifications, etc at one point during the slide. Still, not very useful.

The contact thing is awful. Can't drag desktop. Plus, I find myself either dialing by tapping T9-assisted search (634 for Ndi) or by voice command (it works for me).

I still use clock-calendar-cell info combo (useful), and a weather widget (SPB's). Then there's the battery widget that also shows estimates. Then I have 2 widgets with shortcuts. Then Chat (it checks for messages), the Force Control, then Check In (shows location, keeps GPS warm :)

Then, Search (mostly a remnant from N900, since firing up web goes to Google) and Notifications. This is useful when a lot of missed events pile up - it allows you to call back and SMS back each person you missed, without losing track.

They are not in this order. I have Desktop 1 with quick access (shortcuts, social, chat, time), one for system/secondary (Force Control, Weather, Battery) and the last is Afterthoughts (Notifications, Search)

Because the phone defaults to Desk1, it holds time, chat, mail, Social and shortcuts - things I need at a glance. As needed, I switch to 2. 3 is spare.

As you can see, a lot are shortcuts or third party. Widgets don't have to be a pain. Not exactly the crammed environment of N900 with Queen Beecon, but Nokia promises free form, resizable widgets and 6 desktops in Belle. So there.

I agree with all of your points - I realise now that I said widgets were pretty useless, of course some of them are not, like Profiles, Clock, and of course Shortcuts to apps. I was generally talking about those which are more optional and less necessary, like Vlingo, which never seems to work, but of course the Mail one has its (limited) uses, so you can see if it's worth opening the Mail app or not.

I've actually noticed a slight speed jump after changing those useless widgets to app shortcuts, not sure if there's now less of a load on the processor not having to deal with Social.

The Facebook widget on my N900 scrolls elegantly - I hope this is something that will be implemented in Belle's Social widget. Just quickly changing to new posts doesn't do it for me.

Still waiting for Anna....

sorry for the late reply, but at least it gaves me better experience with this useless crap
.... and can anly do half and n900 can ...

THAT'S the main probleme. in fact, maemo was so great that it leaves everything behind. i've baught a maemo product. not an symbian3, wich is not better than an windows mobile device on smartphone (YES, you heard it right), ...... and if wanted an windows phone 7 device, i'd go for an htc, not waiting ages for nokia to be bought by mlcrosh*t

by the way, now a can say what is really symbian3.
it's windows 95.
.... but everybody else have windows 7.

symbian3 is the same mess than windows95

it is totaly obsolete. and anna (and belle, and crap/whatever wich come next, is just lipstick on a pig.

i know, there is a bit of symbian heritage, like the two on screen bottom button. but i DON'T care. even linux, has lost of his old habits, like copy-past that is application wide, and not system wide.

let start this little review.

so, you boot your device, and come to widget screen, and HO MY GOD, failing so hard. yes, FIXED widget, in position AND size. come on, this is not 2003 anymore!!!! my old windows mobile phone as fixed widget too, but only on position, NOT size. so, if use a meteo widget, it can't display anything. as someone already said, email widget, 2 line. in windows mobile, widget can take half the screen and display A LOT of information.....

ok, so, now, how to start an app? ok, menu button, here it is.... contacts, web, messaging, photos, store, map, and .... WTF ???? office? apps?
so why are they 2 floder, one for app, wich, contain not ALL app, and an "office" folder containing system application like "zip" and "file manager"?
but where do i send email? in messaging? no, this is for sms.
ok, nothing in "office" folder, so, maybe in app? YES. for email, you have to go through menu/app/email, and for sms, menu/messaging and for setup? yeah, easy! menu/setup, thats all. but wait, in menu/app/tools/phone-setup, what is that. yeah, menu thing is just icon in random places .....
in maemo, it's simple, menu/xxx yeah, easy
..... and if you want more, juste use catorise, and done! menu/classification-folder/xxx. and for unknown app /menu/ovi or /menu/other. done.

once you have find your app, started it, maybe you want to start another? and do multitasking thing? so, long press on button for task swithing, and HO MY GOD....
i'm only able to see juste ONE app wich is ..... what? THE MENU ?????? menu in the task manager? so here it is, windows 3.1 ......
so you have to slide, slide, slide agan, slide, slide again, see background app-services (after having menu in task switcher, yeah, having services in task swither is obvious .... nevermind) to close your application


to close your application


to close your application, close your application, close that sh*t off!!
application has frozen, and there is no way to kill it without rebooting. windows95 style.

ok, so after rebooting, why not sending sms ?
so, menu/app .... no no, menu/messaging (sorry, forget where it was LOL).
new sms and wow, app crash.
never mind
menu/messaging, "to:, blablabla....."
app crash again
never mind, it happen.
menu/messaging, and BSOD yeah! phone reboot!!!! not only the app, the WHOLE phone !!!!

it's enough for the first part of this review.
AND YES, everything IS true story. wich mean 3 crash for just an sms .........

You not liking it doesn't make it useless <expletive>. You are not Nokia's only client, nor the final authority in phones. If you have arguments, present them. Don't issue divine edicts. Stone tablets are expensive.

What you thought the phone would do is not Nokia's or the device's fault. You should have checked the device's capabilities, went to a dealer to fiddle with it, ask someone BEFORE getting one.

You know what, I'm not going to get dragged into this. It's not for me to drag people into the light. You're right, they are both a mess.

Again with the egocentric view? You don't like it, fine. It's obviously incompatible with you. Why are you on a Maemo forum, on a review thread, spewing your bad experiences like it's gospel?

This thread was meant to be informative. Double-check your experiences, fix the issues, and, when you're sure it has a problem, add it to a Symbian 3 review.

Better yet, open a counter-thread and inform people of your view. It's free.

Oh, good, you found a phone that can do one thing better. I was getting worried.

If you feel above is being sarcastic, good, because it is. I hate the "it's not <year> any more" because it can be applied to 95% of all arguments. It can't print? The Chinese did that! It's not 112 AD any more!

Beloved Maemo doesn't allow resizing. Old Windows Mobile did that! This isn't 2003 any more!

See how forced that sounds?

RTFM.

The phone has the ability to create new folders, move them around, group apps, just like every Symbian before it. With additional apps, you can even change icons.

YOU can't be bothered.

RTFM.

For both, tap the home widget(s) or shortcut(s) on desktop. They both have notifications that allow reading direct from tapping the top status menu on events.

As for "menu/app/tools/phone-setup, what is that", tap "call" to enter Phone and then Options to adjust search, enter contacts, configure speed dial and adjust the call settings. The other phone settings will be accessed once in the life of the phone, there is no reason to keep them on desktop.

If you fiddle with settings a lot, have a Settings shortcut on the desktop. Tap it once to get the full settings menu.



See? Easy.

RTFM.

You can still pile them all in Menu/xxx. The OS just adds newly installed apps into a folder called "apps" so they wouldn't clutter the home menu like Android/iOS does. You can move them to /Games or /Multimedia/Imaging.

And since you're unlikely to read back or read the manual, it's done by holding the finger down in the menu, just like M5. Also tap and hold to delete, move.

Also, FYI, you can have submenus as shortcuts on the desktop, so you can tap and have a window with all GPS apps ready. Or communications. Or "Applications" folder, where everything is just piled in one, big, honking, heap of icons, that takes a while to open and makes everything hard to find. To each his own, I guess.

Instances are limited to one to save limited resources since it's a blasted phone not a quad core. Apps that make sense to run twice have windows embedded in them - Browser, e.g. There is little point in running 3 contacts app.

Menu is in the task manager because, while running, it keeps the menu cached for faster access. If you need the memory, you can close it. It also keeps a tally of running apps so it can have the little indicator over the app and folder that is running (has running things in them). This takes a toll.

I'd rather have the option than not.

WTF are you on about? The task manager has 3 visible tasks (with preview), and scrolls. If you run less than 6 apps, like a human being, you need to swipe the screen ONCE.

It also offers an option to Close All.

Also, there are no services in the task switcher. Which is kind of the point of having system services. Get it fixed.

Click the X to close it. If it's hung, it will be placed in a kill queue and will be closed as soon as possible by the daemons (after giving it the option to close gracefully - hence the delay). Clicking like a nutcase doesn't help. Also, holding the button while apps are busy saving will corrupt your filesystem. If you did that, database enabled systems might crash. Like, say, Conversations.

You are, of course, free to install a task manager that kills things. There are several.

It's on the desktop.
Tap! <Conversations open>
Select active conversation
Tap! <Active conversation runs>
Type!

2 taps to resume any conversation. I dare you to point me to a faster phone.

And

Move it.

This is, in your view, a problem with the phone?

Get it fixed. What are you, masochistic? It doesn't work, return it to Care Centre. WTF?

Why come here and vent? It is not OK for a phone to reboot because you want to send an SMS. I have said this before. Get the sucker fixed.

Phone never BSODs. BSOD is a colloquial term for a STOP error, or bugcheck, a situation where the Windows OS stops all operations to protect your data because it detected an error either in your hardware or in a driver. This is not an unique concept, Linux has Kernel Panic, Amiga had Guru Meditation, MacOS also has a Kernel Panic, except it's useless in line with Apple's approach to debugging.

What the phone has is a watchdog. It reboots the phone if the OS isn't ticking so that you can still get incoming calls and messages and not find out 2 days later you were out.

Because of this time constraint, very-heavily loaded OS can be rebooted if it doesn't respond in time. Say, because someone was running a boatload of apps and ran out of memory, started swapping, was killed, needed to un-swap and missed the watchdog query deadline.

Under normal circumstances, self-rebooting phone is grounds for invoking RMA. (It's Return to Manufacturer Agreement).

Stop giving yourself so much credit. This isn't a review. It's a vent from an egocentric point of view of a person that is obviously incapable of reading the manual, asking for help (in a proper forum), or returning a defective phone. And who considers that 2 taps is "too much" to do something.

Reviews never contain "this is <expletive>" in them.

You have claimed that switching to 2G requires 5 taps, that starting messaging requires who knows how many, that menu is bulky and in disarray, that battery is poor, that it is full of bugs, that many apps don't work if you don't put a SIM "on" it [sic], that it doesn't have a YouTube app, and that Symbian 3 is a failure at everything.

None of those things are true.

Should you be writing "reviews"?

@bob_bipbip

Sorry buddy, but the bottom line is you just don't know how to use your device, and/or refuse to learn how to use it.

I've had the N900 since March 2010 and the N8 since December 2010 and have used Maemo since OS2005 and Symbian for even longer. The N900 (and Maemo in general) is hands down a more powerful device but the points you're making on your Symbian^3 device just make it obviously clear to others that you don't know how to use it.

Update: OVI Store has been updated.

* The issue of long lists has been fixed. Permanently. Since the lists are new.

* The issue of ghost updates has gone away - Chat is no longer listed erroneously as available for update to 1.0.

* Speed has been upped a bit. Transitions between screens is better, animated, clicks go through each time. Animation no longer waits for results, giving the impression of smooth with high latency networks.

* New download system, seems more resilient
* * Now queues downloads
* * Now queues installs for zero conflicts
* * Features pause (don't remember if the old one had pause)
* * Faster downloads for me. Could be the new store uses different servers and it's still new, or maybe the animations are simply better. Traditionally, OVI store has been slow. We'll see over the next few days if it was just temporary.

* UI is completely new
* * Belle design bottom bar with back button and multiple icons (as opposed to the menu-back 2-button S^3 standard)
* * Smoooooth scrolling. We're talking lubricated butter.
* * Cleaner UI, in line with Belle
* * New "wait" animation, visible in one of the screens, as it is fading in cooperation with the animation.
* * Items have collapsible sections, including short to long descriptions (much like Android store has), including common tasks at the bottom.
(In the screen listing installed apps with Angry Birds Seasons and 3D Icons, the gray bars are sections. In the screen with 3D icons downloading, the bottom has an arrow. When pressed, the arrow collapses to list only 3 rows of text, allowing screenshots to fit).
* * Higher readability due to better use of space inside items (no more thick, one line text)
* * New progress bars and "wait" progress bar animation
* * Moved away from the (nauseating) blue-green signature of Nokia-OVI and to a white background with blue highlights. Old White-green is now more white and less blue.

Overall, this is great. Really, really great. OVI store has been on of the weakest points of S3, and, while the new one is in line with the old in functionality and concept, it's the sluggish UI and bugs that made it less than optimal experience, not the concept.

It's a 7 Mb download, in case you decide to update over 3G, and includes several fixes, making it well worth it. Good job, Nokia.

With Belle already on several devices, and new applications taking on Belle UI, and update feels even closer.

Here are a few screens (and a zip with the originals, in PNG unresized format).

bravo! that guy was clueless. there are shortcuts for just about everythign that guy needed. symbian is no maemo, but its no win95 either....

Thanks for the test I just don't understand why nokia didn't include an microsd card slot on the E7 ?
Also two things i disagree with your test.

1.The speed is quite awful on symbian(whitout any additional apps.) It does not match the N900(the N900 being faster).

2. The web browser s*** on symbian it's annoying, slow, painfull,etc.. plus i'ts show only mobile version of the website... the N900 is better again.