Syncing the Nokia e66 with Gmail and Calendar

There are a number of posts about this on the net already and I followed them with little success. I've figured out the reason why. Here's the setup of the phone:

Firstly install Mail for Exchange. Once that is done configure your initial profile using the appropriate details i.e mail server is m.google.com, your username@gmail.com, password, secure connection etc. Make sure you go through and tell it to sync email (obviously) and calendar. DO NOT try to sync Tasks. This was the issue I was having. It kept saying (annoyingly) "System error. Try again later." I refreshed the profile, I started again, I re-installed Mail for Exchange. Oh my god it worked! The sync worked immediately, cleaning up my calendar, tidying my email. Ah sweet sweet workings. Very nice.

So to be brief - don't enable task synchronisation. It doesn't work and isn't supported.

The combination of the ever sexy Nokia e66, Mail for Exchange and the wonderful gmail make for a winning combination. It's on a par with my iPhone syncing to exchange in a phone that has much better battery life. As a busy person I have two calendars all the time - work and personal and using two separate, fully live and updated devices makes for a much more organised life. Theoretically I won't miss anything now... theoretically :-)

iPhone App store compared to Nokia Ovi Store

Recently I was given an iPhone for work. Given that I use an e66 Nokia for my personal stuff I thought I'd compare and contrast the two devices' application stores. Ovi vs iTunes. Clearly the base operating systems are significantly different - Symbian S60 3rd Edition (e66) vs iPhone OS (iPhone (naturally)). Clearly given the differences in the OSes, the iPhone seems to lead itself to better application support. This, plus Apple getting in first, have given the iPhone a significantly better application store, variety and apparent implementation of user provided applications. I'm quite sure that Nokia wanted to get on board with this, but given that Apple got there first I'm not sure they'll catch them. The Ovi store is still developing from what I can tell and the phone based interface to it is not terribly impressive. Taking into account the difference in the user interface (non-touch phone vs touch phone), the iPhone is still better. Navigating the Nokia Ovi menu is poor and at times damn confusing. Tap tap installed - iPhone kicks butt.

The breadth and depth of the available apps is a telling point too - Ovi doesn't have the depth nor the breadth of the iTunes store. There are a few points which mitigate this though. For example, the e66 does not require you to jump through a bunch of hoops like converting mp3's to some other format to get it in as a ringtone. So to a certain degree the ringtone downloads isn't quite as important - hence the Ovi store doesn't need the same level of focus - the customer demand is probably not as great. The iTunes store though, has millions clamouring to change the default ringtones to something reasonable. So it stands to reason they'd have to provide a better service. Also given iTunes focus initially on the iPod and music etc the background development for iTunes was already there and done. Nokia is playing catch up all the way and trying to develop this revenue stream. So the question is - will the community support behind the Ovi store be as great over time as what it appears to be for iTunes?

In the interests of full disclosure I really like both of these phones. I really like making and receiving calls on my Nokia and not have to charge it every single day. I really like the awesome utilities on the iPhone and I especially like the onscreen board for sending texts and emails. I'll compare and contrast the phones in another post but at this point, they both have many pluses and minuses.

In conclusion, the iPhone store - iTunes kicks the butt of the Nokia store Ovi.

Review: Nokia e66

Recently my beloved e61i perished in an unfortunate washing basin related accident. I was upset, more so because it was an expensive phone and only 15 months into a 24 month contract. Fortunately my SD card was undamaged and my photos and assorted other junk was safe - whew!

On to the topic of buying a new phone - firstly I had a list of requirements that it needed to match. The e61i provided email, wireless G networking and many other very nice features. I looked, therefore, at either the e71 - of which I've had one, or the e66 - the slide feature of which put me off a little bit. Having had an e71 for a short while as a work phone, I knew how lovely they were and enjoyed using one immensely. The full QWERTY keyboard was very nice and I liked it a lot. I was thinking of a smaller phone though - the e71, like it's predecessor was quite wide and hard to slip into a narrow pocket. So I investigated the e66. Here is a list of things I liked and don't like about the phone:

Likes:

• The screen is large and lovely - the back light is bright and very easy to read. The swivel is excellent, although I note sometimes when I pick it up if I grab it on a funny angle it swivels on me and takes a second to adjust
• keys are much better to use than on other slide models I've had before (N80 and the 6120).
• The slide has an excellent feel
• Aesthetically it's a nice looking phone - the grey steel look is very nice and the phone is quite compact and neat with the screen taking up nearly all the available acreage on the front. The keys on the upper part of the phone are back lit when in use and dark when idle and this is nice too.
• Good call quality
• Reasonable battery life - better than the e61i but not quite as impressive as the e71 (although that could be my faulty memory)
• video / music replay is very good, the swivel feature is excellent for watching the various MMS clips I get
• connection to the GSM/3G network is quite reasonable
• 802.11 wireless connection works quickly and easily
• Email set up is an absolute dream - I put in my Gmail address, user name and password and it did the rest for me! It set it up as an IMAP connection and even recognised my Google Application based domain for email as similar to my Gmail account. Excellent!
• Speaker is quite good, even when on hands free

The bad:

• Battery life, while good, is not as good as I expected
• I have an unfortunate tendency to answer/hang up on people when I pull it out of the leather pouch it comes with - I'm not sure if this is bad design of where the lanyard connects or my clumsiness, or a combination of the two but it has happened on several occasions
• The swivel is occasionally touchier than I would like.

Overall I'm finding this to be an excellent phone after a month of usage and recommend it to Enterprise users if the e71 is too bulky. I read a lot of email on this phone, but reply to very little so the lack of a QWERTY keyboard is not too much of a worry for me. I can still send emails / texts on it very quickly and find that doing it one handed is a *lot* easier than when doing it on the e61i/e71. It's compact, the slide feels firm and solid unlike the N80 I once had and it hasn't crashed on my yet. 

And it's also interesting to note that the price for the e61i was very expensive - about $1000 when I bought it, and the e66 (and the e71 for that matter) are around the $550 mark. Phones have certainly gotten cheaper.

I also use a Palm Treo Pro for work and the comparison between the phone is quite marked. I'll review the Pro in another post, but I will touch on a few points here that are worthy of note. Both phones are capable of email/802.11 wireless/viewing lots of things etc. The e66 is smaller, has a much more solid feel to it and is more reliable than the Pro has proven to be thus far. Not only that, I think the only thing that makes the Pro more useful to me is the touch screen and the integration I have with various Microsoft products that Nokia still needs to do some work on. At any rate, stay tuned for the review of the Pro!

Review: Nokia e61i

Recently my phone contract expired and I decided to go for something a little different this time. I liked the look of the Palm Treo and also the Nokia e61i. I checked them out on eBay and didn't really find one I liked the price of, so I decided to get one through my phone provider.

I've been pleasantly suprised. My current work phone (an iMate JasJam) is a great piece of kit. I venture to say that the e61i is at least as good - if not better. The 802.11 wireless is far better - it works with WPA2 and connects without problems. I have noticed that with a Netgear router it does have occasional problems - but then again, most PCs around the place have problems with that particular router.

As a phone it is more than adequate - I like the keypad very much. It has a nice tactile feel to it and I can type reasonably quickly on it. The location of various non-alpha keys confuses me sometimes, but that's to be expected when jumping between different keypads. It has a nice ear piece and I haven't had any problems with calls at all. It's a better phone than the JasJam.

As a PDA I find that it works very well too. But, I prefer the Windows Mobile approach to the Nokia Symbian approach (personal preference naturally). This is not to say it lacks functionality - it's just the aesthetics that I prefer. I've been happy with it's performance for note taking, task making, calendering etc so no complaints.

Battery life is good - I get about a week out of a charge - and this is with it checking my email hourly via wireless and various calls.

I was also pleasantly suprised by the music player bit of the phone. I find that creating playlists and the like is very easy and the sound quality out of the phone's speaker is quite decent.

OK, those were all good things. Here are a few tips on what *not* to do with this phone. Don't set it up with IMAP and gmail. I was completely locked out of my messages - SMS, MMS and emails. The fix? Reload the software. Ouch. Bye bye to all my phone numbers etc. I cried a bit but I got over it. That's probably my only complaint so far. It is a very wide phone too - which makes it hard to find a good case and occasionally makes me cranky when I'm lugging it about. Apart from this I have no further complaints at this time.

I haven't used the camera much and to be honest, don't expect anything special from *any* phone camera.

All in all, I'm very happy with it. It's a lovely compliment to my JasJam and fulfils my geeky requirements :-)