I got the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic a while back. I used it for 5 minutes and was horrified. I expected Nokia's first mass marketed touch screen phone to be not that good but I didn't expect this.
The user interface has not been changed in any way to really support the touch screen. There are also lots of nuisances and inconsistencies all around. I can't understand why they let the device go to market like this.
Oh, and the problems are still in the current version on my phone (21.0.026.C02.01)
- In some places (like the application grid) you can use single click to start an application. But when using settings screens etc you have to click twice. The first click only selects the item, the second activates it.
- You have to use lots of clicks to change text settings. For example, change your password on the MfE client. Click on Password to select it. Click again to activate. You'll get an empty text box on the screen. Click it to open the keyboard. Click Ok to accept the text. Click Ok again to accept the text. This is how it should be?
- Many binary (yes/no) settings need lots of clicks. First to select, second to activate, third to select the other option, fourth to activate it. In iPhone, WMobile etc you only need to click the check box/slider. That's it!
- On-screen keyboard is horrible. The small is too small to use without the stylus. The large one always rotates the screen, so it's quite impossible to use one-handed. Also all accented letters need four clicks to get (first open the accent menu, then select the accent section, then the character and then change back to normal letters). Horrible.
And that's just some of the most irritating ones. I would tell Nokia to do as Microsoft and Apple did, but it won't help since they already did that. They just thought it wrong. Apple and Microsoft took an existing mouse-operated UI, tweaked it and put it into a touch screen device. Touch is like a mouse, so it works. Nokia took an existing D-pad-operated UI and used it as such without thinking. Way to go!
And yes, I do know that Symbian itself has supported touch screen/mouse for a looong time, so actually, Nokia did nothing. They just added the touch screen.
But no worries, I'm sure Qt4 will fix this. Too bad we'll have to wait for it for some time still...