Ah, the day you've all been waiting for is here: I just got the Developer Gift E7 from Nokia! So now I can complain about all the nice things like I always do and Nokia can keep on not giving a damn. Especially since they're throwing Symbian away. Boohoo. But to the point...
(I'll probably update this as I go along, I've only poked around for a few minutes. And yes, I know that others have written about the device already. I haven't read them and I don't care: this is, after all, my blog and my experiences. I've used iPhone 4 for some months, before that iPhone 3G for two years, so my habits and experiences are mainly from there)
Ah, the start screen. Nice that I'm appreciated for choosing Nokia. Didn't really choose, but anywho :) Language, English please. I don't like Finnish in these things (Finnish people know what I'm talking about when I say akt.valm.til.sov.). Then waiting for ages for it to allow me to choose country. Loading something or other. Blah. Time/date, yeah.
Home screen and all the cool widgets. Not bad. Better looking than I thought. But let's try to get updates. Oh, can't since it won't ask me for wifi connection (no SIM inserted, offline mode). Oh well, I'll do it myself. No updates still. Maybe the 14.x is not available for Finnish devices?
Add email account. Warning about maybe sending info to Nokia. Hope you won't, I won't like it and you don't need my account info. Exchange info input, press next. The same screen stays on, no warning, no error. Umm, what? Let's try next again. Oh, now it asks for email server. And it's done. And finally Nokia understood that not all use domain field. Previous MfE required something in the domain field when using the wizard.
But crap. The email application is quite the same. Ugly, font is horrid (the same font as everywhere else. And it is horrid.) Oh well, maybe it works. Not going to test it yet.
Calendar, then. Nice, it's the same as Android: it only syncs the default calendar! What the crap? Hello, Nokia, this was supposed to be an E device. For Enterprises. And even if I'm not an Enterprise, I do use another calendar for school. Actually, I use two calendars for school. In addition to the default one for other things. So I can't use this for my daily stuff. Nice.
Also, I'm used to the nice and simple calendar view in my iPhone: the list. Ahh, Symbian used to be all about lists. Why isn't there a nice list view for the calendar, then? A list that shows all the items in a loooong list. But no. I certainly only need a list that shows one day at a time. It's so convenient to check e.g. what the next week will be like at school. Oh, I forgot. I couldn't do that anyway since it won't support more than one calendar from Exchange.
The nice Social application wants me to have an Ovi account. Doesn't say why, doesn't say if they'll rip off my account info or anything. I just must have one. What about a little clarification here, Nokia? Also, after I set up the ovi account info, there are no social networks to choose from. Nice. Others have had this problem too. They did appear later when I had inserted my SIM and rebooted the device thrice.
The Social application looks quite bad too. The font is one thing, it's too big and ugly (hey, I can only see ONE or maybe TWO updates per screen, that's nice!). The layout for the items is a bit off, too, many times. In landscape mode a third of the screen is used for title bar and buttons. Why? I do have quite big fingers but I certainly don't need that big buttons.
The Social widget, then. No, not going to use it. Shows parts of latest messages. Changes after a while. Shows "Update status" in between and whatnot. I don't need that. I only need an app that starts quickly and shows me the action. And there's only a status update box but where will it update it? To all networks added? I probably don't want that and I'm not going to test it. So a sub par thing this one too.
Wifi connection is very shaky when in offline mode. As it's always been. Nokia doesn't clearly understand that some people don't use the phone as a phone always. So I'll have to insert a SIM to get things working better. I seem to be getting a working network connection every other time, if I'm lucky. And still the phone shows that I'm continuously connected to the wifi. Strange...
Open SIM slot. "Phone will restart." Ok, fine, you shouldn't have to at this point since there isn't any SIM inserted so nothing changed (iPhone on the other hand just removes phone connection and restores it if you insert a SIM later). Insert SIM, "The phone will restart." Fine.
Phone starts and starts telling me, again, that it's nice I chose Nokia. In Finnish. Didn't I clearly tell it that I wanted English as my language previously? Yes, I did. But it chose Finnish since I inserted a Finnish SIM. What part of "no, no automatic language but English" didn't you understand? Okay, every part of it. Let's reboot the phone for the third time. (And after this I got Social to add networks)
Software update found Search update. Install. Takes a while but clearly does something. I think. Ok. Also some Microsoft communicator app, I don't need it so I won't install. But wait, there's one bug here... Info button is hidden if I select the second update. Deselect it and it's activated. And it shows the first app's details. What about the second? Can't get it to show that any way I click. Clearly a problem with this "click once/twice" shit that Nokia had with Symbian UI. You can get the details of the second one with long touch, though. But still a bug.
Ovi Store. Update needed. Umm, so, Software Update won't update Ovi Store for some reason? Ovi Store will update itself only? That's nice :P
Update installed, starting. Still the ugly (web based?) Ovi Store. That doesn't remember account even though I touched on "remember me." And the constant Unable to contact stores continue. And it's not my network since I'm using the same wifi network without problems on this laptop. Installation works when I happen not to get errors. But I don't want to be taken to my account page after I've selected an app to be installed (still it's better than iPhone's "I'll just take you away from the App Store completely so you can watch the app install)
The screen on the device is lot worse than I'd think. I do have the plastic cover on that is on by default (and I know it's supposed to be taken off, it's just a protection while packaged). The viewing angles are small, the white background changed to red-pinkish when tilting the device. I'm used to using my iPhone from whatever angle, so this is not nice.
Home screen widgets (the default ones at least) are mostly useless to me. CNN? BBC? E!? Reuters? Don't care. How do I remove them from the list? No option in the list itself. Blah!
Music player. Default four songs. That are updated when starting. This is what I don't like about Nokia. True, iPhone gets its database from iTunes sync and I can save songs to this phone from other sources, too. Anywho. I hope the search is faster than in the previous phones. But once again a stupid UI thing: a list of songs (I like this), I select one and I'm shown a coverflow-like menu of... the four songs?!? And I have to select again the one I already selected. What's the point? Nokia UX people to the rescue? (And they still try to get me to use their UX services when clearly they either a) don't use them themselves or b) they're crap).
Ah, almost forgot the browser! Let's start it up... Snappier than previously. Still doesn't seem that great. Oh, right. Multitouch. Zoom works quite nicely. The wifi problems still continue. Maybe it just doesn't like my 802.11n network (some other devices don't either, crappy D-Link station). Anywho. The loading bar is hidden, so I can't see if it's loading or not. And scrolling while loading is not working at least on bigger pages. Oh, sorry. Scrolling while loaded on larger pages is slow and jagged. Better than before, still. And there's still the browser update coming, someday, right?
Camera, then. First I thought it was broken, then I realized it had the plastic protector still on. Silly me :) But wait, no autofocus? Right, this is an E device. Maybe it'll suffice. At least the camera app shows how many pics/how much video I can record. Unlike the iPhone that caused me to miss a couple of things since the video was just stopped with the notification "not enough space".
Now if I only knew what to test next. mIRGGI probably needs a little test run and some other things too. But I'm surely not going to switch from my iPhone to this soon. If the email and calendar apps were done right, I might even think about it. But now it's impossible.