Symbiatch - maailma on rikki

I just got my Lumia 800 this morning. Been testing it a bit. I already have LG's Optimus 7 so the Windows Phone is nothing new to me.

First thing I noticed is that you can't turn the haptic feedback off anywhere. I really dislike it. It's annoying. I understand that some people might not realize if they've pressed one of the three buttons or not since they're also capasitive (in the Optimus they're physical buttons), but I don't care about them. I want it off. Right now.

The design of the phone is very nice (it should be almost the same as N9, right? I've never even touched an N9, that's also the reason why I haven't said anything about it). The size is nice and it feels ok. I personally like the camera being in the middle of the back panel. Not so easy to block it with fingers (with the iPhone I'm always sticking my fingers where they shouldn't be). And it looks better.

First time installation is easy, but I think the phone said that there would be some info about making a Nokia account but there wasn't. Which is good. I don't need one and I don't want one. Why would I?

The installation wanted to have my Live ID without asking for wifi info. And I didn't have a SIM installed. So naturally it couldn't validate it. This is kind of a flaw, even though most people will have SIMs installed. But if they have no data plans or for some other reasons would like to use wifi at this point?

Oh, and I tested Nokia Craps, I mean Nokia Drive. Map download was fast, installation slooow. 3D models of "landmarks"? Yeah, ok, kinda ok. But some models are just too ugly to watch. And there is no Musiikkitalo in Helsinki? No extension to the central railway station? How old are these maps? Not that I'd expect much, since the Nokia Maps usually (even in the greater Helsinki area) might route through locked snow dumps etc. But it was still better than Google Craps.

But the UI seems to have some problems. On startup there are three big buttons on the bottom. One allows to change 2D/3D etc and has a selection Settings that has voice selection and other things. But later on there is just a settings button, that goes to some other settings screen where there is no voice selection etc. And I at least don't know how to get those buttons back! So I can't even tell it to route me to somewhere!

Why oh why they clearly made the UI themselves and didn't ask Microsoft to do it. They would've made it right and not like this!

Also, the seconds Settings has four options: 2D/3D, Map Colours (day/night), Manage maps and Landmarks. All except Manage maps are toggle and return immediately to the map view. So if I want to change more than one, I'll have to flip-flop to settings and back many times. Oh well...

So, a nice device, a nice OS, but Nokia things seem to be, basically, crap.

Oh, right. If I tap the map, it goes to full screen (with a stupid white-wash-laggy-transition). To get back, I have to press back button. Yeah, kinda logical, but mostly not. I'd expect it to go back by also tapping on the map. Other things toggle, why not this one?

CoreGraphics Log Jam

A good (even old, but still valid) point on what I'm currently angry about. Apple doesn't want to tell the developers what's wrong! In the case of the article, at least now the debugger shows the errors in the debug console, but it doesn't really help.

For example: I load a PNG file from the net and try to use its data (CGContextDrawImage). I get the file, I get the raw data and also sometimes the data is broken. So I get an error in the console. Gee whiz, that's nice. I, as a developer, get an error. But the application DOES NOT! So I can't do anything about it since I don't know the data is broken! I have searched all around and there are always these questions "I get this and that error, how do I check the error" and all answers tell the developer that his values are wrong and they have to check them themselves, or use hardcoded things.

Who in their right mind thought that it would be ok to build a whole graphics API without error reporting to the application itself? Some methods do at least return NULL when something's wrong, but that doesn't help much. Especially when I'm using a function that will decode PNG, determine it's broken and still return garbled data without any error messages to the application!

So, am I just supposed to decode the PNG myself/via other functions, determine it's not broken and then decode it via Quartz 2D again? Sure. Nice. Very fast and convenient on a mobile device.

Sheesh. I thought I'd seen everything Apple has to offer. But I'm still just beginning... Apple, get a grip! We aren't all some fanbois that will take anything from you!