Nokia N73 review by a first time smart phone user
By Stefan Constantinescu on Monday, February 5th, 2007 at 4:49 PM PST In Devices
I enjoy reviews like this. Personally I’m a little bit jaded since I’ve played with WinMo, Palm (NSDQ: PALM), S40 and S60. A fresh perspective is sometimes needed. This guy, Steven Wittens, lays down the foundation of his piece by describing his mobile phone history:
Two months ago I got a Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N73 hand-me-down from Roland
thanks to Nokia’s Blogger Relations Program. It’s a ’smart phone’ with
a large 320×240 screen, a 3 megapixel camera and more. Before this, I’d
been using an old Nokia 3310 brick (monochrome screen) so this was
quite a step up. Still, I wasn’t particularly unhappy with my old phone
because all I really needed was voice calls and SMS. So I was curious
myself to see if I’d actually use all the bells and whistles.
Let us see what Nokia can learn from him:
I did try editing contacts on the phone itself, and it was way too complicated.
There is a big annoyance here: it takes 5-7 seconds to open the camera application. This is way too long and makes it impossible to snap spontaneous pictures. Also, in spite of all the technical wizardry, pictures in low-light conditions and at night look very bad and washed out. The pictures it takes are also compressed too much. There’s a 1GB memory card in mine, so I really wish I could save images to (near-)lossless JPEG.
The phone’s music player is simply horrible. The UI makes no use of the N73’s buttons: I’d expect to be able to fast forward or backward by holding the stick left/right, and clicking it left/right to go to another song. Instead, you have to press up/down to reach the right on-screen button and then press the stick to push it.
Even more annoying is that leaving the music player stops all playback. If you wish to use the N73 like a real MP3 player, you have to go into a context-menu, scroll down and select "Play in background", then lock the keypad from the main screen every single time. The current behaviour only makes sense if you wish to listen to random audio clips at random moments, which I really don’t see myself doing.
To top it all off, there’s the fact that you can only use the official Nokia headphones with the N73, because they have a proprietary connector. I already have headphones for my laptop and I don’t want to carry another set around.
The phone’s own calendar input is, again, clunky and cumbersome to use.
For playing video, the phone uses RealPlayer. Now, I realize this might sound a bit irrational, but I for one don’t want anything to do with Real. They have screwed over their users for years on end producing ridiculously crappy players bundled with some of the most insidious spyware and adware seen. But even disregarding that, RealPlayer is a horrible choice as it doesn’t play any of the most popular video formats, like DivX or QuickTime. With open-source players like VLC being able to play every format under the sun, there is really no excuse for this.
Having used this phone, I can clearly see why traditional cellphone makers should fear Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s iPhone. I’ve consistenty avoided using the phone’s built-in tools like address book and calendar editing, because doing it on my Mac is orders of magnitude easier and faster. From what I’ve seen, the iPhone changes that. I really wish the iPhone will bring a fresh wave of usability improvements for mobile devices. But, if usability was all that mattered, we wouldn’t be seeing so many Windows installs out there either …
I’m not going to penilize him for saying a phone, that isn’t out yet, is better than one that has been on the market for 8 months simply because the feedback he has given is absolutely brilliant. What I’ve been ranting on about for almost 3 months now he captures in this brief, but concise review. I didn’t even copy and paste all of it since there is so much more to go! I highly recommend Nokia take this critique to heart. It really says a lot about how a brand new smart phone user takes on to a device.
Source, and complete (must read) N73 review: Acko.net
Thank you Steven!
A good read, however, I would ask if the user even picked up the manual? I have a big problem with people who pick up a phone and within minutes (and apparently without playing with it at all) begin to bash it and compare it to devices that aren’t yet available.
He does have some valid points, but I think he exaggerated. The contacts input is no different from his old 3310. I’ve used plenty of both S40 and S60 devices and that’s one thing that they share.
As for playing music in the background, clearly the reviewer didn’t bother with the menu key, and it’s multi-faceted uses, as that’s one thing it’s good for.
Can you honestly say you use manuals anymore? With a straight face?
Most of his comments weren’t even operator confusion either.
Is that the way the music play buttons really work? wow.. no use for the directional pad? any other shortcuts (no excuse for not being intuitive, mind you)? Is that so in the newer ones too, not that they are many newer ones than the N73..
If he would have checked the manual, he would know that the player HAS shortcuts! You can use the keypad to use the player. 5 is pause/play, 6 is skip a tune or fast forward with it and so on..With the N73 ME you use the joystick like in the calsium calculator: you push it down and it’s play/pause, you push it right it’s skip..and so on.
Yes Stefan, one should RTFM. Especially if you are switching from a 3310 to a N73. It’s frustrating to read reviews where there are obvious mistakes that show that the person doing the review has no idea what he/she is doing. I remember reading that one of the “more” eminent Nokia reviewers confessed that he didn’t know what basic functions “menu” button could have. Oh dear..
It would be a interesting test to hand a person who has previously used a 3310, a WinMo, Apple iPhone, Blacberry and a S60 device and see which he likes best.
I posted some replies to comments on my blog here:
http://acko.net/blog/nokia-n73-review#comment-1254
I want to stress that I’ve had this N73 for 2 months now. Most of these problems I noticed in days, but I did give it the benefit of the doubt and played with it more.
I did miss some things that are obvious to me now, like the task switching, but I think the MP3 player UI is a valid gripe. Why should the controls be arbitrarily mapped to numbers on the keypad, when the N73 has the stick to control it intuitively? The firmware update has addressed this, so I guess Nokia agreed. And to my credit, I did figure out everything else on the phone without consulting the manual either. Most of it is not rocket science.
As for ‘comparing it to an unreleased product’, my main point was that the UI on the N73 for Address Book and Calendar is too hard for practical use. In OS X, I can edit 5 contacts in the time it takes me to edit 1 on the N73, and that is with the time needed for running iSync.
Even if the iPhone is not out yet, it is clear from the available demos how the UI works and that traditional UI operations such as drag and drop, direct clicking, zooming, etc make for an experience that is an order of magnitude faster, easier and more flexible than what current Smartphones offer.
As it is now, the N73 is a great consumer of content (video, MP3s, messages, contacts, calendars), but it is hard to create content on it. At most, you can record video or audio clips and upload them as-is to some service or to your computer. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could e.g. edit your clips on the phone? Splice together your video or podcast while on the bus… add transitions, titles, music. For applications such as this, you need a sophisticated UI with a mouse-like device. It simply isn’t practical on e.g. S60.
Just occurred to me, that Steven doesn’t have any data-plan, so he hasn’t tired the web-experience or other online content creating capabilities.
Really Steven, read the damn manual. Yes, in fact you can ad trasitions/splice clips together, etc., on the N73, yes you can put borders around the photo and make basic adjustments–why you’d want to do that on your N73 is beyond me (at least I’ve never bother to do any of it past the first time of just trying it out, but hey at least I did that much and figured out that I can actually do it, that’s more than you’ve done).
I really hope no one reads this comment, because that will just indicate that they wasted their time reading your summary.
P.S. I want the iPhone too, I have a mac (which my N73 syncs w/ perfectly) but the iPhone wont be able to do any of the things you’ve just mentioned, nor will it be able to do a lot of the things that my N73 already does. Yet I still want it; but I probably won’t get it….moving on.
Does he know about the new firmware?? Does he know about what holding the menu button does??? Does he even bother reading the manual?? READ THE GODDAMN MANUAL. God, I wanna smack him for not even reading how to use the phone and now bashing how it lacks features. These people should be using S40 phones.
i can not view videos from nokia n73 in my pc although iave real player