So once upon a time, when mobile phones were just that, mobile phones, they would come fresh out of their packet, and just work. They were simple, made phone calls, and worked, and that was GREAT! Now, however, they are multimedia computers with the photographic capabilities of a budget 8mp camera, wifi connecting, youtube streaming, iplaying, facebooking, emailing, fm radio, gps tracking, interneting wonder machines, all promising to keep you 24/7 connected to your new internet life…

However, the simple fact of the matter is that they fail. Badly.

The Nokia N86 8mp is case in point – here’s where it fails:

- It offers an 8 megapixel camera, but has an awful LED flash
- If offers email connectivity that works, but wont successfully click an email link with the subject defined as a ? and therefore Facebook Mobile Photo Upload does not work
- If offers a web browser, which features a built in RSS reader as a hidden away menu item, and doesn’t let you put your RSS feeds on the home page
- If comes with satnav software that can only be used for 10 days – would you buy TomTom if it only worked for 10 days?? So why do mobile phone companies get away with demo functionality? It also tells you to turn right anytime it looses GPS signal!
- It offers it’s own photo hosting connectivity, and will let you upload to Ovi (by Nokia), Vox (who?) and Flickr, or email, but does not include built in Facebook support.
- It has a pretty user interface and multi-tasking applications that can run in the background, but they then stay in the background until eventually crashing the phone until you manually exit each program individually, rather than just quiting when you exit.
- It provides links to useful programs as downloads, such as a flashlight program, that sensibly uses the screen as a torch, that is free for a number of days, but when you download it and install it, it then updates itself and tells you that you have to pay to use the program. Even though the program should be included free with the phone as standard.
- The phone likes to go into power saving mode when it has 2 bars of battery life left, when it does this, the screen brightness is set to minimum, and can’t be adjusted, and then when you go outside into the sunlight, YOU CAN NOT SEE THE SCREEN!
- Update: Note scratches on the glass under the lens cover – this is caused by the LENS COVER! Normally lens covers are supposed to stop the lens from being scratched, apparently this is the fixed version which only scratches AROUND the lens photo taking area, which is better I suppose than the N97 that scratches where the photos are taken!

…and this one deserves it’s own section because it’s so unbelievably flawed:

ovi.com (by nokia)

The phone can sync with Nokia’s Ovi.com website over the internet, so that you can apparently backup your contacts to the internet, however, as I have experienced, after it’s backed them up to the internet, it:

- Somehow removes all the phone numbers from the phone, leaving just the names.
- So you think, that’s okay, I’ll just restore from ovi.com to the phone
- You sync the phone, and then it removes all the names from ovi.com, leaving just the numbers on the website, and all the contacts on the phone have been named “Unnamed” and have no number:

And then you’re stuck with 220 phone numbers on ovi.com and no idea whose number belongs to who… and 220 entries on your phone, all called “unknown” – it simply should NOT be possible for a BACKUP service to DELETE all the DATA from the phone and itself! Backup systems are meant to be about copying data, NOT DELETING DATA! (unless of course ovi was designed specifically to “hunt down data from across the internet and try to kill it“)

And if that wasn’t enough of a pain in the arse (particularly when ovi.com was supposed to be a backup of your contacts, rather than deleting them!) ovi then doesn’t work when trying to invite friends and contacts, and provides completely different functionality when you have a different phone, for example the Nokia N97, which can send requests out, that simply don’t work if you have a different phone.

To summarise: Basically, if you’re going to make a phone, that connects to everything, please make sure that:

1) your bundled applications work (facebook mobile uploads),
2) standard internet technologies are supported WELL for example with a seperate fully functioning RSS reader that can be viewed on the home screen like it’s email,
3) that your biggest selling feature such as an 8mp camera has the expected supporting features needed to make a decent camera, such as a real flash,
4) include REAL satnav features that works for as long as you own the phone,
5) include expected software for free (flashlight tool), and don’t update it to disable the expected demo!
6) support multiple upload services INCLUDING facebook, not just your own dumb ovi.com photo hosting service
7) this is KEY: provide sync / backup software that NEVER EVER deletes data from the phone or the backup, but instead, you know, backs up the data!
once again support internet standards such as ? defining the subject of an email!
9) Make an operating system that doesn’t crash because there are too many programs open, because the OS doesn’t shut them down automatically!
10) Make a screen THAT WORKS OUTSIDE (even when the battery is low!!), mobile phones are meant to be MOBILE, they are not just for use indoors!
11) Standardise expected functions, such as copy and paste, so that you can copy from one part of the phone (ie text messages) into another part of the phone (ie web broswer or other apps)
12) Standardise what buttons do when using different programs, if the C key is the backspace key when writing texts, then why doesn’t it do the same when typing something into the web browser? Instead it quits the web browser and everything you were doing! (This can be switched off, but for some reason may revert back to default settings)
13) New: Make a lens cover that, DOESN’T scratch ANY PART of the lens!

The list could go on, but it just goes to show that these products are being released with serious flaws and faults that anyone can experience and come across without even trying. You come to expect everything to work straight out of the box like in the olden days, and when it doesn’t, you’re left wondering whether anyone at Nokia actually tested this phone in real life, outside the perfectly functioning office, you know, perhaps outside in the real world?

It’s as though they printed a list of 20+ features, except that 50% of them have a small * (star) next to them with legal print at the bottom in tiny tiny writing that goes on to explain “these features may or may not be fully functioning and may not provide expected features or functionality”. Except they then forgot to print the disclaimer on the website / packaging and marketing material.

Update: The Nokia N86 comes with 8GB of memo
ry built in, which is great for putting your MP3s on (assuming you keep them all on your PC as well), but not so great when you’ve taken 500 photos, and then the phone dies and is irrepairable. As you’ll have just lost all of your photos. To avoid this it’s worth buying a seperate memory card for the phone, even if it does cost you money (thankfully there is a memory slot, unlike some other phones!).

More links: Nokia N97 Reviewed by Gizmodo, Dumb phones must die (Gizmodo).