Taking a new Nokia S60 device into use - not a pain it used to be
Let me tell you an exclusive story about what we have done for making it easy to take a new Nokia S60 device into use. What I talk about applies to new Nokia S60 devices based on S60 3rd Edition.
Agony of setting up a new device
This is a story we have heard over and over again during the last years:
You have just bought a brand-new gadget and you unwrap the package with shaking hands. You power on and… Errr… The browser doesn’t work, it just complains something about missing access points… Err… Email doesn’t work - it just asks difficult questions about mail servers… Err… Your 476 contacts are firmly stuck in your old device, how on earth are you supposed to transfer them? Err… What is this weird icon… oops… what did it do now… oops…
Does this sound familiar?
Read on. I hope this stuff will give you some relief.
Solution #1: “It just works” + Setting Wizard application
When you insert the SIM card and turn on your device for the first time, the device silently sets up the basic operator settings. It just works - just try browsing or sending MMS. You can find more info from my previous entry.
Unfortunately, some settings, such as email, cannot be confiugred automatically. That’s why we have a separate application called Setting Wizard. It helps you set up Email, Push-to-Talk, and Real-Time Video Sharing, depending on what services your operator supports.
Solution #2: Easy to switch with Data Transfer application
We had the first version of Data Transfer application already in Nokia 6630, Nokia 6680, N70 and N90. With this early version, you could transfer your user data from an old S60 device. Now, the application is able to transfer your data from old S40, S60, S80, and S90 devices (the ones that support synch). In addition, you can continue using your old device in parallel with your new device. Data Transfer application synchronizes your user data allowing easy switching between devices.
The interoperability table is quite complex, but let’s see if we could publish that.
Solution #3: Tutorial
The purpose of Tutorial is to be your guide for first-time use, and whenever needed.
People of earth: give feedback to the developers!
I drink coffee every day with the team behind the apps mentioned in this post. Believe me, they are listening your feedback. Steve, Rafe, Ewan, Michel, Darla, Jayvee, Martin, GSMArena, Mobileburn, Mobile-Review, infoSync, Engadget Mobile, and everybody else: please comment this post (or write product reviews, or whatever) and give feedback directly to the developers!
Good stuff! Don’t forget to emphasise, for old and new users, that the new SyncML syncing to and from Outlook is absolutely faultless too, and makes getting your PIM data to and from devices really easy.
In the last few months I’ve gone from 9500 to 6630 to N70 and haven’t had a single glitch with any of my data.
Steve Litchfield
Tommi,
This is EXCELLENT!!!! In the near future, especially here in the states, people will be switching from their 6682’s to the N80 once it is released. So a post like this is just in time.
One thing I would like to mention though is even though data can be transferred from old device to new, it would be nice if Nokia can incorporate Bookmarks as well. There is a trick that I learned from AAS awhile ago but it would be much more easy to have bookmarks transferred in the same manner as the other data.
Series 60 - Making The Transition From Old to New
Tommi over at S60 has come up with a brilliant showcase as Steve Litchfield puts it. Info like this is definately needed for those, including myself, who will be looking on upgrading from our early version s60 devices such
Good news: you can transfer the bookmarks from 3rd Edition devices onwards (to future Nokia S60 devices). I simply couldn’t summarize which data types you can transfer from which devices. As said, the interoperability table is quite complex…
This is neat. Anotehr thing I want is to beable to upgrade my firmware without the intervention of tech support.
Do you believe that the official Nokia Technical Assistance here (Porto Alegre, Brazil) requires me to sign a disclaimer saying they are not responsible if they brick my machine when they try to update the firmware? And my machine is under warranty.
I’d like to download the fw on my machine and flash the device, much like a BIOS update, or even better, like a windows update, without having to turn off the machine. download the fw on the mobile itself and flash its ROM from itself.
Just to remind: with PC Suite you can also backup all of phone content and restore to another model.
Joe, I can feel your pain. For the time being, I guess you are out of luck. I’ll let you know if Nokia makes firmware update publicly available so that ordinary people could flash the devices themselves.
[with PC Suite you can also backup all of phone content and restore to another model.]
Although this isn’t really recommended for upgrades surely? The new unit will almost certainly be running a different version of S60 or Symbian OS and the files in the System folder will conflict and cause problems.
Steve Litchfield
Not to mention us poor bastards who run OSX or Linux - it’s really nice to be able to move your stuff without having to find a Wintel box…
i can’t wait to switch from my treo 650 to a nokia s60 9.1 device. what is holding me back, other than lack of current availability, is the missing categories functionality.
categories, categories, categories. we have to have them!
also, a voice recoding app that is not limited to 1 min files.
Hello Tommi!
Speaking about the new devices you and your team are working to develop, I’m just curios if the big third party software players like AgileMobile.com ported their apps to the s60…
@Janne: Actually syncing S60 contacts and calenders with Mac OS X works fine with several models (here’s a list of supported devices). I regularly use it with my 6680 (and before that with a 6600).
Unfortunately Apple usually take a while to add support for the very latest models though. Perhaps Nokia can help them out by giving them whatever info and / or prototypes they need to add support for new S60 devices as soon as they come out? (C’mon Nokia, pretty please with sugar on top! :P)
@nokia developers: Generally I think it would be a good thing if Nokia/S60 published the protocols their sync app uses (unless you do so already) and encouraged developers of non Windows platforms to write compatible sync apps. This would have to be free of charge of course (otherwise freeware / open-source developers won’t use it), but I assume that you don’t make money directly off the Nokia PC Suite I imagine this would not be a problem. Mac, Linux, BSD etc. users may be a minority compared to Windows users, but together they’re still a few million and if this makes them more likely to by S60 devices then surely that’s a good thing!
Besides, I’m sure there are some Linux / *BSD developers out there who would be more than happy to write apps to support S60 phones if they had free access to the necessary info. So you won’t need to write / test / support your own apps on those platforms.
@mike: Yeah, I second that: Categories would be sweet! Apple’s iCal has them and I really miss it on my phone!
@james, my thoughts exactly, i want to use ical/addressbook on my mac with a nokia.
also, i think i forgot to mention how terrible the treo 650 is. it is indeed distinctly unusable.
I’m a big fan of the transfer tools and the Settings Wizards tool. It will be great to have something that trnasfers thing back and forth. Yes there’ scope for improvement in the technology (3rd party applications and application data being the next step).
However you also need the awareness / marketing to go with this. Put a flyer in the box thats says ‘Get your contacts etc. from your old phone and have some nice diagrams explaining exactly what to do. Not everyone reads the manual so a seperate piece of paper would be good, but it would also be nice to see the instructions as part of the setting your phone / quick start part of the manual. If you don’t do the transfer in the first few days of onwership it might never happen as data makes it onto the new device manually. I think it’s important to capture and direct people to the task as soon as possible.
I really like the idea of a tutoial aniamation too. But again people need to be directed to it.
Often the problem with a new phone is the rabbits in the headlights issue. People panic and freeze when confronted with something new and need to be talked through it.. but they need to find the way to get through it as quickly and as easily as possible.
I have an N70 and I used both these features when I moved from my 6630. Thank you.
Now, you said you want feedback, fine. Here we go:
Every time I have to send a new text message to someone I text frequently I have to either look for them in contacts or I go to the Inbox and reply to a message that was sent to me by that person. Can you please add a drop down menu with the last 10 or 5 people that were texted to the new message screen. I have data showing that click count would drop from 5/6 to 2 if you were to implement this.
Next, contact search. Please make it predictive. The way it should work is this: You type the first initial of the first name and space and second initial of last name and it should just show up. Regardless of what you type, a list of selections should narrow down with the more letters you type.
There’re are other things that need change and I won’t mention them all here. The last thing you really need to do is support OS X as a first class platform starting with PC Suite and Lifeblog. For both of these programs Nokia promised Mac support. Lifeblog is now at version 2.0 and there’s still no Mac support. I bet if you look around at all the developers in your team you’ll notice that a lot of them use Macs. Same is happening in the rest of the developer community and as you know what developers use today is just a reflection of what people will use in the future.
Enough for now. Keep up the good work and keep making things simple. Click count is a good measure for simplicity. Oh and take a look at your competitors, specially the guys that designed the Treo. There’s a reason that device is the best selling smartphone in the US and I tell you what, it’s not the keyboard.
Take care,
Jose Marinez
It is my understanding these phones will come with Seven internet edition. Is this true?
Thanks a lot for the feature descriptions Tommi. It has never been that easy to move from a S60 device to another.
Sync without using a desktop application is IMHO a very good thing.
Here is a short comment (in French, sorry) on your post in SymbianFrance.com
Regards
Greg
Steve, PC Suite knows how to handle different versions/phones.
Thanks for mentioning me in your post and requesting comments. I can’t wait to update from my current 6680 to an N80 and comment on the upgrade process and the new apps on my blog. In fact I am already biting my nails but so far it is still nowhere to be seen in the shops. So, hurry up Nokia (and S60), people are waiting
My biggest problem has been preserving my sms’.
There needs to be someway of maintaining your messaging history, messages in the inbox, archives, my folders, sent items, etc…
I don’t think synch or PC Suite does that yet?
Boom
Why would anyone want to keep old SMS? Surely they’re small, time-specific messages? By all means copy and paste some important snippet into a Note or similar, but I’ve seen customer smartphones with 1000 SMS stored on them and the RAM and flash memory hit is immense.
Steve Litchfield
Thanks everybody for your feedback!! It strengthened our confidence that we are on the right track
Mike: I think there are plenty of 3rd party apps available for unlimited voice recording
Horia: most definitely. For bigger players, it is just matter of time.
Rafe: we might have some plans in this area, watch out
Jose: good points. Personally, however, I can’t help you. But I guess other people from Nokia are listening.
Simulator: I am not allowed to talk about future products, sorry.
Greg: thanks! I must start my French lessons…
Jukka: let’s let the thowsand flowers bloom. Feel free to keep using PC Suite
@Martin: will do.
James, yes, I know. Unfortunately, iSync does not move SMSs nor does it move gallery files. In addition, as you state correctly, it does not support the latest phones. Therefore it is quite useless for a geek like me who gets the latest phone - I don’t want to wait three months for iSync to update to take a new phone into use.
Steve, quite a few people store SMSs. I’ve seen teenagers transcribe the SMSs they have received to small booklets, and decorate them with stickers and drawings. This happens because SMSs may carry emotional content as well as informational content. I simply hated, hated, hated it when I lost the first SMS messages ever from my current girlfriend due to a backup accident.
Janne: Exactly. They ‘transcribe’ the messages to a book or diary and then the originals aren’t needed anymore. I had one guy with 3000 SMS messages and who was wondering why things were grinding to a halt on his 6630….
Steve
@akboom
You can actually store your SMS using Lifeblog or the Message feature in PC Suite. I did that to store the only sms that my dad sent me from his phone. Lol, so Steve it isn’t really so weird.
Steve, have you tried Stacker for S60 (http://my-symbian.com/7650/applications/applications.php?fldAuto=1626&faq=11). Reminds me of good ol’ DOS days, when you could “double” your hard disk space with it.
Stacker? No, it’s just another way to slow your smartphone down! It was a kludge back in the days of DOS and it’s a kludge now.
Steve Litchfield
Thought so
Steve, saving an SMS in its original form (date, sender number, msg ctr number, etc.) is essential for me and I’m sure for a lot of other users.
1: Emotional value
2: Pseudo legal reasons
3: Quick look up
4: Reference in a back and forth converstaion.
I’m not the type who stores 100s or 1000s of Smss; I have about 30 to 40 of them, some of them 3 to 4 yrs old from the time I was courting my (now) wife.
Here are the needed impovements to SIM directory support:
1. SIM directory application does not show SIM slot number for the contacts.
2. SIM directory application does not allow to rearrange contacts on the SIM - change their SIM slots.
3. Phone dialing application could show the SIM slot when dialing some contact.
I believe not everyone wants that, so this should be customizeable.
E.g. when I am dialing my friend Bob, it would be nice to know that his phone number is stored in SIM slot number 5, so next time, I could call him by entering “5#” in the idle screen, instead of using this tedious search in Contacts.
Count by the number of keys:
[Enter contacts]
[two times key "2" to enter "b"]
[three times key "6" to enter "o"]
[two times key "2" to enter "b"]
[possibly scroll down to find the right Bob out of many Bobs]
Instead of just
[5]
[#]
4. In the Idle screen, when I enter “5#”, the phone gives me the phone number that is stored in SIM slot number 5, but it does not show the contact name! The name is right there on the SIM card, together with the phone number, how hard is it to show it?
This goes to the top of my S60 annoyancies list.
If Nokia Marketing would only stop forcing people to use the Contacts application/phone memory, and give people the choice of using their SIM card!
Here are the needed impovements to SIM directory support:
1. SIM directory application does not show SIM slot number for the contacts.
2. SIM directory application does not allow to rearrange contacts on the SIM - change their SIM slots.
3. Phone dialing application could show the SIM slot when dialing some contact.
I believe not everyone wants that, so this should be customizeable.
E.g. when I am dialing my friend Bob, it would be nice to know that his phone number is stored in SIM slot number 5, so next time, I could call him by entering “5#” in the idle screen, instead of using this tedious search in Contacts.
Count by the number of keys:
[Enter contacts]
[two times key "2" to enter "b"]
[three times key "6" to enter "o"]
[two times key "2" to enter "b"]
[possibly scroll down to find the right Bob out of many Bobs]
Instead of just
[5]
[#]
4. In the Idle screen, when I enter “5#”, the phone gives me the phone number that is stored in SIM slot number 5, but it does not show the contact name! The name is right there on the SIM card, together with the phone number, how hard is it to show it?
This goes to the top of my S60 annoyancies list.
If Nokia Marketing would only stop forcing people to use the Contacts application/phone memory, and give people the choice of using their SIM card!