How would you revamp the phonebook? …or would you?
Nokia S60 applications
- March 26th, 2007
Stephen Johnston has posted an interesting piece, suggesting a revamp - perhaps a radical one - of Nokia/S60 phonebook. Go read the entry and share your thoughts!
Stephen says:
I should probably point out that my position in strategy makes me far removed from the actual tech-heads who build this stuff (and maintain your trusty contacts book in its pristine state) so feel free to be as crazy and ambitious as you like…
Well, I work a bit closer to those tech-heads. If you come up with something interesting, I’ll make sure they hear your thoughts 
Note: Janne Jalkanen’s thoughts about the same topic here
Hi Tommi,
To revamp the S60 phonebook book all you have to do is take a look at jaiku or wait to see the iPhone’s implementation, which is very similar to the way the address book works on OS X.
Regards,
Jose
Tommi,
I’d like to see something like Jaiku, only richer. And better Outlook synch, for instance what if I could synch my contacts’ category as a caller group?
I would also like to see something where I have one contact entry, and I can input their usual contact info, as well as email address and IM name for all related services. Then if they’re online on any medium, I could see that, Jaiku-style, in my phonebook.
It needs to, as Stephen pointed out, be more useful in the way that we use contacts - to get in touch with people. If my contact isn’t “touchable” at the moment, I should know that.
As devices begin to have GPS built-in more and more, location should be integrated, as well. If I’m just out and about, I should be able to publicize my location, so that friends could pull up their address book and see that I’m at the store, or whatever. Then if I’m going somewhere I don’t want anyone to know (or just don’t want to be found) then I could *easily* turn that off.
Basically, mobile devices are all about connectivity, and the Address Book has mysteriously been left out of the connectivity circle.
This is a great topic. Having moved from another platform to Symbian I have to say that the address book (along with the calendar) are my two pet peeves.
Comparatively, the address book is so weak in so many ways…
Hmmm, don’t want to get started on a rant here but rather will sit down and do some comparison and post on my blog.
Great topic Tommi.
Why not completely revamp the Gallery instead. Because this image carusell is driving me crazy. Why cant the Gallery have a classic view as well that shows lets say 9 or 12 pictures at the same time and allows me to scroll to a list.
> Why not completely revamp the Gallery instead
Why not, but let’s keep this thread focused on the phonebook. The phonebook guys can’t revamp the gallery…
I actually like the contacts app overall. I’m not opposed to some presence functionality as suggested above but equally I’m not desperate to have it.
There are some improvements I’d like to see though (some minor, some not so minor :P):
Oh yeah - FWIW, I don’t like the carousel thing in the gallery either.
I think there’s definite room for improvements. Not that Contacts is bad, but Contacts hasn’t changed much from the early S60 days aside.
Here’s my brain dump so apologies if some of these seem a bit wacky.
Smarter searching would be my biggest request. At the moment its a bit simplistic. How about the ability to search based on recalling a portion of the phone number (maybe as part of an advanced search dialog). The Smart Dial function found on Windows Mobile is good - that as a default search option would be good.
Take advnatage of screen orientation. When in landscape mode have
Name: Mr Bean
not
Name:
Mr Bean
so that space is better used and you see more information on the
sign in screen.
May be a a bit of artificial intelligence that knows the information you are most likely to use from a contact and have that displayed first. (e.g. I have three number for each of my family [mobile/land line/office], but usually I call them on the land line. Have that number display first.
Integration of IM - yes there are politics tied up in this one, but in an ideal world I would like to be able to have it. Its just one more route for contact and I want all of these routes in Contacts. Multiple routes makes presence more important as I need to know which number/ route to use and whether someone is available. Of course presence isn’t something that Contacts can fix on its own sadly.
Categorisation - I know there are Groups, but with large numbers of contacts differentiating between business and personal might be useful. Maybe it could have a weekend function that only displays personal contacts at the weekend and means only people in your personal list can call you (hey its a nice idea in my dreams). Maybe some kind of Temporal Profiles function that controls this?
One thing I would like to see, but is never likely to happen is some kind of hybrid service contacts with online telephone directory. For example if you entered a contact with a number or email (a unique identifier) the rest of the information (address, birthday, other numbers) could be pulled from elsewhere. I know I’m bad at entering only basic details then finding I need more. Plus it could keep in sync if there were any changes. Plus it could sync the thumbnail picture I choose not the one that was taken of me!
Staying with the online theme = some integration into a directory service (be it web based or voice) would be good. Don’t know the number then lok it up… Might be nice if you could integrate with Local Search application.
By the same token it would be great if, from within Contacts, you could start the Nokias Maps / Smart2Go / Mobile Search and bring up a map of your the address stored in your contacts.
James’ “shared details” , “sanely default number” (of course i dont want to send sms to a landline) and Rafe’s “search based on a portion of the phone number” please Steph. Happy revamping
Sharing of more than one contact (via BT) between 2 S60 “computers” is painful. You have to do each contact individually.
For e.g. I want to send 10 contacts from my phonebook to a friend via BT, I mark them and hit send via bt. They come into the inbox from there you can save it to the phonebook but only the first contact is saved. It’s quite strange why it behaves like this.
I don’t know if the situation has changed on the latest S60 devices, probably not. I got so fed up of this that we ended up writing an app for our internal use and then figured that a lot of people are facing the same problem.
Boom
Kinda backwards, but if you have Smart2Go installed, you can go through Smart2Go and pull addresses out of your phonebook. It would be nice, though, to have the option of going to the contact first.
I would like to have networked group contacts. I do use syncml now to backup my contact to a server. But a couple things are missing.
1. Ability to do auto sync (timed) to server
2. Ability share contacts between f.eg. family members. Now everyone has to make and update their own contacts. It would be nice to have shared contacts, which can be updated from server or better yet automatically or manually with bluetooth when two phones are in range of eachothers.
My biggest regret from moving over from Windows Mobile - the lack of T9 search of contacts! And preferably from the Active Standby screen directly. It’s so much slower to find someone on S60 if you have a large contacts list.
I would go for one more option then list and groups.
I would to have a top-list. So that when i pick the top-list, the contact I call the most is in the top. The same go’s for picking contacts in sms’s, the contact to whom I send most sms’s will be in the top.
Wouldn’t that be nice?
/$vend
I think the Log and Contacts application could be combined.
And as $vend wrote a auto-group called something like “favorite” could be populated based on most called, most SMS’ed persons, the user should control if the group should list top 5, 10, 12 or 17 contacts.
The favorite group could also get a little higher points when the SIND search attempts to find the right contact, ie if two names are a close match for SIND then take the most called name.
When contacts are used in other apps it would be nice to see matches as you type. When I send a SMS I usually enters a few letters of the name and the select “Options > Check Contact” to get a shortlist of possible contacts. I would prefer this to happen automatically.
James wrote about the need for default numbers. If I’m not mistaken my S60 phone send SMS to contact phone numbers defined as mobile numbers. The mobile number also seems to be the default number for SIND.
A better way to select text/number in other apps and add it as number for a contact would be neat. Or simply enable dialing the number. I use company internal numbers and conf.call numbers. Those numbers do not contain country/region codes and might include P or #. Selecting strings like that and add them to contacts could be easier.
Groups should be synced with Outlook or if that’s impossible then enable PC suite contact managaer to edit Groups either write or drag’n'drop contacts around.
The speed and sync of the PC suite contacts/messaging application could be faster. it takes ages to click PC suite > Messages > new message > refresh contacts > select contact.
There are some that have been previously suggested that I would definately subscribe to:
@ Sharing info (numbers, address etc) between contacts
@ Search by number (and email address!)
@ Order by most called
@ Default number (though in england you can text landlines, so don’t dismiss the idea that people would want to do so!)
Another one I would like to see is icons after the name that you could move right to and would let you email / sms readily to a default number. so (excuse the poor formatting)…
Contacts:
Bob Geldof S M
Frank Sinatra S M
…
You would move to the desired contact and press green to call a default number. You could then press right (thus highlighting S) click to send an sms right again (highlighting the M) click to send a mail.
There is plenty else that can go on, such as the searching and formatting, but i think something like that could make contacting your contacts more easy and intuitive.
damned - sorry I thought I had hit escape in time to cancel the first post. Evidently not. Please feel free to delete this and the first post of mine.
Cheers,
Mitch.
One more please;
Right now you can edit any label in a contact, for example I can have 2 home numbers assigned under one contact name and I can then edit the “Home” label to make it say home 1 or home London, home Manchester, etc. Now when a call comes in from that contact it would be nice to see the label, without this you can’t figure out from which home is the contact calling. Same with logs, I can easily see which home the contact called from without having to open the entry in the log and view details.
Boom
I’d agree with integrating Contacts and Log. Would be useful to look up when you last called / were called by a contact / what messages you sent and received etc etc.
See also DreamConnect for a well done Symbian (UIQ) contacts application (it doesn’t have the more advanced stuff suggested here, but does the basics very well).
I want to propose You to provide built-in feature like MS-based smartphones have. Ie: to indexing Phone Book and to have ability to browse it like T9 manner.
It means you do not need to press buttons ~15 times while you entering “John Smith”, but you can do it 9 presses.
Also such feature is provided for Nokia Smartphones by QuickContact software. Nevertheless it is much better to have this feature inside of OS.
Manual trackback:
http://www.gadgetguy.de/2007/03/28/what-would-you-change-in-the-symbian-s60-phone-book/
1. Make better use of the screen real estate
2. Include phone numbers on the top level phone book view
3. Prioritize the information displayed
4. Make it *easy* and *intuitive* to access killer features of the smartphone
5. Make it easier to search contacts
7. Innovate, innovate and innovate.
http://www.e-series.org/archives/311
Wow, thanks everybody.
I asked today the main man behind the future development of our S60 phonebook to check out your feedback.
Feel free to continue this thread! We’ll listen
I will go totally with James’ and Rafe’s comments. I don’t know i it “fits” into phonebook, but why did Nokia drop CLI presentation when receiving a phone call? Many of my contacts (you can call them friends, also) are having more mobiles–when I receive a call, I see that “Mirko” is calling, I can see a mobile phone icon, but I cannot see mobile phone number
I’ve only been using Nokias since the last 8 years… I have an N80 now with latets firmware, etc
I love customizing my address book as much as possible, with as much detail as possible.
++ The pictures should be larger.. or at least they should display on the mainscreen when someone calls a LOT bigger. Screen resolutions are going UP but the preview picture is not budging.
++ It. Is. So. So. So. Slow. I have 550+ contacts, and takes way too long to open it up and search. And for some strange reason, when I select to view details of contact, in can stall for anywhere up to 15 seconds before it opens (either to view, or edit details). Weird.
++ Support for MacOS X Address Book Groups. I have 5 very large distinct groups and its a pity I cant sync that with MacOS X Address Book.
++ Additional Info/Stats: Such as “last time called/received call”. I have SO MANY contacts I havent heard in YEARS, I’d love to clean up a bit. Or, also know how many SMSs/Calls I have sent/received, etc.
++ Most modern Instant Messaging systems or email (like Gmail) let you select a contact, and be able to view all related IM, Emails, details etc in one page. It would be nice if I could select a contact and have the option to see any SMSs, Emails, Calendar entries related to him/her.
++ Geo Location: Not only with GPS, but since almost everyone (at least AFAIK) puts the full international number when saving someone’s telephone number, it would be nice if I could instantly know who of my contacts are in which country, maybe even city (easy with fixed/land numbers and/or if I put the details in every contact I have). I often travel and I can’t remember all friends/colleagues in the city/country I am in. If I could just have a way to see when I land in Italy “Welcome to Italy you have 120 contacts in this country. You are in Rome, you have 35 of them here, would you like to see who?”
++ Geo Location Bis: What about GPS fields in the Address Book? We should be able to tag where a company/contact is based/home. And, it goes without saying, that one should be able to fire up a contact and press a button to be led there. I imagine this is already in the N95, but never hurts to make sure…
Thats all I can think of right now…
Tommi.. Please have the address book team use a Blackberry (Pearl or 8800) for a few days - this will give you an idea of what us corporate geeks are used to.
My biggest issue is NOT being able to search via company name on the main address book list. Would be nice to have the sort/display to be not just first/last name and vice versa but also adds the ability to add Company name.
Adjustable font size on the phone address book list and within each contact detail.
“C”/delete key when in the contact SHOULD not delete the contact - this should only be the case from the main contact list, maybe SHIFT-C/Delete does it. This should then allow any selected field to be deleted (or cleared to empty) if the C/delete is pressed. Example. If I have multiple email address for a contact and one of them is no longer valid, would be nice to be in the contact view, click “C/Delete” and be able to remove JUST that field.
Also when on an existing field in a contact view, allow any keyboard key (or enter) to start editing the contact from that field. Hitting Option, Edit sucks for minor corrections/changes..
Allow for copying contact from ANY field, e.g. floating over the email address, have a “copy” option in the menu WITHOUT being in edit mode and selecting. If I want to copy a contact field to an email this is handy. Allow the same from the main address book list, Copy should copy the ENTIRE contact info into a TEXT only field. (NOT vcard)
Groups…. Never use it… Allow me to change “Groups” view to be a company view… handy if I have alot of people in each company.
Notes field. Seems that large notes fields get clipped - Nokia PC Sync clips these - IT’S IMPORTANT TO FIX THIS DOWN THE ROAD! Treo’s Blackberries and Windows Mobile devices don’t clip this.
Allow contact to save alphabetic phone numbers (in general the phone dialer should support this). In the US we get all these idiot companies that give us 1-800-IMAMORON … Right now to dial these I need to look at another phone to figure out the keys (E62 seems to support dialing alphabetic - E61 and other E series don’t)
Any further “corporate” user questions - ask away.
Here is another wacky (?) idea: since I bet most people make 75% or more of their calls to 4-6 favorite friends/conctacs/family, could you include an option to make your favorite contacts more “visual” (making all contacts visual would probably not work too well)? In other words, include an option to select a” Visual” shortcut view (something comparable in choosing Grid or List for the view of the main menu ). x
The way this could work is that in the visual view your favorite contacts would show up as a picture (and maybe name under it if space allows) only. They would show up in a grid or a carousel of some kind. With current better screens at least 4, probably 6 contacts could be shown on one screen without need to scroll. Selecting a pic and hitting the green button would call the default number. Selecting and clicking one of the softkeys could open the contact for editing.
T-Mobile here in the US is advertising something along these lines. I have not seen it for myself, but in the add it seems that the favorite five contacts show in a circle shaped fast menu with pics. It seems highly applealing for the “average user” at least.
This may be a better idea for the S40 series, and in any case perhaps hard to pull off without making it too complicated.
Nick’s comments about changing the groups view to a companies view got me thinking: Why not have “smart groups”, where you can specify some criteria and they automatically contain any contacts that match it. For example you could define a smart group as one that contains all contacts where the company field is set to “XYZ” or all contacts whose home address country is “England” or … whatever! You get the idea!
Another thing is could you please include lots of international fonts on S60 phones (or at least have an easy way of installing them). I have some contacts with names written in Korean chanracters (Hangul) on my phone and they show up as squares which is a pity. Mac OS X seems to come support for lots of scripts out of the box, so on my Mac those contacts display fine. I know this is a wider issue than just the address book, but I thought I’d mention it here because address book is one app that would benefit from this!
for me theres a couple of things it needs
(well its generally terrible but what the hey - also note im using it on an N70 so its probably a bit better on v3)
one: make all info visible - if a field is quite long i have to edit it to read it!!!
also when editing show all fields so i dont have to add one in.
when you go into contacts, i want predictive selection - like on windows mobile.
so if i want bridget
i just do [2][7][4] and i’m there
currently i have to do
[2][2][7][7][7][4][4][4] - its PAINFUL
the display spacing and typography is SHOCKING
complete overhaul
smaller categories and larger text for the info you want.
This is by far my biggest gripe with S60. I would love just simple things to be updated like
1. sync of contact categories with outlook (which many have already mentioned)
2. being able to see all information without having to edit the information, especially when the address is too long or you have notes on a person (this applies to the calendar as well).
I’ve always thought these things should be a no brainer as WM5 and Blackberry do this so well and it is by far the single most annoying aspect of the S60 phones. S60 leads all other platforms in multimedia IMO. Ok, if you don’t update this for the N-series at least do it for the E-series, which I think as an Enterprise series should be a basic function to have.
Sort by nickname or ‘file as’ (like in outlook) feature! I want to have peoples full name in the address book for reference but generally I don’t need or want to browser through full names of my mobile contacts. E.g. Full name = Elizabeth Wilson, File As = Lizzie or Full name = Alan Thompson, File As = Dad.
Also, I agree that T9 search for contacts is much needed. At the moment I find windows mobile contacts application the one area that makes me miss my old windows phone.
The address book is ok, but it needs a few fixes in my opinion.
- The C/Delete key problem is super-annoying. Adding undo is just a band-aid. The real problem is the feature (or rather a BUG) that when a phone number is selected in the contact details view, the C key deletes the whole contact.
- You can add nicknames but they do nothing. You can’t search for the nicknames, so why on earth have a feature that doesn’t do anything? Talk about disappointing user experience…
- The phone being SMART and all, it should notice that even though I do have seven people called Sami in my phone, I only call two of them regularly. So if one of my regular Samis is at the bottom of the screen, why make me scroll there every time? It’s in one word, annoying. Yes, the alphabetic listing is logical and all, yes, you shouldn’t change the position of items in a UI. But at the cost of five additional clicks and 1.6 seconds of unnecessary staring at the screen multiplied by every call to my friend? Borrow an algorithm from LaunchBar or something.
- Why have groups functionality if syncing my address book with my Mac resets all the groups every time? Disappointing again. Wasting the time of the user. If you can’t make it work, don’t entice me.
- Same goes for speed dial numbers. Those get selectively reset on sync. Speed dials are far easier to set up again than groups, but still, the phone is simply wasting my time by making me do unnecessary maintenance work. Not very smart, from a smart phone.
- Same goes for selected default numbers. Each time I sync the phone, the phone is like someone suffering from memory loss: “so what was the number for text messages again? The landline, perhaps?” And this is a bit of a band-aid suggestion, but if this memory loss is something that’s hard to fix at the phone’s end, it would be nice to be able to set the defaults at the time of use. Ie. when I send a message and I get asked to select a number, I could set the number as a default right away. Now I’m required to send the message, open address book, find the contact, find the number, open submenus, set as default, moan at the difficulty of every little thing in the device.
Enough ranting. A geeky, perhaps not too useful, but possibly a killer app
feature would be to link more data to contacts. More specifically, link feeds, or time-stamped data to contacts.
Like someone said, an easy example would be to be able to view caller logs related to the person.
Or taking the idea further, you could see the flickr photo stream of the contact. How cool (and unuseful) would it be to be able to select a new contact picture from their flickr stream?
Or what about the contacts’ latest tracks from last.fm? With links to buy instantly from the Nokia Music Store?
Or if you gave the Gallery team a bit of extra time to come up with face recognition, the address book could link directly to the locally stored pics and video that includes them!
Or you could just go to address book, find Tommi and go read your blog from there.
I guess you get the idea..
Could you have a look at synchronising phone numbers with Outlook? Outlook stores numbers in the format that differentiates between the country code, area code and local number, eg. +44 (020) 123456. The Phonebook does not however, meaning that this number becomes +44020123456, which will not work. The only workaround I’ve found is to go through and delete all leading 0’s from the area code in Outlook, which is quite annoying.
Could you have a look at synchronising phone numbers with Outlook? Outlook stores numbers in the format that differentiates between the country code, area code and local number, eg. +44 (020) 123456. The Phonebook does not however, meaning that this number becomes +44020123456, which will not work. The only workaround I’ve found is to go through and delete all leading 0’s from the area code in Outlook, which is quite annoying.
-being able to sort contacts by group: Business, personal, etc
-better “details” or Icons for Business VS Home right now I cant tell when I call my girlfriends Home or Business # until its dialing the only one but this is more of an issue in the call log
-Presence would be nice much like Jaiku w\ IM
sort by nickname!
Hi Tommi,
Nice to see that you have touched on a subject that was crying out for attention for a while.
I’ve summed up my wishes here:
http://www.tanzim.co.uk/2007/04/08/the-nokia-s60-address-book-time-for-a-change/
Here’s the main points:
* Transering contacts from non S60 phones to S60 based phones is broken: Something that akBoom has already noted in Tommi’s post. To me, this is a critical usability issue. The first thing I did when I got my E61 was to copy all my contacts from my trustyP910 using Bluetooth to the E61. Imagine my shock horror when it didn’t work. There’s good reasons why they say “First impressions last” and not all business users can’t be expected to be patient enough to use a workaround (in my case, I had to use the PC Suite to sync the contacts to the E61, after I copied my old contacts from the P910 to my PC using, surprise, surprise, Bluetooth).
* Contacts resolution for incoming calls should be customizable: Just after getting the E61, I received a call. Only the number showed up on screen, no name. I was at work and was a bit apprehensive about answering the call. Fortunately, I did. To my surprise, it turned out to be one of my friend, a friend who’s contact information was definitely in the phones address book! Then why couldn’t the *&^** phone show the name of my friend? With the help of colleagues at work who have been using S60 based devices longer than I have, I eventually found that, contacts resolution for incoming calls *fail* if the same number in multiple address book entry. In my case, I had two entries like John and John Temp, both using the same number. In my previous phone, at least, the P910, the first entry that matched a contact entry would be displayed, which meant I at least had a clue who was calling, as opposed to having no clue what so ever! Same goes for situations where you might have the home phone number of your friend and his wife’s number in their respective contacts, it just won’t be resolved.
* The Log application should be improved: I use the phone log application a lot, more than the address book. Why? Its simple, although I have hundreds of contacts in the address book, there’s only a handful that I use most frequently and I get to see the list simply pressing the call button on my phone, no need to troll through the phone book :-). For now, the only complaint I have is the fact that in the call log list, only the name of the contact is displayed, but not the number. In the P910 (sorry to bring it up again ;-)), there was a nifty option that would enable you to go-to the address book entry directly from the log entry - very handy indeed, not just to see the number, but also to edit/update the contact details! The closest thing that the S60 address book has is the “use number” menu option.
Hope that helps.
I work for a major telco as a consultant and some of the points ppl have brought up here are fantastic and also ones I hear similar views from clients.
S60 is near comparable to Windows Mobile now it has Exchange ActiveSync. But it does thirst for a better contacts app.
Needs:
- T9 search
- multiline view, e.g. why do I have to “Edit” to view a long note or field?
- categories easily searchable and viewable, e.g. I have ‘clients’, ‘personal’, ‘work’ categories etc. but only useful if sync’d to outlook!
- search contacts from home / “today” screen.
- when viewing contact, if mobile is highlighted, one-click to send sms immediately. if email, send email immediately, etc..
- company name allowed without needing first or last name. ie. company: “Nokia”, work phone: “333-444555″. and search on that too, just like Windows Mobile.
- following from above, view by name, or view by company is really handy too. not essential though. but I use it weekly personally.
Really would want syncml syncing integrated tighter… like scheduled syncing.
Probably the most important thing, is that any info, should be ’syncable’. i.e. customers change their phones so often, if categories is lost or notes are mucked up, it’s a bad experience for them.
I would like to see the colours changed.
Make the white pages blue, the blue pages yellow and the yellow pages white.
I would like to see the colours changed.
The white pages would be blue, the blue pages would be yellow and the yellow pages would be white. Just for the fun of it.
I would like to see the colours changed.
The white pages would be blue, the blue pages would be yellow and the yellow pages would be white. Just for the fun of it.
Too many key presses to get to an entry in the phone book. T9 entry should be an option that can be set as a default for the phonebook search function. Opening the details of a contact appears too slow (N75)
Not just on phone book but on largely everything that pisses me off in s60-3rd.
1. Generally you should mimic the windows mobile 5 smartphone phonebook interface (one without touch-screen; now called windows mobile 6 standard).
When I start typing in home/today screen, the system searched through phonebook/log combo. Some very important points:
- it’s a-la T9 search
- the search is done through most (should really be ALL) text fields, i.e. company, nickname, notes etc
- the search is performed in all selected languages (meaning not just English or ‘current’). ALL! I have some contacts in Russian and others in English – I shouldn’t care!
- the search includes numbers
To sum it up, when I type 274 I get ALL records containing regexp /[abc][pqrs][ghi]|274|[абвг][фхцч][ийкл]/ ANYWHERE in the records’ field. I can stop typing at any moment. If I press SEND/GREEN the number 274 is dialed. If I press DOWN/UP the cursor allows me to select the record to call.
Log records are displayed first, since in 85% of cases the record I’m looking is there.
When I press the phonebook button I get the list of contacts, without the log records, but otherwise the beahviour is the same. There SHOULD be auto-selected ‘default’ number for any record. It is displayed at right of the contact. I CAN change it by pressing LEFT/RIGHT on the selected record.
*Some* of this functionality is available in ALON Contact manager but it’s a far cry from what is needed.
2. Log is screwed at the moment. Why do I care if I called someone via internet unless it was an internet-only number?! If I called a mobile via internet just keep record of a call to mobile (i.e. not ‘sip:123456789@asterisk’ but just ‘123456789’). Then I can use this log record to call the same number when internet calling isn’t available. At the moment is drives me crazy - I can’t re-dial a number I dialed just 5 min ago, when internet was available!
3. Please do allow to call emails (via internet)! There really is no need to input a separate ‘internet’ telephone number in most cases – most of my friends have their email ‘callable’.
4. Scheduled SyncML is a must. I just wonder how it was left out.
5. I don’t really care about ‘presence’ in the phone book and here’s why: OMA IMPS is largely a failure and I don’t see Nokia adding anything like gtalk/msn/aim/y!/skype chat capability. However a ‘presence API’ would be a huge hit: a way to ASK the ‘presence provider’ (if one is installed and active) if the currently selected person is online and what is her status. Alternatively you could set up a public/free OMA IMPS server with full integration with mentioned services but that’s just pipe dreams.
6. Re-connecting. Now that Gmail has IMAP, I can finally have push email on this phone. IMAP Idle is great but it’s of very little use when a connection is lost all the time. Even setting the keep-alive to 5 min doesn’t help. I enter subway and – no signal in the tunnels – IMAP gets disconnected. For some reason it doesn’t re-connect sometimes.
7. Actually why stop there – make a decent user-programmable keep-alive for GPRS/EDGE! Reliable GPRS/EDGE connection fixes a lot of problems, not just the IMAP Idle one.
7. When a call comes in via internet you should strip the prefix and suffix and try to search the address book. It’s really annoying when a friend calls my SIP dial-in, his number is clearly visible but because of prefix/suffix it’s not looked up correctly in the address book.
8. Allow re-definition of buttons! I don’t use Nokia’s version of ‘conference’, so why can’t I re-define it on my E65?