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Software features of Nokia S40 6th Edition FP1 (Touch&Type)

In S40 6th Edition Feature Pack 1 we received a support for touchscreens (series Touch and Type). The majority of models receive USB on The GO (UTG) support, an opportunity to play unconverted video (WAV, with file size limitations) and visual effects to accompany lists scrolling. In comparison with previous versions the handling of in-built memory was changed together with several other features. Read the article to get all details.

Just like we always do, here is a thing for you to take note of – some features listed in this article have much to do with hardware, as well as software. For instance, some phones may not come with an FM-radio module. Bear this in mind, and look for reviews on specific devices. This article is the breakdown of the platform's functionality, which is composed so as not to go over the same thing again in our reviews.

You can find our detailed review of the S40's previous edition here:

Software features of Nokia S40 6th Edition (Compact UI)

All features were reviewed, and screenshots taken from Nokia C3-01.

Contents:

  1. Changes in 6th Edition Feature Pack 1
  2. Memory organization
  3. USB on the GO
  4. Interface
  5. Phonebook
  6. Messages
  7. E-mail
  8. Calls list
  9. Settings
  10. Backup&Sync
  11. Connectivity
  12. Gallery
  13. Media
  14. Organizer
  15. Web
  16. Communities
  17. Maps
  18. PC synchronization
  19. Conclusions

Changes in 6th Edition Feature Pack 1

This version of Touch and Type was being developed in a hurry alongside Compact UI (6th Edition). Tight deadlines made it impossible for Nokia developers to add standard features everybody is familiar with. Some of them are given below:

  • Absence of voice commands and dialing. These features are mentioned in user guides, but in real life they are not supported.
  • Setup wizard was ditched because there are not so many variants of main menu display.
  • First models with FP1 have no OVI Maps as the latter was not adapted for touchscreens.
  • Memory is organized differently without the dedicated sections for contacts, organizer and other standard features.
  • WiFi wizard – networks search and storage. There is an appropriate widget;
  • Simplified mail client for S40;
  • Browser for S40 based on WebKit with minimum alterations to suit touchscreens;
  • Addition of  OVI account to the majority of sections;
  • Automatic scheduled synchronization of a calendar and phonebook with OVI;
  • VoIP– download of providers from a Nokia service; adjustable settings are not available;

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Memory organization

Feature Pack 1 6th Edition has no dedicated memory for standard apps (Phonebook, Messages, Calendar, Notes and so on). The memory is allocated dynamically. For example, if you take memory by photos you cannot add new contacts to the Phonebook or entries to your Calendar. The phone will offer to delete some files and free the required space. At the same time you cannot copy files onto a memory card (even if it is free you still cannot use the option).

On one hand, dynamic memory allocation makes irrelevant any limitation on a number of entries in every section, on the other hand many people communicate a lot (and have to keep many SMS) and handsets with limited amount of dedicated memory may not satisfy certain users (Ñ3-01 sports merely 30 MB of memory available to users). The browser uses the same amount as its cañhe and the situation becomes even more complicated. Unfortunately, you cannot select a memory card to store all standard apps files.

When the size of in-built memory exceeds 200 MB you can ignore the downside of this approach. I would like to highlight that the amount of memory depends on a particular model and you have to read reviews of appropriate handsets.

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USB on the GO

Through the adaptor you can connect memory cards or external storage devices (NTFS and appropriate media are not supported). You can view files on an external device. This feature was available on selected S40 and Symbian^3models before.

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Interface

The main interface change for Touch and Type in S40 was a combination of a hardware keypad with a touchscreen. It is quite unusual, but the absence of a virtual keypad is a downside. The selection of particular menu items is carried out on the screen, but you need a keypad to enter the information. For example, you select time in a calendar, but to enter it you need a keypad, which is not convenient. A defect of an interface is also manifested in the fact that a "Ñ" key (to delete the final symbol entered) is always virtual and you have to use the screen. Switching between a keypad and touchscreen requires moving between different types of touches, surfaces, efforts, which leads to mixed feelings. Ergonomics leaves much to be desired then.

The Active Standby mode is very similar to the desktop found on smartphones nowadays – while active, the display is divided into several zones (shortcuts toolbar, media player and radio status, date and upcoming events and notes). No doubt, all power users will appreciate this feature, as it allows reading relevant information on the screen outright. You can also arrange the zones on the vertical axis, which adds to the interface's flexibility.

GoTo link connects you to shortcuts. It is an icons matrix where you can place your own shortcuts.

Once the display falls into standby mode, it gets occupied by the clock, missed calls and received messages indicators – all of these events are tied up with tiny icons and numbers, i.e. if you have 3 missed calls, you will see a corresponding icon and "3". The fifth edition features a caller ID picture for every missed call (provided that you have one registered in the phonebook).

The main menu has several display modes– the list (4 items on screen with the rest to be scrolled down, matrix (12 icons on screen), and matrix with sub-items notes (9 icons on screens). In all submenus the lists are vertical.

Some applications and features of the sixth edition, such as the phonebook, now feature pop-up menus that don't refresh the content but appear on top of it. So, once you have picked the required option in it you will go back to the screen you were managing a second ago. All in all, it's a nice improvement over the previous version of S40.

You can set custom font-sizes for Messages, Contacts, and Web (small, normal and large), it doesn't seem to make any difference, however, for the most part, lines will fit on the display, depending on the size you have picked. Even the maximum font size doesn't make it too bold, so the fonts remain delicate enough. For the main menu you can also select a normal or enlarged font size.

In the menu we get fast navigation via numerical sequences. Unlike S60 6th Edition this platform does not support voice instructions (we could not find them in Ñ3-01, but the manufacturer claims such a capability).

The sixth edition also sports predictive text input (T9) system. Also you can opt for the Word Suggestion feature, which is pretty much self-explanatory. But what's really important is that now T9 works in all menus and features throughout the phone. If you need to type in various languages, it is not a big deal, since the handset supports switching languages on the go. The sixth edition also allows copying fragments of text or individual words – it saves all such snippets in the buffer and enables the user to insert them in any application afterwards. For instance we managed to copy text for a text message and paste it into a note on the standby screen.

Themes – using the themes, you can alter not only font color, the icon style of the main menu and wallpapers, but also the background picture of each sub-menu, which is quite interesting. All themes are very well detailed, so that you might even spend some time picking the most fitting option. The sixth edition improves upon the previous version of S40 by extending themes to the player and radio applications, so that now they are parts of one big theme you apply in the settings. But you can also opt to forgo this feature and the player will revert back to its default theme.

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Phonebook

Unlimited number of entries can be saved in the phone's memory. Each contact may have up to five assigned phone numbers of the following types: general, mobile, home, office, fax and video – for 3G networks. The first entered number becomes the default one and can be then edited to your liking.

While previous versions of S40 offered the user only a few fields when creating a contact – that is, first name, last name and one number – and the rest could be filled in later on, the sixth edition shows a few more: mobile number, email address and picture selection.

Additionally, you can enter e-mail, homepage, mail addresses, text note, company and job title. Among all other fields available for filling in is, User ID – it is the identifier for the presence service. Generally speaking, it's some kind of ICQ, which gives you a warning of the user's availability at every given moment. If you think we are going to wind up our story right at this point, you're greatly mistaken, since there are more informative fields available for filling in, like Formal name and Nickname. You can enter Birthday date as well and it will pop up in the calendar as a new event automatically.

Already filled sections are highlighted in grey, so you will be aware of entered information right at the first glance. The system won't allow you to duplicate entries by creating a new contact with the same name – instead, it will allow you to replace the existing item. Nonetheless, this limitation fades away once the phone gets synchronized with a PC. But, keep in mind that if you do have identical entries, this is more likely to give you some trouble with voice dialing.

You can bind up any contact with an image or a video clip. Priority-wise, video clips are higher than pictures therefore they will be played back instead of a photo on all occasions (each name can have both a picture and a video clip assigned). When viewing details on a contact, you will see its picture outright, although previously it resided in its own section. In the general list you can have caller IDs and contacts names paired up - in this mode, the thumbnail is smallish and gives a little notion of the actual image. Other view modes are quite common - only names, names with the general number. The general list can display contacts stored on a SIM card and the phone's internal memory.

On an outgoing call, the image gets reduced to a small thumbnail, whilst on incoming calls, it occupies the entire screen. Contact's name is displayed next to the number type icon and full phone number.

Each contact can be bound up with a personal ring tone (any file) – in case you choose a video clip instead of picture, the sound will be taken from the clip, rather than from a music file.

And traditionally, the buttons 2-9 are for speed dialing.

There are no preset groups available in this phone, thus you'll have to create them yourself. The great edge of this system is that you can create up 25 contact groups. Each of them can be customized with a personal tune and an image. The photo, set for a certain group member, has the higher priority and will be displayed instead of the picture applied to the group. One and the same entry can be a member of various groups.

In the general list of entries, groups are displayed in one line with stand-alone contacts, yet marked with their own icons. Searching is performed in group names and separate contacts at the same time. This layout may seem confusing at first, but later on you realize all its advantages, as you don't have to look up for a special item on the menu to access the groups list (besides, it's accessible only from the main menu, using the soft-key or shortcut numbers, you'll get to the list itself).

Search in the general list can be performed by entering several letters – it doesn't cause any hardships and works as it always does. Pressing the "*" button results in switching to entries on a foreign language (in case you have contacts both in Russian and English, for example). When browsing the phonebook, pushing "#" key calls up the detailed view featuring the general number – to access full data on a contact use the corresponding menu (two presses). All entries may be sorted either by first or last names.

MS Outlook synch module of the sixth edition is far more tuned than that found on the earlier systems. Most of the fields synchronize correctly – and this goes for First Name and Last Name fields as well. From the phonebook menu you are at liberty to send any entry as a Business Card to another device with the aid of an SMS, MMS or a wireless protocol. Unlike the previous edition, here you can choose between sending away the entire entry or name and main number only.

In the menu you get OVI Sync option. Now your contacts can be synchronized with OVI service. If you like it can happen automatically once a week.

On the face of it, there is no way for beaming the entire phonebook to another device – even if you select all contacts, the context menu won't offer you this option. However, using the Settings – Connectivity – Data Transfer tab you will be able to do that, the handset supports synchronization (add all, replace all), apart from the contact list you can transfer notes and calendar events.

This edition fully supports contact transfers between internal memory and SIM-cards and vice versa.

You can also type in a couple of letters into the search field and then select all contacts starting with these letters.

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Messages

You can always change the input language while typing in any menu, this solution is identical to the one applied on Nokia smartphones and is quite handy.

The phone supports Nokia Smart Messaging standard, which allows sending and receiving ring tones and simple black and white pictures from compatible phones. Apart from Nokia phones, this standard is also supported by Samsung, LG and some new Motorola phones. Unfortunately, the company's policy limits the users, since the alternative standard - EMS, which is more popular nowadays, and allows sending not only melodies and pictures, but formatting text as well, is missing here.

All messages regardless of type (SMS/MMS) are stored in the Inbox folder. Messages themselves are kept in the dynamic memory; this means that at best you will have nearly 500 short messages stored. Resettable message counters (sent and received) are also onboard.

When sending a message, you can pick phone numbers not only from the phonebook, but also from recent calls list, calls log or select a group. On top of that, there is the Favorites list, where you can put the numbers you use more often.

The messaging interfaces for SMS and MMS have been merged, so now it makes no difference what you are intending to compose. Depending on the content you throw into your new message, it remains a text-based message, or morphs into an MMS. This is a very smart approach, for it doesn't make you think how you are going to write a message, and probably will win over more users to the MMS standard. As for this message type, no significant improvements have been made. Any message can be up to 600 Kb big. With its OMA MMS 1.3, the platform presents pretty good implementation of MMS technology, so you won't experience any hardships with composing these messages. All images taken with the phone's camera are cropped automatically to fit in your multimedia message (maximum – 1600x1200). If the image's size doesn't exceed 300 Kb or a tad less, you can send it with no further editing in the message body.

The rest of the features in the messaging department are standard - smiles (converted from the text in received messages) and long messages. You can have your messages automatically replaced in the Sent folder on memory overflow (the oldest messages are deleted one after another). Delivery reports are stored in a separate folder, which is handy. CB-messages have their own folder, providing channel number settings on top of its main function.

Conversation represents your SMS messages as a chat. This option is nice and can be used by default to new opened messages. Messages are considered opened if you click on them. Reading separate SMS on screen is not considered as opening even if the message is short enough to be read on screen. You have to open it. Otherwise the indicator of unread messages will still display messages in the status bar.

Flash messages - a kind of short message, shows only on the recipient's screen, but not saved into the phone's memory (they can be saved forcibly).

While in standby mode, the phone indicates sender's name.

Voice Messages – an MMS variation, when you record a voice message, lasting up to 3 minutes 6 seconds (maximum duration), and then send outright.

When composing a message the phone number field has text input enabled, so that you have to type in first letters of a contact name and tap the center button to make the handset look for matching entries.

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E-mail

An e-mail client was considerably redesigned and is based now on OVI service (supported by Yahoo). It handles APOP/POP3/SMTP/IMAP4 protocols. A mail installation wizard can set all required parameters in several steps. If you don't have an e-mail address the phone will offer to get one from OVI.com. It can also find account settings online. It works well for popular mail services and you don't have to put them in manually.

In previous versions you could choose an encoding for a received letter, but this client unfortunately lacks the capability. The majority of files formats are not supported, so you cannot even download them (for example, MS Office files like Word - *.doc are not supported yet). When you download images from online mail services they are optimized for viewing on mobile phones (the size is changed). This way you cannot get a fully sized picture.

Html is not supported in messages and it is automatically converted into one column for comfortable viewing on a phone. You cannot display html.

The settings for incoming and outgoing mail are separated from each other. You can cap the number of received messages (no more than 150), retrieve only headlines of letters, and delete messages from the server once they have been uploaded onto your phone. Any received message cannot exceed 600 Kb in size, which is too little for the majority of consumers.

On one hand the mail client became easier to work with, but the lion's share of features we enjoyed before disappeared. It is currently one of the most basic clients. It is not good for serious work and can only be used for viewing mail.

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Calls list

The platform presents you with three lists – incoming, missed and outgoing calls, with every list having the capacity of 20 entries. On top of that, all these lists feature call date and time, which is pretty convenient. While at the standby screen, press the pick up key for the general call list (although you won't be able to jump to other logs from there).

In detailed call view, you can also see its duration, and when calls are united you can see all entries.

The Call Log also has the menu with all numbers you have sent messages to, and message\call\data counters.

In this section you have a log for positioning. It is represented by all locations for a given time.

Another log sports all synch sessions you have had with the phone.

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Settings

The profiles may be activated from this menu (but it cannot be done by pressing the On/Off button, though it is possible to add a shortcut for a particular profile). Each profile may be activated for a designated period of time and after this, the phone turns back to the default state. Sound alerts may be adjusted for all the events, including calls from group members. You can also easily set whether a contact's video will work in this profile or not. All in all, the profiles implementation on Nokia's phones is one of the best on the market to date. The handset houses five pre-installed profiles and two user-adjustable ones; however, each of these profiles can be set up in any desired fashion and even renamed.

The phone is empowered with the automatic key lock; you can also set a safety pin number so that no one else could use your phone. Furthermore, you can protect your phone's internal memory and memory card with passwords separately.

There is a possibility to adjust enhancement settings, for example, to choose a profile that will kick in when the battery charger is plugged in. This is quite a clever feature that allows you to customize your phone even further.

You can enable the Flight Mode dialog window on handset's start up, however by default, this prompt is turned off. In fact, you might never need that, since the profile with exactly the same settings can be found in the list of standard profiles.

You can always opt for a slideshow composed of your own photos, so that they will change each at designated intervals.

Transition effects – a self-explanatory feature that adds animation to pop-up menus and dialog boxes and long lists. It only improves the way your menu looks.

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Backup&Sync

In this section you can customize synchronization parameters for PC and remote server, which is not useful for ordinary users who don't deal with corporate networks.

Create BackUp – in spite of its resembling title, this feature makes a local back-up copy of your data and moves it to the memory card. You can also select what data you actually want to backup:

  • Settings;
  • Contacts;
  • Messages;
  • Bookmarks;
  • Calendar;
  • Gallery;
  • Applications and games.

The downside to this application is that it creates only one archive, meaning that you won't be able to back up data several times and then use particular system builds for various purposes.

Phone Switch is similar to the utility for S60 and helps transferring notes, contacts, SMS and other files to the second phone (S40 or S60) or takes files from another phone to yours.

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Connectivity

This sub-menu retains all the settings related to Bluetooth, WiFi, packed data (GPRS, EDGE) and data transfer.

Yet, the Bluetooth settings are far more complicated – the handset may be visible for other devices, hidden or available for a designated time span. For connected devices, there is auto-pairing mode, when the handset will keep on trying to establish a connection with another device without notifying you. Coupled devices are now displayed as a separate folder in any menu, which is pretty convenient.

USB connectivity settings have two modes, which are USB Mass Storage (memory card), and Media transfer (synchronization with PC), and Nokia OVI Suite.

WiFi connectivity in the sixth edition of S40 may be used both for data sessions and VoIP telephony. In the latter case, however, you will need some settings from your carrier, since this client can't be configured as you please. Other than that all settings are pretty standard, and it also supports WEP2. There is also networks detection wizard.

Configuration. From this menu, you are allowed to configure the following programs:

  • Web
  • Multimedia messaging
  • Synchronization
  • Push to Talk
  • Instant Messaging
  • E-mail
  • Streaming
  • Access point

At that, it's important to stress that several applications can be set up in a different way and that's not prohibited. A good example of that is the standard Email client, which retains more settings than the Configurations item does. It's worth repeating that such settings depositary proves to be very fetching.

Calls. All phones employ the Voice Clarity technology that enhances call quality in areas with pure reception – in a way, it's an equalizer that negates outside noise. You can also enable in-call timer and after-call note on duration.

Software update. This item serves for auto upload of new firmware versions, in other words, it's what they call "over-the-air update". You can opt for scheduled check-ups and also choose the service provider (for some it may be different from Nokia).

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Gallery

The folders with various files are stocked here - all of them have titles matching their contents. You can view the folders as a list, list with labels or as icons. Any multimedia file, including video can be viewed in full-screen (landscape) mode. All data received via Bluetooth is stored in the "Received" folder, and in case the phone cannot provide enough memory, gets redirected to the memory card automatically. There are no caps on the size of received file.

There is a basic image editor coming included with the sixth edition, which allows you to scale pictures, crop them, add own text fields, small clip-arts or frames, in other words the very minimum you might need for your edit-it-all mood. Some people may benefit from these features. The editor looks differently and is more convenient than before. All changes are immediately displayed on the screen.

In the Gallery a file manager was added, which is not visible in separate menu sections. Here you can view content from the phone or card memory. In Pictures you have a Timeline filtering and My Albums section allows adding separate pictures to albums. It is pleasant to choose shots in series. Select the first and the last pictures and you are done.

Upload of images is a standard option now. Flickr is used by default, but different models may offer various services.

Music and video form another section of the Gallery to access the list of music filters.

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Media

All the settings concerning the multimedia front of the sixth edition are stored here. We aren't going to dwell on the camera module in this article, as it varies on different devices, therefore should you need a more definitive review on the camera – look for the model you need in our Reviews section.

Music player. The player found in the sixth edition copies most features of the one available with 5th edition, but now it comes with support for two codecs: WMA Video 9, WMA Audio 10. The player deals with video content as well as audio files, which brings about a very amusing situation, when by minimizing the player while watching a video, you remove the picture from the display, even though the sound keeps going out from the loudspeaker or earphones like before. It shouldn't be considered as a mistake made by the programmers, since it looks more like a feature, but I have certain doubts about its usability, and on top of that, other handsets don't have this kind of background video playback.

The display shows you data on artist, album, and even album art, if it is in the current track's tag. Forwarding inside the track on a touchscreen is not possible yet for this version.

The playback modes available with the sixth edition's player are: sequential, random, repeat one track/all tracks.

Outside the player is the Stereo Widening feature. There seven five-band equalizers with 5 presets (Normal, Pop, Rock, Jazz, Classical) and two user-manageable setups.

The music library can be categorized with the help of the following filters:

  • All tracks – every song stored in the phone.
  • Artists – tracks sorted by artist.
  • Albums – shows songs depending on album.
  • Genres – classic, rock and so on.
  • Composers – filters your media content by composers.
  • Track lists. Another set of filters, including Favorites (you can throw any track onto this list either while it’s playing or when browsing categories), Most popular and Recent tracks, Recently added and My tracks. A very interesting set of filters that might be quite useful.

Your own playlists may be composed on a PC or on your handset. Unlike the previous edition, with the sixth version you can pick either stand-alone tracks to add them onto your playlist, or entire albums or all tracks by a specific artist, etc, which is obviously really handy.

Music upload – a stand-alone item in the menu, that includes only a link to Nokia's site for the time being, and once the Nokia Recommendation service gets online, it will lead right into it. Apart from AAC, eAAC, eAAC+ and MP3, Nokia's player also supports WMA format. You can also beam sound to a wireless Bluetooth-powered headset, or skip forward/backward wirelessly.

Stereo Widening – allows extending the stereo base. The effect is dependent on hardware specifications

Whilst using the Dictaphone, you are to observe the limit of 60 minutes per one recording. On the bright side, it is enabled during calls. The user is free to choose the place of storage (either phone memory or memory card), but can't set titles of each recording – the handset strictly defines them as a label and number. Unlike handsets by other manufacturers, a recording's title here doesn't feature the phone number of your contact, and this is quite frustrating.

Radio. The model remembers up to 50 FM radio stations and gives them text names. This feature is similar to other Nokia models. You can switch between saved radio stations by pressing a headset button. Radio may work in the hands free mode, but you need a headset as an antenna. A radio signal can be used as an alarm, but once again you need a headset. Radio recording is not supported. Visual Radio is also available. RDS shows names of radio stations.

You can toggle between all saved stations with the help of the number pad – a sort of shortcut number navigation.

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Organizer

Users can add an unlimited number of entries depending on the amount of available dynamic memory. You can view a calendar for a month, week with hours breakdown together with fast transfer to the entered date. Up to 6 types of events (meeting, call, birthday, anniversary, alert and note) can be added with alerts for every type. Events can be repeated. In the monthly view mode days with events have angled corners. Pressing on a day does not lead you to a list of events. A separate key is required for that.

The To-do list enables you to make up events with three types of priority (high, normal and low), set due date and time for each event.

Notes - each note may contain up to 3000 characters. That is more than enough even for the most demanding user.

The alarm clock allows setting both single and recurrent alerts, which may trigger on certain week-days. Any tune, or a radio (you just need to plug a headset in) can serve as a signal. Snooze time-out is also adjustable.

Also the organizer contains a countdown timer, a stopwatch which allows getting intermediate values. Both apps can work in the background mode.

The calculator, apart from its default mode, also has a scientific mode as well, and the mode for calculating your interest in your investment activities.

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Web

The new browser builds upon WebKit open source project which is quite popular with other manufacturers and is currently used by Nokia in its S60 devices, and Apple doesn't shun it either in its fabulous iPhone. This browser supports AJAX, although it view of pretty miniscule displays of feature phones, you won't be able to enjoy games with it (or your experience will be far from passable). But for other services, this AJAX support, along with Flash 3, is a saving grace.

List of items in the browser is typical of 5th Edition plus Web Upload to send your pictures to Flickr and similar services. You can create your own folders for links.

The support of a touchscreen allows quick viewing of a page's mini version and zooms it onscreen (in accordance with predetermined values).

The main flavor is inside. For instance, you can opt not to see the page title, also the browser can save cookies and logins/passwords automatically and change page encoding.

When loading a page the browser shows a progress bar at the bottom that also features the total amount of data it has downloaded so far, so that should you return to that page it, most of its parts will be taken from the cache file.

In the bar you see the full size of the page, though some data are not taken into account by the carrier as it is taken from the local copy.

Moving around webpages is very easy with this browser, plus you can go for its zoom feature, but it's no dynamic, so you can only see pages at 50, 75, 100 or 125 percent of their real size, more importantly it will take the browser around 3-4 seconds to zoom in/out on a small page and just shy of 10 seconds to deal with a 400-600 Kb one. If there are any addresses or phones available you can add them into your phonebook or mail them. There is still no way you can check up addresses spotted in the web browser using the sixth edition's maps, but it will come along down the road.

The "View images" option doesn't work as we'd expect it to – on some pages the browser will display all images available and on the others it will omit a good portion of pictures. We haven't managed to find the source of this issue or any method behind this selectivity.

When downloading files the phone always checks their certificates and also shows estimated time and size. The bad thing, though, is that once it has finished downloading files it goes back to the main menu, instead of the page you were browsing before that.

The History menu in this browser is no bells and whistles – a couple of text links and that's about it. There is also a special section that allows downloading content from Nokia, but it's nothing special either.

Wrapping it all up, this browser allows for PC-esque web surfing experience, but it doesn't look like a clear winner – Opera Mini trumps it on my fronts and as of today offers a more powerful feature pack. So while this browser excels the one found in the fifth edition, it's not the ultimate solution. But on the other hand, it's a significant improvement over the previous versions with some really strong features – and make no mistake about that, more feats and abilities will come along shortly.

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Communities

Work with social networks is carried out via Java app. It gives access to Twitter/Facebook, with other networks to follow. The client is not convenient enough as it shows too many entries, which it is not ready to handle.

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Maps

By the time of FP1 launch maps were not ready to handle this type of screen and subsequently you cannot find them in the standard version.

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PC synchronization

Your handset running on the sixth edition will come with the OVI Suite software kit, which includes a whole range of applications that allow you to synchronize organizer data and phonebook with MS Outlook, Lotus, download tunes, logos, wallpapers and games.

Review of Nokia OVI Suite 2.0

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Conclusions

The range of Type and Touch phones was being developed against tight deadlines, that is why FP1 has no standard Nokia options (voice dialing, maps and so on). Moreover, such features are mentioned in the description of phones, but in real life they are not to be found there. We could not expect to see multitasking here due to similar reasons.

Apart from multitasking, S40 FP1 (Touch&Type) is on par with standard S40 handsets and the majority of users will not see the difference, especially if they predominantly use SMS, calls and ignore additional features. If you need rich features look at a particular app. For example, the absence of maps during the launch is a definite downside. The same applies to the impossibility of installing alternative software (e.g., Google Maps).

If Nokia manages to develop a touchscreen version of S40 fast enough it can carve a small niche, but the rationale behind these devices is faulty. The lack of a virtual keypad makes such phones inconvenient to use. Only a handful of people are ready to pay money for this kind of hybrid devices.

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Eldar Murtazin ([email protected])
Translated by Oleg Kononosov ([email protected]), Maxim Antonenko ([email protected]

Published — 23 January 2011

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