Nokia X6: My experience so far

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently upgraded to the Nokia X6 16GB and as when I reviewed the N900, I’m posting my experiences of just over two weeks with it so far. All from the perspective of being a Linux user of course.

I am loving the X6 on the whole. The ‘X’ range is targeted at entertainment based users but, running Symbian^1, it’s fulfilling my Smartphone requirements. There’s an irony in that my reflection on the N900 was that I had to keep reminding myself that it was “a tool not a toy” whereas with the X6, its work functionality is married up very well with its fun applications.

I’m going to do a straight mirror of my positive and negative points from the N900 – that is to say for each point in turn there, I’ll post the X6′s response. That means that unlike in the N900 review, they’re not necessarily divided into positives and then negatives but reading the two next to each other could give a simple comparison of Maemo (MeeGo that will be) and Symbian^1 (as yet, there are no Symbian^3 phones on the market but I’d love to get my hands on the N8 when it is unleashed later this year). After the responses to the N900 review, there’ll be things that are either unique to the X6 or that didn’t occur when reviewing the N900.

• Symbian doesn’t have the same wealth of applications as Maemo – and what there are are often payware rather than Open Source. That having been said, there are a few that I have found invaluable, along the same lines as those for Maemo:
  • Funambol Sync – allowing me to sync with Evolution on my main computer. Now, it bears mention that in theory I don’t need this. When I first got the X6, I set it up to sync over bluetooth using SyncEvolution. This worked great but where I had long descriptions on calendar items (such as the lectionary entries), these are truncated. I think this is an issue with doing it over Bluetooth generally so I’m not blaming the X6. It does mean that I reverted to using Funambol.
  • Gravity – a superb Twitter client. It’s payware and I must confess that I paid because it’s fantastic. I would love to have Witter on Symbian and if that were a possibility, I’d never have gone near Gravity but the best Open Source Twitter client for Symbian in my view is Twim which is Java-based. I used Twim on the N95 but found it far too fiddly with the touch screen of the X6.
  • SymbianBible – Bible software that uses the file format of the venerable PalmBible+. This has the advantage that over the years a lot of translations have been produced for that format but the disadvantage that also a lot of those translations have ceased to be available for download. If it could be ported to Sword (and a conversion script from PalmBible+ to Sword produced), it would be near perfect. It does suffer from a general issue I have with Symbian – of which more below.
• The default browser is pretty poor. I’ve never got on with the Symbian’s browser but I’ve installed Opera Mobile. Sadly, there isn’t an obvious way in Symbian to set a default browser so other apps open the Symbian browser if they need to open a link.
• Symbian doesn’t automatically switch between WLAN and mobile data services. I really hope this has been added in Symbian^3 as it’s really frustrating to keep having to tell apps which network to use. Gravity makes a decent effort at switching but it’s not perfect.
• I love Ovi Maps. With the X6 (as with all recent Symbian based Nokia phones), I get free Sat Nav, worldwide. The GPS seems really strong, picking up my location very quickly and the navigation in Ovi Maps is exceptional. I’ve switched to it wholesale in preference to TomTom. Frustratingly, you need a Windows box to install the map and voice data. This is the only function for which I’ve needed a Windows box. It seems strange to me that I can install the Maps app itself directly on the phone and it can even update its firmware directly without needed a computer yet I need to plug it into a Windows box to download and install this data. Again, I hope this will be resolved in a future version.
• The X6 has a notification light like the N900. Simple idea but extremely useful.
• As is the case with most Nokia phones these days, the camera is of a very high quality. It comes with Carl Zeiss optics of course and although it’s only 5MP, for someone of my standard of photography, that’s plenty (although I’m loving the prospect of the 12MP widescreen camera in the N8). Here’s a picture I took with the X6 that try as I might, I simply could not get with my “proper” camera (Fuji FinePix F40fd, 8.3MP) without it blurring.
• The switching between portrait and landscape mode is amazingly smooth. The homescreen only works in portrait mode (the opposite to on the N900) but otherwise, every app other than the camera (for which, forcing landscape makes sense when you think about it) works fine in either orientation and the rotation detection is setup perfectly to rotate at the right time, most of the time. This is a small thing that makes a big difference and it’s made using the X6 a lot easier.
  • The charging socket for the X6, like the N900, is on the top. At the time of reviewing the N900, I said this was a failing on its part. I’ve changed my mind. What it actually serves to do it to ensure the charging cable is out of the way of the car’s dashboard when it’s in a windscreen mount. Using the maps in portrait mode (as the universal car mount requires) makes a lot more sense than using it in landscape as it provides more information about what is ahead rather than what is around. This makes me wonder why for so long, SatNav companies have produces units with landscape screens.
• The battery lasts a full day under constant use (mostly data in my case). This is perfectly adequate as it’s not that uncommon or difficult to have it on charge at some point in the day whether on the desk in one’s office or in the car.
• In addition to the points from the N900 review, I also want to highlight the music functionality of the X6. 16GB is plenty of storage and it’s meant that I’ve switched to using it as my music player. So happy have I been with it in fact that I sold my Cowon S9 on eBay.
• Two niggles that I want to mention:In the “Orange” homescreen. This is the screen I’d like to use but I’d need to have the option to put application shortcuts on it but when I tap “Add a shortcut”, nothing happens. If I try to drag it to the screen, it locks it up until I change to a different homescreen. It’s a small issue and it’s not ruined the phone for me. When I first got it home, it worked fine but had ceased to work before I’d added the shortcuts I wanted. I suspect that if I do a factory reset, it may work again but I am concerned that it might also reset it to Nokia’s default which doesn’t even include the Orange home screen so I’d lose it altogether (a soft reset didn’t solve it).
• Font support is pretty poor.You can add TTF format fonts by putting them in a specific directory (C:/Data/Fonts although it’s not documented and I only found this out from the SymbianBible site) but you can’t then use them in the menus or homescreen or select a default font for apps to use. Moreover, not all characters from fonts are available. This is a particular issue in apps that require characters other than the basic Latin set. For me, this applies to SymbianBible and texts in Hebrew and Greek. They simply are not displayed correctly. I know this is a niche use but failing to support fonts fully in this way is appalling for any Operating System on any platform in 2010. I really hope this is resolved in Symbian^3.

So, yet again, in my quest for the perfect smartphone for Linux users, I find myself bound to say it’s Symbian despite the niggles – and roll on Symbian^3 for even more goodness!