Well it's been 2 days since I've started using a Symbian S40 phone, specifically the Nokia 6126. I am using it as a backup phone until I can get my N73 fixed, hopefully soon. I'm dying here! This post is about a few things I've noticed that S40 has and S60 doesn't. Of course S40 doesn't even touch S60, which is obviously better.
The first thing I'd like to say is how much I miss having a S60 phone. This is like torture! I am realizing how much S60 converges with my life. Accessing email and the web is a pain on S40. The browser is crap compared to the S60. I personally am not liking the interface too much, and the biggest killer for me is the lack of multitasking. The ability to multitask is one of the main reasons I love my Nokia N73. I can't believe Symbian didn't implement multitasking into S40. Who cares if it's not meant to be a smartphone. Hell, even my girlfriends Sony Ericsson can do this (and well). In todays world, the ability to do more things at once is how you get ahead. Switching from the calculator and back to the internet should be no problem. Maybe they don't want it to compete with S60, who knows.
And for good things. Things that Series 60 needs to learn from Series 40.
1. Timed Profiles - I never even new this feature existed on phones. Say your going into a movie theater. Set your profile to silent for 3 hours, and after the time it will automatically switch back to the previous. This can come in handy for meetings, work, visiting family, going on a date, etc. Such a basic function should be included in Series 60 "smartphones".
2. Tons of shortcuts in Series 40 - If you use "Active Standby" on your N95, you are limited to 6 applications across the screen, and two softkeys. In S40, you can have your active standby, right and left softkey, and all four directional keys act as shortcuts. How they do this is you can assign a directional button to highlight your active standby menu, then scroll left and right to get to your favorite application. Example: For my directional buttons, I have left as the browser, right as the calculator, up to activate active standby menu, and down for the phonebook. Then my right softkey starts a new text message. Now heres where it gets even better! S40 has a "Go To" menu shortcut. Using my left softkey, a small list of more of my favorite applications and functions pops up on the screen, fully customizable. Below the Active Standby application menu you can also add a "quick note" feature so that you can jot something down on the fly, as well as start a countdown timer. Why doesn't Series 60 give this functionality? Or do they? Am I missing something here?
3. Timer and Stopwatch - I can't remember if the N95 had these applications built in, but not on my Nokia N73. Weird. Maybe Symbian did this on purpose to get 3rd party developers involved?
4. Sending a text message to "recently used" - This is a big one for me. When you are selecting who you want to send a text to, you have an option of viewing the "recently used" contacts. This is very similar to a "most used". There are only a few people I text on a constant basis, so having them pop up on a list like this makes things so much faster than having to scroll through my whole phonebook. I've talked about the 3rd party S60 application called TextQuick (click here for the review) which gives you a list of your most texted people in order of how often they are texted. This is extremely valuable for texting on the fly and I wish Series 60 had this built in.
That's all I can find for now. If there are other features that S40 has over S60, let me know. I'm sure there aren't many more.
Other than that, Series 40 has nothing over Series 60. The lack of 3rd party applications is huge. I think S40 only takes java applications, which if you follow this blog you'll know I hate. After playing with my girlfriends Sony Ericsson W580i for a few hours, I've came do the conclusion that their firmware is much more sleek, intuitive, and cleaner than Series 40.
