I am a self-confessed Nokia die-hard. I have stuck with them even though the performance of some of their later models of phones, especially the touchscreen ones has been less than stellar. Nokia make great hardware. I am yet to find a manufacturer that makes sturdy long lasting phones Like Nokia does. However, their software seems to leave a lot to be desired. Saying that, I still do believe that the Nokia E71 is one of the best smartphones they may. I still have mine to date and it has served me faithfully.
A friend who couldn’t understand my almost fanatical obsession with Nokia phones dared me to try another smartphone operating system. Try the iPhone or an Android phone and then tell me if you will go back to Nokia. The opportunity came when Safaricom introduced the uber-cheap Huawei IDEOS U8150 in Kenya. Retailing at 8,500 Kenya Shillings with 600MB free data and 1,000 Shillings free airtime, it was a bargain to say the least. The IDEOS had Android 2.2 (Froyo) installed. It comes with a 528 MHz ARM 11 processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm MSM7225 chipset and 200 MB storage, 256 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM. These are pretty modest specs compared to the HTC Desire or Samsung Galaxy S. In fact, with 256MB of RAM, Flash 10 is not supported on this phone. You need at least 512MB of RAM to do that.
I convinced my pal to get me one and I got my wife one – in pink of course. If I was going to do a review, I would like to do it from two angles. I am a power user – I customise my phones extensively and push them to the limit. My wife on the other hand, though being a techie, is just beyond an average user, though I must admit at times she surprises me by finding some really advanced features. So began our journey into the Android world.
One month down the line, I guess I am converted. I am still a Nokia fan, but hey, Android rocks! The first day my wife played with the phone she said she isn’t going back to her Nokia E63. That would be the backup phone. She was amazed at the ease with which she could check her email (on gmail), facebook and surf from the phone. The only limitation was the small 2.8 inch screen, but that we soon got used to. The clarity was really good at 240x320 pixels (256K colours). I must say, it was amazing to see a small package behave so well. The capacitive touch screen was very responsive – compared to the resistive one on my Nokia N97. It was fast and pretty accurate. I liked the phone. The cheap plastic build many people have complained about didn’t bother me much since for that price, I wasn’t expecting Nokia quality build.
I went about installing apps on it like TweetDeck, Fancy Widget, Andoku (Android Sudoku), Bible Reader, Dolphin Browser (I heard it is better than the native browser), Lookout Mobile Security and a couple of games. Most apps worked fine. Initially I couldn’t get Angry Birds to install from the Android Market but somewhere later in March something must have changed because I managed to install it on both my phone and my wife’s phone. She became an instant addict.
I didn’t get to use all the features on the phone like the camera – I prefer a real camera for such things. I also used the GPS very little.
So, after a month, the strong points I picked up are:
- Lots of free apps – Nokia Ovi Store has quite a number but those on the Android Market are so much more. Stuff I had to buy on Ovi Store I could get for free on the Android OS.
- The OTA application installation. This is what impressed my wife and I the most. I could visit the Market on my computer, choose the application, click Install and in a few minutes it would be installed on the phone. Wish Nokia had that instead of just sending the link via SMS. That was about the coolest thing I saw on the platform.
- Ease in connecting to email. I used my Nokia N97 to connect to my many email accounts using Nokia Messaging. It worked very well, but had no HTML emails. On the other hand the Email app on Android supports HTML email. I know on the Symbian^3 phones you can get HTML email and I think on the Nokia E72 as well, but I don’t have that experience yet. I was even able to configure the IDEOS to connect to read my work email. It was awesome. I didn’t configure all the accounts I have on the Nokia as it was just a test phone.
- Web browsing. This was also really good. It was smooth and fast (when Safaricom didn’t have hiccups) and with HTML5 support, it worked really well on some websites. I definitely prefer the browsing experience on the IDEOS to Nokia. Dolphin Web Browser also made the experience better. I wish we had one on the S60 platform.
What I didn’t like about either the IDEOS:
- When receiving a call, there is no built in application for speaking out the callers name like on the Nokia. I was so used to this from Nokia I missed it on the Android. I managed to get an app called SayMyName but I must say the quality doesn’t compare to Nokia. The voice is tinny and I think Nokia’s version does better with Kenyan/African names.
- As I mentioned earlier, I am a power user, so I tend to push the phone hard. The slow processor began to show. The phone would drag and sometimes completely freeze. I thought this was because of all the apps I had installed but my wife’s phone would experience the same issues some time. It would lose all network connectivity or become totally unresponsive requiring a restart. I also noticed if the memory went below the 70MB mark, the phone would struggle to load web pages and even take time to refresh the screen – it would go blank at times. But that is what you get for a budget smartphone. I had a bit of trouble with MPESA and the IDEOS because of this. In some cases it would hang after using MPESA or if you hadn’t used MPESA for a while, you needed to restart the phone before it could properly access the SIM applications like MPESA. One other thing was that it was slow to switch between applications.
- The phone had lots of issues with USSD. I tried it on all the networks in Kenya, and with each network it threw back MMI errors. Trying the same command on a Nokia would bring no errors. This was both for operator USSD – recharges, data balances etc as well as for Mobile Banking. Seems that the IDEOS has issues with USSD. This is a major drawback as some of the services are billable and if it throws you an error in the middle of a USSD transaction, you have to start all over again which is an extra cost. That is a huge downside.
- Screen size of the IDEOS. At 2.8 inches, the screen is rather small. At times the keyboard covers a lot of the screen real-estate yet it is still quite small so typing messages on the keyboard is rather difficult if you have fat fingers. Otherwise at $100, it isn’t bad.
- Inability to receive or send vCard files via Text message or MMS. This is one feature that I really enjoy on Nokia Phones. I don’t have to copy and paste numbers to send to someone. I just sent them a business card via text message and voila, they have the number they need. Android doesn’t support this so if the person is not close by then you just have to do a copy and paste. Thankfully this isn’t hard on Android. It does support vCard via Bluetooth but that means the two of you have to be in close proximity. I managed to sort this out (thanks to Skunkworks) by installing an application on the phone. Share Contacts from the Android Market adds this feaure to your IDEOS. Interestingly, HTC and Samsung SMS apps already support this feature without requiring any add on.
- Battery Life. The IDEOS has very poor battery life especially on 3G. The best way to improve battery life is to switch to 2G or install an application like GreenPower which turns off the data connection when not in use and fires it up when you need it. The only problem is that at times it seems to hang and so switching to airplane mode solves it at times. At other times, the phone has to be rebooted. Seems there are a lot of reboot requirements for this phone. The phone has a tendency to heat up quite a bit. This is normal with 3G but on EDGE I was surprised.
- Accelerometer response is slow at times. This can be a source of irritation waiting for the screen to change orientation.
- One thing I found difficult and which I think I am so used to on Nokia phones is the ability to shut down an application. On Nokia, one holds down the End-Call button for long while in the application and it shuts down. This is very useful when you want to free up memory. On the IDEOS, I was unable to do it no matter how I tried. {ED - Advanced Task Killer can do this but do we have to install an app for everything?}
- Calendar and Alerts: I love the way Nokia handles this. Even if the screen is locked, the phone will bring up a notification you can acknowledge. On the IDEOS, this was not possible. When notifying you of a calendar alert, the screen remains blank if locked and there is only an audio notification. This means you have to go and unlock the screen and then acknowledge or view the alert. I find that time wasting and utterly boring.
- One more thing. When you connect via Wifi, it is not possible to use a proxy to browse the net. I know application like Android Market and push mail may not work, but simple web browsing doesn't work either since you cannot set up Proxy Settings. I tried various applications from the Android Market and none worked. I gave up completely. Searching on the net, I found it is an issue faced with a couple of Android phones. Some manufacturers have managed to solve it by adding settings for Wifi Proxy but interestingly, this feature is completely absent from the IDEOS.
Conclusion
In summary, for the price, the IDEOS is a great phone. Android is a great operating system. A few quirks here and there but it provides a better user experience than Nokia’s Symbian. The ease of use and intuitiveness make it easy even for a new user. So with this phone, Safaricom is sure to create lots of data addicts and ensure a good amount of revenue for itself in the data realm, given that voice prices have dropped to all time lows.
