I picked one of these up this week as I thought it was time I finally checked out FP2. Now before anyone points out I could have picked up the all mighty N97 I will say now it was all down to money. the 5800 I could afford and the N97 is just out of my reach at the moment.
I am not going to carry out a full review here as like most phones that come out I am way behind the usual bloggers who get review handsets so this is just about my early opinions.
Firstly I wanted to check out Nokia’s touch screen capability as although touch screen isn’t really my favourite way to input it does seem to be the future so its best to try and get used to it now.
As you may know I did own a T Mobile G1 and the touch on that was impressive and I will say now Nokia you have some work to do, why oh why did you make it resistive? and people don’t want to have to mess about with Stylus or a Guitar Pick????? for any kind of text input. I have stuck with the standard alphanumeric dial pad input as I haven’t really mastered the full keyboard input as of yet, but ok it still does work and so far it hasn’t caused me many issues just using my fingers so I won’t harp on about it too much. The screen itself is very nice though very bright, clean and crisp and has impressed me so far.
It’s a very plasticy (sic) handset but feels sturdy enough, so from that point of view it’s actually well designed and put together (I have put a full screen exim screen protector on it also and it doesn’t affect the touch ability at all) It’s blue stripe one and I have noticed that in a certain light the whole phone has a slight blue tint to it which again I do like.
Software wise there are a few differences I have noticed and I actually like the way you can organise folders and applications but some things just seem so awkward. One thing of note is syncing, why bury it down in connections and switching profiles for different sync options is just plain daft.
The choice between having an application bar and avatars for people you contact the most is nice but with a tall screen as is why not both? or do something similar to the xpressmusic touch button with the drop down menu which I think is an excellent feature, surely a contacts one could have been developed also?
One thing I have been pleased about is that all of the 3rd party applications that I always use work flawlessly. Gravity, Profimail, Handy Weather etc and things like the BBC’s iPlayer is great in widescreen mode.
The camera is better than I anticipated, it makes me laugh now when I think “oh well its only 3.2mp but it will do” it just shows how far handsets are come when 3.2mp on a handset is not seen as a major thing, but I have been pleasantly surprised with some of the photo’s I have taken.
I was concerned when I read that people were complaining of “smoky tints” and blurring and were resorting to removing the cover to get decent images which suggested that it was less to do with the Carl Zeiss optics and more to do with the plastic lens cover. Now I except that you are not going to get some kind of mineral glass lens cover but surely if you are going to big up the fact that you are using Carl Zeiss then you want to source a decent lens cover to support it.
But I haven’t had to do any of this? I don’t know if Nokia have made any changes from earlier production models but mine seems fine for what it is which pleases me no end or have people just had “dodgy” versions? who knows but I am happy which is all that matters to me.
The picture above was taken the day after I received the handset, it was a quick point and shoot from a carpark and its a decent enough replication of what the day was like, the clouds are slightly more prominent in colour but overall for something that was taken on the fly with all settings automatic then I think it’s pretty damn good. I uploaded it straight to Flickr from the phone and have linked it to here as is.
I suppose seeing as this is an xpressmusic handset then I should mention audio, and yes it’s fine it really is, I don’t like the headphones as I prefer inner ear noise cancelling so I will buy a set for it but the music player is fine and the audio quality is good enough for what I expect.
I could go on but then it would just cover what some of the more in depth reviews have covered that you can find on the bigger phone blogs. Overall though I think this is a fun handset and I am enjoying the early experience with it. Yes some of the menu/feature functions seem to be a bit less intuitive on FP2 and yes I really do believe that resistive was a mistake and Nokia have a fair bit of work to do around touch technology but its not too far away and I am sure that they will progress with it and future handsets will be right up their with the competition.
