S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2 fully reviewed!

Eldar Murtazin from Mobile-Review has had his mega-review of the S60 3rd edition Feature Pack 2, part of Symbian OS9.3, translated.For those of us who didn’t understand the original review, we can now enjoy the English words that so well describe the upcoming platform. Eldar used a Nokia N78 to derive screenshots and opinions. Surely the model must have been a test prototype, so we can expect changes on the release firmware.

The pictures I had posted on a past article, you can read the text here, but if you prefer to check the full review, please head over to the source.

Preface

A year ago we looked into the major changes brought about in the Feature Pack 2, as Nokia showcased this much-hyped update at 3GSM Congress in Barcelona. Back then the company’s staff claimed first FP2-powered offerings would debut and shortly after that, being slated for spring – that’s exactly how it came to pass, although with a delay of one year. Twelve months later, and still in Barcelona, we witnessed the first product running the FP2 – the Nokia N78. Drawing parallels with the world of touchscreen-enabled devices, we shouldn’t be off assuming that S60-based devices with touch-sensitive displays will be announced in a year’s time, or, at least, will hit the market no sooner than that.

Such a long development time is largely due to the issues concerning the integration between certain features and making all their gears spin together. But is the final product worth all the effort they have put into it? The answer couldn’t be more definitive – yes. The Feature Pack 2 continues the evolution of the S60, as it is not much of a revolution, really. On the other hand, it packs in all core features and stand-alone applications that have been popping up throughout this year, stepping up the system’s basic functionality. Since the year to come will have this version of the S60 as the engine for most products, we thought that just listing all improvements over the FP1 wouldn’t be quite enough, that’s why we are presenting you with an in-depth review with breakdowns on every core feature, so that we won’t have to go back to the basics in our smartphone reviews.

User Interface

The S60 has always been walking a path of its own, and unlike the mass market offerings running the S40, aims at tech-savvy users in the first place. At some point in time, as the sales of S60-powered devices kept soaring up, they finally got to the mass-market, which provoked a decline in the average owner’s expertise in that new users seemed to get befuddled with the interface, menu categorization and so on. The FP2 signifies the first deliberate attempt to get the user interfaces of the S60 and S40 closer, figure out a guideline that would suit them both. In the future these two platforms will be borrowing core features and specific apps from each other. This way, the S40 is set to pick up Nokia Maps down the road.

Three-button interface. Up until the FP2 all devices had only two captioned soft-keys, while now there are three of them, with the key in the middle usually serving for item selection (OK, Select functions). In some sub-menus its functions may vary, but this is all another attempt to get the devices to be more user-friendly. This interface layout doesn’t have a huge impact on the ease of use, at least for those who already familiar with the S60.

Open applications is accessed not only with a long-press of Menu button, but also by tapping the left soft-key. The inclusion of this menu item plainly indicates that the vendor wants to highlight its solutions being multitasking-enabled, since many users are unaware of such ability on their devices, no matter how odd that sounds. Horizontally arranged thumbnails in this task manager add some visual appeal to the interface layout as well. You can terminate any given application by pushing the C button.

Active Standby. The interface of the Active Standby screen has received a lot of tweaking – application shortcuts now may be laid out not only horizontally, but vertically as well. Upon selection of a shortcut (only for the vertical view) the window on the right fills up with various options that have something to do with the picked application. RSS/Atom feeds can now be enabled at the bottom of the main screen. Overall, such layout saves a great deal of time when looking for a particular menu item.

The third way to view the standby screen is the no-frills mode, when you are presented only with captions to the soft-keys and no other extras.

Caller ID. No need to use FSCaller anymore – now the image assigned to a contact is displayed full-screen both on incoming and outgoing calls.

Wallpaper and screensaver. The user can go for any set of pictures, making them appear on the screen as a slide-show, this feature is available for both the screensaver and wallpaper.

Menu animation. When entering sub-menus or switching between menu trees, the FP2 presents you with some eye-candy animation, like snowflake, dancing on the screen or just an invisible hand turning over the pages. Menu animation can be enabled in the Themes menu, the user isn’t allowed to set a specific effect for each menu, but I doubt this ability will be craved for.

Icon animation. All items in the menu can get much more pleasant to look at, when Icon animation is enabled. The effects pool depends on the theme you are in, as well as your device.

Menu layout. It is not the first time we critique the roster of items found in different menus of the S60 – often enough it doesn’t make sense and there seems to be no method to it. For instance, if the standard Calendar app is housed in Office applications in one device, rest assured you will find it somewhere else with your next Nokia-branded smartphone. Basically, we don’t need to list all these missteps in terms of the menu layout – every user that has had experience with the S60 products know that all too well, when he had to change his habits and wonder about his new phone, trying to locate the applications he needed. The FP2 now employs the rule that the main menu should comprise of no more than 12 icons (3×4 grid). The menu categorization is now a tad better, although it still suffers from a couple of glitches. For example, the Nokia N78 has its office applications stuffed in the Installations menu, where nobody will ever look for them. The company has a lot of work to do here, and that’s not done in a week.

The main menu’s default view is grid, but you can also go for the list view, as well as two wheel-style appearances (Horseshoe, V-shaped).

“V- Shaped” groups all the icons in a wedge, so when moving through the list the one in the centre always changes. “Horse Shoe Wheel” mode is a round-shaped menu view – if there are some sub-items in a menu available they are displayed at once but going into them is impossible until you enter the corresponding menu item. These two types of menu layouts are of no interest in light of the missing JogDial, as the logics behind these wheel-type views is that you can scroll through them with a navi-wheel, rotating joystick or a sensor built into the joystick; and if that’s not the case, such menu views seem to be somewhat of out place.

The user is free to crate own folders in the main and all sub-menus, as well as move any items to them, adjusting the system to his/her needs this way

Multimedia menu

The honor of being the first model to carry the multimedia menu onboard belongs to the Nokia N95, where calling it up required you to push the upper slide to reveal the music controls. But unlike the Nokia N81, the N95’s menu was sort of a quick launch bar. Starting with the Nokia N81 the multimedia menu is going one level up – you press a dedicated button and find yourself in a wheel-shaped menu, where every tab features kindred functions. You can navigate through these tabs with the help of the navi-key or the numeric keypad. This menu type will be available not with all FP2-powered devices, but rather those from the Nseries range.

The current version sports only six pages, whose order of appearance may be easily varied – by the default, the first tab you see is all about music (with this tab on, you can check out your library, start random playback of your tracks or view podcasts). The Games tab proposes exactly the same options as the N-Gage section. The Gallery allows you to view your last captured shot and calls up the Album. You can submit some entries to the Contacts tab, so it acts like a speed dial menu, which may come in handy on certain occasions. Internet – links to your favorite pages, Maps – points of interests and locations.

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