Nokia 6682 Review Part 2 of 5: Software Applications.

Posted in Gadgets, Technology by engtech on August 03, 2006

In this part of the series, I’ll be talking about

the wrist band (horrible, can scratch your display),
Nokia PC Suite software,
Lifeblog software,
and the prepackaged phone application
- clock and
- mp3 music player

Before I comment on the phone/PC software, I’d like to make some general comments on the design of the phone.

Wrist Band

Moronic on many levels. Big circle on it for scratching your display/camera lens. It is on the top of the phone, which means that if you are trying to take a photo without putting your wrist through the strap it will either be hanging in front of your display or in front of your lens. How many years have digital cameras been getting this right for? All you had to do was copy a digital camera.

The good news is there is a plastic screen covering the LCD that is part of shell casing. Replacement shell casings are going for about $18 US on E-bay.

Why isn’t GPS standard?

The attachable GPS unit is not yet available and will cost $280 US when it is. GPS is not yet standard and that makes me sad. But why not software approximation based on cell tower location? The phone CPU runs at 220 MHz with half a gig of RAM.

SOFTWARE

PC Suite

The 6682 comes with a CD-ROM to install the software to connect to your PC. I chose to download the latest versions of the software from the Nokia website instead. The PC Suite application is simple. It prompts you to connect your phone to the PC for the first time, installs the software on the phone and the PC. A pop-up will appear on your phone to confirm that you want to install the software. This does not upgrade your firmware.

Lifeblog

Nokia has three applications available for download: Lifeblog, image editing software and video editing software. Why would I use my phone to edit content instead of connecting to a PC and using much better software with a much faster processor? I have the same issue with digital cameras.

Make sure you choose the option to download both the phone software and the PC software at the same time. The latest version of Lifeblog is 2.0.43, but the Nokia 6682 only supports 1.80.50. The free version of the Lifeblog software has a limitation that it can only transfer 500 items from your phone to your PC. The link on the Nokia site to buy a full version of Lifeblog for 30 Euro is broken.

Lifeblog is an intermediate software for moving data from your phone to your PC to you internet blog. The software does not list supported blogging platforms, instead it offers a broken link to the Nokia website. The online FAQ mentions it only supports Typepad. A bit surprising, as I would have thought they’d have support for the lion-share of the blogging market: Blogger and WordPress.

Red and Blue are Blogger and WordPress, Green is Typepad.

Google Trends - WordPress and Blogger rule
First things first, Lifeblog is not primarily a blogging application. It primarily used to store and chronologically organize the different types of data on your smart-phone.

Considering that will store text messages and IM conversations, I was surprised that it doesn’t offer any password protection options besides the assumption that you are using a unique Windows user account. I think teenage users would hate parents/siblings could just open Lifeblog and see everything they’ve been saying to their friends.

Lifeblog doesn’t allow you to directly moblog to an online service (not that you could afford it). Roland Tanglao recommends using ShoZu instead.

At this point I decided to uninstall Lifeblog from my PC and phone.

Start Menu >> Control Panel >> Add Remove Programs >> Nokia Lifeblog

Menu >> Tools >> App. manager >> lifeblog.SIS >> Options >> Remove >> Yes

Prepackaged Applications

While reading up on the opinions of some of the other people involved in the Nokia 6682 seeding program, I found out that the 64 MB card that comes with the phone has some goodies on it that the 512 MB upgrade is missing.

From the Applications Guide:

Movie director – available for download at Nokia, not useful.
Photo editor – available for download at Nokia, not useful.
Kodak mobile – upload/print photos with Kodak online, not useful.
Opera – good mobile web browser, keep.
Music player – better music player, keep.
Quickword – office app, keep. Trial version, not sure of terms.
Quicksheet – office app, keep. Trial version, not sure of terms.
Quickpoint – office app, keep. Trial version, not sure of terms.
Adobe Reader – office app, keep.
Info Print – only useful if you have a Bluetooth printer.
Settings Wizard – Only supports Fido, not Rogers, not useful.

There’s some more software that isn’t mentioned in the manual:

Snakes EX – classic game.
VoiceSignal – control the phone by voice recognition commands.
Wireless software for Bluetooth keyboard.

1 time use Trialware:

Various games.
WayFinder mapping software.

1 trial use? Click on an application once to see what it is and you’ve used up your only chance at using it.

Hint to marketoids: the only way you are going to attract customers to your product with one use is if you are selling crack.
There is also some multimedia:

A bunch of videos intended for sending as attachments to your friends.
Two extra themes that can be copied to the phone memory.
- Menu >> Tools >> Themes >> Options >> Copy to phone mem.

Stuff I couldn’t figure out what it is:

MVENGINE, LM Pro QPASS, AnyXML, AnyHttp, MVPS-HeadsUp, MVPS-MakeMyDay, MVPS-Entertain, MVPS-JustUs, MVPS-Honeybun, MVPS-Getaway, MVPS-DepartureLounge, MVPS-Fastlane, MVPS-Mozart, MVPS-Game On

One problem: how do I move these applications from the 64 MB card to the 512 MB card? Using the PC Suite memory card backup software didn’t do it. These extra apps aren’t available for download. They aren’t on the applications CD. The PC Suite app manager software only goes from PC -> phone. My MMC reader on my laptop can’t see the applications on it.

~~I guess I won’t be using them.~~

Update: The extra applications are available online from ~~the Nokia 6681 Europe page~~. General rule of thumb: check the Nokia Europe pages if you can’t find something on the Nokia USA pages. They have much better content.

Update2: They moved the page. 2006/08/24

PHONE APPLICATIONS

Clock Application

Only has one digital and one analog skin, and they’re both quite ugly. Has an alarm, but I’m surprised it hasn’t evolved. I would have thought it would be standard to be able to set more than one alarm and being able to set which days of the week the alarm is active for. Not to mention an egg timer like application for cooking, BBQing, or exercising. (Or, more likely, how long until the pizza is free).

Music

The first PC Suite application I tried was the Music Transfer. It looks very Apple-esque, and is very similar to iTunes. It looks like it has a random selection function much like the iPod shuffle. I decided to test the limits and transfer a 3 hr / 260 Mb MP3. It prompts if you want to optimize the mp3s for mobile format (converting to AAC). Converting and copying such a large file took upwards of 30 minutes, and they don’t give a time estimate to completion. iTunes would have taken less than a minute. The file size went from 260 Mb to 165 Mb after converting.

It did impress me by playing the MP3 on the phone. I expected it to completely choke on a file this big. Trying to fast forward through a song is useless, as it works in 6 second increments per button push. They need to adopt the positional scroll bar slider of the iPod. It looks like it can store and play the entire MP3, but the MP3 playing application does not know how to fast forward / display time past 34 minutes and 5 seconds. Trying to rewind after 34:05 stops MP3 playback. This is what I expected, as it took iPod forever to properly implement large MP3 support. Keep your music files to a reasonable size and you will be fine. It will be a problem for audio-books.

The music app has two different front-ends depending on if you are using it from the Gallery or from the My Own menu. The My Own player displays the an associate graphic with the song and uses the click button with center as pause, left/right for volume, and up/down as fast forward/reverse. It looks like a copy of the iPod click wheel, except they switch volume with ff/rv to match the phone volume controls. It also sorts songs by ID3 tags.

The Gallery music player makes you scroll through different buttons to skip songs, ff/rv, pause, stop, play. It sorts songs by filename only. Both music apps have the same 34:05 limitation.

When moving several MP3s from different sources I ran into issues where some wouldn’t copy, and some wouldn’t play on the phone. All songs were accessible from the Gallery, but not all of them were available from the My Own music player.

If the headphones aren’t used, music plays through the loudspeaker. Sounds is what you would expect from using the internal speaker. I love the headphone functionality. When getting a phone call while playing MP3s, the music stops and you can press a button on the headphones and all of a sudden they are a hands-free headset. I love it.

VERDICT

People Who Should Get Raises (Cumulative)

Nokia Headphone Developers

People Who Should Get Fired (Cumulative)

Person(s) at Rogers responsible for their data rate costs.
Person who decided to call a non-blog-centric application Lifeblog. *Everyone* thinks it should be used for moblogging from your phone. Manage expectations and change the name to “Lifelog”.
Person who designed (I use the term loosely) the wrist strap.
“1 Trial Use” bundled software.
Person who didn’t include trial software on the CD-ROM.
Person who developed the half-sized MMC card adapter that I can never, ever detach.