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I want one of these…

Read more about the T-Rex.

…or this!

Read more about the full scale, working Tumbler replica from the movies Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.

I’ve recently changed phones from a Samsung E700 to a Nokia N73. I had the Samsung E700 for a while, but I grew tired of it, plus it died on me. The phone hardware was great, but the firmware on it was second rate. At the time, it seemed, Samsung were not interested in the minor details when it came to user friendliness. You had to make a dozen key presses just to get the phone to do a simple task.

Anyway, I got sick of it and opted to go back a Nokia phone. I have always thought Nokia phones gave the best user experience. They were user friendly, with a very intuitive interface. Things worked the way you expected them to work.

That was then, this is now. Ever since moving over (upgrading isn’t the right word) to the Nokia N73, I’ve had mixed feelings. I thought, the N73 has been out for a while, so it should be a pretty solid piece of technology by now. Maybe not.

Off the top of my head…

The good:
- Camera: Great camera with flash.
- Memory: It’s great to be able to add more memory to the phone.
- Applications: So many add-on applications to expand the phone’s capabilities, such as Google Maps.
- Music: Great multimedia device.

The Bad:
- Alarms: the alarms I am used to allow the user to set the day(s) which I want the alarm to fall on, with the option of repeat. This is usually standard in a phone of this calibre. Not for the N73, although there are 3rd party commercial applications available.
- Voice Tags: Nokia, do you seriously expect everyone on earth to speak with the EXACT same voice as the synthesised voice on the phone? In the past, Nokia phones allowed the user to record their own voice tags, so there was generally a 90% hit rate. Now, the voice tag is automatically generated. Even when I try to speak like the synthesised adult male voice generated by the phone, the hit rate is about 0%. Maybe they might address this shortfall in a future firmware update, but I won’t be holding my breath.
- Speed: It is bloody slow! I am used to pressing a button on the phone and having things happen instantaneously. With the new Symbian system on this phone, I press a button, then wait for the phone to render and draw the graphics on the screen, that’s if it hasn’t crashed already.
- Operating system: The Symbian operating system is quite unstable. I’m not used to phones crashing on me, so having it happen on a regular basis is quite a shock. There’s nothing that puts me off using a device more than the fact it has a poorly designed and slow operating system. Why couldn’t they just stick with the old Nokia operating system? I was playing with an old Nokia phone today and thought, “Gee, this is so much better than the new phone I have!”
- Camera: Slow camera start-up. By the time the camera is ready, the moment has long gone.
- Multimedia Button: Only works half the time.

The Ugly:
- Pop-Ports: No 3.5mm jack for my head phones!
- LED: In power saver mode there is a VERY bright blue LED that flashes every 3 seconds. It’s great if you are in a disco, but when you are trying to sleep…
- Keypad: The keys are a bit small. I’m not sure how many times I’ve sent a half finished text message because I pressed the send button instead of the “1″ button.
- Speed: Did I mention how slow the N73 is?

So, there it is. My opinion on the Nokia N73. It’s not very positive as you have gathered, but why should it be? I expected the great features that were present in previous models to at least remain, or be improved upon, not get worse! I hope Nokia addresses these issues, otherwise I might jump onto the iPhone band wagon.

What’s the use of having a great piece of hardware, only for the software to fall so short of the mark? Get your act together Nokia!

Update:

I found some discussion about the N73’s voice recognition abilities. Apparently the phone “learns” to recognise the owner’s voice over time. But when I am in a hurry, I don’t have the time and patience to “train” the phone. That’s the whole reason of voice tags - to make it more convenient, not less so.

If you haven’t noticed, Wordpress 2.5 was released not too long ago. With the new release was a slew of new features. One of the new features is dashboard widgets. I took this opportunity to update KQF to support the new dashboard widgets.

In the past, KQF had it own dashboard management system, but as of this version, I will leave dashboard management to third party plugins such as Dashboard Widget Manager, or if you are using a version of WP prior to native dashboard widgets, try WP-Dash.

You will still be able to add feeds to your dashboard via the KQF templates. So, if KQF detects dashboard widget support, it will create a widget for each feed you choose to add to the dashboard.

There are also new sample OPML (XML) files in the KQF directory for you to have a play with. They will help you understand how the templates work.

Download KQF 1.7.9 and see how easy feed management has become.