| « First impressions of Nokia E72 | Why you DO want multitasking on your iPhone » |
OK, picture this.
You are at the office. You leave your desk for a minute and have left your S60 powered Symbian smartphone on the desk. At that moment an alarm/notification goes off, it can be your alarm-app or your calendar, it doesn't matter which.
Now tell me what's wrong with that picture?
Follow up:
You don't see it? It is probably because you have never owned a Symbian device then.
So let me tell you what's wrong.
Firstly, the alarm won't sound simply for a brief second as it does on, say Windows Mobile, but will instead sound continually for about 30 seconds, to the delight of your co-workers who probably love listening to your phone alarm for half a minute while you are away.
Secondly, and much worse, when you come back to your desk and check your phone for any missed events, the alarm you just missed (because it certainly didn't go unnoticed by your co-workers) is gone; in other words, you don't get ANY notification of ANY kind that you just missed an alarm. Nothing, nada, zilch. As if it never happened.
Your only hope is to be around when the alarm automatically goes off again next time, in N minutes (which is configurable), which it will do for a total of 6 times. After that, you are out of luck.
But, some might say, since the alarm sounds again in N minutes you will most likely get it on the second, or third, or forth go.
Granted, 9 times out of 10 you will. But it is that 10th time that matters: when you are in the theater and you silenced your phone, or you left your phone at home for a couple of hours, or you simply kept you phone deep in your winter coat and you didn't hear the alarm. It is on those occasions it makes all the difference in the world because then you will miss it.
There is nothing "smart" (as in "smartphone") about handling alarms in this fashion. I have stated before that I am PIM guy, and this is such a big flaw that I literally sold my last Nokia because of this. I tried several 3rd party alarm apps but there was no solution.
But still, as I stated in another post, I really like Symbian because it does everything else really well, and it is the fastest and the most stable OS around. Because of this, and the new Nokia E72 that is about to be launched, I am thinking about trying to look past that flaw and learn to live with it.
Will I?
We'll see.
Comment feed for this post
It seems that those who have always used S60 don't see this as a problem, so I reckon that Nokia don't either. Quite bizarre since I honestly can't see how the current set up can be of any use. I certainly don't bother now (and have missed most of my appts since I got my E71).
As a tip: try selecting a silent tone for your calendar events. At least this way you won't annoy your co-workers.
I have mentioned this issue in several forums, starting from several years ago, and have never received a response of any kind from S60 users that would indicate that this is a problem for them, which makes me think that most of them have either a) never used another platform or b) only use their S60 phones for calling, playing games, and listening to music (but you don't need to a buy a smartphone for that, do you?).
But Symbian/Nokia(?) should know better. Much better, if they truly want to be in the "smartphone" league.
@Olbow: like you I tried all 3rd party apps but to no avail.
Let's hope Nokia fixes this.
But, to be honest, after all these years I am not very optimistic about it; if they have not changed it until now there is little reason to think they consider it to be problem to begin with, which makes you wonder if they depend on their own phones at all for PIM related tasks...
But if, as you say, it is a Nokia "feature" then the request should be done to Nokia, not Symbian, shouldn't it?
I use Outlook 2007 and enter hundreds of all day events which become memos when synced with my E71. I normally attach an alarm zero minutes before the all day event, so that when I turn my PC on in the morning, any missed events pop up.
Unfortunately, if I am away with work and switch my phone on after a good night's sleep, I get no reminder alarms for any of those all day events. What's worse is that I normally don't see a display of the all day events/memos on my E71 until all my timed appointments for the day have ended!
It is like adding insult to injury; not telling me about an event in the morning, and then letting me know once the day is done!
This is a shocking flaw for a 'smartphone'.
Hopefully things will get better [much much] better with Symbian^4.
My reminders are in silent, but I keep the vibrating alert. This is just as annoying, as it keeps going off whenever a calender entry comes up.
@Nokia
One vibration, as for an sms or an email, would be enough. Why can't this be changed as a setting?
I am also not very confident that Nokia will remove any bugs from Symbian. They simply ignored my comments in the past already.
Either way, this issue was one of the reasons why I sold my Nokia E72, as I explained in my last post.
I don't see myself buying another Symbian device until this is changed.