When I first bought the phone I thought that it would take some getting used to – but I never have got used to it. The touch-screen interface is bloody awful and I should have been wary of this having tried and failed to use a friend’s iPhone previously. Unfortunately, I sometimes just have to learn the hard way. Aside from the interface I also found the screen very difficult to read with my middle-aged eyesight and the whole thing was bulky and cumbersome to use. However, the absolute killer was the battery life. If left on standby it would last less than a day so I ended up switching the thing off, rendering it largely useless as a mobile phone. Even then, I would forget about it and the battery could be flat in under a week, making it less use than a strategically placed public call box.
I’m not in the habit of scrapping things that are not actually broken beyond repair but on occasion I just have to admit that I made a duff purchase and buy a replacement. I don’t think my requirements have changed as such. I need to make and receive calls on occasion and sometimes text; I like to have a decent MP3 player and camera but I also now realise that a half decent battery life and a vaguely useable interface help no end. As such I’ve gone for a not-so-smart phone in the form of a Nokia 301.
So what’s it like? Well, small, black, with traditional buttons and a no-nonsense interface would sum it up quite nicely. On a single charge it has lasted for around a week on standby although it runs down faster if the camera or music player are used more. The MP3 player is also a model of simplicity which easily found all the albums that I had loaded on the micro-SD card from the old phone. The songs can be selected via album or artist and there are also playlists which I haven’t fiddled with yet (and probably won’t). It sounds OK though the supplied headset and significantly better on more expensive headphones or playing through a proper stereo.
The camera is a 3.2MP job which is theoretically inferior to the old one but I haven’t noticed any difference. In fact for the most part it is far easier to use than the old one. The only problem I have found, and it is an annoying one, is that the photo’s are mis-orientated. I have found a way of fixing this using the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) but it is a little annoying. Anyway, I took this picture in the early evening of the Celtic Circle at The Helix:
There are a couple of useful extra features on the camera. The first is for producing Selfies. A Selfie is a self portrait produced by pointing ones camera at oneself. I discovered that this word was added to the Oxford English Dictionary the other week and is a currently fashionable term amongst the young person’s argot (in a similar way to the way iPod means “gramophone-player”). The feature works by having a bossy American woman help position the phone at arms length. This was the result:
Unfortunately, it doesn’t point out that a gale is blowing one’s fringe asunder. The other feature is a panorama which allows a wide angled shot to be deployed by taking several shots and piecing them together. This was my effort:
I could see that working nicely for landscapes or something like Liverpool waterfront. The surprising thing is how idiot proof the feature is. All of these features seem to work intuitively and with very little effort from the user. Overall I’m very pleased and aside from the annoying picture orientation I couldn’t fault the device. I’ve also managed to set it up with the old Doctor Who theme as the ringtone and a TARDIS noise as the text notification. As far as I am concerned the mobile phone industry can take their smart phones and avail themselves of the suppository app.
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