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< Esato Forum Index > Sony Ericsson / Sony > General > Gizmodo verdict on dumbphones and the W995. Bookmark topic

The review may have essentially touched the nerve and pinpointed an issue worth discussing, but it's still way too arrogant.
Not everyone wants or can, for that matter, lock themselves in the fruit phone walled garden. People in many countries around the world do not have the opportunity to buy Apple's handset on contract or otherwise legally and thus have no access to the fabled app store, which in turn, dims the lustre of the device, at least to a degree.

More importantly, there's no doubt that not everyone needs a smartphone of any description. Some people just won't be bothered. Though I sure would like one (still steering clear of full touch solutions) as much as the next geekish person.

Cheers!
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Posted: 2009-06-05 18:36:41
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$600, where?

You can already buy it for $490usd, http://www.mobilecityonline.c[....]=txtlink&utm_campaign=GSMarena

and its only been out a week, the price will drop even more in the next week.
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Posted: 2009-06-05 18:52:07
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One of the tags say "lightning review".
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Posted: 2009-06-05 19:05:10
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I admire the iPhone in some departments but I won't ever buy it because some of the features it offers (or lack of, actually) are dead meat for me. Some of what it can do are already covered superbly by my (nevertheless slow) other phone - which is also a fruitphone.
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Posted: 2009-06-05 19:37:02
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I think he was a bit harsh on the UI which is top notch. The commonly used functions can be reached by

Dedicated buttons
D-pad shortcuts ^ V
Activity menu shortcuts
Using the menus and typing numbers to make selections
Using the menus and typing ^ V to make selections

Plus you have Voice Dialing, Voice Answer, Magic Word, speed dialing, it is infinitely customisable and this should be recognised by the reviewer. I really like 's Rotating menu but I have to admit that I'd never see it because I put everything I use on D-pad shortcuts and the Activity menu. And who DOESN"T use the camera button or media button - come on...

However, I see his point about $600 phones should be better than this and thats why I'm so enthusiastic about the Aino. I think its the template for all feature phones going forward - combined use of Touchscreen and hidden keypad / D-pad is a stroke of genius that will take off with people wanting more than a 'dumbphone' but not wanting to commit to an entire OS ecosystem that comes with a Apple/Android/WM smartphone. Getting the touch v button control balance will be the key to its success but the potential audience for this combination is huge - I think aspects of this should reach down to the 3xx models of the S/C/F and should be mandatory in G/W series.

Smartphones were supposed to be a smaller version of your PC in your pocket but in reality they just brought the complexity and geekiness of Windows to mobile phones. Apple got it right by making the iPhone a simplified Mac in your pocket but in truth feature phones have been eating away at the smartphone advantages for years to the point where my V640i could do everything I needed (modem, browsing, email, calendar appointments, PC sync, USB document storage, etc) except connect to wifi, at 1/6 the price of an X1.

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Posted: 2009-06-06 02:26:08
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That makes you the opposite of all those people here at Esato who feel that displaying photos at full size is not a good thing.

. . .

I agree with the review to 110 percent. I use my phone as a filofax and for this purpose WM, UIQ3 and S60 work very well. But SE's dumbphones have very limited PIM features. What is the limit of a calendar entry description? 160 characters? Some of my entries are almost one KB in size (entered with a QWERTY keyboard or stylus on an onscreen keyboard) and these will not sync to any of the SE dumbphones I've tried so far.
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Posted: 2009-06-06 06:55:11
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Sorry, but I agree with gizmodo. The UI may have shortcuts but it's still the same UI that they keep throwing more functions to it, making it longer and more complicated and then they try to make up for it by creating shortcuts or extra keys. Shortcuts aren't very good when you have to figure out how to use them and adding extra keys is no real UI improvement since you won't be able to add more keys forever plus it's another hardware piece to get loose, dirty or just non-functional with time. The point of the review goes actually even further because smartphones are actually getting easier to use them dumbphones and sometimes they are even cheaper. Why would you pay so much money for a device that's harder to use, dumber and has fewer functions? The debate between dumber/easier-to-use phones versus smarter/harder-to-use phones is totally changing with smartphones becoming just as or even more accessible to anyone. I agree. Dumbphones like w995 have to die. Not the hardware but the software. needs a wake-up call.
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Posted: 2009-06-06 07:04:55
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@GUCCI:Please tell me,how opera mini is resource hungry
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Posted: 2009-06-06 08:19:28
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@estatophan
A proof of that is the way it eats through our battery in low coverage areas. But it's still a superb browser.
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Posted: 2009-06-06 09:30:07
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My V640i came with a PIM java app built in - I never used it so I don't know the character limit. I used the Notes function a lot and posted them to the Standby screen which is something I believe most smartphone owners do as well. Notes for feature phones can also be entered via MPE which is probably quicker than a half qwerty or a stylus.

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Posted: 2009-06-06 13:16:09
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