Nokia N80 Vs Sony Ericsson S700i

From SifWiki

I've had a Sony Ericsson S700i for 18 months and have just replaced it with the Nokia N80. For a long time I'd not bothered upgrading the S700i because I just couldn't find anything that was really worth changing too. The decent screen (320x240) and the handy camera (1280x1024) on the S700i make it still quite a well specified phone even by modern standards. However, 18 months is long enough for one phone and I was just itching to get a new gadget, the Nokia N80 is just enough to tempt me to change, following is a comparison between the two comparing and contrasting some of the features as I find them.

Data Communications

• iSync - The iSync application on MacOSX doesn't support the N80 currently, but follow these instructions to get it to work Apple iSync and the N80
• Wifi 802.11g/b - It was quite strange assigning an IP address to my mobile and then being able to browse the web at DSL speeds from anywhere around my house, but a very welcome feature. The performance of the reception doesn't seem to great as yet (as with the Bluetooth) but I'll see how I get on. The Wifi connection is able to be used in-place of any of the other data connections, ie: replacing GPRS or GSM connections for use browsing web pages from the built in browser. Two of the more notable uses are mentioned below, UPnP and SIP.
• UPnP - Unfortunately I don't yet have anything else UPnP enabled to test this out with but I'll be looking into UPnP on Linux and seeing what I can come up with over the next few days.
• SIP - I didn't expect to see any SIP support in the phone but with Wifi built in this is surely an ideal platform to turn into a very funky SIP phone? Unfortunately the SIP support is limited and to be used for 3G Video calling only, rather than being able to connect the phone to an Asterisk server, which I was hoping to do! Browsing Google there are a couple of people with the same idea as me, technically I'm sure its possible with the right software. I can imagine Nokia would have stepped on toes by allowing the N80 to make use of SIP over it's Wifi connection straight out of the box (I can see the mobile network providers wincing at the thought).
• Bluetooth - The Bluetooth connections on the N80 seem to be much quicker than I get on the S700i, towards 50KB/s rather than the 35KB/s I'd see on the S700i. A decent improvement and useful for the extra size of the image files generated by the N80. Annoyingly, I don't seem to be able to get a connection to my laptop over quite such a long range as I could with the S700i, needing to be in the same room whereas before I could Bluetooth pictures upstairs from the living room or into the office from my bedroom. A fairly minor irritation all said and done and I suspect it's maybe to do with the phone having WiFi and the two not co-existing well in such a small form factor perhaps.
• Email - The email client on the N80 is nippy and the big screen makes it a joy to use, sensible grouping with the other Messaging functions means it's nice and quick to navigate too, as with the S700i so not much to choose between them so far.
• SMS / MMS - Of the two I use SMS the most and very rarely bother with MMS, so far the N80 is fine for SMS but I've only had it a day, I'll update this later...

Camera

The resolution on the N80 is a fair bit better than the S700i, 3 megapixel compared to the 2 of the S700i. The quality of the images is also better with crisper detail and better contrast. The best way to compare the two is with pictures: So view comparitive pictures here!

The camera is one of the major uses for my phone, I probably spend more time taking pics than I do making phone calls, so this is a must-have feature for me and I've really not been dissapointed, there's a good list of shooting settings which are useful, one of the major bonuses I've found so far is that the N80 has a proper flash instead of a crappy LED like the S700i. The flash is nowhere near the standard of a dedicated camera, but it's good enough to take snap's of friends in darkness at distances of up to about 2 metres - which is ideal pub-picture territory, where most of us are probably going to want to take that kind of snap.

A Timer function is useful for taking pics of yourself and of course, with the N80 being 3G ready it has an additional camera on the front for making Video calls on. One of the interesting features on the phone is the ability to set the camera to take photos at an interval between 1 second and 15minutes. I'm not sure how much use this will be, but it's kind of funky.

I've been really hammering the camera on this phone now and one of the major observations I have is just how much battery it uses! If you're expecting to take the phone out and use it all day for taking snaps, then I'd get a second battery!

For more tips on the phone, including disabling the irritating Orange photo album software see the Nokia N80 Hints and Tips.

Ergonomics

• Build and Case - So far so good, the keypad is nice to use, the phone itself feels well built and fits in the hand nicely. It's a little smaller than the S700i and feels lighter too. Doesn't feel quite as well built as the S700i, which is a remarkably solid little phone. The buttons on the N80 feel like they won't last as long, especially the rocker switch but it's still a well made little device.
• Display - The screen is bright and crisp and the resolution is brilliant, the on screen displays are easy to read and very clear, this is definitely one of the best points about this phone. You won't have any problem reading the screen in any conditions and there's plenty of options to let you tweak how the backlight stays on.
• Call Quality - Excellent, crystal clear and plenty loud enough. Haven't got anyone to make a video call to but the quality of the front camera is great and I expect it would be well up to the job.
• Battery Life - The battery life currently is about 24 hours, which is pathetic. Granted this includes an hour or so of WiFi usage and perhaps another 30minutes of camera usage (including flash photography). Maybe I'm expecting too much... After reading this thread at the expansys forum I've disabled constant data connections and also turned off the WiFi checking for available lans, hopefully this will give me more standby time...

Gripes

There are some gripes with this phone - in general Symbian isn't as nice as the Sony Ericcson interface. It doesn't feel as well held together and you can see that it's a standard OS with phone apps built in, rather than a ground-up built for a device OS like on the Sony's. It's a real shame because the Hardware is fantastically spec'd and just let down a little by the OS, here's some of my particular gripes...

• Crashing - It's just not acceptable for phones to be released with buggy firmware nowadays, I suspect that some of the mobile operators modifications don't help matters but this phone crashes far too much. Bluetooth dropping out, reboots for no reason, Browser crashing, FFS! Update: After a few days of use I've not had any more crashes, this is quite strange but I'll update this page as time goes by.
• Alarm Clock - The alarm clock is far too simple, the S700i could set a weekly recurring alarm that would be active Mon-Fri (or any days you choose) and then a seperate alarm which you could set daily. The N80 version is far more basic, maybe it's just me but I rely on my mobile for time-keeping so this is a major loss to me. I've found a third party Alarm Clock application which gives me back all these features, see the Nokia N80 Hints page for more information.
• LED Light - I've praised the N80 for having a proper flash instead of an LED, but I do miss that LED as I sometimes used it as a torch, a very minor irritation :)
• Keypad Lock - Whilst I miss the button on the side of the S700i for keypad locking, that's a minor irritation compared to the N80 wanting to lock the keypad whenever I slide it back in with the camera activated - of course I don't want to lock the keypad with the camera active, even if I did, wouldn't I also want the camera closed down too???
• Battery Life - It started off at around 24 hours, with a few tweaks detail on the N80 Hints page I've managed to get around 48 hours from the battery. It's not brilliant but it's manageable, just.