Why Nokia 7650 Sucks or How to make your cell behave like a Windows PC

It was a pleasent evening but only untill I messed up with a borrowed Nokia 7650.
Unfortunately I somehow decided to copy the contact list from my SIM to the already overloaded phone set (Nokia 7650). And that was the end, during the copying I recieved an error informing me that the memory is full, still the phone did'nt stop it continued copying, and now the this phone has started behaving like a Windows PC.

The phone has some very nice features, (well they sound nice, and sometimes work nice as well),

  • Combined mobile phone, digital camera (640x480 tru colour images) and PDA features.
  • A nice GUI, polyphonic sound, digital camara, Notes Taking facility, TODO Lists etc etc.
  • 176 x 208 pixels (35 x 41mm) at 12bit colors resolution.
  • 4MB of onboard memory.
  • Really nice ring tones.

It runs on the Symbian v6.1 Operating System, Nokia Series 60 platform and features the J2ME technology. These are not the reasons to hate the phone, but the phone sucks. It is unable to handle some very obvious errors.

The Nokia 7650 cannot handle out of memory errors. That is if you fill up the storage on the phone, which can be done very easily, the phone will start behaving starangely.The phone will tell you that the it is out of memory and will also advice you to delete some data. But will not allow you to delete the data, because it cannot start the applications to delete the data (images/ messages/ contact lists etc), because it is out of memory.

After some research from the Internet I came across an article that had a reference to some similar problems, faced by other users of Nokia 7650. The article had a reference to some reset code *#7370# which can reset the phone to its factory defaults and also a pointer to a bug with the firmware v3.12 which can get the phone into a state where it is too full to even accept the formatting code. Then the only solution is to get the Nokia 7650 to the nearest service center [which is 40 KM from my place :-( ] for flashing.

I am wondering at the speed new features (and bugs as well) are being added what will happen to the mobile phone. There is a very simple formula in S/W development

Bugs in a S/W Program are directly proportional to the Size and Complexity of the Program

And indeed Nokia 7650 is a complex system. I hope Nokia is not going the way of Microsoft. The most important reason form me to own a mobile phone is communication, and not that I should be able to take pictures or listen to ring tones or warm my meals on it. If the reliability of the basic functionality is ignored for the sake of extra features than you are in trouble buddy. Extra functionality Soon we can expect Notron Utilities and Antivirus kind of utilities for Nokia phones too, promising to protect and optimize a system which cannot be.

Meanwhile I will stick with some old fashioned GSM handsets, which can provide me reliable communication not at the expence of features. And the amazing thing is at Nokia's site I found no reference to this problem.

:-(

References

Submitted by Ajay Pal Singh Atwal on September 17, 2003 - 12:27pm. categories [ Communication | Mobile Computing ] Ajay Pal Singh Atwal's blog | 354 reads

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