I had 20 minutes with the Nokia C5 today and was quite impressed with the build quality and overall design. While it looks and feels like many other Nokia phones, there has definitely been a ramp up in terms of the care given to materials and the form factor. It felt very quick and the screen was ‘just’ large enough to cope with what is a fairly busy OS and the overall experience was much more positive that I have felt over the past year with any Nokia phone. I still can’t see where it will fit in such a crowded market, but it is part of Nokia’s focus on making standard mobile phones smarter rather than trying to push smartphones onto people who just need a phone. My overriding feeling was that it is a bargain for under £150 without contract.
And then I had a full 30 minutes with the BlackBerry Torch. When I first picked it up I must admit to feeling less than impressed by the size and especially the weight. The design does not scream 2010 and is very much in the practical camp, but the levels of practicality available are immense.It was only when I started to really play with the keyboard and touch screen that I got into the experience and OS 6 felt very natural within a few minutes. I won’t go into too many details because I am expecting one for review soon, but I was left feeling that this phone is actually quite special.
You probably know by now that Apple is holding a special event on 1st September. Rumoured announcements include the new Apple TV (still people are calling it iTV), 99 cent TV episode rentals from the likes of Fox and Disney, a new iPod Touch with Retina Display and FaceTime, CDMA iPhone 4 and lots of other silly ideas such as hardware keyboarded iPhones (won’t happen) and that the Beatles back catalogue will make it to iTunes (also won’t happen). The use of a guitar to put an image to the event is a curious one though…
MusicWithMe is a new BlackBerry app which performs a very important task- it allows you to download tracks from iTunes straight to a BlackBerry device. It is currently priced at a one time charge of $14.99 and a 30 day trial is also available. It is also coming soon for Android, Symbian and Maemo. I have looked and cannot see how it handles the DRM tracks, or if it can, but it is ironic that an iPhone needs to connect to iTunes via a wire and a BlackBerry doesn’t.
The C5 is aimed at people who prefer texting with one hand, the old fashioned way. Before anyone says you can text with one hand with non candy style phones, I am just repeating Nokia marketing….