That not withstanding, I thought it would be a useful exercise to snatch an hour of yesterday evening trying out a number of web sites in the E90's second generation Web browser, allied to its much larger display. How would it stand up?
And before I plough on, please bear in mind:

1. <LI nd="4">I'm no Web 2.0 expert and I'm not that experienced with the S60 3rd Edition web browser, I was coming at this from a strictly man-in-the-street point of view. On the other hand Rafe saw this article in the editorial stage and decided it needed a technical explanation to clear up some points. You can find this at the bottom of the article.
2. I had very limited time, so when I hit a problem I moved on - there was no time for detailed analysis...

First stop was Nokia's main site. Their use of Flash to drive all their intro screens was a problem, though, and I couldn't get into the main site. Clicking on any of the apparent links above resulted simply in the S60 Web browser popup toolbar appearing...


Going in via Google to a sub page was a little more successful, but again the use of Flash (despite Web's quoted Flash support) was a problem. Hey ho.... Why oh why do web site designers insist on flashy Flash(!) rather than using traditional text, images, links etc. Call me old style, but......


I wondered whether it was something I was doing wrong, e.g. with a toolbar option set wrong, but nothing obvious proferred itself.


And yes, I did check that I had Flash support turned on...


Talking of Google - well, you knew THIS site was going to behave!


Ah yes, a basic HTML site (wonder who created it?!), no problems here....


...until I tried to watch one of my embedded MP4 movies... which didn't play, although I was able to set the raw MP4 downloading thanks to the provision of an alternate link.


Thoughts of video led me to YouTube, where, somewhat predictably, the Flash video didn't work. At least the playback window appears though, let's hope the S60 Web team crack this one before S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1 is finalised, YouTube/Flash video supprt would be pretty darned cool for watching videos while bored, using Wi-Fi or HSDPA...


Time to head for Google's Documents though - coo, they do a lot these days, don't they! Move over Microsoft 8-)


Ah. Logging in via my Google Mail account, it turns out that Web identifies itself as Apple's Safari, which it is after all related to... Hopefully this will work better once Google have changed things at their end...


I wondered what other Google services might or might not work. Google Maps unfortunately decided that Web wasn't a grown up browser and served up the true 'Mobile' version...


Ditto their Mail service, alas. With a full 800 pixel wide screen and connected over Wi-Fi, I was kind of hoping to be able to use the real thing again....


Google Image search is simpler, I suspect, and worked much better.


Time to dive into a really complex, huge HTML page - BoingBoing. The E90 coped with this very well, although it did take a minute or so for every last advert and button to load up.


More BoingBoing - let's try clicking through to the Yahoo Finance story...


Pretty good. It's screenshots like this that really show off the size and capability of the E90's display.


Just giving you an idea of what the whole Yahoo Finance page looked like, using Web's handy mini-map.


As requested, just trying out Meebo, but the use of flash was again the sticking point.


Interestingly, even Nokia's own sites don't recognise the S60 Web browser as being er..... capable.


One last example - even the BBC's news site serves up the WAP version rather than the full Web version. Sigh.
The verdict? More work needed by the E90 team (Web crashed the entire device several times), the S60 Web team (you've made a 'proper' web browser, you need to make it tell sites what it can do, or at least what it can emulate) and the web teams of a lot of major sites (less Flash menus, more useable by those without MSIE).




Playing back an MP4 test music video, fabulous frame rate and glorious sound (really). I couldn't screenshot this because the video's driven directly to the screen via the graphics chip, but the above will give you an idea. For a live video of the above, watch Smartphones Show 25 in a few days time.

And while we're on the subject of video, here's an unedited 640 by 480 pixel by 22 fps video clip taken on the E90's high quality camera, just right click, save and watch, as usual:
e90extra.mp4, 6MB

Considering that this is on an unoptimised prototype and that the light was very indifferent, the quality's decent and not a million miles from the output of the Carl Zeiss lens-equipped N95... And now for some apps and screenshots... (Note that all the screens below have been resampled to fit this page - the originals would have been too wide!!)


SysExplorer's hardware dialog shows some details. I don't think I believe the MHz figure, but the RAM looks about right. Having this much RAM free is utterly luxurious! In theory, even the largest web pages can be loaded and the largest photos zoomed right in, both at the same time, while 2 or 3 Java apps sit in the background and TomTom Navigator loiters over in the corner.... Quite staggering.



Browsing my own (ahem) web site, here with the Page 'mini-map' displayed. The map is not as vital as on smaller screened devices, but it's still useful.



The built-in tutorial system (offered during the initial device startup) includes slides explaining the positioning/GPS functionality.



TeamSuite, debuted on the E50, seems to be an Eseries regular now. Useful for coordinating communications with colleagues from your Contact store.



Quickoffice 3.8, working on a Word invoice of mine....



Previewing the Word file before printing... The printer options are the usual HP-centric set, but this may widen before release.



Quickoffice again, handling a Powerpoint file. There's an excellent set of viewing and editing modes.



Quickoffice, in spreadsheet mode and zoomed out a little so that you can see more cells. My sources tell me that Quickoffice 3.8 will be the version in the final E90 ROM, by the way, with Quickoffice 4 available as a paid upgrade using the convenient Quickmanager over-the-air system.



Editing text in a Contact Note field. The handling of notes still isn't perfect, but it's better than on smaller-screened S60 devices.



Playing back a WMA music file. Music player itself doesn't have a working library yet (in the proto), I had to kick this off from File manager, but at least it shows the WMA codec is in place, which bodes well! I'd also hope that some of that extra space gets used for album art...



File manager. It's not quite as intuitive as the Series 80 version (you can't tab across to scroll down items in the right hand pane) but it's not far off. And, again, the extra screen real estate just makes a big difference.



Installing applications - it's worth noting that the extra screen real estate has the added benefit that pop-up S60 dialogs no longer obscure the main part of the display, as above...



As with the original Communicators, it's practical to create folders for specific projects, at least in terms of all your Office documents. In fact, you can do the same on all other S60 3rd Edition devices, but the capability is pushed a little more here.



Third party applications won't know about the E90 yet, at least in terms of optimising screen use, but at least they auto-scale to fill the space available. This is the free Calcium, by the way.



HanDBase, a pretty good database app for S60, though of course it's still optimised for smaller screens. And something's not right (yet) about some of the E90's system fonts. Still...



800 by 352 pixels means a rich document experience. Here's Mobipocket Reader and a popular ebook.



Mobipocket Reader again, this time in my hyperlinked Trivopaedia. Great for reference documents.



Wi-Fi reception was pretty good, this was a good 30m from the router.



More Wi-Fi scanning. The 'Unknown' bit is one of the little routines that have obviously yet to be written!



GPS Satellite info, courtesy of the built-in Positioning app. GPS sensitivity isn't as good as with a dedicated Bluetooth GPS, but it should still be fine in reasonably open areas. And, again, reception may well be improved further before final E90 release. It's also worth noting that there's support for Bluetooth GPS as well, potentially in combination, for extra precision? We'll see....



OK, so OPL appears to have died a few years ago. Not to worry, there's quite a bit you can do with Python, including developing on the E90 itself.

It's still quite early days for this new Communicator. Whole chunks of the interface and software suite have clues that the software isn't actually finished yet. The hardware's extremely solid and is obviously pretty close to the final product (though the keypad backlight on the cover phone wasn't working on the proto and the main keyboard backlight was very dim). Adapting S60 to the 800 pixel widescreen Communicator screen isn't a perfect fit - where Nokia have worked on the core apps to make them more suited, the changes work well - where they haven't got around to it yet, the expanse of wasted screen space speaks volumes.
And, as many people have said, for this to be a flagship enterprise device without any support for Outlook categories is a bit of a non-starter. Let's hope this is added into S60 before the E90's ROM is finalised, otherwise take-up of the E90 will be much reduced.
Still, once you get into Quickoffice or an ebook reader, making full use of that huge, huge screen, much is forgiven. The E90 is a tremendous opportunity for Nokia to win back the sizeable market segment that's currently served by the likes of the HTC Universal and TyTN, let's hope they don't blow it.
Steve Litchfield, 26 Feb 2007

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