Nokia Search 4 as the ultimate mobile shell

Sometimes it's rewarding to step out of defaults.
What's good for majority may not be so good for you, smartphone power users.

And it's just dawned on me that there might be another thing on your phone, a powerful piece of software which is under-rated and under-used.
It's called Nokia Mobile Search 4.0 and I think it can be used not just for search, but also as a shell for navigating your phone.
It has advantages of it's own and I will demonstrate it now.

Here's my active standby screen shot:

Shortcuts are a prime power in "marketing" phone software to users and I don't think defaults do justice to the power of S60 here. Luckily, S60 is highly customizable.

Of course, Search is already accessible from your Active Standby screen, but I prefer single-button launch for such often-used actions as navigation. Doing more clicks than one would be waste of time.
So I quickly followed the path: "Settings - General - Personalization - Standby Mode - Shortcuts" and have set the right standby softkey to Search.

As you can see from my Standby screenshot, I still have access to Contacts and Messaging from the Active Standby Apps bar.
You may also notice that I replaced "Create New Message" with "Messaging" - this combines both New Message and Inboxes into a single entry, and frees up one softkey (the other softkey is also freed by removing redundant Contacts shortcut).
Widsets has it's own clicks to do (Access Point selection) and is more of a platform, so it takes one of softkeys.
Where once was Lifeblog (sic! I prefer the PC version now), I placed Search.

What does it give me?
Well, simply "access to everything", if I don't enter search terms!

Unless you press some numeric/abc keys, you have categorized, sorted access to all you phone's content:

- Music (same structure as Music Player, sans podcasts)
- Contacts (consider simplicity of options there)
- Calendar (only items shown, no day/week/month view)
- Messages (Inbox and Sent items are combined)
- E-mail
- Images (albums supported)
- Videos (albums supported)
- Applications
- Notes
- Bookmarks
- Files (turned off by default)
- Landmarks
- Mail for Exchange
(more plugins are possible with Search SDK, it's up to developers now)

And if you start pressing dialpad keys, you enter a search term and you search across all those "domains"!
Once you get into that shell and start navigating, you notice nice sliding transitional effects, neat un-cluttered Options menus, scrolling text that makes long phrases usable, all that at a speed that will not disappoint!

Surely, this one "shell" cannot replace each and every function, but still I find it pretty usable for getting back at my phone's content. Some of you may already use applications that give you access to stuff by typing first letters.
I don't know if those use Search engine, but why not try the original?

It's free and you can switch off unneeded sections in Search Options, to speed it up even further.

Try it, you may like it. Even if you're bad at T9 as me, you still can "just browse" in Search...

Links: Nokia Search demo, FAQ and tutorial

The end of XPERIAments

New month, new hopes.
As you probably know, Nokia has just introduced a new flagman device, N97.
Looking at the demo and UI of that device, I could not stop myself from thinking -

"This is the end of SonyEricsson XPERIA, there's so much more behind Nokia's offering...
Now XPERIA looks like another custom WinMo device, with that Panels user interface which is niche by design".

"Seriously - who wants to have multiple Panels? Why would a normal Joe User want a different view and UI every now and then?
To make himself accustomed to new ways all the time? Really, for UE junkies only."

Besides, it tries to push a new concept on you, one that all apps are just panels on the Panels Home screen (and there are multiple Home Screens!), and this would require developers to learn new things about panel setup, usability, coding. Not every one of those plain vanilla WinMo developers would just jump into that.

Another concept not only for user, but for a developer, too. Another API to learn.
Why would they invest extra time to support a tiny fraction of a WinMo market?
This is geek-only UI, utterly niche, more so than Apple was in the 90s."

I have my doubts that X1 will have success. I have had them even before N97 announcement, now they're even stronger.
XPERIA user interaction concept is bad example of when a feature hunger led to less ergonomic (although more flexible) design.
X1 was announced pretty long ago and I remember my buddy's excitement. He was an SE fan (like myself 5 years ago) and he wanted to get X1 badly. But he could not wait and got iPhone instead. Come on, Apple ships them for 18 years already, and only now Nokia and SE can put out an answer, besides both of them have had touch-screen devices for quite some time.

It will still take them some time to reach the same slick level of user experience and simplicity in access to advanced functions. Was Mr. Jobs right in his bravado about iPhone being 5 years ahead of any competitor?

N97 will also finally compel all existing N95 users (including myself) to upgrade.
A new era, indeed.

With UIQ let down, in 2009 we will have only those platforms competing for our (and the developers') mindshare and markeshare:

Google Android
Nokia Symbian
Apple iPhone
and Microsoft Windows Mobile

Ewan from AllAboutSymbian put out very similar thought about the market - it's tightening up - less players and more competition.

Will Nokia, like Microsoft, come in and take away Apple's crown, and put them back into smartphone niche?
Time will tell.
My POV is "Developers, Developers, Developers..." plus do something to consolidate app exploration, purchase and installation

Maybe it's a good idea for Nokia to provide free classes for Symbian developers?