S60 Versus Windows Mobile: Contacts, Calendar, and To-Do
More on Windows Mobile versus S60: the personal information management (PIM) parts of the phone. Again, I will be comparing the Nokia E61 to the HTC Mogul Qwest lent me for review.
Disclaimer: I work for a competitor of both HTC and Microsoft in the smartphone space. That being said, my day job currently has nothing to do with smartphones. This is my own opinion.
I have used S60 devices for a number of years. The basic PIM functionality has not changed all that much in that time. No surprise, since the S60 PIM clients go back a couple of decades to EPOC, from which Symbian itself evolved.
Windows Mobile’s PIM functionality is based on the gold standard PIM for the desktop: Microsoft Outlook. Outlook itself has only been around a little over a decade, but it’s basic functionality also has not changed all that much across the versions either. On the Windows Mobile side, the PIM functionality in Windows Mobile 6 looks exactly the same as it did on Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition, which I had on a Dell Axim X30.
The calendar in S60 stores appointments, the contact list stores pretty much any piece of information you want to enter (though not all the fields will sync with, say, Mail for Exchange), and the To-Do List lets you keep track of what you have to do. Windows Mobile is pretty much the same way.
I prefer the task list view in S60. The view is far more compact: one line per item, complete with date. The task list in Windows Mobile takes two lines per item to get that information.
The calendar functionality between the two is very similar, but there is a clear difference between S60 and Windows Mobile: in the “alarm” functionality. When a meeting or task is scheduled for an alarm in S60, you are given an alarm at the appointed time. If you hit snooze, you will be reminded every 5 minutes for a half an hour unless you hit Stop. In the case of Windows Mobile, you can pick a certain number of minutes to snooze the alarm for, though it does take a number of extra key presses to activate this functionality.
The contacts application in S60 is fairly straightforward. You are presented with a list of names in your contacts. You can type some letters to narrow down the list. You can click on a contact and get their details. You can edit details. There are a couple of cool things in the contacts–things you can’t do on Windows Mobile, or at least not with this HTC Mogul:
- Assign Ringtones to specific callers.
- Set a default for calling, texting, video calls, MMS, email address, VoIP, and Push-to-Talk
- Send the contact via Bluetooth, email, MMS, or text message
- Customize the name of a particular field
As far as I’m concerned, the only thing the Windows Mobile contact manager has that S60 doesn’t is that the listing of contacts includes a telephone number in the name listing. However, it’s the same number of clicks to make a call from the contact manager in either S60 or Windows Mobile.
Another key part of the PIM functionality is the idle screen on the phone itself. In S60, this is called Active Standby. On Windows Mobile, it’s called the Today Screen. I will cover that in another post as that is a topic in itself. Zach over at Symbian in Motion covers it better than I could. However, there is one thing I like about S60 that I’m not sure how to accomplish in Windows Mobile: list the actual unread emails on the Today Screen. On S60, I can get up to 3 messages showing (sender and subject).
The final verdict: S60 wins for me, mostly because of the contact management. Tasks and Calendar are about equal in my mind.
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Comment by Rob Evans
I think you’ve called this one wrong for the calendar. Windows Mobile is better at Calendar by a country mile. I wouldn’t use an S60 phone as a business phone as the calendar just isn’t up to the job. The biggest fustration I have is timezones, the WM device handles this really well, change timezones and it adjusts the appoitments accordingly. I tried doing the same on a Nokia and got in a right mess. You can read loads of reviews of 3rd party calendar apps for the S60 as it’s pretty well known the calendar is poor. Don’t get me wrong I like S60 and use one every day, but for professional level calendar management, the Windows Calendar is miles better.
Comment by jthousand
I think they are about equal here as well. Although when I used Winmo I had the 3rd party pocket informant which made it worlds better. Papyrus seems to be an equivalent for S60 platform but I haven’t purchased it due to the low ram on my Nokia E62 (Muttering crippled junk from AT&T).
Comment by PhoneBoy
The Calendar largely depends on how good your sync software is, I think. I generally don’t have any Timezone issues with Mail for Exchange or recent versions of Intellisync Mobile Suite.
And the E62? I’m sure if you hunt around on the Internet, you can find a way to remedy some of your issues.
Comment by rosh
Syncing is very important when it comes to PIM, and this is where S60 fails. No category syncing support in S60 for calendar, todo, and address book! This is really just plain unacceptable and vaults WinMo over S60 IMHO.
Comment by PhoneBoy
Category support isn’t a feature I have personally used, so I can’t comment on it.
Comment by Ogami_ito
Just FYI, Windows Mobile suprisingly falls down big-time in the sync department for one important reason…it does not allow you to only sync sub-folders. This is vital if you want to have a contacts folder for general contacts…which may have several thousand contacts…and a folder for phone-only sync. I suppose you could get over this by catagorizing every contact for phone sync or not. I don’t like that method because your phone contacts -many of which may be personal – would then still be in the same folder as your business contacts.
Comment by Ogami_ito
I just received this and I’m going to reply here:
“I don’t think S60 does folder-based contact sync either. Then again, I
haven’t tried.
– Dameon”
Actually, this is not about S60 v. WM but is about Activesync versus the Nokia Phone Suite. I have not synced an S60 phone… I’ve yet to buy either the N81 (not 8G), or the N95. But when I owned a Nokia 6131, I could sync individual folders. For a business-phone, this allows you to have a seperate personal contacts folder and a business contacts folder on Outlook. When I briefly switched to WM, I had to move my personal contacts onto another computer with a new installation of Outlook. I really don’t know why Activesync does not allow this ability.
On the other hand, Activesync provides one very cool feature: it acts as a reverse-modem sort off. WM phones can access the internet through Activesync. Why is that good? Well… think GoogleMaps, Mgmaps, and RSS feed programs. For an S60 phone without Wifi, you need to through on-air data to get internet data.
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