Nokia N81 8GB: The “Sexy” Navi Wheel?
The next part of the Nokia N81 I’m going to talk about is the Navi Wheel. It has some good and bad points, which I will get into.
Disclaimer: Yes, I work for Nokia, but these are my opinions, not theirs. They don’t pay me to write about phones.
The Navi Wheel is over the square directional pad. Instead of pushing down on the directional pad, you run your finger over it. While I’ve ever owned any iPod other than a 2nd gen iPod Shuffle, I imagine it’s similar to the scroll wheel on a regular iPod.
The Navi Wheel only works in a couple of applications: the image gallery and the music player. You can use the Navi Wheel in pretty much any place in the music player except on the “Now Playing” screen. In the image gallery, you can kind of mimic the “finger-flicking” that you can do on an iPhone when browsing pictures in the gallery.
I’m a bit disappointed that all of the included applications did not make use of the Navi Wheel. The web browser would have been a great place for the Navi Wheel in terms of page scrolling. The same could be done in the messaging application.
The Navi Wheel does take some getting used to. Sometimes, it seems way too sensitive, others not sensitive enough. Perhaps I haven’t discovered the “sweet spot” yet.
It seems like a cool concept with a lot of promise, but I can’t help but think the Navi Wheel wasn’t entirely thought out. Certainly most of these things could be fixed in future firmware updates–for the record I’m using 10.0.053.
Maybe they need to do what they did for the accelerometer in the Nokia N95: release some APIs and see what cool stuff people come up with.
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Tags: n81 8gb, navi wheel, nokia n81 8gb, sexy navi wheel Fnord
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Comment by Richrd
I completely agree with you, i think they should include the naviwheel support in all apps in a new firmware update. Apis would also be great. I’ve got so used to it that I feel the urge to use it all over the UI
Comment by joe
my N81 navi key managed to work in all application. It is done mysteriously. I have no idea. It goes off when i press the multimedia short-cut key. I do need an explaination here. can anyone verify this phenamenon. Anyway i did enjoyed this short period tempting feature. Hope you all N81 users will enjoy this features too. Im looking forward to this fixture.
Comment by PhoneBoy
The earlier versions of firmware were a little TOO sensitive with the media keys. The internal versions of firmware I’ve played with since I got the device have been much better in this regard, but I don’t know if they made it out yet.
Comment by Richrd
@joe
Yes, I think I know what you mean. When Im spinning the wheel in the music menu and switch to the application menu it scrolls a couple of icons there too.
Comment by Liviu
Hi.can you tell me if s60 service pack 2 software will be available with nokia software update?
Thanks.
Comment by PhoneBoy
@liviu I assume you mean S60 3rd Edition FP2. Experience suggests that once a device gets a particular level of S60, it doesn’t get upgraded from that version. Oh sure, you might see new firmware versions come out with new features, but the version of S60 doesn’t change.
Comment by Liviu
Thanks a lot!
Comment by Z
I’m having trouble with my navi wheel. it seems like only a 1/4 of the sensitive touch thing is working n the rest isn’t. could the Firmware upgrade fix this or is it a problem with the phone?
Comment by mostafa
i bought 2 n81 8gb.one for myself & the other for my brother.navi wheel in mine; dose not work properly;how ever my brother’s n81 completely works efficient.i don’t know really what should i do?is there any body to help me?!!
Comment by Fraser
I cant even get the naviwheel to work. i have it activeted, in my ist of over 400 songs, and it wont work. i have read reviews on how to do it, but it wont work on mine. i have an ipod mini and ipod classic, and i tried to do the movement on the phone like the ipods, but i cant get it. any advice?
Comment by nathan
i own a nokia n78, and the navi-wheel is a fantastic feature that allows me to roam through my pictures and my music, yes it would be better for the navi wheel to work for internet purposes, but even though thats one of the hiccups of this project, its better to look at it in the positive side, and think that it is great technology, and it does really save a lot of time..!