Further Impressions of the Nokia N81 and S60

After further use with the Nokia N81 I still don't think that the S60 operating system is great for most people. I mentioned in my last post that some of its functionality made sense from a developers point of view, and I would still stand by that.

Why?

There are too many user paths. There's no reason that there should be so many different ways to get to applications. As an example, to choose a song here are all the ways I found this can be done:

1. From the home screen, click Music player -> click Music -> click All songs
2. Click the weird thin button between the right soft key and 'C' -> switch to Music -> click Music -> click All songs
3. Click to applications Menu (switchy type button) -> click Music -> click Music player -> click Music -> click All songs
4. Click to applications Menu -> click Gallery -> click Tracks -> click All songs

Another complaint is that networking is confusing. Why is there a 'Connection Manager' and connection settings in the settings? And further, why is it so hard to reach settings?

Also, it's not very confidence inspiring to have your music flake out while loading programs. I realize this is probably a hardware or low level issue, but it drives me crazy. Everything should be fluid.

Obviously I really value the extendability of operating system with custom applications, but the core system — the part that most consumers will use — is awful. It's not very intuitive, there's often too much jargon, and I believe it should be looked at much more seriously.