[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo Upgrading] leoni1980:
Greetings,

I 'upgraded' - though I use the term loosely and don't wish to sound detrimental - from an Athena to a Nokia E90 communicator on the 13th February. My experience of different mobile operating systems over the past 12 months has been extensive (not to mention expensive) but for the most part i've drifted back and forth between Windows Mobile and Symbian.

There are comparisons available on the net of the two devices, but these are generally based on the Windows Mobile 5 factory install without tweaks, and - in the case of both phones - don't take into account the multitude of apps that people use for pleasure on their phones, and the tweaks which make the user experience all the nicer.

I decided to give a little rundown of what I miss about the Athena and a few summary comparisons between the Nokia E90 and the Athena based on real-world usage.

SIZE

Both devices are generally deemed large, though the Athena is positively Brobdingnagian in comparison to the E90 - which kind of resembles a Nokia N70 with a big jacket on!

FORM FACTOR AND CONSTRUCTION

Needn't go into too much depth about the Athena's construction here as I'm sure you're all familiar with it. My personal opinion is that its keyboard is a design catastrophy with mushy feedback, no backlight and an unadjustable screen/keyboard gradient. HOWEVER the minimalist styling of the device when the keyboard is removed is very pleasurable.

I thoroughly enjoyed texting and emailing with fingertouch and Touchflo in unison and miss this feature more than anything else.

The E90 uses a fully hardware-based input system since it doesn't have a touchscreen however the QWERTY keyboard is fabulous, with individual number keys and a plethora of shortcut buttons, including two customizable ones - AND a backlight.

When closed all the functions of the phone are still available albeit using a qvga display - making it act analogously to most regular Symbian smartphones.

Both handsets are of a very well-constructed metallic finish but all the weightier for it.

Personally I like a bit of weight to my phones.

The E90 gains a few extra points in my estimates for the fact that its main screen is protected in my pocket without the need for a case.

CALL HANDLING

The E90 offers more choices to the user as once folded it can be used as a normal (large) mobile phone. The Athena on the other hand only has a loudspeaker, which is fine if you're on your own but not so good when in company. Both devices can be used with handsfree kits - either in-car or earpieces and both have perfectly good voice command software available. Out of the box the E90 offers voice command functions such as dialing individual contacts by name without the need to program each number in.

The E90 wins here easily for me as it just offers so many options and therefore more convenience.

THE SCREEN

Despite the fact that it makes the Athena MASSIVE I do think the screen is bright, crisp and beautiful. The E90's screen is less bright but VERY readable outdoors.

The clarity and resolution of both displays is a breath of fresh air, however the Athena's is better for the long haul, particularly if you like E-books and word processing on the go.

It's nice to have a touchscreen, and I miss the feature with my E90, though only to a small degree as there are so many shortcut keys on the Nokia device that a touchscreen would be fairly redundant and affect readability in daylight.

USABILITY AND SPEED

The two devices are on a par to me, though out-of-box the E90 is simpler as closing down and switching between applications is facilitated by a hardware button.

There are a selection of free third-party applications for Windows Mobile which allow simple application switching functionaility from within the today screen.

Individual tastes dictate which OS you prefer. Personally I like both in their own way, though given its predominantly touchscreen based UI I don't think Windows Mobile is as finger friendly out-of-box as it should be, but this isn't an Athena issue per ce.

CONNECTIVITY

both devices offer WLAN, bluetooth, HSDPA and GPS. Signal strength is great on both devices, though I find that when I open the E90 to browse I sometimes lose my signal entirely, seemingly for no reason. I suspect the receiver is blocked by particular finger positions.

HSDPA is supported up to 3.6mbps on the E90 but only 1.8mps on the Athena; crucially though the E90 will only work on Edge or GPRS in the Americas as the US HSDPA bandwidth isn't supported.

The Athena offers USB host which enables memory sticks and USB HIDevices to be used. This feature is not offered on the E90, though its screen is probably too small for a mouse to be of any use anyway. I used the USB host feature occasionally but for me it was more of a party trick and I don't miss it.

The E90 has bluetooth 2.0 EDR, while the Athena has only 2.0

The Athena also has video output - a feature that I used rarely but nonetheless have missed on a couple of occasions - it's certainly handy for showing presentations and slideshows.

GPS is comparable on both devices. My E90 gets a lock within 5 seconds using A-GPS and I don't recall the Athena performing any better. The Athena wins here though because there is more compatible navigation software for the Windows Mobile platform.

WEB BROWSING

Both phones are great for viewing web content. The E90 takes the upper hand in terms of its width of 800 pixels versus the Athena's 640 but the Athena's larger screen makes content clearer and less strenuous on the eyes.

Neither phones support flash, though with FL3.0 due for release in the next E90 firmware update this will be fixed somewhat in the case of the Nokia handset.

Both Symbian and Windows mobile will be getting the flash and java friendly Skyfire browser, with Windows Mobile being the first. They will also be getting Opera Mobile 9.5. I have no experience with either of these browsers though, and can only say that I prefer the Safari browser in the E90 to either the Opera browser OR the Internet Explorer browser on the Athena, since it seems snappier and works with more of my oft-visited web pages.

HOWEVER I prefer opera mini to ALL of these.

VIDEO PLAYBACK

The Widescreen display of the E90 is more suited to the Hollywood aspect ratio, and also newer television broadcasts in 16:9. Combined with hardware acceleration and an adjustable viewing angle via the hinged screen the E90 wins here for me.

The larger screen of the Athena is a nice size for longer-term video playback, but I always had issues with lip-sync and jerkiness on the Athena unless optimising movies for the device.

CAMERA

Indisputably I prefer the E90 here. Although on paper the two devices' cameras are comparable the reality is that the E90's is snappier, sharper and produces more realistic colours. it also records video at VGA 30fps, which steals the show for me.

The Athena's camera is good for a Windows Mobile device though - the best I've seen - and I particularly like the depth it gives to black and white photography. Shame the shutter speed is so rubbish.

STORAGE

The Athena wins here with its 8GB microdrive versus the E90's....nothing. The E90 supports any size of Micro SDHC though and these are getting very cheap of late. In practice I used the microdrive very little as it took too long to copy things onto the Athena using either Activesync or WM5torage.

SOUND

Both devices perform very well with music playback: the E90 feels more portable though and is easier for one-handed operation. It is let down by a 2.5mm headphone jack instead of the 3.5mm standard seen on the Athena. The E90 has a radio which is handy on occasion, though it requires earphones to be plugged in at all times - not much use if you use bluetooth headphones.

BATTERY LIFE

No noticeable difference with either - I always end up recharging before the day is through!

SOFTWARE

Many people cite healthy software development and availability as a reason for Windows Mobile's flexibility, but in the past few weeks I've found some great free software for Symbian. Among my current favourites are:

Symella: A gnutella/limewire-style p2p filesharing client.

Symtorrent: I'm sure you can guess this one

Sportstracker: track your walks and runs via GPS with a full live rundown of speed, distance travelled and orientation, followed by a comprehensive report (which even tells you how many calories you've burnt off)

Google Maps: includes internal GPS support

software to enable the internal GPS to be used via bluetooth as a standalone GPS receiver

Opera Mini - goes without saying, but is more enjoyable on the E90 owing to the fact that Java is better integrated in Symbian OS.

Joikuspot: share your HSDPA over WLAN (as WMWIFIROUTER by Chainfire)

Windows Live Hotmail: integrated within the messaging application.

Nav4All: free navigation software.

EM tube: standalone youtube browser and flv downloader with a snappy and beautiful UI.

MP3editor: edit MP3s on-the-fly through your phone: edit tags, merge clips and save segments of songs to use as message and ringtones.

Only a month has gone by, so who knows if my experience will change. Maybe I'll end up going back to the Athena - who knows. I'd be interested to hear from people who have gone the other way round - E90 to Athena, and what their experience has been like.