GSM Phone (I)

So ... now my gripes about the S56 software (OS) ...

- User Guide is horrible and tells you no more than the OS does (or than you would guess with your own intelligence). Oftentimes, it will tell you what choices you have for an option, but won't go into one more sentence on what each of those choices means. HowardChui does a better job, and his forums offer lots of tricks and tips.

- The default ringtone is pretty catchy, but doesn't seem to be listed, so you can't select it. The only way is to turn off the customized ringtone (which then re-activates the default automatically).

- For any feature, the "Options" button pops up a dialog that allows various actions to be taken on the item (ie. a saved phone number entry). Only three options will fit in a window, but often more are possible -- problem is, it doesn't show you a scrollbar to indicate that scrolling down will offer more options!

- There's no calling card feature (as in Nokia and SonyEricsson phones) whereby you can enter calling card data and easily use it to call any number in your phonebook with it. (I use this when calling Canada.)

- Alarm Clock feature is categorized under Organizer, not under the Time/Date option.

- They've interspliced certain functions with the ability to edit those functions. Example: left "FastKey" is the softkey that you can program to go to a particular setting/feature right away. But you press it once, and instead of doing it, it asks if you want to do it or change it -- meaning a second keypress is necessary. (Or you can press and hold, but that's not any faster.) I think that setup really should be somewhere else, a separate section.

- The search function in the AddressBook is not instantaneous. When I'm in the AddressBook, and I hit "8" ("TUV") once, I expect the book to go down to the "T" entries immediately, not after 1 second.

- File Manager feature (which handles data objects, audio files, images) does not clearly indicate what is on the SIM card, and what is in the phone's memory. Likewise the distinction between AddressBook (phone) and PhoneBook (SIM).