tmelcon
09-20-2008, 09:55 AM
Everyone has been gushing over the new and improved 4.5, so I finally tried it now that there's a sanctioned release. I have to say I'm just not that impressed! There are some new features, but also some UI elements which have been degraded in functionality and misimproved. Details below for those who have not upgraded yet and are weighing the options. All these comments are relative to 4.2, not relative to earlier pre-releases of 4.5, which I have not tried.
I shall edit this post as I notice additional changes, good or bad.
Major Improvements
HTML Email
Yup, it works now. Remember to resend your service books if you have problems. Furthermore, it can be turned off if you don't want it. Note that it is receive-only - you are still limited to sending plain text.
Streaming Audio and Video
Works! This is admittedly pretty cool. With some help from moodio.fm (thanks Jace), I was able to listen to my favorite public radio stations from 1000 miles away. A couple drawbacks are that it always wants to keep the screen backlight on, even when playing audio-only (it doesn't seem to distinguish between streams with and without a video component), and that you cannot background the player and perform other tasks like you can with the player for locally-stored media - as soon as you switch applications or holster the device, the sound stops.
There is also a special deal, apparently, to allow you to view Youtube videos, which normally require a Flash player. However, they are not even 320x240 - the largest available size is about quarter-screen.
Voice note recording
4.2 had a limited feature which would let you record audio, but then the only thing you could do with it was send it as an MMS. You can now record audio and save it locally, making it a first-class document which can be sent by email, bluetooth, etc. Of course you can also play it back on the device. You cannot background the recorder (it automatically pauses), so don't plan on recording meetings, say, while also checking your email. I had hoped for MP3 encoding, but what you actually get is AMR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_multi-rate_compression), a format I don't know much about but which is apparently a standard of some popularity for phones.
Saving Email Attachments
It is now possible to download and locally store email attachments of all types, even those which are not recognized by the server, so if you have 3rd party applications, you can email yourself data files for them now, something you could not do previously. This also means you could download a document from an email, transfer it to your laptop by bluetooth, edit it, transfer it back, and send it back out - for any application you have on your laptop, not just MS Office. This would have saved me a lot of trouble on several occasions.
Minor Improvements
Spell Check
It seems to work. I am not much of a spell check user and cannot evaluate its finer points.
Multiple Calendars
Each email address now has an associated calendar, which can be differentiated by color. I can see how this would be useful to easily tell work appointments from personal appointments and so forth. You can also set them all to the same color if you want. (to set which calendar is the default for locally-created entries, you have to go Options->Advanced->Default Services)
Media Player Backlight
The keyboard backlight now turns off when playing videos, fixing a bug that had bothered me in the previous version (that trackball is really bright in a dark room).
Maps
There are some new configuration options, including some to allow you to decrease the minimum font size and thus display names on more roads. I think it's better.
Fonts
There are a couple new ones; I believe "Alpha Sans" and "Alpha Serif". Ultimately I'm still using "Millbank", but I appreciate the thought.
Menu
The scroll ball is now configurable to bring up a special short menu (as before) or the full menu, same as the menu key. Options->Screen/Keyboard.
Neutral Changes
Documents to Go
This is a great idea, but the version which is included is so crippled that it's really just a waste of 2 megabytes of valuable device memory. I tried the PPT editor. I pressed "enter". I got a message saying "Inserting new bullet points is available only in the premium edition." So is changing the indentation level and a host of other operations so basic that one cannot meaningfully edit a document without them.
I was aware that the free version was limited, but I had hoped to have enough functionality that I could edit a document somebody sent me and get back to them with suggestions that they could then reformat as necessary. This is not the case. "Limited" is an understatement. The free version is nothing more than a demo of the paid version. Unless you're seriously considering paying the $70 and want to give it a try first to decide, I wouldn't bother checking the box to install this at all. This is not a reason to upgrade - this is a profit-center for RIM and/or the carriers, just like bundling the Telenav installer.
Image Zoom
Previously "i" and "o", this is now 1/3/7/9 in the media viewer. In the web browswer, there are no keyboard shortcuts, but shift-trackball works.
One subtle change on default zoom - previously, images 320 or fewer pixels wide would open full-size (and scroll up/down if taller than 240) whereas those 321 or more pixels wide would open scaled to fit on the screen. Now all pictures open scaled to fit the more restrictive of width or height, and there is no magic 320-pixel width cutoff.
Email Look
Both the message list and individual message display have changed stylistically and now feature shaded filleted rectangles instead of a horizontal bar to separate the header from the body. I have no real preference between the old and new styles. The new style also applies to tasks, memos, etc.
Change to "Automatically Dim Backlight"
In 4.2, if you set "automatically dim backlight" to "no", then it always used the setting you gave it. If you set it to "yes", it would go dimmer than the setting you gave it in dim light and brighter in bright light.
The interpretation has changed. Now, if you turn dimming to "no", it no longer gets dimmer in dim light, but it still gets brighter in bright light. This makes sense, but they should have added a second option called "Automatically Brighten Backlight" to complement it so you could still control the other direction. It's unfortunate that there is now NO way to stop it from going to full brightness when you're in the sun - full backlight draws more power than making a call!
Minor Losses
Address Book
The address book now uses TWO lines per entry. I looked for a way to set it back to the previous behavior and could not find one. I get absolutely no benefit from this, just a loss of half the available screen space.
Loss of preinstalled wallpapers
See comments below for details on a workaround to reinstall them.
Major Losses
Web Browser
"Mobile view" and "desktop view", with the separate zoomed-out "page view", have now been replaced by only two modes, "column view" and "page view". Column view, the new default, is like the old mobile view. However, the default is now to show a cursor at all times - turn that shit off immediately unless you like scrolling twice as much as you used to. The new "page view" is a combination of the old "desktop view" and "page view" - it renders the page wider, and also starts zoomed out. There is no way to render the page wide and start zoomed in like the previous "desktop view" did. This is not necessarily bad, but the new view seems to be lacking in the implementation department - some pages which used to render correctly now crash the web browser and hard-reboot the phone when used in "page view" mode.
The real travesty of the new web browser is the change to the "Go to" screen. Instead of the old dialog, you now get a cutesy attempt at a general-purpose start screen which combines a tiny bookmark view, a tiny history view, a search engine bar, and a box to enter URLs. The original versions of the bookmark and history view still exist, thankfully, but the functionality available for entering URLs is reduced. You can no longer scroll through the list of old manually-entered URLs at all; you have to start typing to bring up auto-completion. You can no longer delete URLs from the list with the delete key - the only way to remove anything is to completely erase all browser history. Finally, it used to be possible to select whether you wanted the WAP, Internet, or 802.11 (now called "hotspot") browser from the "Go To" URL screen. This functionality is now gone, and there is no equivalent, making it very difficult to invoke the 802.11 browser - you basically have to set it to the default in order to use it at all, and then set it back when you're done. If they wanted to add a new "start screen", they could have done so in addition to the existing features, and it would have been fine. It was the decision to replace the existing "Go to" dialog with it that is inexcusable. Two thumbs down on this brain-damaged change.
Minor Disappointments and Unfixed Bugs
Profiles
They still have not fixed the problem wherein you can get no announcement of any kind for a PIN message unless you set them to be "Level 1" (there is no setting for PIN messages in the profile - come on, guys, this worked on my 7290!). Neither is there any increased control over vibrations.
BIS Email
There are a lot of things they could be doing with BIS email (enabling real folders, creating some manner of color-coding the messages, etc) which they just don't seem interested in doing. This seems disingeneous given the huge push to grow their market of low-price consumer devices, almost all of which are going to be using BIS, not BES.
PDF Support
I had hoped for some support in viewing locally-stored PDF documents, or those downloaded from the web, but this is disappointingly unchanged from 4.2 - PDF documents work only as an email attachment. The inability to view PDFs from the web is a limition I hit quite regularly and I am disappointed they chose not to address it.
I shall edit this post as I notice additional changes, good or bad.
Major Improvements
HTML Email
Yup, it works now. Remember to resend your service books if you have problems. Furthermore, it can be turned off if you don't want it. Note that it is receive-only - you are still limited to sending plain text.
Streaming Audio and Video
Works! This is admittedly pretty cool. With some help from moodio.fm (thanks Jace), I was able to listen to my favorite public radio stations from 1000 miles away. A couple drawbacks are that it always wants to keep the screen backlight on, even when playing audio-only (it doesn't seem to distinguish between streams with and without a video component), and that you cannot background the player and perform other tasks like you can with the player for locally-stored media - as soon as you switch applications or holster the device, the sound stops.
There is also a special deal, apparently, to allow you to view Youtube videos, which normally require a Flash player. However, they are not even 320x240 - the largest available size is about quarter-screen.
Voice note recording
4.2 had a limited feature which would let you record audio, but then the only thing you could do with it was send it as an MMS. You can now record audio and save it locally, making it a first-class document which can be sent by email, bluetooth, etc. Of course you can also play it back on the device. You cannot background the recorder (it automatically pauses), so don't plan on recording meetings, say, while also checking your email. I had hoped for MP3 encoding, but what you actually get is AMR (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_multi-rate_compression), a format I don't know much about but which is apparently a standard of some popularity for phones.
Saving Email Attachments
It is now possible to download and locally store email attachments of all types, even those which are not recognized by the server, so if you have 3rd party applications, you can email yourself data files for them now, something you could not do previously. This also means you could download a document from an email, transfer it to your laptop by bluetooth, edit it, transfer it back, and send it back out - for any application you have on your laptop, not just MS Office. This would have saved me a lot of trouble on several occasions.
Minor Improvements
Spell Check
It seems to work. I am not much of a spell check user and cannot evaluate its finer points.
Multiple Calendars
Each email address now has an associated calendar, which can be differentiated by color. I can see how this would be useful to easily tell work appointments from personal appointments and so forth. You can also set them all to the same color if you want. (to set which calendar is the default for locally-created entries, you have to go Options->Advanced->Default Services)
Media Player Backlight
The keyboard backlight now turns off when playing videos, fixing a bug that had bothered me in the previous version (that trackball is really bright in a dark room).
Maps
There are some new configuration options, including some to allow you to decrease the minimum font size and thus display names on more roads. I think it's better.
Fonts
There are a couple new ones; I believe "Alpha Sans" and "Alpha Serif". Ultimately I'm still using "Millbank", but I appreciate the thought.
Menu
The scroll ball is now configurable to bring up a special short menu (as before) or the full menu, same as the menu key. Options->Screen/Keyboard.
Neutral Changes
Documents to Go
This is a great idea, but the version which is included is so crippled that it's really just a waste of 2 megabytes of valuable device memory. I tried the PPT editor. I pressed "enter". I got a message saying "Inserting new bullet points is available only in the premium edition." So is changing the indentation level and a host of other operations so basic that one cannot meaningfully edit a document without them.
I was aware that the free version was limited, but I had hoped to have enough functionality that I could edit a document somebody sent me and get back to them with suggestions that they could then reformat as necessary. This is not the case. "Limited" is an understatement. The free version is nothing more than a demo of the paid version. Unless you're seriously considering paying the $70 and want to give it a try first to decide, I wouldn't bother checking the box to install this at all. This is not a reason to upgrade - this is a profit-center for RIM and/or the carriers, just like bundling the Telenav installer.
Image Zoom
Previously "i" and "o", this is now 1/3/7/9 in the media viewer. In the web browswer, there are no keyboard shortcuts, but shift-trackball works.
One subtle change on default zoom - previously, images 320 or fewer pixels wide would open full-size (and scroll up/down if taller than 240) whereas those 321 or more pixels wide would open scaled to fit on the screen. Now all pictures open scaled to fit the more restrictive of width or height, and there is no magic 320-pixel width cutoff.
Email Look
Both the message list and individual message display have changed stylistically and now feature shaded filleted rectangles instead of a horizontal bar to separate the header from the body. I have no real preference between the old and new styles. The new style also applies to tasks, memos, etc.
Change to "Automatically Dim Backlight"
In 4.2, if you set "automatically dim backlight" to "no", then it always used the setting you gave it. If you set it to "yes", it would go dimmer than the setting you gave it in dim light and brighter in bright light.
The interpretation has changed. Now, if you turn dimming to "no", it no longer gets dimmer in dim light, but it still gets brighter in bright light. This makes sense, but they should have added a second option called "Automatically Brighten Backlight" to complement it so you could still control the other direction. It's unfortunate that there is now NO way to stop it from going to full brightness when you're in the sun - full backlight draws more power than making a call!
Minor Losses
Address Book
The address book now uses TWO lines per entry. I looked for a way to set it back to the previous behavior and could not find one. I get absolutely no benefit from this, just a loss of half the available screen space.
Loss of preinstalled wallpapers
See comments below for details on a workaround to reinstall them.
Major Losses
Web Browser
"Mobile view" and "desktop view", with the separate zoomed-out "page view", have now been replaced by only two modes, "column view" and "page view". Column view, the new default, is like the old mobile view. However, the default is now to show a cursor at all times - turn that shit off immediately unless you like scrolling twice as much as you used to. The new "page view" is a combination of the old "desktop view" and "page view" - it renders the page wider, and also starts zoomed out. There is no way to render the page wide and start zoomed in like the previous "desktop view" did. This is not necessarily bad, but the new view seems to be lacking in the implementation department - some pages which used to render correctly now crash the web browser and hard-reboot the phone when used in "page view" mode.
The real travesty of the new web browser is the change to the "Go to" screen. Instead of the old dialog, you now get a cutesy attempt at a general-purpose start screen which combines a tiny bookmark view, a tiny history view, a search engine bar, and a box to enter URLs. The original versions of the bookmark and history view still exist, thankfully, but the functionality available for entering URLs is reduced. You can no longer scroll through the list of old manually-entered URLs at all; you have to start typing to bring up auto-completion. You can no longer delete URLs from the list with the delete key - the only way to remove anything is to completely erase all browser history. Finally, it used to be possible to select whether you wanted the WAP, Internet, or 802.11 (now called "hotspot") browser from the "Go To" URL screen. This functionality is now gone, and there is no equivalent, making it very difficult to invoke the 802.11 browser - you basically have to set it to the default in order to use it at all, and then set it back when you're done. If they wanted to add a new "start screen", they could have done so in addition to the existing features, and it would have been fine. It was the decision to replace the existing "Go to" dialog with it that is inexcusable. Two thumbs down on this brain-damaged change.
Minor Disappointments and Unfixed Bugs
Profiles
They still have not fixed the problem wherein you can get no announcement of any kind for a PIN message unless you set them to be "Level 1" (there is no setting for PIN messages in the profile - come on, guys, this worked on my 7290!). Neither is there any increased control over vibrations.
BIS Email
There are a lot of things they could be doing with BIS email (enabling real folders, creating some manner of color-coding the messages, etc) which they just don't seem interested in doing. This seems disingeneous given the huge push to grow their market of low-price consumer devices, almost all of which are going to be using BIS, not BES.
PDF Support
I had hoped for some support in viewing locally-stored PDF documents, or those downloaded from the web, but this is disappointingly unchanged from 4.2 - PDF documents work only as an email attachment. The inability to view PDFs from the web is a limition I hit quite regularly and I am disappointed they chose not to address it.