Let’s get this clear from the start, I’m not suggesting for a second that you’re going to sell your laptop and merrily conduct your business from nothing but your phone. However, if you’re on the go and the thought of carrying your laptop and accessories around sounds like a pain, can your phone take the strain?
As I’d just got a new phone with several bells and whistles attached I thought I’d give it a go. The phone I’ve been using is the Nokia N82 which runs Symbian 60 3rd edition. The phone comes with a read-only version of Quickoffice that can handle word, excel and powerpoint documents. I tried to open a document created using openoffice but to no avail so I passed. I found a trial version of an office suite imaginatively called Officesuite which opened my openoffice document without any problems.
The N82 doesn’t have a qwerty keyboard and I’m pretty terrible at typing on phone keyboards so I invested in a bluetooth keyboard which cost less than £20. Having found the correct driver and after an email to the company behind Officesuite who sent me a copy of their software that has been optimised for Bluetooth keyboards, I was up and running.
As a professional editor I often get emailed documents which either need a quick proof or complete re-write and I’m happy to say that my new setup was well up to the task. The phone has wifi, 3G and HDSPA connectivity so accessing the internet isn’t a problem. Enter your email settings and you’ll have full access to your emails (beware of data charges if you’re not on a suitable contract). I received documents, opened them up, made a few changes to justify my wage and emailed them back without any drama. The only criticism I have is that the bundled email client isn’t very flexible and you can’t tweak the usability much. I couldn’t stop it wiping all the old emails when new emails came in. However, as this is a symbian phone there are many other email clients that I’m sure offer more professional features.
All in all I’d say that working from a well featured mobile like the Nokia N82 is certainly feasible and a practical alternative to splashing out on a Blackberry (and thus selling your soul to the office) or lugging around a laptop when you think you might only need to do a little bit of work. Don’t forget that when you’re finished working you can also use the phone as an mp3 player (3.5mm headphone jack), camera (5 megapixels with zenon flash), satnav (internal GPS) and a phone of course. Be sure to charge your phone before you leave the house though as all these functions are energy sapping. Just having wifi and bluetooth turned on will reduce your battery time to just a few hours (still more than a laptop though).
I realise that this has almost turned into a review of the Nokia N82 but the same features are now present in a raft of offerings from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, HTC and LG to name but a few. I’d love to include the iphone in that list but it’s not suitable for working on in any way…..for now.
