iWill not buy iPhone. iWill not give in to the madness of buying an obsolete device. And iWonder when will class action lawsuit hit AT&T? The reason…well you see cellular providers usually offer phones for $49, free, $100 etc etc. In order to be able to offer the device at such low prices they lock you in for two years (duh…everyone knows that) to recover the cost of phone discount they offered you in the beginning. If you decide to leave before two years (or whatever your carrier locks you in) you have to pay an “early cancellation penalty” usually in the range of $175 - 200 depending on the carrier or device. So here’s question..or two… Since iPhone will be sold WITHOUT any subsidy (as in you are NOT GOING to get any discount from AT&T or Apple) what will happen if you decide to cancel the service lets say in two months. Since neither AT&T nor Apple gave you any discount, wouldn’t it be grounds for filing a lawsuit against AT&T if they would demand an early cancellation penalty??? This may be an interesting case. Another question is WHY do we still have to pay let’s say $200 if you decide to cancel the service one year after you signed the agreement. The carrier recovered partial discount they offered you so why should YOU pay the full early cancellation penalty??? Let’s start a war…
A few days ago I received an invitation from WOM World to review Nokia’s N800 internet tablet. Since I love gadgets, there was no need to twist my arm. So immediately i gave up my soul, signed the form and three days later (Friday, June 22nd to be exact) I got a box via DHL. Now I’m not going to do the ooohhh’s and aaahhhh’s of some unboxing freakiness. It would be fake anyway since I already saw and handled the device at Nokia store in Chicago.
Instead I’d rather post some of observations and comments. First thing that I’ve noticed is the lack of IR port. This is a GREAT device that could well work as an interactive remote for your TV. You could have an EPG (electronic program guide) application and with remote control functionality you could schedule recording or whatever else could come to mind. The camera that N800 comes with is very basic. It’s on par with the basic cameras of the bottom of the line camera phones but this device (at least in this stage should not be treated as a substitute for camera). One thing immediately came to mind…. Internet tablet in the next incarnation should have some kind of connectivity. Hopefuly by then US 3G networks will be up and running (better to wait for T-Mobile’s finalization of their 3G so the device can be used both on Cingular..err.. AT&T and T-Mob as needed). In my opinion this device was not meant to be a phone and I do not miss this functionality from it. If it had 3G implemented you could run VoIP if needed. For example Real Estate agents could use it right on the spot to create listings of properties. Snap a picture, insert is in the template, add some fancy comments, send to the web and voila…let the offers pour. When It came to the speed, it was perfectly sufficient. One thing that I DEFINITELY like so far is the battery life. From day one (sort of) I was an early adopter of pocket PC’s (basicaly after ARM processor became the standard and took over MIPS and other acronyms). My first PPC pda was Compaq iPaq 3650, then 3850, then 5850 and God only knows what other numbers. Only the last one had WiFi built in. The problem with it was similar to Nokia N80 and N95… WiFi was built in but the battery would go dead in about on hour and a half if WiFi was on. I just checked N800 and it says I have 8 days left of stand by and 6 hours when in use. Of course the six hours are for moderate use but still my guess is you’d get about 3 hours of continous WiFi use which is still FAR better than the previous devices. With the technology advances next devices will probably have 10 hours of continous use and 30 days of stand by.
Since this was my time playing with Linux based internet table I was a bit afraid I would not know how to install programs but it was just a momentary scare as it’s quite easy to do so. There’s an application built in that handles all the installations. Also if you go to the web and try to install something, it works pretty much the same as in windows. You click on the link, a dialog pops up and asks if you wish to install the application. As everyone knows in linux the distribution packages have different extensions than under windows (no exe’s com’s or bat’s) but after a few times you’ll learn what’s what so it’s not a brainer. Since N800 runs an open source OS there’s a plenty of software available for download. From what I was able to find so far, maemo.org is one that has quite a few applications. One I wanted to try was a program that reads out the data from your car’s ODBII interface and you can get the “health read out” of everything but unfortunately it requires a $50 adapter which i do not have so I guess I won’t be able to test it.
One thing I WAS able to try was GPS function. I have a bluetooth GPS so i got a chance to play a bit with the unit. Of course with screen the size of iPod video; NO - Not the screen on an iPod…N800 has the screen that’s the size of the WHOLE iPod….it’s about 4 inches diagonal. It’s Gorgeous. at 800×480 so it’s VERY sharp and crisp. One thing I’ve noticed was the right side of the screen was a bit darker. My guess is that the backlight in N800 is probably implemented only on the left side of the screen and through a diffuser lights up the whole screen. This was a minor annoyance. I paired N800 with my Nokia N95 and the maps were downloaded on the spot (a bit slow over EDGE) but it still worked. Downloading maps can be a time consuming task. I live in Chicago. I zoomed out to cover the whole city and over WiFi it took about 35 minutes to download maps with the most detail (this is not Nokia’s fault though - it’s an open source GPS application that downloads the data). The device itself is an amazing toy. I think Nokia released it to see the market acceptance as well as get some feedback from users what they’d like to see in the future releases. Hopefully they’ll listen to us.
With Nokia N800 i dare to predict the future of iPhone that’s about to be released here in the US of A… It’s poised for doom. I tried to use my finger to navigate some of the big controls on the screen (media player mainly) and I could NOT STAND the finger prints that were quite visible. Stylus seems to be the only and the best option for touch screens and since I think iPhone is already obsolete before it’s even released, I’m quite happy it will fail (I hate when outdated devices get released and the manufacturers want to charge an arm and a leg for them). The next internet tablet tablet from nokia may as well be iPhone killer. All Nokia has to do it loose the hump on the back of the device, smack 3 or 4 MP camera in it, add 8GB of flash memory, UMTS and they’ll have iPhone killer in their hands.
Yesterday I took N800 to work to play around a bit and see what it can do. My boss treats me like a gadget guru (which i’m not) and she’s about to get a T-Mobile sidekick for her teenage daughter. When I showed her what I got from Nokia to play around with, she immediately asked me how much it is and that her daughter would go nuts for this device. I told her that it lacks GSM radio so it can not be used on its own for text messaging…so Nokia..listen… In Japan Teenage girls set the trends (Hello Kitty phones etc etc). In the US of A… guess what… also teenage girls set the trends. Now GOD FORBID you will let teenage girls pick the hardware functionality…leave that to us geeks. Give the girls applications and usage. So for my “wanted list” on the next Nokia tablet… Worldwide UMTS (850,1900,2100-US, 2100-EMEA, Quad Band EDGE/GSM, WiFi). 3-4 MP camera WITH flash. Also to kick operator’s ass why not implementing open source Video Calling…. maybe then Asterisk users would implement Video into their servers as well. On top of that you could ditch Voice functionality and make the device data only (or voice through earpiece…bluetooth of course), built in GPS. That’s all…ahhh…and make it sturdy enough…not flimsy (by the way N800 is built better than any other recently released phones).
Most of the features I like on the device are software based so it only further proves that all that’s really needed is a device with good data connectivity. I’m not the oracle that sets the trends for the whole industry but from my personal point of view it would be a big seller if such device would have a kicker data connection (Thank GOD Nokia is not too crazy about CDMA market so we don’t have to worry about being stuck with Verizon or Sprint hell). I’ll have a couple more days to play with the device so more feedback will be posted.
I am having a hard time in my life right now. For 20 years my mom has been fighting cancer (breast cancer in 1988 and lung cancer two years ago). We (my sister and I) thought everything was ok until about a month and a half ago when we learned that my mom has a relapse on the liver and in the spine. This is a VERY hard time for us. My mom lives in Poland and currently my sister (who also lives in the US) is with her. I’ll be trading places with my sister next week. I call them EVERY day. International calls are very cheap these day but still calling every day would add up. Because of that I am VERY grateful to TruPhone for their “Free until the end of June” promotion to most countries in Europe. I’ll be taking my N95 with me to Poland and thanks to the service I’ll be able to stay in touch with my sister. Technology is a wonderful thing which we take for granted these days. It’s at times like that one realizes how good it is. Thanks TruPhone and Nokia for making lives easier. In my current situation Nokia truly translates their “Connecting People” slogan into real life
Today Darla Mack is asking a question “Which Series Are You”. Well, it’s obvious I’m a “N-series” guy. One of the things that Darla mentioned is why Nokia doesn’t just allow application downloads among different series. I’m completely 100% on the same note as Darla. In a distant past (about 1.1 version) there was a nice application called Mail for Exchange. This nice application worked fine on N80 devices. As soon as the new version was released (1.2) suddenly it would not run on N80. In my job a few months ago I started using my personal phone for work related tasks (my employer pays half of my bill) so I signed up for free mail2web.com exchange hosting. It worked flawlessly for what I needed. Now I’m on N95 and have no chance of using Exchange Mail so I’m sort of screwed. I’ve tried Emoze, now that 7-thing but none of them work the way I’d like them to. Another nice application on my ubergizmo would be Nokia’s Text-to-speech application. WHY OH WHY can’t they allow us to just install them as we want???
So after all this mumbling for a second I’m getting to the point where I have a really good question…. I’m a 100% Polish. I live in The US of A. It’s obvious here that the mobile operators have flaps on their eyes and assume that people who use cell phones here speak only two (orat most three) languages.. Just pick up any cell phone for any provider and you’ll see that is supports English, Spanish and sometimes French (that’s probably because of French speaking Canada). What about Polish, Germans etc…. If you’ve ever tried to play around with updating phone’s software you’d know that the language data is embedded in a separate file. I send SMS messages to my family in Poland and to my English speaking friends here in the USA so why should I go through the hell of not being able to use predictive text entry in the language of my choice. Since Nokia opened up their cell phones to user updates, WHY NOT give the users even more freedom in choosing the language pack of their choice. I for one would love to be able to legally (without hacking device code) to upgrade my phone to locally available firmware but at the same time be able to choose EURO3 language pack (Polish, Czech, English, German, Hungarian, Slovenian) language pack instead of the default English/Spanish. During the event in Chicago I mentioned it to one of the employees. Now I don’t know how “deep on the inside” he was but he said that there was a mention of it at some point. Hopefully it’s not a lost case..maybe in the future we’ll be able to pick the language of choice on our moby’s
Yesterday was THE DAY. All technoratis, Darla, Stefan and other glitteratis were there. Yahootinis were yoomy. First I had a glass of red vine followed by Yahootini (Yahoo sponsored martini bar. I wanted to talk to Darla for a few minutes but a certain person (whose nipples were sticking through his shirt… NOT COOL) was all over my Diva. Maybe at next event I’ll get a chance. Unfortunately for me I got there an hour late (the traffic in Chicago was a b…tch) but the event was still nice. After two drinks I was a bit “tipsy” so my friend and I started talking to a fabulous local gal. The bling bling on her finger could work as a landing beacon at O’Hare. The icing of the cake of course were the phones. 6110 Navigator phone, N75, N76, N77 and E90. Navigator was nice although there was no GPS signal inside so I did not get a chance to test the speed of satellite acquisition. Next was N77; very nice (N73 lookalike) but again since it has DVB-H which is not available on this continent I could not test the toy. Next in line was N75 - after reading other people’s reviews I was expecting a chunky phone. Surprisingly it’s not as bad as I thought. One thing I disliked about it was the flip hinge. It felt quite flimsy (I get a feeling it will be loose after a month or two of use) but otherwise the phone was quite decent. Then there was N76 - RED…devilish…SO SCANDINAVIAN looking with it’s square slanted edges. Contrary to N76 the hinge on this one felt like it would stand a Hummer running over it (wait…I think someone has already done it if I remember correctly). And the last one was E90… OH BABY…the inner screen is HUGE and gorgeous. This device is not intended for the N-crowd. It seems a bit smaller than 9300 series but still quite sizable piece of chunk. It’s simply designated for the business crowd. The ultimate device would be N95 with dual slider (Helio’s Ocean type).
At the end was the best part… N95 drawing (some guy got that one…go to my flickr pics to see) and the goodie bags… Now that was a nice treatment. Just about four days ago I was looking on eBay for Nokia BT keyboard but could not justify spending $130 on it. Guess what… I got one for free. THANKS NOKIA :-). Another MALE goodie bag had Nokia Digital Pen. Since my friend had no use for it…i scored two freebies. The digital pen allows you to take notes on a special notepad and then send them either to your PC or to your phone. From phone you can send them as MMS. Nice feature. I think I’ll have some time with it. So overall I had a nice time, people were friendly and one nokia employee (I’m sorry I don’t remember your name) remembered me and was very nice and asked me if Nokia and I kissed and made up. I could say that - although I do have to say again and again - It’s the BAD service center (outsourced by Nokia) that turned this whole issue into a hell. So on this note (with my digital pen :-) ) I hope another event like this will take place in Chicago again.
I am my own special creation… Well in this case I am my own VoIP provider. To be more honest my friend and I set up a Voice over IP (VoIP) server in my office running on T1 line. I am enjoying a free ride on TruPhone while it’s still free. If the rates will be good after TRU turns into paid service then I’ll definitely stick with them. If not then I’ll run my voip minutes via our server. One negative thing I found in N95 is the process of setting up voip service. It’s not for Mr. John Doe on the street to figure out. Of course if you run your server, there are ways to creating profiles which can be installed on the phone but otherwise it’s not the easiest thing to do. On top of that I tried copying settings from TruPhone and Gizmo project and substitute them with my own ip’s for our asterisk server but that required a different setup but now it all works like a charm. Next thing that I would LOVE to see from Asterisk OR Nokia would be video calling. I have no clue how video calling is handled on Symbian phones but if it could be somehow bypassed and such functionality could be implemented in Asterisk then mobile providers would get their act together and speed up the roll out of advanced services. What i love about Nokia that in addition to a basic phone functions it is also a “dummy” terminal that can handle very complicated tasks. If anyone would be interested in signing up for our VoIP service, please contact me. My friend Jeff, who runs the service constantly is researching the market for the best rates for VoIP minutes so if for example you would want to get minutes for Russia, Poland or whatever other country - let us know.
Two days ago my friend was visiting me. We were joking about this and that. At one point I was looking at Nokia 3650 on www.nokiahowto.com which seems to be an old “online manual” site for Nokia. 3650 was my first Symbian phone so with nostalgia I looked at my friend and said “this was my first phone”. My friend replied “I know” to my surprise. I recall buying 3650 during my trip to Denmark (I believe it was in 2003). I did not think I have known my friend for that long so I said “I’ve known you for four models now”. It’s hard to figure out how many years it’s been (three) but it was funny that I used the number of phones I’ve had instead of the actual years. I fell in love with Symbian from day 1 i tried it and it’s been a very steady relationship. Prior to 3650 I had a sad moment in my life where I was using Motorola 7089 for a year or so but then i saw the light and discovered Symbian. After 3650 I upgraded to 6680, next was N80 (see the unfortunate Repair incident posts below) just so I could upgrade to N95. That baby rocks although the build quality leaves a little bit to be desired.
Today I went back to www.s60.com to find out some info about upcoming Nokia event in Chicago. When I logged in to the website, I found a few cool FREE applications. Checks them out. Head over to www.s60.com and register to become a member. Nokia is giving away some freebies and themes. My favourite one is S60 Blue. Also check out the animations….REALLY funny