Monthly Archives: March 2011

Nokia E7–The making of

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Shaun

The Nokia E7 is probably Nokia’s best smartphone for a long time and the video below details the design process which seems to involve fruit, but I’m not sure why? via the Clove Blog.

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Nokia files second ITC complaint against Apple

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Shaun

Here we go again…

Espoo, Finland – Nokia has filed a further complaint with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) alleging that Apple infringes additional Nokia patents in virtually all of its mobile phones, portable music players, tablets and computers.

The seven Nokia patents in the new complaint relate to Nokia’s pioneering innovations that are now being used by Apple to create key features in its products in the areas of multi-tasking operating systems, data synchronization, positioning, call quality and the use of Bluetooth accessories.

This second ITC complaint follows the initial determination in Nokia’s earlier ITC filing, announced by the ITC on Friday, March 25. Nokia does not agree with the ITC’s initial determination that there was no violation of Section 337 in that complaint and is waiting to see the full details of the ruling before deciding on the next steps in that case.

In addition to the two ITC complaints, Nokia has filed cases on the same patents and others in Delaware, US and has further cases proceeding in Mannheim, Dusseldorf and the Federal Patent Court in Germany, the UK High Court in London and the District Court of the Hague in the Netherlands, some of which will come to trial in the next few months.

“Our latest ITC filing means we now have 46 Nokia patents in suit against Apple, many filed more than 10 years before Apple made its first iPhone,” said Paul Melin, Vice President, Intellectual Property at Nokia. “Nokia is a leading innovator in technologies needed to build great mobile products and Apple must stop building its products using Nokia’s proprietary innovation.”

During the last two decades, Nokia has invested approximately EUR 43 billion in research and development and built one of the wireless industry’s strongest and broadest IPR portfolios, with over 10,000 patent families. Nokia is a world leader in the development of handheld device and mobile communications technologies, which is also demonstrated by Nokia’s strong patent position.

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QOTD: Battery percentages?

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Shaun

At what point do you start to feel uneasy about the battery level on your smartphone? I must admit that when I am below 50% I have an unnatural urge to recharge it.

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webOS 2.1 works…

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Shaun

The negative press that hit HP and O2 when it appeared that webOS 2.1 would not reach the Palm Pre Plus was caused by a strange error from what I can see now. I was sent a Palm Pre Plus at the weekend running webOS 2.1 and it works perfectly well. There is the occasional slow down when multiple apps are open (and I mean many, many apps), but on the whole performance is more than acceptable.

So why did the powers that be initially decided that webOS 2.1 was too much for the Pre Plus? I really have no idea because I am loving the experience at the moment and have been more than surprised at how well it all works. The simplicity of the OS and the hardware come together to produce a smartphone that does not make you want to search for ways to improve it. There are of course many hardware annoyances such as the battery and smaller screen, but I am getting used to the keyboard and find myself more inclined to pick up the Pre than the San Francisco that is sat next to it.

I wrote about my post iPhone life last week, which never came to be, but must say that webOS is by far the nearest to iOS in terms of how easy it is to pick up and use. There are some genuine touches of brilliance within the software that make it a joy to use and everything just works as it should. It isn’t all about potential either because many of features are way ahead of the competition; notifications, PIM, multi-tasking and the list goes on. Where it falls down is on immaturity and the lack of support from the larger developers, but with a fair wind we just may see webOS becoming a force in the mobile, and tablet, industry. That’s what I am hoping for anyway because it feels like the sweet spot at the moment.

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5 minutes with the iPad 2 / purchasing motives

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Shaun

I got a full five minutes with an iPad 2 over the weekend which is of course not long enough to pass a full judgement on what is supposed to be the product of the year. It is very nice I must say and feel snappier than the original. Strangely the size and weight didn’t feel substantially different to me and overall it felt like a small update.

You will probably know my view on tablets anyway, but if I still had an iPad there is little here to make me want an iPad 2. The changes are minimal from a technical perspective; no increase of screen resolution and the cameras are just about useful for FaceTime and little else. Until we start to see apps that take advantage of the increased processing power, it is difficult to judge how much of a leap the iPad 2 really is.

The number of people in the iStore surprised me and they were all crowded around the new iPads. The MacBooks, iMacs and everything else sat there lonely while the crowds fiddled with and devoured the iPad 2 experience.

So, the iPad and iPad 2 are not for me, but that doesn’t mean I have anything against people who believe the iPad to be a great piece of kit. I do, however, find myself turning into an old man when I witness people like the person stood near me in the iStore when I was checking out the iPad 2.

“Wow, look at the way it does photos! I have to have one! Is this the new iPad or the old one?” It was white by the way.

The salesman explained that it was the new one and that it could be ordered with stock available in a few days.

“Let’s do it!” He excitedly said and walked off with his wife / partner and daughter. If you had heard what he was saying before the bit above you would have realised, like I did, that he knew very little about anything technical. The photo trick alone was enough for him to dig deep though.

I am not saying that everyone buying an iPad is like this because of course they are not, but it is amazing how Apple is able to build products that everyone seems to want, whether they have good technical knowledge or not.

In this particular case I just wished he had spent a quarter of the money buying some decent clothes for his daughter because what she was wearing was old, had holes in it and looked way past its wearable date. I guess it’s all about priorities, and yes I am sounding like an old man…

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Tennis Tour for iOS: the ZX all over again

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Shaun

Tennis Tour for the iPhone is a game that is not only great fun to play, but one which brought back many memories of my early teenage years stuck in a bedroom desperately trying to win at Match Point on the ZX Spectrum.

It is a clever mix of retro and new and the more you play, the more you will play… Great value at under $1.

While looking for an image for this article, I found this great piece on the Spectrum- well worth a read if you used to use one.


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MobileMe to drop to $20 with Music Locker included?

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Shaun

The big rumour of the moment is that Apple will drop the annual cost of MobileMe to $20 and bundle in the Music Locker service. It is unclear if the Music Locker service will be $20 and MobileMe free, but most seem to believe that they will be bundled for $20. Is that a price at which you would use the above services?

From The Music Void- “Informed sources say that Apple has sealed its deal with Warner and has been using that agreement to leverage the other labels to get the deals done in time for the April launch. The locker service will reportedly have somewhere around a $20 annual price tag.”

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Mobihand commission moves up to 30%

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Shaun

Mobihand has finally relented and joined the industry standard commission rate of 30%. I guess this had to happen with so much commission out there now, but perhaps will make the service more difficult to sell in the future? Difficult choices in a very demanding market.

From Tams- “70% Revenue Share: Beginning May 1, 2011, our standard revenue share rate will be 70%. This rate has become an industry standard and we are pleased to offer this standard rate across all of our “Standard Channels”, which include all the MobiHand-powered stores through which you currently sell your products. Rates at shopping carts in your website or within your product will continue to be based on the current tiered fee schedule.”

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Nokia Pure: a font, a style, a new beginning?

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Shaun

Some will say “It’s only a font.”, but that would be missing the point. Fonts are incredibly important in everything we do on computers, big and small, and Nokia is looking to try something new with Nokia Pure.


“This week, Nokia announces a new typeface and a new look for promotional materials. It’s a new brand image that’s simpler, fresher and stronger than before. Today we’ve been lucky enough to get a sneak preview of some assets, starting with the new Nokia font, Nokia Pure.”

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Open Letter from Purnima Kochikar to Developer Community

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Shaun

Purnima Kochikar of Nokia has sent an open letter to Nokia developers, aimed at calming their fears. It’s quite long, but if you like this kind of thing, enjoy…

Dear Nokia Developer,

Much has been said in the last few weeks about Nokia’s announced strategy. I’ve heard from many of you with encouragement, concerns and questions. Please do continue the dialog with me and the Forum Nokia team.

I want to take a moment to focus on what these announcements mean to you, how Nokia plans to support your development needs and how this translates into opportunities today and in the future.

First, let’s recap what it is we announced; the three main areas of our strategy:

Plans for a broad strategic partnership with Microsoft on Windows Phone
Connecting the Next Billion
Future disruptive technologies
What about Symbian? What about Qt?

Understandably, these are the first questions that come to mind. Although Windows Phone will become our primary smartphone platform, we will continue to deliver a great deal of value from Symbian. We’re making investments that will help us to engage and attract existing and new Symbian users and allow us to launch new competitive smartphones.

Over the past weeks we have been evaluating our Symbian roadmap and now feel confident we will have a strong portfolio of new products during our transition period – i.e. 2011 and 2012.  These devices will take advantage of the strong integration of devices and services as well as our strength in areas such as imaging and location-based services. They will also include improvements in hardware performance such as GHz+ processing capabilities and faster graphics speeds.

To further enhance the competitiveness of these products we will deliver updates to the current Symbian user experience.  The first major update will arrive in summer, delivering a new home screen, new flexible widgets, new icons, a faster browser, new Navbar and a fresh look and feel to Ovi Store and Ovi Maps, including integration of social media services in Ovi Maps.

You may have seen some of these updates in the latest product we launched at CTIA Wireless this year, the Nokia C7 Astound.  Those plus the rest of the enhancements will be delivered to all users over the air in a simple update available from the Home Screen, and Nokia Astound users will receive the remaining enhancements not already in their device at the same time.

I’ve been asked many times how long we will support Symbian and I’m sure for many of you it feels we have been avoiding the question.  The truth is, it is very difficult to provide a single answer.  We hope to bring devices based on Windows Phone to market as quickly as possible, but Windows Phone will not have all language and all localization capabilities from day one.

In many markets, including markets where Symbian is currently the lead smartphone platform with significant market share such as China, India, Russia and Turkey, we will continue to make our Symbian portfolio as competitive as possible while we work with Microsoft to introduce Windows Phone.  For that reason certain markets will play a more significant role in selling the 150 million Symbian devices than others and we will be selling devices long after Windows Phone devices from Nokia have already started to appear in other markets.  That is why we cannot give you the date when Symbian will no longer be supported.

What I can promise you is that we will not just abandon Symbian users or developers.  As a very minimum, we have a legal obligation, varying in length between countries, to support users for a period of time after the last product has been sold.  Our intention is that when users come to the end of the natural lifecycle of their Symbian device they will make the change to a Nokia Windows Phone device and so it would not be in our interests to undermine their Nokia smartphone experience.  Operators have also been very supportive in their commitment to help us continue to sell and support Symbian devices while we make the transition to Windows Phone.  We currently stand at 109 operators in 34 countries and no doubt they continue to recognize the opportunities in a platform that has great localization, differentiation and flexible billing services, while we start to build great new devices with Microsoft.

Qt, the development platform for Symbian and future MeeGo technology remains critically important and Nokia is committed to investment in Qt as the best toolset for those platforms and we are focusing on future developments in part by our plan to divest the commercial licensing business, used mainly by developers of embedded and desktop applications beyond the mobile market.

Additionally we are readying app analytics, in-app advertising, in-app purchasing, a new browser and hardware enhancements. There are a lot of new things for developers to take advantage of in these soon-to-be-released APIs. We are continuing to explore Qt for use in other strategic investment areas as well.
So in short, there are some very exciting things happening in Symbian and Qt, lots of new devices and platform improvements and we believe consumers will be downloading great developer apps from these devices. All together, this means your investment in Qt is a safe choice for skill competency, monetization opportunities and brand awareness amongst our millions of users.

The partnership announcement has many of you wondering how Forum Nokia and Microsoft will support you in the future. As we carefully plan this with Microsoft we will be able to share more information. However, we are listening to your concerns and comments. Nokia and Microsoft share a view and commitment to make the transition as smoothly as possible for developers.

The second pillar of Nokia’s strategy, ‘Internet for the Next Billion’ also highlights our increased focus on opportunities for developers, especially Java developers. Nokia sells over one million features phones a day; a staggering number by any measure. Developers can already distribute Java apps to approximately 600 million Series 40 devices.

We intend to drive more innovation and improvement in Series 40 developer engagement. We are continuing to develop easy-to-use tools and software developer kits to make it simple, easier and more affordable for Java developers to work with us. For example, there is free signing for Java apps; the new SDK for Touch and Type UI is in the market now; plus we have plans for increased proxy browsing capabilities on our device and support for web apps.

Consumers around the world are hungry for apps on Nokia devices.

The disruptive technologies area of our strategy includes our work on MeeGo and Nokia Research Center, Nokia’s future looking, global labs. You will hear more from us on MeeGo in coming months.

Finally, there is still $10M up for grabs in the Calling All Innovators contest. The deadline is approaching – March 31 – so be sure to submit your app. If the content of your app is applicable to consumers in the US and Canada, you could get a piece of the $10M in cash and prizes. Giving out these big checks and seeing your apps get downloaded by millions of consumers is the best part of my job!

In the coming weeks and months, we will continue to update you on our progress with Symbian, Windows Phone and Series 40 and new programs to assist you in building success in Ovi Store. We are excited about working with you in each of these areas. In the meantime, we’ll look for your next great Qt or web app in Ovi Store!

Best regards,
Purnima Kochikar
Vice President, Forum Nokia

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1st April: a big day for smartphones, no joke

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Shaun

It looks like Friday will be a big day for smartphone availability according to the tweet from Clove below-

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QOTD: Gaming?

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Shaun

How many gaming systems do you have? And are they actually used?

Shaun: We don’t tend to use our Wii much these days, but Fifa 11 still causes my excitement for my son and I.

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T-Mobile Pulse Mini review

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Shaun

The T-Mobile Pulse Mini is available for the extraordinary low price of £29.99 plus a £10 top-up. For that price you get the following-

Android 2.1
3.2 Megapixel camera with zoom and flash
3G
Bluetooth
GPS + free sat nav software
FM Radio
300 hour standby
4 hour talk time

You simply cannot go wrong paying such a small amount of money for all of the above.

Actually, you may want to ignore the statement above because this phone is a bloody disgrace! Never in all my years reviewing mobile technology have I had the misfortune to review such an appalling piece of junk, and that includes the dreadful Next Tablet which highlighted just how much poorly made products can affect the image of Android.

Let’s forget the impact this type of device has on Android for the moment and ask why T-Mobile would want to sell it. The company spends a fortune, as all mobile network operators do, enhancing its network so that customers can get the best possible experience. It spends a fortune on training staff, renting retail spaces, manning call centres and all of the other aspects that a large company needs to cover. After all of that it puts a Pulse Mini in the hands of a customer.

Why would a company do such a thing? It makes no commercial sense at all and does nothing to breed customer loyalty. On top of all that T-Mobile must be making a loss on each unit so it isn’t even profitable as a quick win.

Anyway, I don’t want to give my conclusion away (?) so I will just get on with the review…

The packaging looks quite smart from the outside and is basically a black box with nothing written on it at all. The Pulse Mini sits at the top and looks quite professional and so I was looking forward to bestowing many ‘benefits of the doubt’ on it. In the box you get a USB sync/charge cable, AC adaptor and a really bad pair of headphones. To be fair this is standard whether you are buying a £50 or a £500 smartphone so I will let this pass.

There is something unusual that comes out of the bottom left of the phone. It is thin, telescopic and has a pointy end. I think it is called a ‘stylus’, but I would have to check with people who have used mobile devices for many years. Oh yes, it has a stylus which is an indication of what is to come.

Turning the Pulse Mini on instinctively made me use my finger to swipe the lock icon to see what it could do. I swiped and the icon moved slightly and fell back, I swiped again and it did the same thing. I then remembered that the stylus is probably there for a reason so I used that instead on the ‘finger sized’ icon. I swiped with the stylus and the icon moved slightly and fell back. AAAAARGH! It took me 10 attempts to unlock the phone the first time I used it and subsequently I have never managed to unlock it with one swipe using my finger or the stylus.

It gets worse though because touching an icon on screen will open up a completely different app and trying to scroll down the list of apps is akin to putting up wallpaper; it never happens how you want it to and the result is always different to what you expected. Anyway, I thought I would try making a call with the phone- it dialled out OK so I put it to my ear and heard nothing. I turned on the speaker option and heard nothing. I cancelled the call. I tried again and could hear the dial tone as it rang in my ear. I turned on the speaker and all sound disappeared. The speaker has never worked on this phone for me at all.

The continual mis hits on the screen led me to calibrate it in the settings, haven’t done that for a few years, and it worked better. Five minutes later I had to calibrate it again and so the process continued. Over three days it has never improved.

At least the camera is there which offered me some rest bite from the awful touch interface. There is a dedicated camera button which you can use to quickly take photos that are roughly the same quality as a smartphone camera from a year or so back, in fact they can come out quite well. Video recording looked quite smooth, but because the sound in my Pulse Mini doesn’t work I couldn’t tell what the sound levels were like. I transferred the video over to my Mac to test the sound and, there was still no sound.

There is little doubt that the stylus is needed for all navigation and even for the buttons below the screen which is crazy. It offers no natural interaction at all and you do have to press hard to get any touch recognised. Don’t even get me started on trying to input data on this phone.

I like the size and shape of the phone and it looks and feels like a £100 phone from the outside, but everything else from the software to the hardware components are sub-standard in a way I have never seen before. Oh, and Android Market crashes every time I try to access it.

Conclusion

You should treat this phone as if it is made from enriched plutonium and stay as far away from it as is humanly possible. At least I can say that it is consistent- consistently terrible in every single department. It is not good for Android, it is not good for T-Mobile and it certainly won’t be good for you.

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Lost In Mobile

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Shaun

Lost In Mobile. That is the new name for PDA-247.


It is finally time to ditch the ’247′ name and the ‘PDA’ term is also way past the time when nobody knew what a PDA was anyway.

This site has been through many names since it was first launched 9 years ago; Clie World, Clie Planet, PDANews24, Palm 247 / Windows Mobile 247 / Symbian 247 and finally PDA-247.

A website cannot keep changing names and so a generic title was needed, and Lost In Mobile will be the one. There is still a ‘lot’ of work to do to ensure that all of the current content keeps the same URLs and that the domains are switched without losing any traffic so it could still be a couple of weeks before you see any changes, and there will be many more changes besides a name change.

———

A while back I emailed some of you to advise that PDA-247 was shutting down. I woke up one day and imagined my life without the constant pressure of adding daily news, thoughts, reviews and the like and I liked what I saw.

I then imagined my life without PDA-247 and realised that it was something that I am very proud of and something that makes me a little different to others.

It will be different in the future, there doesn’t need to be a set number of articles per day. I am not engadget, I am just an ‘I’ and can never compete with company run websites. PDA-247 (Lost In Mobile) is not a link chaser who makes up clever headlines to attract traffic and it is as genuine as I can make it.

The site is all about discussion and the thoughts of you and I. It is a place to talk about what we do with our mobile devices, help others and to discuss all things mobile. It will remain that way, but I will be taking a more relaxed approach to it in the future and hopefully it will continue to grow. To those of you who have offered to help, I will be in touch soon. To the rest of you- thanks for sticking with me all this time.

 

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COTD: Loving iOS and Android

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Shaun

Axim Addict is here to explain why you should love both iOS and Android- “During the last few years, I have worked myself up from an iPod Touch to the iPhone 3GS and ultimately the iPad. Having always loved the iOS experience, I still got bored with the iPhone somehow after a year. I switched to Blackberry, which was a bad move. I personally dislike the BB os and it’s poor software offerings. Recently, I changed to an HTC Desire HD, so I’m on Android now. And I use the phone alongside my iPad.

My conclusion, Android isn’t better than iOS, and vice versa. They are completely different operating systems which cater to the different needs of different people. Both OS’es where developed with finger input in mind, and that’s pretty much it. I’m not a real tinkerer, but there are quite a few things that I like about Android:

- Notification bar
- Widgets
- True multitasking
- Background syncing
- The overal UI
- The ability to customize a lot of stuff
- the wide range of google apps
- Hookup to a pc is not required
- OTA updates

Compared to iOS a lot of things are rough around the edges and not very intuitive. And yet, I enjoy the heck out of using Android. I actually like the fact that it’s a bit similair to a PC. And the number of available phones is also nice (could use some more high-end, quality devices however (I think Honeycomb looks promising). Other downsides are the crappy battery life, and the customizations that manufacturers make – I personally dislike Motoblur and Touchwiz.

Am I done with iOS? Certainly not. And I will never be a fanboy of any camp. iOS and Android both have their weaknesses and strengths. At the moment I favor Android for the reasons mentioned above. But I love both OS’es for different reasons.”

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