Nokia did it again...

They still manage to surprise me. Just unsubscribed from one of their newsletters...

Guess what, it will only take them "up to 14 days before" the remove me from their mailing list.

So long...

So long, Nokia, and thanks for all the fish handsets.
Had a great time and fun with Nokia handsets for the last 14 years or so ... But now I'm leaving.

I'm now proud owner of my own HTC Desire Z (not only the test equipment, thanks again Richie).

And Nokia?

Nice observation (by my wife, actually), that - until half a year ago - we used to be a pure Nokia family... for years.
Me, her, the twins... only Nokia.
If there is such a thing as a Nokia fan boy - I probably was one.

Now we are pure Android family (2x HTC, 1x Samsung, 1x Sony Ericsson; see here and here).

IMHO, this says a lot about Nokia.

Dinosaurs mating

So... Nokia and Microsoft seem to mutually feel that they need each other to survive in the mobile / smartphone world.

I guess there is some truth to that, and it will play out to some extent:

• Microsoft needs every hardware manufacturer they can get for their Windows Phone 7.
  In that regard, Nokia is very important and helpful to them: they still do have a huge base of followers, and they do have the operator connections.
• Microsoft will gain a lot by the uni-lateral exclusivity: every Nokia smartphone will come with Windows Phone 7. So if you want Nokia (and a smartphone) you have to go Windows.
• Nokia needs a good OS... Symbian was OK  - years ago, but would never stand up to iOS, Android or Windows Phone.
• On the other hand: there's a good chance that Nokia smart phones will become just another HTC/LG/... phone.

There are still good reasons to choose Nokia:

• They have robust hardware design - even Windows can't take that away.
• They do know a lot more about radio and the phone functionality than Apple and the Android folks combined - but lets see if this can make it into a Windows phone
• If you only want a feature phone, Nokia (with Symbian) is still an excellent choice.

What I'm not really sure about is: Do people explicitely want an iPhone or an Android phone ... or do they "just" want a nifty smart phone, and don't really care about the OS (and app ecosystem). The lackluster 2010 sales of Windows Phone 7 (despite all the push from Microsoft and others) and the decline of Nokia Symbian smartphones indicate that it really is about the OS (iOS, Android).

Let's see.

And one more thought:
Remember that Palm with the Treo once thought the found their salvation by giving up PalmOS and being embraced by Microsoft?

Sad.

So, Samsung...

... now you can prove that/if you are any better than Nokia :)

The Android 2.2 update for (my wife's) Galaxy S finally arrived. But of course not yet for the operator branded version she own (A1).
This is/was to be expected, because the operator will have to test and approve the official/final update and then apply their branding on it again

Last time on my Nokia E71 it lasted until forever and it was Nokias fault.
I sure hope that A1 and Samsung can get this done in 2-3 weeks.

ProfiMail for the E71

Thanks to the hint of a colleague, I installed ProfiMail for the E71. Well, I needed the hint, because I never intended to install yet another 3rd party app on my E71...first of all, because this never increases the stability of the phone, and secondly, I thought it would only be cumbersome...

I couldn't have been more wrong.

ProfiMail (v3, 3.28 to be more specific) has everything you want from a professional mobile email client.

• full imap/imaps support.
• "push" email... well, it's "only" IMAP IDLE but thats good enough for me[1]
• multiple accounts
• full folder support on IMAP, and it allows you to move an email message from folder to folder.
• user interface is very OK
• proper attachment support
• proper address book support

Seems like the creators actually use it themselves or have a good feedback process... it's the little things like the feature to check mail on startup and immediately go to the inbox when you start the email client...

Access to it is quite easy, if you map the application to the long-press of the Messaging one-touch-key, then it's just one (long) press on the envelope button, and there you go.

I seem to prefer it over the built-in iPod/iPhone mail client... but that's probably only because of the physical keyboard... which I stll prefer over the virtual touch keyboard.

--
[1] and it's enabled on my mail server...

Odd limits on the E71

In the last couple of months the limitations on my Nokia E71 started to really annoy me.
Today's incident:

When I added my new corporate email account[1] (and did not delete the old one) I wanted to enable Automatic email retrieval[2] - of course.
To my great surprise, I could not...

Turns out, you can only have 2 email accounts with automatic retrieval enabled.
A limitation I don't understand at all.


Totally time for a new handset... preferably one with proper reception... :-)
--
[1] new because Oracle bought Sun and as of today I am 100% Oracle
[2] you know, the one that cannot be set to 1 hour...

Palm and 3Com re-united

So, HP bought Palm... not Apple, as has been rumored over the last couple of weeks.
Palm and 3Com [1] finally re-united.

IMHO (and as a former Palm fanboy) this still does not give Palm/HP a chance in the smart phone market: HP/Compaq never managed the iPaq to smart phone transition - with the help of giant Microsoft - so why should they be able to manage it now without any help, when they are up against Apple and Google (and. yes, Nokia, but they are an easy target).

--
[1] Sorry, "HP networking" as they are called since last week.

Skype on Nokia E71 - update

So, I've been using (native) Skype on the E71 for a couple of days now, and it really works quite well.
Faster then the Java version (and that's me saying this). And more complete.

It does, however, not honor the settings for

• Default access point

and

• Sign In [When Skype starts].

It currently ignores both.

I changed them to their other respective values, restarted Skype, changed them back, still no change.

Skype on Nokia E71

When I read that Skype was dropping support for the Java Mobile version of Skype (light), which I use on my E71, I just thought "What the f*"... [1]
Then I continued to read to find out, that there actually is a native Symbian version of Skype, that I totally missed during the last 1.5 years...

So, lets install it... just point your phone browser to skype.com/m.
Check back here to find out what my experience with it is.
Looks promising at first sight.

--
[1] yes, I literally thought "f asterisk"... :-)

Scheduled Sync for the E71

Just when I was about to rant about the lack of periodic or automatied calendar sync on the E71 (over-the-air/OTA via SyncML) I did in fact google for it and found that the Bergamot project on Google Code does provide exactly this.

The program is called SWIM and this is what it does:

Swim is a utility for automatic periodic synchronization of data with internet servers such as Google Calendar (through GooSync), Mobical, Zyb, ScheduleWorld, Ovi or any system running Funambol. It makes use of the existing SyncML support in the system, and adds timing capabilities, something both UIQ and S60 mysteriously lack! You can set it to sync your data every 15 minutes, every hour, every 4 hours, every 12 hours, daily, or weekly.

Swim uses the existing Synchronization functionality and profiles from the E71... which is cool, so there is no difference if you sync manually through the menu or run the synchronization scheduled.

The how-to section is quite ok... here are some tips and tricks from my installation, though:

• For my E71 I needed version 0.41 from the download section. The more recent v 0.50 did not do anything.
  The tricky part is, getting the beast signed using the Symbian Open Signed Online tool.
  This is also well explained in the How To Install section: just upload the unsigned .SIS file, download the signed .SIS file and install this to the phone.
• However, I ran in to the problem that my phone said that the certificate of the signed .SIS file was “not yet” valid. A google search for that revealed that this is a common problem with - as it seems - the clock of the signing server and the phone being too far out of sync. The trick is, to put the phone 1 day ahead, install the software, and the put the phone back today.
  Frankly, I don't really see why I should (self-)sign software at all, if the only way to install it, is with a kludge like that.
• Anyway, after that it ran just fine, I put it to 30min synchronization interval for starts and thats what it did... After a day of observation (without any problem) I put it to 12hrs, which is sufficient to have my corporate (Sun) calender synched with my phone...

So Hooray and thanks to the Bergamot project...

Facebook app for the E71 - just crap

So I tried the newly released facebook app for the E71. And after the first disappointment, I wanted to post a side-by-side feature-by-feature comparison against the iPhone/iPod facebook app here.

Well, I won't.
Simply because the app is such a crap and lacks every single conceivable feature, that I won't waste the space here with a 50 [1] rows table that only states iPhone "yes", Nokia "no".

Just forget it.

--
[1] roughly, could easily be extended to 120 ;-)

Finally a Facebook app for the E71

Finally, Nokia's Ovi Store has a Facebook app for the E71, not just the bookmark...

Just downloaded and installed it (quite inconvenient, the Ovi store, btw)... Will post results here.

Qando learned how to use the keyboard

Finally, just when I was about to give up on Qando, the mobile info service for public transport in and around Vienna, they fixed their major [1] usability problem on the E71.

Like I reported months ago, they purposely emulated a T9 input even on the full querty/quertz E71 keyboard. So you only could use (by guessing mostly) the numeric keys of the full keyboard...

Finally, they removed that piece of code and seem to rely on S60 and JavaME to handle the keyboard by themselves ;-)

Thanks.
Might become more useful now... I'll be trying it.

GPS still does not work, btw...

--
[1] and we are talking really MAJOR MAJOR here

Yet another E71 discovery

... a bit embarrassing, to be honest.

I've been using my Nokia E71 now for about a year now, and only today discovered that I can delete an item in a list, e.g. SMS, eMail, Todos ... simply be pressing the delete button.

Until today, I always went through the menu...

Some E71 shortcuts

Here are some keyboard shortcuts for the E71 I discovered:

General:

• Press & hold * (star)
  Turn on/off Bluetooth... quite handy
• Press & hold #(hash)
  Should switch between general and silent profile,
  but does switch between line #1 and line #2 on mine
  I'd have preferred the profile switch...
  

In text edit / messaging:

• Fn-Ctrl-C [1]
  Clipboard Copy
• Fn-Ctrl-V
  Clipboard Paste
• Fn-Ctrl-X
  Clipboard Cut

Useful... yes, sort of...

But try hitting [Fn] [Ctrl] and [C] (or V or X) at the same time... and still hold the phone in one hand...
Almost impossible... see where those keys are located:



Lucky however, that you don't have to press and hold them at the same time. Fn, then Ctrl, then C/V/X is OK... so you can do it quite easily.
--
[1] Ctrl being Chr/Ctrl or Alt/Strg (on German keyboard) - the key in the very lower right corner

E71 usability

Just by accident I noticed that you can select (="mark") elements on a list on the E71 by holding the shift-key while scrolling over the items.... just like on Windows (and others).
Very convenient in the messaging application (SMS, email).

Don't know why I did it... I didn't try on purpose... I guess I just did it, because that's the way it ought to be...
Sad thing is, I noticed only after about a year...

Nokia support is getting ridiculous

So last time Nokia support told me to "have some patience. The problem should be solved in the near future."

Wir bitten noch mal um etwas Geduld. Das Problem sollte sich naher Zukunft erledigen.
[1]
When today after a couple of days I inquired what they exactly mean by "near future" I was told they "could not give me more detailed information. In the near future means 3-4 weeks or more. We ask you for patience".

Wir können Ihnen leider keine genauere Auskunft geben. In naher Zukunft bedeutet 3-4 Wochen oder auch mehr.
Wir bitten um Geduld.

Just a reminder that first, they told me I was too stupid, and then that the website and the NSU database were just not in sync. Now the problem requires a couple of weeks (or possibly months) to be solved...

Just a reminder: the problem is to sync the information on the website with the NSU database requires 3-4 weeks or more... preposterous.

Well, this time I asked for the support manager... let's see what (s)he has to say regarding answers like those.
I'm waiting...

--
[1] re-reading this: they actually say (in German) that the problem would (more like) disappear in the near future.

Still no update...

this is getting boring (for you, dear subscribers/readers probably, too).
There is still no E71 update for me, and asking Nokia Care Center if waiting from Wednesday to Monday is ample time for them to synchronize their web-query and their NSU database, they choose not to answer.

One might think, that Nokia is not under pressure from Apple and Android/G1/HTC/...

Does NSU hate me ?

I'm getting the feeling, that the Nokia Software Updater (NSU) hates me.
See what it did on August 16h, 9:34 (a couple of minutes ago):

All I wanted was to update my E71...