MobileTracker spreads the rumour of "a yet-to-be-announced Nokia which is being passed off as the 6850, showing the now familiar '6800 feel' but with a camera and Bluetooth! For unfamiliar readers, the Nokia 6800 looks like a typical flip phone, but when you flip it out the phone sports a QWERTY keyboard"
If this is more than a rumour it could be my ideal phone. I love my 3650 but, as a touch typist a QWERTY keyboard would speed up email entry no end.
There was no Memo yesterday because I decided to take advantage of of the last (surely) of this abnormally good Irish summer (ok, technically it's autumn but virtually it's still summer ;)
My day job is managing a website (no not this one!) and I decided that yesterday was the perfect opportunity to see if I could monitor and if necessary manage my business remotely while disposing of another staple of the road warrior's toolkit - my laptop!
I wanted to see if the email, WAP and browser clients (software programs) on my Nokia 3650 would be sufficient for the job or if I'd end up craving more power, more pixels and more keyboard.
No, no and no. In short it was a dream. Little did any of the hundreds of toursists above the towering Cliffs of Moher realise that I was managing a website while wearily climbing to the top of this Irish precipice on the western periphery of Europe. Admittedly that might have had more to do with the awesome view than the diminuitive nature of my 3650 :p
But the thing is, even by Irish standards this length of the Atlantic coast is remote and I wasn't sure if I'd have any mobile coverage at all. Happily, 6 of the 7 bars were alight so browsing the web-based console through Opera for Series 60 on a Vodafone HSCSD connection seemed just as snappy as doing so from my PC dial-up at home. I also took the opportunity to capture some video and stills on the phone and moblog them to another blog. What a verstaile device!
Finally, a question for all the wi-fi evangelists - when will will I ever be able to do likewise on an 802.11 connection? Yup, that's what I thought....
"fastmobile today launched its push-to-talk mobile service, fastchat, into the European mobile retail market, unveiling a commercial alliance with Wizcom Limited, a part of Caudwell Group, the UK's market-leading mobile communications provider.
From October, fastmobile's 'fastchat' voice-text application will be sold throughout the UK by Phones4U, Caudwell Group's mobile phone retail chain.
The agreement marks the first time that any voice-text service will be available to European consumers via high street retail stores.
fastchat combines a walkie-talkie-style instant voice-text facility with the latest multimedia messaging capabilities - including picture, video, e mail and text - into one easy-to-use application that enables subscribers to chat with friends across mobile carriers, handset models and also to PCs globally.
The service is currently suitable for Symbian Series 60 handsets including Nokia's 7650 and 3650, the Sony Ericsson P800 and the new Motorola A920. New Series 60-based phones due for launch include the Nokia N-Gage, Nokia 6600, Samsung SGH-D700 and Siemens SX1, and plans are also in hand to dramatically increase the number of handsets in time for the Christmas sales season."
"... how do you license material to your competitors without the competitors taking advantage. And equally, how can we trust you to license your crown jewels without the suspicion remaining that you've kept all the good bits for yourselves?
Nokia's Series 60 has certainly succeeded on one front since it was launched late in 2001: there's now a thriving mass market of developers creating some pretty compelling applications. On the other hand, is this platform seen to be 'independent', trustworthy and viable in the long-term?"
Hmmm, I hadn't quite thought about it like that before :(
Openwave Systems Inc. the leading provider of open software products and services for the communications industry, today announced that Openwave Mobile Messaging Client Version 6 is shipping on the LGE 4050 for the GSM market and will ship on the LGE 5450 handset for the CDMA market approximately one month later. The LGE phones will be two of the earliest devices equipped with an embedded MMS client for subscribers in the Americas.
Developers can download the Openwave Phone Simulator 6.2.2 and the MMS SDK to create and test their MMS content. The latest Phone Simulator contains the Mobile Messaging Client and can be downloaded from http://developer.openwave.com/
Hutchison 3G UK Holdings Ltd has locked down the new Motorola-built smart phone for its "3" service, seemingly in an effort to stop the device being used for nefarious purposes. However, the plan denies users of the device access to applications written for the similar Symbian-based handset from Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB.
Symbian Ltd confirmed to ComputerWire last week that the A920 featured a "closed" version of its operating system, but 3 has only just confirmed what this means in practice. A spokesperson for the operator told ComputerWire that the device was being treated as a "walled garden" with users only able to install 3-approved applications on the device."
Jeez, will these people ever learn. Oh wait, there's hope -
"Hutchison's decision to lock down the A920 is similar to that used by Orange SA with its Microsoft-powered SPV smart phone, which for some months after launch could only run Orange-certified software. However, Orange eventually relented, albeit in the guise of a "temporary" workaround to give developers access to the device for testing purposes.
Hutchison appears likely to follow suit in due course. The spokesperson said the device would become more open going forward, although no time line was placed on this development. The operator has previously taken a similar approach to content, although it is now starting to bring in partner sites."
Let me say it again. Mr. Operator, if all you can offer me is a walled-prison, ... er, I mean -garden, then forget about it. I'm going elsewhere!
"FG Microtec has announced a predictive flow control (PFC) software solution which it claims can reduce picture message transmission times by as much as 35 percent. The system works by analysing the flow of data over the air interface and optimising the data transmission to minimise the amount of information which needs to be resent.
In addition to reducing the time taken to send a MMS, it also reduces power consumption. FG Microtec is licensing the software for integration into mobile handsets at the chipset level. "
This is by far the best article I've yet seen on explaining the difference between traditional photography and camera phone photography and why ubiquity and connectivity are so much more important than image quality.
"Within the broader ecology of personal record-keeping, archiving and communication technologies, camera phones occupy a unique niche. In comparison to the traditional camera, which gets trotted out for special excursions and events -- noteworthy moments bracketed off from the mundane -- camera phones capture the more fleeting and unexpected moments of surprise, beauty and adoration in the everyday. They also invite sharing that is more immediate, ad hoc and ongoing, such as a dad e-mailing a baby photo to a mom or a teenager showing a picture of her current crush to a friend in a fast food restaurant. Most photos are not e-mailed to others, much less moblogged to the Net, but are shared in more lightweight and opportunistic ways."
This is exactly what I've found since getting a Nokia 3650 a few months ago. I have built up a personal video library of amusing and memorable family moments that are precious to me and my family but may not even be slighty entertaining to people outside of that circle. These animated visual records have an intimate personal relevance because I know and understand the character of each 'actor'. Sharing the video with other family members allows them to live, momentarily, through my eyes.
"The low installed base of handsets that support the MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) and a lack of inter-connectivity between MMS infrastructure deployed by various carriers will not stymie the evolution of the market for photo messaging. Carriers and consumers will make use of Internet services such as shared online photo albums and email."
