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nokia goes pen based with series 90

this is really just a pointer more than anything else, but forum nokia has released the inital specs and concept SDK for it's series 90 user interface for the symbian OS.

they have obviously chose not to go with using UIQ to compete on it's pen based offerings - that is their devices that would compete head to head with the likes of the p900. In the past nokia has stayed away from pen based devices, except in asia where they sell the 6108.

for those of you who are confused on who owns what in the symbian world - here's the lowdown:

symbian, ltd is the company that makes the underlying operating system and is owned by Ericsson, Nokia, Panasonic, Psion, Samsung Electronics, Siemens and Sony Ericsson.

UIQ is a wholly owned subsidiary of symbian, ltd, and makes the pen based user interface layer for symbian OS that is licensed for use on devices made by the likes of Sony Ericsson and BenQ. They otherwise concentrate on advanced user interfaces for the Symbian OS, and are located in Sweden.

Series 60, Series 80, Series 90 is the keypad driven user interface on top of symbian OS that is owned by nokia, and is found on such devices as the nokia 3650, n-gage, and the nokia communicator. Series 60 has been licensed to sendo which they have included on their Sendo X device. Sendo has made their own enhancements to the series 60 OEM core.

still confused? some analogies: UIQ and series 60 are to symbian os as gnome and KDE are to the linux core. nokia licensed series 60 to sendo like palm source licensed the palm os to sony for their cleo devices.

each user interface as well as the underlying OS has it's own developer program, as well as the developer programs for the devices that use them. yes, this makes it confusing for developers as well. good natured object-oriented MVC design can help developers target multiple platforms and devices at once, but man, does it need to be sorted out. there's a lot of activity by the various developer programs to do this, but for everyone's sake i hope it gets streamlined soon.

sparta wiretap scars

if you've been reading these entries, surely you know that half of at the drive in went here while the other half (the non-afro'ed members) formed sparta in el paso. well, darn if i'm hard pressed to name a band that split into two where both bands recorded some great stuff such as this. no no, duran duran splitting into arcadia and the power station doesn't count.

wiretap scars shows the emo drive behind at the drive in, with a collection of songs that hint at a more melodic emocore while not denying their roots. i guess listening to wiretap scars along with de-loused tells a story of a band that left while on top, a rocket that broke apart at its apogee, one half going off into space, and the other coming back down to earth. lucky for us, we didn't have another challenger.

personally, i'm drawn a little bit more to the mars volta disc. it's just a little more original and little more consistent - but this one is pretty good too.

i'll move out of this genre soon, i promise.

[amazon]

mars volta de-loused in the comatorium

more space rock from the afros from at the drive in. building upon the tease of the tremulant EP this full length release is well worth seeking out. it's not quite as accessible at the drive in's swan song, but shows where the creative element of the former band came from.

[amazon]

notes from CTIA wireless IT

finally, back from vegas and a week of CTIA wireless IT. this was the first conference i have been to in a long time where i wasn't a speaker or running a booth - so it was good to sit back and soak up what was going on as an outsider! now that i'm back i've had a day or so to digest the show and here are some general observations:

attendance was lower than in the past
i've been to this show for the last three years, and this was probably had the lowest attendance of the three. perhaps there were as many attendees, but certainly fewer businesses on the show floor. perhaps because there has been a shakeout of many of the smaller companies that have presented in the past (there certainly weren't as many "science fair" booths, if you know what i mean) but also a lack of presence of many of the bigger companies. notably missing with any force were nokia, ericsson, motorola, and microsoft. they were all there but with a way dialed down presence from what we've seen in previous years.

symbian kicked ass
okay, another way to say it would be symbian put a lot of marketing dollars toward this show, which was probably a smart move to start to displace palm (or is it palm one? does anyone remember the difference? that might be the worst name change since when Borland tried to change their name to Inprise) in north america, and try to hold off windows mobile 2003 from really establishing a foothold here.

but seriously, symbian executed well. their educational sessions were all well attended and informative, and their booth on the floor had a constant sea of people trying out ALL the symbian based handsets. they did a great job of bringing in their partners such as UIQ for the UIQ user interface, nokia for the series 60 and series 80 user interfaces, and sony ericsson for the official launch of the P900 handset. also interesting was a presentation by macromedia on bringing flashcast to the symbian OS. i played with the demos of this "channel based" platform and found it interesting.

deployment of location based services is still a mess
probably the most well attended, standing room only, presentation was a panel discussion on location based services sponsored by the wireless lbs challenge. there were a lot of good points bounced around, but in the end, there were a lot of annoyed developers who weren't happy about hearing that most of the operators in north america (save nextel, who has LBS for developers deployed today) won't be allowing developers to access networked based location information for another 12-24 months. this jives with operators i have talked to as well, who want to sort out all the privacy and billing issues associated with the LBS before allowing developers to have access.

the companies that will be in the forefront of pioneering such applications this year will be the ones that purchase the network wholesale from operators and manage all the billing and liability separate from the customer, or that go ahead and use other means for obtaining LBS information. an example is wherify wireless which purchases network with LBS capabilities from Sprint PCS, and takes the operator out the equation of managing the customer.

in the end, there were lots of questions about how to even satisfy the requirements of this contest, and a lot of lame suggestions about being forced to use bluetooth GPS machines and such, it's the application idea that matters, etc. the winner gets $100K, so perhaps that's incentive enough.

what's that? eric told me to read the fine print. oh. that's a $100K of navtech software licenses. well, that might do it for some folks.

smartphone designs are getting better
both the sony ericsson P900 and sierra wireless voq seemed to get a lot of attention and praise from many of the people i talked to. keeping the device small, but increasing its usefulness seems to be the message the device manufacturers are starting to present, rather than trying to stuff whatever they can into crazy designs. the P900 is 20% smaller in mass than the P800, but with more functionality, which is a good trend.

reviews coming soon: Sony Ericsson P900, Motorola MPx200

review: nokia n-gage

i first realized that gaming would take off on phones when i got my first nokia 8290 and played my first game of "snake". actually, it was a day later when i walked into the bathroom at work and heard the sounds of "snake" eminating from one of the stalls. "hmm, maybe there is something to games on phones as a timekiller."

ever since nokia announced the n-gage a combination game machine and phone, i was extemely intrigued. after reading a few initial reviews and hearing comments from colleagues that had tried them, i had written off the n-gage as a failure that i'd take a pass on. silly me, i should have known better. while walking through the local mall on release day (unbeknownst to me) i saw the stack of n-gage boxes out of the corner of my eye in the local electronics boutique, and well, 5 minutes later i was a proud owner.

of course the shop clerk was more than willing to promote it, but he actually seemed genuinely excited about the n-gage, and had tried it the night before (each store manager was given a promotional handset. lucky dogs) with nothing but good things to say. this young man, who best resembled a cross between jack black and the "comic book guy" from the simpsons, said "this is perhaps the coolest thing i've seen all year. the screen is amazing, and the call clarity is way better than my old handset, and if i could get a bluetooth headset..." well you get the picture. whomever paid for the free handset helped at least one sale. the n-gage is sold in north america in both t-mobile and att wireless versions, with an inactive sim that you can either activate, or replace with your existing sim card. the device is SIM UNLOCKED. whew.

the n-gage has to be both a phone and a game console. so you need to set your expectations. currrently there is no phone on the market that's perfect, and no game console that's perfect, so even though nokia sure had the chance here to exceed at both, it's unrealistic to expect it. i'll tackle the phone characteristics first, and then present the gaming capabilities.

those who are familar with the nokia 3650 line of phones will immediately notice a lot of similarities to the n-gage, because they are both based on the symbian series 60 platform. they are slightly different versions however and not all programs compiled for the 3650 work on the n-gage.

the phone supports most of what you would expect it to - it has a speakerphone, a wired headset, and supports bluetooth headsets that support the "handsfree" bluetooth specification. as i have a bluetooth headset that supports the "headset" profile, it would not work with the n-gage. make sure you check this out before purchasing a bluetooth headset. i recommend the sony ericsson hbh-60 or it's soon to be released successor, the hbh-65.

the speakerphone works great, but i have to be honest, i could not for the life of me figure out how to use the n-gage as a phone you hold up to your ear...finally figuring out you have to hold it perpendicular to your head instead of flat against it! imagine cutting a compact disc in half, and then holding the edge you just cut flat against your cheek and you'll get the picture.

on the messaging side of things, the n-gage supports SMS, MMS and email (both POP3 and IMAP). looking at the UAProf, the phone supports MMS up to 100K, and images up to 640x480. also, it supports both symbian and j2me installers to be sent as an MMS, as well as 3gpp video - features that i haven't seen anyone taking advantage of yet - but seeing as this is a gaming phone, it could be a bettter way to deliver games to the phone instead of WAP download. the MMS player itself still doesn't support MMS slideshows, which i found a little surprising.

the email client itself only allows for one mailbox to be active at a time. the client is adequate for receiving and viewing mail, not the best for responding. that said, it's as good as you can find on a phone-phone without paying extra.

sizewise, the n-gage is big for a phone, but it was actually smaller than i expected from the pictures. it's not any worse than a p800 for carrying around in your pocket, and it is a bit thinner, which is the dimension that counts, to a certain extent.

battery life is not stellar. it will last a good day if your signal is strong, otherwise it seems to drain a little faster than i have come to expect from a nokia phone. there's also no indicators to tell you bluetooth is on, and when bluetooth is on, the battery drains even faster. battery life is a little below average, but passable.

enough with the phone, how about the games?

wait, before i get into games, you should note the n-gage also has a radio that requires the headset to be attached, and an mp3 player that can play mp3s off internal memory or the MMC card. the mp3 player seems to be handle high bit VBR recordings just fine, a problem i have had before with some other phones that can play mp3s. you do have to use an included adaptor to listen to music or play games to a standard pair of headphones.

there is also now an included screen shot utility, making it super easy to snap some of the examples you see here.

what about the games?

i'm glad you asked. first, i'm sure you've all read about how you have to switch games when using a cartridge. if not, i'll paraphrase. cartridge games are delivered on an MMC card, but in order to switch games, you have to turn off the machine, pop off the back, remove the battery, and swap the MMC card out. yes, you have to remove the battery. this seems to have been a remnant of engineering in which removing the SIM card with the battery in can short the phone - yet hot swapping MMC cards doesn't seem to be a problem for the likes of palm, and having gaming cartridges go into an exernal slot in a portable gaming machine was done in the early nineties on the SEGA game gear, but that's not the biggest problem i have. the biggest problem is that they didn't include 2 MMC slots.

with only 1 slot, you can *either* play a game or use an app you have saved to the MMC card, but not both. it would have been nice to have a 128MB MMC card for apps and mp3s, and then another slot for cartridge games. that would have gone a long way toward making this an all in one device. even better would be a way to do a transfer of a cartridge game to your own MMC so you could consolidate games onto one MMC, but the digital rights around that would be a nightmare. having to swap MMC cards is okay, but not an optimal solution.

thankfully, playing games is a lot of fun on the n-gage. games you used to play on your other phones will just be easier on the n-gage, mostly due to the physical phone profile of it looking and feeling like a game controller. for instance JAMDAT football, which i found clumsy to operate on the LG VX6000 and the nokia 3650, is way more fun to play on the n-gage. i was also able to copy some j2me games written for some other phones to the n-gage such as cybiko tetris, and they all worked much better (and loaded way faster!) on the game deck. there are a lot of third party games and apps you can get for the n-gage. a good place to start is my-symbian.com.

i tried 2 cartridge games: Lara Croft Tomb Raider and Sonic N.

tomb raider looks about as good as any game i've seen on a screen this size, pretty comparable to the 3d demos on the p800. it has an online mode (n-gage arena) for racing other online opponents over gprs. it's not taxing on the network but a good example of what can be done over gprs.

sonic is fun, with plenty of depth, and saves your game as you progress automatically which is cool. the graphics are pretty good, although i have to say this game looks better on a palm tungsten c. playability, however, is won by the n-gage. there's a lot to say for playing games with a game controller vs some odd layout of buttons.

the console has the ability to play networked games of up to 6 people over bluetooth, which is great, but since i doubt i will know 6 people with an n-gage, only the future will tell if this will be a useful feature. it has nintendo backpedaling a bit, who recently made a deal with motorola to supply a wireless gaming interface to the gameboy advance.

the real power will be whether or not programmers can pull off networked games over GPRS. it's possible. when i was a younger lad, i played many a game of ID's Quake with capture the flag mod over a 28.8 modem which was adequate until some LPB (low ping bastard) came in on his (or her, but let's be realistic, it was probably a him) t1 and started shooting up the place. with a somewhat level playing field, i await someone to port quake to the n-gage so we can all try this out. better yet, if they EA can get networked FIFA to work over GPRS, they might just sell three more n-gages in this office alone.

summary
i like the n-gage. it's a phone you can play games very well on. it's not a game console that will go up against nintendo game boy advance. it's in a whole different price class. it is in a category of its own! i commend nokia for trying to innovate, and test the waters for how all these mediums can play together. it's not the best phone on the market, it's not the best game console on the market. it is, however, the best phone on which you can play games on the market. who will nokia sell the n-gage to? good question. i'd love to get my hands on the owner demographics once we make it through the holiday season.

ratings
phone: 7
texting: 8
mms: 7
email: 7
browser: 7
pda features: 6
camera: 0
battery: 4
usability: 7
durability: 8
stability: 9
gameplay potential: 10
third party apps: 9
fashion: 8
out-of-box accessories: 7

att wireless updates mMode look

this morning i received a service sms message from att wireless telling me they will be soon updating mMode with a new look and feel. mMode is att wireless' WAP/XHTML based font end to purchasing applications and setting up content, and i think you'll have to admit, this new look and feel is a bit better than any other WAP stack you've seen of late.

we typically haven't liked WAP at all for applications, as it was pretty much impossible to accomplish anything in the past given the shakiness of the network and low quality of the server based applications that ran on network, not to mention the differences in phones. some operators such as U.S. Cellular chose to launch without WAP for their 2.75/3G data services, and Verizon charges a monthly fee for access to a service that pales in comparison to their BREW based content offering.

att seems to be learning from their japanese cousins, and continuing to execute their mMode strategy with surprising results. a theme i am seeing here is easier access to content, fewer "clicks" and bringing innovations like location based services to the forefront. as much as we dislike WAP, mMode demonstrates some best practices in north america. good for them if they succeed in making this useful in time for their nationwide EDGE launch by the end of the year.

fewer clicks is good. colors not as boring, good.

the new home screen.

more of the new home screen. search, messaging and history all up front. good.

big names in content, easy access to the favorites. most people regularly visit 4-5 sites on a regular basis anyway.

"My 5 Nearby". this is all there in the current mMode, albeit buried.

in short - this is good. att realized what they were up against, and rose to the challenge in designing around the user experience.

i bounce around between phones and operators quite a bit, and i have been finding myself going back to mMode more and more these days to purchase things like J2ME games with my att ewallet (because it's easier, no credit card involved) - and then even transferring these games over to my t-mobile phone, who doesn't offer this level of content.

hopefully the full launch of this preview delivers. i like to be pleasantly surprised.

sony image station

sony has launched a print-from-your-phone service called ImageStation. they say they can do wallet size or 4x6, and they show this with a T610 along-side a stack of prints. i'm signing up as we speak and will report back with the results. i'm skeptical but would love to be pleasantly surprised! wallets might work. i've discouraged people from trying to print camera phone pics in the past, because i've tried it and the quality just has not been there.

i saw there was an ofoto press release with att wireless to do the same thing as sony is doing here, but i haven't seen the results.

quick camera phone shootout

i get a lot of questions about which camera phone to buy these days, so i decided to take a few we had laying around here and put them to the test... here's a snapshot of the lovely chicago river, across the street from chez burning door. these pictures were all taken within seconds of each other. you be the judge. the pictures themselves are just one dimension of buying a cameraphone, and there well may be some valid reasons for buying a phone that doesn't have the best picture quality, because you won't really be able to print these pictures anyway.

clearly all cameras are not created equal. all pictures were taken on the phone's highest quality setting it had. some of these pictures were resized to fit on the page. i am always amazed how the exact same picture can look so different through different lenses. there's a proverb in there somewhere.

	nokia 3650 takes a pretty clear picture, but a bit orangish
	nokia 7250 brighter. a little blurry, a bit of fish eye. doesn't do well with the glare
	sony ericsson P800 clear, color is on, dimensions look good.
	sony ericsson T610 a little blurry, a little fisheyed
	LG VX 6000 sharp picture, a little dark

nokia 3660 goes back to classic keypad

i just noticed that the new nokia 3660, the successor to the 3650, will be going back to the classic 3 x 3 keyboard layout from the circular keypad layout on the 3650. anyone know why exactly?

perhaps the circular design turned some people off. i actually kind of liked the circular keypad. i think it made double thumb text entry a little easier, once you got used to it.

with all the usability testing nokia is known to do, i'm surprised they retreated so quickly. i wonder if they will still offer both versions in all markets.

no, n-gage games don't work in a nokia 3650

just a short headline in case anyone was curious. the n-gage looks a lot like a repackaged nokia 3650, but no you can't play the n-gage cartridge games in the 3650. i didn't think this would work, but was still hopeful this was undocumented and i'd get a pleasant surprise. i tried it today, and i got a symbian "kernel-exec failed" message on startup. kudos to the 3650 for recovering gracefully after the "ok" and going about it's business. maybe a flash upgrade or loading a software module could make this work in the future.

also, SD memory cards do not fit in the n-gage, only MMC. guess that limits you to 128 MB in one expansion card.

full review of the n-gage coming soon. in short, despite some well published shortcomings, i like it!

fun with bluetooth at the acura dealership

[editorial note: if arriving here via a google or yahoo search, please make sure and also read full review which supercedes what's written here]

i decided today to check out what i was hoping would be the killer app for bluetooth - the Acura HandsFreeLink(tm) system - which provides bluetooth integration of the audio system with your bluetooth enabled mobile phone. it's available from acura on the 2004 acura tland now also the 2004 lexus ls from lexus.

the way the system works is pretty cool. you can pair up to 6 phones with your car audio system, and when you bring your phone within range, your phone's vitals such as signal strength, battery life, and caller ID show up on the instrument panel. to make a call, you press the "talk" button (which also allows for other voice enabled commands such as controlling the navigation system) - say "dial" and then dial your number by calling out the numbers such as "eight six seven five three oh nine".

when an incoming call is received, the audio system is muted, and the caller id is displayed on the console. pressing "talk" on once again answers the phone, and you can talk to your party through the audio system.

so it came time to try it. i brought along my Sony Ericsson T610, which seems to always play well with bluetooth headsets. alas, after 2 tries, we could not get the phone to pair with the car. the salesman then became afraid of trying more, as he didn't know how to unpair the phone from the car. so he went into the service department to ask.

when he came back, i asked how bad the technical support has been. after all, bluetooth is hardly the most user friendly technology out there...and the salesman said "yeah, we've already had a few of these in the service department. there's a few glitches, one problem being there isn't any way we know of yet to unpair a phone with the car. and some other people have had the same problem we had with your phone".

i wasn't sure how much of this was on the level and how much was them not knowing the answers, or not wanting my phone permanently paired with their demo car. at any rate, when i have another chance to try this out i'll post with more details.

i still think this is a great application of bluetooth that will start to force bluetooth application programmers to make this technology easy. not to make any generalizations, but how much experience does your average car salesperson have with using bluetooth? my salesman was pretty mobile tech savvy - but i would expect him to be on the front of the curve and he would have a hard time selling this feature to most potential buyers methinks. i can see people holding up their old nokia 8290 and asking "show me how it works" and him having to explain "no, you need one of the latest phones for this to work" - which is what he said to me before i whipped out the T610. and we still couldn't get it to work easily.

$129 for panther, yeah, i'll buy it

do i really have a choice?

i'm an apple powerbook g4 user, and i've never bothered to change the homepage of any of my browsers, so i started work this morning with the "upgrade to panther for $129" message at apple.com OSX. my first thought was, "wow $129, that seems high. it should be around $79" and i still think that. but yeah, i'll pay it. if i have to pay for an OS, i'd rather have the updates be frequent, significant, and relatively cheap compared to shelling out whatever microsoft is charging these days for XP professional. it probably helps stow off the rampant piracy that goes on with XP and illegit keys that never seem to be further than an email away. i'd never buy a linux OS subscription, because, i don't know, it's supposed to be free, and with a little effort it is.

all that aside, i hope that panther provides a lot more than the incremental upgrades we all get free from apple. specifically, i'm upgrading for improved bluetooth, and being able to print directly to a windows printer share. right now i print to a linux samba share that has a windows print queue loaded via samba. never been able to get it to work any other way.

3's motorola a920 users revolt!

this petition to get hutchinson 3g to unlock cababilites of the motorola920 is the first example i've seen of subscribers really getting miffed an an operator for trying to control what can and can't be done on their network, and the device that the user owns!

3 has locked the phone so that third party applications cannot be installed on the device, only internet sites approved by 3 can be browsed, and sockets to things like imap and pop servers cannot be opened through their gateway. amazing. bluetooth for a fee? what!? i can see why people are a little upset, especially if they paid the full £399 (that's $666, the number of the beast).

i've said this before, i'll say it again. the 3G provider that thinks of themselves like any other wireline ISP is the one that will win. don't try to control the content that flows over your network. don't try to restrict the apps that use your connection (within the law). just provide a fast, reliable, wireless pipe.

perhaps those things are at odds given the state of the market today. build this into your business models and figure it out. if you don't, you will lose to the operator that does.

vindigo's new business model

while no one was looking, vindigo, inc, developer of vindigo 2.0, which imo is the best mobile city guide available, has started developing other productivity apps on the BREW platform under the name "vindigo studios". in the last few weeks, they have snuck a few other great productivity apps into verizon's "get it now" service, where subscribers can download BREW apps over the air, and have them automatically charged to their account, with no wallet to deal with, and no WAP browsing necessary to locate applications.

vindigo has released MapQuest mobile, an BREW based front end to MapQuest for directions and maps, and MovieGoer, which offers the same for finding theatres and movie times. I've tried both of these out on verizon's network and both work great.

and for the price, they had better! MapQuest Mobile is offered at $3.99/month or $2.49/day. that is, you can choose a monthly subscription and pay the monthly price, or buy a 1 day subscription that expires the next day. definitely pricey, but very useful - and your success rate will be much higher than if you had tried this on the WAP based versions of the same apps.

the way the revenue split works with BREW is you sell your app to an operator at a wholesale price, which the operator marks up. then the developer gets 80% of the wholesale price per unit sold, qualcomm gets 10% and the operator gets 10% - so it's very developer friendly, and suggests a strong postion for developers in the BREW vs J2ME argument. i've heard that vindigo was making 4 times the revenue on their BREW version of vindigo vs the J2ME version that runs on att wireless' mMode service, so it's no surprise to see them expanding their line with vindigo studios, as well as doing custom development for other operators.

nextel has a similar revenue split for their J2ME developers, so this model seems to be setting the market here in north america. we'll see if other operators that offer J2ME and mophun applications follow suit.