Tag: Nokia

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Business mobile connectivity phones

I see Microsoft are going to buy the Nokia handset business

I found out about 5am this morning via Twitter (under the bedsheets!). Between 5am and the time I got up, around 7.30ish is was being retweeted by all and sundry and Rory CJ was talking about it on the BBC Radio4 Today programme.

By the time I left for work I felt it was old news and had already been done to death. The line of discussion was “Will Stephen Elop be the next Microsoft CEO?” Tbh that isn’t really news and the BBC was certainly unable to do any more than anyone else which was just pure speculation.

Whether Microsoft makes a go of the handset business is neither here nor there in my mind. I’m not really bothered. I’d say it will take them years to catch up with Apple and Samsung/Google if  they can do it at all.

What I think is worth a moment of reflection is the passing of Nokia as a mobile handset vendor. The brand must now inevitably fade away. In my business life I have had very few different vendors’ models of mobile phone (though that is starting to change with what feels to be an unsustainable pace of new product intros) and for most of that time my phone was a Nokia.

Nokia represented quality and had the best User Interface.  Although  I still own a Nokia, a Lumia 920 handset it is very much my secondary phone. I don’t like the UI or the weight of it. I only got it to try out Windows8. The last Nokia phone I can claim to have been happy with was the N97, a while ago now, it seems.

There are always examples around of major multinational companies with big market leads that fail to move with the times. Microsoft is in one of those periods now of trying to reinvent itself. It isn’t there yet.

In the meantime Nokia has failed to keep up and is now going through the mobile phone equivalent of the death roll. Stand back and watch from a safe distance.  RIP the Nokia mobile phone.

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End User phones

Nokia Lumia 920 camera compared with Samsung Galaxy S3

snow on railway lines taken with Nokia Lumia 920I’m not going to go into a detailed comparison/review of the Nokia Lumia 920 camera compared with Samsung Galaxy S3 camera but I will share a few observations.

First two photos:

Alex Whitworth taken with Lumia 920Alex Whitworth taken by Galaxy S3

 

 

 

 

 

The one on the left was taken with the Nokia Lumia 920 and the one on the right with the Samsung Galaxy S3. I have no complaints about the photo quality of either camera but you do have to say that they look different. They were both taken at the same time – the Lumia in my left hand and the S3 in my right. I personally think the Galaxy S3 looks more natural.

The  S3 camera definitely has more functionality out of the box. For example panorama mode is an additional app download for the Nokia and the S3 has far more variables that can be modified in its settings. Having said that I guess the Nokia stance is that the simpler the camera, ie the fewer settings you have to play with, the less likely things are to go wrong.

I don’t feel that the increased functionality of the S3 has been detrimental to my photo taking though. The Lumia 920 is a lot faster in bringing up a photo on screen once you have taken the picture. It’s just a sideways swipe of the finger. I’m wondering whether the reaction time of the S3 is because I’ve got a lot more running on it. It’s something I’ve begun to notice recently. Both camera apps  take the same amount of time to fire up which is important because I often find myself wanting to take a quick photo of something – Lancaster bomber flying by etc1.

The header photo is “snow on the line at Newark Northgate train station” taken with the Nokia. You will be relieved to know that this light dusting was not enough to cause railway chaos though it did mean we were slightly late into Kings Cross as the driver was taking a tad more care than he normally would – good to know we were in safe hands. Arrive alive and all that!

Alex Whitworth, the model shown sitting down is one of our excellent product managers. Which photo do you prefer? The people shall have their say!

1 I should point out that I don’t often take photos of low flying Lancaster bombers. I was merely using that situation as an illustration of the kind of scenario that demands quick reaction time with the camera. I could have used a low flying spitfire as an alternative. That of course would have required even faster reaction time being a fighter and therefore designed for speed and agility instead of bomb carrying capacity and range.

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End User phones

A stroll through the Lincolnshire countryside with Nokia Lumia 920 and Samsung Galaxy S3

Drive Carefully Sign at North GreetwellI’m just doing a lot of work with Microsoft Windows 8 at the moment and am running it on the desktop and on the Nokia Lumia 920. It is taking me a while to get into the OS but it is going to be on the menu on trefor.net for the next few weeks.

I am also going to be comparing Windows8 with the Google ecosystem – Chrome and Android. This isn’t one big post or article. It’s a series of bite sized chunks discussing specific aspects. I think this whole subject area is important because I see the business customer base polarising between the two. It might take some time for this to be totally apparent but it is happening.

It’s a cloud versus mobility versus desktop play. Whoever gets the mix right will take the top spot and by definition, money. Apple isn’t in this business centric game other than a boutique player.

Nokia Lumia 920 mapsgoogle maps on Samsung Galaxy S3In playing with Windows Phone 8 (or whatever it is specifically called) – I am using the Nokia Lumia 920. Some of my comments may be specific to Nokia rather than Microsoft but for simplification I am going to assume that they are one and the same.

The first opportunity I had to compare the two was last Saturday when my beloved wife and I decided to go for a stroll through the (bitterly cold) flatlands of Lincolnshire. We settled on a walk to the Cherry Tree Cafe, a renowned purveyor of hot drinks and home made cuisine in Sudbrooke.

To figure out how far it was to walk and how long it would take I used Google Maps. 3.5 miles and one hour five minutes. Perfect. We could get there for a cup of tea, walk back and I would be able to sit down and watch Wales wallop Ireland at the rugby. As a cross check I did the same with the Nokia Lumia 920. The answer I got was a slightly longer 3.6 miles but giving me an elapsed time of one hour thirty seven minutes. Oo I thought.

The walk actually took bang on one hour five minutes – it would have been less had my wife who is a bit of a racing ferret not had me in tow slowing her down.

Now it may be that Nokia assumes a slightly older and less mobile demographic as its main customer base but this isn’t a good start. The error of half an hour represented around 50% delta in actual time taken. Not much use if you rely on a service to plan journey times. That’s all for now.

PS note the header photo was a sign we passed in the village of North Greetwell. It should read North Greetwell, Please drive carefully through our village!

PPS Each phone photo taken with the other – review of cameras to follow soon.

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4g Business

4 G E E L T E 4 ME?

4G EE LTEEE is doing a good job at building up market expectation. Today the mobile network operator launched its pricing plans, available from the end of this month.

Consumers can have unlimited calls and texts with 500MB of data for £36. Remembering that I used 60MB of data in one minute on the O2 LTE trials I suspect that not many people will stay on this plan. The options are:

500MB £36
1GB £41
3GB £46
5GB £51
8GB £56

I assume that this comes with a phone though it isn’t clear. Their site suggests you can get the Nokia Lumia 920, 820, Samsung Galaxy S3 LTE and Note 2 LTE, HTC One XL and the iPhone5 plus a few other also rans (sorry).

If you use up your data allowance you won’t be able to access the internet until you buy a data add-on (ok). It isn’t entirely clear but it looks like the cost of a data add on is £6 for 500MB or £15 for 2GB so it makes sense to get your plan right in the first place.

I note there is a roaming package for £5 a month though this doesn’t seem to apply to data which in my mind is what I am most likely to use when roaming – checking restaurants, bars, local attractions (library locations etc).

The speeds are quoted at 8 – 12Mps on average.

It also looks as if they will not be blocking VoIP

Continue reading “4 G E E L T E 4 ME?”
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4g Business Cloud mobile connectivity

I am not in Barcelona but the UK needs to shift the debate to mobile

I am not at Mobile World Congress, Barcelona. I have had a number of emails asking for meetings at the exhibition. They obviously aren’t using the attendee list for their mailing.

It’s ok though because almost every tech journalist I know is there and there will be a lot of coverage. It’s even made BBC primetime with Rory Cellan Jones trying (and failing apparently) to broadcast a report using the 4G network at the venue.

At MWC this year there are over 1,400 exhibitors. It is surely impossible to visit all stands. One journo I know has a table at a café and has invited anyone with news to book a slot for coffee/lunch/beer. That way he won’t wear out his shoes traipsing around the 11 or so exhibition halls. The value in these shows is not normally at company stands but in the networking opportunities at bars and restaurants.

Also in my experience each event needs to put together a best 50 powerpoint slides of the show. That way you miss out all the sales gough and cut to the chase (and can spend more time “networking”).

These are expensive events to attend – both as exhibitors and attendees. Realistically it’s a thousand pounds minimum spend per person if you want to pop along taking airfare hotel and meals into account. If you are a large corporate and not spending your own money it is probably twice that.

If you are not a journalist the only sensible way to do it is by reading about it online. For example I have just read in the Guardian online that this year Nokia is launching PureView camera phone with 41 Megapixels.

Interesting how technology dynamics have changed. It used to be that bigger and bigger Microsoft software footprints would chew up any progress made under Moore’s Law by the PC manufacturers. Now the race has changed to mobile handsets and connectivity speeds.

My Samsung Galaxy has an 8Megapixel camera and takes 3Mbytes photos. The 41Megapixel camera should proportionally take over 10 Mbytes of memory per shot. Last summer I wrote that I would be taking photos with a 40Megapixel phone by 2016 and discussed how connectivity speeds needed to keep pace with smartphone technology for access to the cloud.

Nokia seems to have blown the 2016 forecast out of the water although note that there is no mention of the PureView on their website – CEOs need to have something exclusive to talk about at expensive shows I guess.

The fact that the BBC has been talking 4G is a sign that the technology race is about to step up a gear. Whilst broadband speeds have started to climb, for the majority of us in any case, the UK is behind the curve on mobile – we haven’t even sorted out who gets which spectrum yet. Faster mobile data connectivity and in particular more bandwidth to cope with the increased usage that that faster connectivity will bring is going to be critical.

“Mobile” is where the future battles for country competitiveness of a country is going to be fought. Mobile applications, mobile ecommerce, “mobile anything” will depend on good connectivity. For the last two or three years here in the UK we have been talking about the need to have faster fixed line broadband – to have the “best fibre broadband network in Europe by 2015”. The focus of the debate now needs to start shifting to mobile.

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End User mobile connectivity

Nokia gets ready for winter offensive

Bumped in to an old colleague (platform 1 Newark Northgate – location, not name of old colleague) who now has Nokia as his biggest customer. Pontificating that business might be slow I was surprised to hear otherwise.

Of course Nokia still does very well in developing parts of the world. His main excitement though was regarding “the big Microsoft launch” coming apparently at the end of October.

The view from the Nokia ecosystem is that this launch is going to be highly successful. Of course they need to believe this but the argument is that the product looks great and that Nokia is relatively unencumbered by patent litigation. The Finnish company holds many key core patents in the mobile technology space.

It sometimes feels as if the companies we support because they have developed technologies that have changed our lives are strangling each other in the court rooms. Everyone watching wishes they would just get on and continue to innovate.

Although they are currently not up there in the smart phone premier league I have never totally written Nokia off (almost have mind you). It looks as if the battalions are fuelling in the wooded hills around Helsinki preparing for a winter offensive. These days battles are fought in the full glare of the media and this is one where we will all have ringside seats.

Wallets at the ready…

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Apps End User mobile connectivity

PC games and how to stop playing them #SpaceInvaders #Galaxions#Solitaire #AngryBirds #XBox #Marconi #Nokia

I was totally astonished a few years ago when I found out how big the market had become for what was then PC games.  I couldn’t understand it – mainly because I very rarely indulge in playing them myself. It was only when I realised how much the kids (ie me) spend on XBox games that it sank in.

This lunchtime I saw someone playing “Angry Birds” on his mobile handset & said the only game I ever really played (Space Invaders and Galaxions aside) was Solitaire and that except for the occasional trip down memory lane I even gave that up many years ago.

It  was only then that I understood why.  15 – 20 years ago I worked for Marconi. Such was the morale in that place that people used to spend whole afternoons playing Solitaire. We got very very good at Solitaire. My record was below 100 seconds. This was a skill built up over long hours of practice.

Then one day someone did it in less than 90 seconds. He had the perfect hand.  All the cards fell right and every click was a winner! This had the effect of stopping everyone in the office from playing – it was the hand of a lifetime that we were never going to beat. It cured me and I have only played Solitaire a half a dozen times since.

All I need now is to figure out how to stop the kids from playing!

On a similar but different note I was talking with a mobile application vendor this morning. He said that of his  12 Tier 1 carrier customers only 2 were asking for support for Nokia and Windows Phone 7 and one of them was in an Eastern European market that had little smartphone penetration! Uhoh. Lots of people are already cured of Nokia it seems though we are still waiting for the big “final push” (enter melodrama stage left).

PS In my book Space Invaders remains the best ever electronic game. Screenshots are courtesy  Wikipedia

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Business mobile connectivity

Nokia cancels 2011 – short term outlook not good apparently

Bit of a dramatic statement that. 2011 cancelled by Nokia.  What they have done is decided not to publish any more forecasts for this year because apparently their sales  numbers are so bad.

The cavalry is on the way and if they strain their ears they can hear the sound of the bugle blowing the charge. However they haven’t arrived yet.

There is a long way to go and in order to succeed Microsoft will have to throw huge amounts of cash at the problem with no guarantees of a win.  It is interesting to watch this play out and I’m glad its not my money.

As I write Nokia stock is down 14.76% on the day. More here on ZDnet.

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Business phones

Nokia knocked off top spot in WE smartphone sales – ducks not lined up – IDC

look out for that cliff edge

In June 2008 I wrote that the writing was on the wall for Nokia. However in August of that year I got myself an E71 and saw that it was good. I note that by June of 2010 I was using a Nokia N97 which at the time I thought was the best phone I had ever had. Although it was targeted at consumers I couldn’t see why business users would not want it.

By November 2010 I had ditched the N97 for a HTC Desire HD. Symbian for Android. Old world for brave new world. Now the HTC is the best phone I ever had – this is a continuing saga.

According to IDC whilst Nokia remains #1 globally for smartphones in Western Europe the Finnish company has slipped into second place behind Samsung.

In a quarter that showed a 76% year on year growth for smartphone shipments Nokia suffered a 10% decline. Samsung grew only 5% and HTC a whopping 271%, admittedly from a much smaller base.

This isn’t really an “I told you so” post and of course it is about operating systems these days not handsets. It is however interesting to be able to read the historical blog posts and be both a spectator and participant in this game.

You would think there have been enough case studies on companies disappearing off the map having been left behind in technological revolutions for modern day participants to see problems coming a long way off. For Nokia the cliff edge is perilously close with only a fence built by Microsoft between them and oblivion (breaking up on the rocks/watery grave etc). Would you bet on the Microsoft fence?

PS the imagination is running riot here with a severe risk of winning an award for most clichés used in a blog post. I could also have used “one last window of opportunity” when describing the Nokia/Microsoft relationship.

Any further appropriate clichés left as comments will be appreciated. No prizes – just points 🙂

PPS header photo is something to do with having your ducks lined up (ok I know they are probably geese but it isn’t Christmas yet)

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End User phones

The HTC Desire HD – Android review two months in a step up from my old Nokia N97

phonebox in snow in Lincoln Bailgate

I get asked what I think of my Android phone – I seem to have a wave of friends whose contracts are now up and are looking to move (predominantly from a Nokia!)

My first observation is that the moves are typically away from a Nokia and the question is Apple or Android? A second observation is that none of the phones being considered are cheap and people are signing up to spending £850 or so over two years, including the bundle, on a handset that they are almost certain to want to churn at the end of their contract. Such is the pace of development. That’s the equivalent of buying a new 42″ plasma/LCD TV every year!

My two month old HTC Desire HD is the best phone I have ever had. Before that I had a Nokia N97 which was also at the time the best phone I had ever had but the HTC is streets ahead of it.

The biggest leap forward is in usability. Everything is intuitive and easy. Next is the huge range of apps you can download for the device. This is not unique to Android but it is collectively for the industry a big step up from where we were before. There may well have been apps available for older generation handsets but today it is more natural for people to use them. If anything the difficulty is trying to decide which app to use – there are just so many of them.

The apps are also better designed for their environment. For example on the N97 I had a Facebook App that used to give me problems when leaving the house. The device didn’t easily switch from WiFi to 3G and the Facebook app kept complaining about “not having a connection to the network” – a nuisance when I had just set off in the car and didn’t want to fiddle about with the phone. It was easier for me to use the 3G connection most of the time rather than keep switching back and fore from WiFi.

On the HTC Desire HD this is never a problem. It isn’t a problem on the iPad either so I imagine this is a “generational” improvement in software. Using 3G does pose battery life problems though so I do take real steps to prevent this, normally by keeping the phone disconnected from any data network unless I particularly need to use it. With careful management the battery lasts me a whole day and if I know I am going to be “hammering” the phone I take advantage of any opportunity to recharge it.

The Apps I use are TweetDeck, Voice Recorder, Mail, Camera, Messages, Search, Gallery, Internet, Four Square and AudioBoo. I also have Skype on there but more from the notion that I feel I ought to have it than because I really use it. In fact I very regularly use all but Skype and AudioBoo and I’m planning on doing more audio posts.

It isn’t a phone anymore. It is clearly a personal communicator – it’s just that the PC acronym has already been taken.

If I had to make a criticism it is that the sound quality of the HTC Desire HD doesn’t match up to the quality of the rest of the device. The speakers don’t anyway. When I use the headset it is great. Also because it is a touch screen phone I sometimes find that my cheek has “ended” a conversation.

The only other gripe is not phone specific and that is the spelling auto-correction sometimes leads me to including words that I didn’t mean so send in a tweet or text. The benefits of the function outweigh the problems and I am happy to live with the added overhead of having to check what I have a written before sending.

From a parental perspective I fear that a new bar has been set in terms of a child’s expectation of a mobile phone. It’s all about money these days. Whilst I realise that I make a living out of technology, part of me yearns back to the days of my youth where nobody had a mobile, the internet hadn’t been invented and I used to put two pence in the phone box outside school to call my mum to come and pick me up from cricket/rugby etc. In fact I didn’t even need to spend the money because as soon as the pips went mum knew I was at that phone box.

Of course I could always become a monk! Click on the header photo and you will see a boy waiting outside a phonebox in the snow for his mum to pick him up. I suppose there are benefits to technology :). He should have used his Android! (he does have a HTC running Windows mobile 6.5 and an iPod Touch!!)

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internet mobile connectivity

iPhone Nokia N97 iPad Apple consumer versus business

My mobile phone, an N97, ran out of battery yesterday. It normally lasts 2 days but there was a network problem and it kept searching for a GPRS signal. It wan’t really the phone’s fault but it does go to show that battery technology has still some way to go with mobiles, especially as we are trying to do more with the device.

The N97 is supposed to be targeted at consumers.  It has a 30Gig hard drive so all my music fits on it. It also has a nice Facebook widget and I regularly use the camera, the voice recorder and make notes.

I don’t really see a difference between consumer and business applications for these high end phones. People want to listen to music whilst on the move with work.  Business people take photos (mine are usually for the blog), make recordings and notes (I do it because I can never remember things otherwise), update twitter, pick up mails, VPN into the office network etc etc etc.

At Timico there is an increasing demand for the iPhone from our business customers. In fact I think that consumer technology has outpaced what is provided specifically for business use so it makes sense that business people want to use consumer tools.

The iPad is not currently a business tool but that type of device will soon be used by business for all sorts of mobility applications.  Whether the Apple device specifically is it will depend on the applications that reside on it – I suspect not.

It is all going to be highly reliant on connectivity, and battery life, and cost, and functionality, and ease of use, and I’m sure the list goes on…  Anyway all that stemmed from the battery running out on my N97 – streams of thought:)

PS the N97 is the best phone I have had so far.

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End User mobile connectivity

Google G1 Phone Date Announced

Google is launching its new mobile handset, labelled the G1, in the UK on Thursday 30th October. This is Google’s first phone and is based on a new open source operating system named Android.

I haven’t had a play with it myself yet and am unlikely to in the near future as T Mobile has an exclusive deal in the UK.  In anycase it is initially going to be a consumer play and I use a mobile phone for business rather than listening to music etc.

The exciting thing here is that Android is open source. Anyone can write an application for it. I’m sure there will be gotchas that benefit Google but that is understandable. Why otherwise would a company make such an investment.

If you don’t understand the implication here of “openness” look at Facebook. Facebook has had thousands of applications developed for it, good and bad.

Nokia is making its own Symbian OS open source and Apple allows developers onto its iPhone although not with complete freedom. The mobile revolution is about to move onto its next phase.

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End User mobile connectivity

Nokia E71

Nokia E71

 

Nokia kindly sent me an E71 to review. I’m not a gadget man but I have now had a series of Nokia E Series’ which I hope qualifies me to comment on this latest one.

 

I some time ago decided that I would use Nokias for email rather than RIM. BlackBerry at the time did not support WiFi and offered no hope of a VoIP client. Windows mobile devices did not cut it. For me they did not seem to be very good phones to me; clunky with a poor user interface and not a very good battery life.

 

The E Series came along and with it the business mobile range for the future. I thought the E60 was good and was somewhat surprised when it was canned. I put it down to progress. It wasn’t perfect. Pages downloading from the internet frustratingly seemed to do so twice. I put it down to some strange caching process. Still the screen was very clear and I could lie in bed on a Saturday morning reading the paper over my home wireless network.

 

My replacement, taken in order to run mobile voip clients on the latest Nokia device, was the E65 which I thought was great and is what I have been using since it came out. It seemed to be a stabler device although it still locked up from time to time. I eventually worked out that if email was synching some of the other buttons wouldn’t respond – crucially the address book. It still seems to download web pages twice.

 

Cosmetically the paintwork on the E65 rubs off so it doesn’t necessarily stay looking good but this isn’t what turns me on. I would happily carry on using the E65.

 

Enter the E71.

 

What I like about the E71?

 

Old fashioned PDA footprint but is a lot slimmer and slips in the pocket very easily.

Good weight – the Blackberry’s are too light for my liking

Good screen

You can listen to your text messages

On board satnav

WiFi – you can also get software that turns it into a WiFi hoptspot.

Battery life seems reasonably good

 

What don’t I like about it? I need to get a Bluetooth car kit. It isn’t really fair on the device because most modern cars probably have Bluetooth built in but mine is a “Classic” and so I have to switch SIMs to my E65 which has a generic Nokia interface that fits into the car.

 

If that is all I can complain about I think the Nokia E71 does very well. In fact it looks to be a huge step forwards as devices go. Well done Nokia.

Categories
Apps Business mobile connectivity

Mobile handset wars

I have always been a fan of Nokia handsets for business use. However I have recently been a little concerned that in the longer term the writing might be on the wall. What with developments in the iphone world and more competition potentially coming from a google open mobile platform.

Nokia has just announced that it is purchasing outright rights to the Symbian operating system. The company intends to make Symbian freely  available as open source which might do something to stop the potential rot. We can only wait and see.

The developer community for iphone will I’m sure come up with thousands of applications in a very short space of time. How many of these will be particularly useful is another thing. Again we can only wait and see, or at least wait and see how many of them will be useful to business. The issue really  for me is is how many useful applications will now come out of the woodwork for Nokia handsets.

I did come across an application on the Nokia website which I consider to be supercool (excuse my naievity if readers think this is all old hat). This is a barcode generating application that allows Nokia handsets to be used as barcode scanners.

 nokia bar code

It took me seconds to generate this barcode and upload it to the blog. There have to be many uses of this in business and Nokia has made it easy. There is a prize for anyone who can tell me what the barcode says. Leave a comment if you have the answer.

Use this link to see more. http://mobilecodes.nokia.com/create.jsp