Nokia’s direction down

If anyone has any doubts about the sanity of Nokia’s, rather eFlops selection of windows to hang Nokia’s future upon, this should settle them as Nokia Lumia 800 sales forecast gets chopped that puts first batch sales almost half of what the MeeGo powered N9’s sales already achieved. And that was even after the N9 sales were deliberately handicapped by eFlop himself into some of the most obscure markets in the world. If the N9 had been sold in the same regions that the eFlop 800 is being pushed into, there would be no deigning that Window-Phone is a flop, an Elop.

If you Love/Hate Nokia read this


Will the Real Stephen Elop, Please Stand Up?

I couldn’t on my best day, speak to this better than this article.

If anything it should speak to any CEO/CFO/CTO that arrogantly enters a new company environment with preconceived notions of what strategy should be applied to their new positions. So this article isn’t just about Nokia, it’s about ignorance of facts.

Symbian to MeeGo not without pain.

Some how I think that the Nokia announcement that their N-Class phones were moving to MeeGo from Symbian was not greeted with universal internal acceptance, or gracefully.

When Charles Davies departed abruptly and with the appearance of a mystery Nokia N9 running Symbian^3 instead of Meego, I couldn’t help but make a connection. Internally I believe Mr. Davies was bent on pushing Symbian in the N-Class series after the management decision to move to Meego was made, hence the leak of the N9. But who am I to cast aspersions, I was rooting for Maemo.

SmartPhones in the reality distortion field.

I have had a revelation with regards to SmartPhones and the Reality Distortion Field.

Simply put, if the device, any device, that does not behave like a profit generating platform for Apple, should not be considered a Smartphone.




Platforms based on Symbian OS, BlackBerry , Windows and Palm and are based on a principal that the phone provides smart services to help the owner become more productive. To assist with the communications and telephony functionality and on the side, provide other useful apps. For the newly renamed iOS the goal is looping the customer into more expenses, locking them into Apple products, and Apple’s iPhone Ecosystem. To behave as a continuous advertisement and mobile marketing stream. A profit stream that even Razor Blade Salesmen would love.

Sorry not for me, even Android’s more subtle marketing of Google is too much for me. If you are new here, you can be excused for not knowing that I use an Open Source phone called the Nokia N900. And while Nokia has done a lousy job marketing it, it still does all the things that the mighty Apple iPhone 4.

Nokia support is indescribable, really indescribable.

What can say Nokia support is indescribable, as in not available. I have an New Nokia N900 purchased through Expansys U.K. Which shipped it to me, from london (as in U.K.) but it turns out it was acquired by them from the U.S. and Nokia Europe does NOT service (as in repair) Nokia handsets that are sold by Nokia U.S. in the U.S.

Ok, What? Nokia will NOT service Nokia handsets because it’s a U.S. Nokia warrantee and not a E.U. Nokia warrantee. It’s a Nokia, and it’s a their warrantee!

BIG FAIL, NOKIA!

Now I have to ship my phone to the U.S. to find warrantee service on my NOKIA Phone!

Nokia N900 to be locked to Vodafone network.

It looks like all the previous vendors (eXpansys, Amazon UK and other suppliers) of the Unlocked Nokia N900 have been consistently denied product to sell by Nokia. Now the word is, that the N900 will be exclusively the product of The Carphone Warehouse (with a Vodafone ontract) and Vodafone UK.

This means only one thing, there will be NO SIM Unlocked Nokia N900’s. They will all be locked to Vodafone SIMs and further OTA updates will be to Vodafone specifications. With the advent of Vodafone 360 they will be more and more tied to this service. You really can reach no other conclusion, so much for Nokia’s commitment to Open Source and Open Source developers.

The Nokia N900 is a Fake

From the email this morning…


We regret to inform you that the following items have been delayed as we are still awaiting stock from our suppliers :

“Nokia N900 Mobile Computer with Maemo 5 Software”
Estimated arrival date: December 17 2009

One of Amazon’s aims is to provide a convenient and efficient service; in this case, we have fallen short. Please accept our sincere apologies.

I order this on the

2nd of Oct 2009

and this is the third delay. Could Nokia get the release of this phone more wrong? No! they have nothing to release, it’s a fake, vaporware! There are stories out there of Nokia shipping empty boxes to keep up the illusion. I’t no wonder that the boxes themselves look so cheap, they are cheap mockups.

Time to look for another REAL smartphone.

UPDATE: It REALLY is a fake I just received this email from Amazon on Sunday the 13th;

We regret to inform you that your order will take longer to fulfill than originally estimated. Our supplier has notified us that there is a delay obtaining stock for the following items you ordered on October 02 2009.

And the Amazon web page now states that the ‘Product’ is “Currently unavailable.
We don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock”

Decisions decisions too many mobile phone choices.

For a change, I have money to burn, some, anyway, and while I love my Nokia 6300 mobile phone, I thought I’d splash out and go for a new ‘smartphone’. But the choices are endless, I like the Nokia E71, but I know that there is an upgrade to the Nokia E72 , then there is the New Nokia N900 with the New Maemo OS, and more or less future proof. Or how about the HTC (Android) Hero. Of the three, I like the N900, but the E72 has better ergonomics, more like a phone. Which is what it’s supposed to be.

Any suggertions?

Having a Fling with Fring

Off and on the past week I’ve been having some fun with Fring or rather MiniFring as I only have a Nokia 6300. My model only runs the S40 OS, and it doesn’t have WiFi. This isn’t too much of a restriction I get Skype messaging, just not voice, AIM, Yahoo and Twitter which all open up on a tabbed browser when active. It’s proving to be a real useful application.

Blogging life

It’s amazing that when family matters start to stress you, everyday activities like blogging loose their appeal. Facing aging and dying parents and the unpredictability of their loss makes everything else pale to insignificance. But I’m more or less prepared, in part, ready to hop any flight, when my brothers tell me the end is near. I have managed to put in place as many mobile communication and messaging technologies as I could manage so as not to be burdened with packing a laptop and various other bits and bobs that might make flying more of a burden that it will be otherwise. I could probably makes the States with only carry on luggage, dispensing with check in issues and customs. These new toys consist of a new Tri-band Phone in the form of the Nokia 6300 and a Palm T/X for more of the heavy lifting email, and web communications issues. With the U.S. now searching all laptops and sucking off suspicious data from disk drives these devices should prove useful for quick passage.

Web 2 Bloat and Mobile Internet bandwidth

This article about the Average Web Page Size Triples Since 2003, is a further illustration of problems on the Mobile Internet when dealing with Bandwidth issues. With the nature of the mobile web communication methods (GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA, etc.) being more often costed on the bandwidth, and usage, rather than on a flat rate found in ADSL and Cable connections, this becomes a costly proposition.

Web 2.0 makes for easy universal ‘Application’ programming, but is inherently expensive to use as a consumer while on mobile web systems like Wap enabled phones and PDA’s. Even utilizing a mobile phone as a bluetooth modem and a laptop, Web 2.0 makes for expensive internet.

So the question remains, Who benefits most from Web 2? It surely isn’t the consumer.

I started out developing web pages, often testing against dialup speeds. Who does that now? Who tests their Web 2 apps against a slow GPRS connection or with the dialup connection many Irish folk still have to put up with? There is a vast marketplace out in the real world where broadband, or rather cheap broadband, handicaps Web 2.0 deployment.

This whole Web 2 experience convinces me further of the need to maintain, and further expand, traditional fat client Client Server application development into the mobile internet. As the internet continues to expand into convergent devices like the iPhone, Symbian and Palm OS based smart phones, Portable Media Players and connected PDP’, Web 2.0 will fail to fulfill the promise and the hype currently being displayed.