Disqus - Latest Comments for krisse

Re: Did the N95 kill Nokia or revive it?

krisse — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 10:12:27 -0000

I think this whole debate shows how utterly, completely 100% out of touch the phone/tech community is right now.

Arguing over whether an iPhone is better than an N95 is like arguing over whether a Bentley is better than a Rolls-Royce, it's a snobbishly irrelevant argument for the vast majority of people. To think that it matters is just silly.

The new version of Ubuntu is NOT an event in the real world, most people don't even know what it is. The iPhone has sold something like 6 million, which is a market share of about 0.6%, yet some of the people in this debate talk as though it has taken over the world.

The average phone sells for 100 euros, and that's where almost all phone sales are. It's the 100 euro phones that matter, it's the 100 euro phones where Nokia and other phone manufacturers get their profits and growth from. The phone technologies to watch out for are the ones that get nearer and nearer this 100 euro barrier, which isn't the case with either the N95 or the iPhone as they cost about 500 euros.

Re: Nokia N-Gage screws you — AND your granny!

krisse — Wed, 21 May 2008 11:38:21 -0000

Thanks for the link!

The irony is that Nokia's other internet services (Music, Maps and Share) DO allow you to move content from phone to phone, N-Gage is very much the odd one out in this respect.

As we say in the article, why do they allow you to transfer a 10 euro album bought from Nokia Music Store from phone to phone, but not a 10 euro game bought from N-Gage? Surely they should be treated the same way?

The oddest thing is that Nokia's original plans for N-Gage did include an iTunes style games locker which let you buy and store your games on a PC and load phones up like you'd load iPods. N-Gage was meant to be the iPod of gaming. That seems to have been abandoned.

For that reason I don't think the problem lies with the service designers, because the original N-Gage service designs were actually pretty good. The problem seems more likely to be the people higher up who make more general decisions about money and copyright issues, they may have lost touch with how phone internet services are supposed to operate.

Re: Nokia N95 New Firmware Version 11.0.025

krisse — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:00:08 -0000

"I am still furious at the arrogance of the Voda bastards though - they won’t be getting another contract from me, and I’ll be encouraging others to the the same."

If you've bought a VOIP phone in Britain and the network operator crippled the VOIP, the UK Trading Standards people want you to complain through this government website:

http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/

If a phone is advertised as VOIP-compatible but the retailer (in this case the network operator) removes the VOIP, that's quite probably in breach of trading standards laws because you're not getting what was advertised.

Re: Nokia N95 New Firmware Version 11.0.025

krisse — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 09:29:22 -0000

Good luck Kent.

I can't believe how phone networks get away with this, not just the crippling but the locking as well.

Imagine if your ISP said you could only use a computer locked to their network, you'd dump them and get a different provider. The government and/or EU would also probably be very interested in the anti-competition issues involved.

Hopefully the EU (which has just cracked down on roaming charges) will get round to banning phone locking and crippling at some point.

Re: Every Phone Is Smart

krisse — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:38:36 -0000

"explain to me how one is smarter than the other. "

It's very simple actually.

A smartphone (such as S60) can run many pieces of third party software all at once, and you can switch between them whenever you want, just like on a PC.

A non-smart phone (such as Series 40) can't do this, it can only run one third party app at a time.

Of course that might not fit your definition of "smart", but that's technically what the name "smartphone" means.

But I agree "smartphone" is a very vague and deceptive term, a much better name would be "multitasking phone". The problem is it's just not as catchy as "smartphone". :-)

And actually... Nokia HAS already dropped the term smartphone for models aimed at the mainstream market. The 5700 smartphone I wrote about in the article is never advertised as a smartphone, it's always referred to as a "music phone" or simply "phone". Very few Nokia smartphones actually have the word "smartphone" anywhere in the publicity or tech specs any more.

As I said in the article, if smartphone makers can sort out the problem of battery life (which is by far the biggest weakness of modern smartphones), it seems very likely that smartphones will finally merge completely with normal phones, and everyone will own a multi-tasking gadget just called a "phone".

Re: Using the SU-8W with the N800

krisse — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 03:49:42 -0000

Hmm... very good find, thanks for that! This should make life much easier.

IMHO touching the screen isn't that bad though, at least it gives you the option of something like a mouse. With current S60 devices there's nothing at all for people who want pointers.

Re: Can Unlocked Handsets Free Us?

krisse — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:43:53 -0000

Yes, you're totally right. Phones should be sold unlocked, in fact I'd go so far as to say that locking should be banned on anti-trust grounds.

Shocked? Let me explain:

Until very recently phone locking was totally illegal in Finland, all phones had to be sold unlocked and sim-free, usable on any phone network. Although locked phones are now allowed, people still mainly buy phones at their full price unlocked because this strong culture of buying phones separately from service providers has developed.

The experience of comparing this to the UK (where locking has been the norm from the start) convinces me 100% that locking is bad for the consumer and only of any real benefit to the incumbent carriers. If governments banned locking as anti-competitive (which it is), it would make phones cheaper, calls cheaper, coverage wider, and the consumer would end up paying less for better products and services.

In countries where locking is normal, consumers are fooled into thinking they are getting something for free, when in fact they're being forced into long term pay-by-installment plans that are far more expensive and cumbersome than if they just bought their phone up front.

The result of the years of forced unlocking here in Finland has been a steady decline in phone prices compared to countries that have locking as standard (for example unlocked phones in Finland cost less than in America despite the Finnish prices including a 22% sales tax).

There's also been a steady drop in call charges in Finland. My current service provider has a monthly charge of about US$5, calls cost about US$0.04 per minute to anywhere in the country anytime, text messages cost the same, and there's no contract or minimum charges or other conditions whatsoever. For an extra $12 a month I can have unlimited uncapped broadband internet access through my 3G cell phone.

If I see a better offer I can instantly switch to any other provider any time I like, and take my phone number with me. This ease of movement from one provider to another has also allowed independent carriers to spring up from nowhere and force the incumbents to lower their prices too. As soon as one carrier lowers their prices, the others match them almost instantly. It's pure market forces at work.

It's also interesting that Finland has much better cellular coverage than America despite having a lower population density, you can get a 100% signal even in the middle of a forest miles from the nearest village. I doubt this would have come about without the stiff competition between the rival companies that run the different phone networks.

There's also been a huge amount of competition between phone handset makers because everyone is fully aware they can switch phones without switching phone service provider, and there's a general awareness of the features of their phones. People buy smartphones because they're smartphones, people buy music phones because they're music phones, people buy basic phones because they're basic phones.

People in Finland don't just blindly buy whatever their service provider tells them, most people buy phones the same way they would buy a DVD player or a TV set: they weigh up the features they require against the asking price, and the market can dictate exactly what people really want from phones.

Re: Smartphone Comparison on InformationWeek

krisse — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 22:01:38 -0000

Outside the US, virtually no one uses Windows Mobile, Palm or Blackberry. American commentators seem to either have trouble understanding this, or don't care what happens beyond their borders.

Take a look at this:

http://www.unstrung.com/document.asp?doc_id=102926&print=true

"Symbian accounted for about 71 percent of worldwide smartphone shipments in the second quarter of 2006 ... Microsoft, Palm, and RIM each accounted for only about 3 percent of smartphone shipments in the second quarter, with Linux accounting for the remaining 19 percent."

Windows Mobile isn't even in second place on the global market, it's in a distant third with 3% of the market, trailing Linux on 19%.

There's also a misunderstanding of who uses smartphones: in Europe and Asia they're general products, usually sold based on their features rather than as pocket computers. They compete with normal phones, and consequently get a far larger market share than PDAs do because an ever-tinier percentage of the population actually uses PDAs. Almost everyone in the developed world uses a mobile phone though, and vast numbers of people in the developing world too.

This is probably where the idea that only business people use smartphones comes from, because much of the media assumes that whatever's true in the US is true around the world. This just isn't the case in the mobile world, for example compare the long-standing US indifference to text messaging and the Euro-Asian obsession with it: they're totally different.

The two largest mobile OSes in the world are Symbian and... Linux. Linux is huge in China and India, and these are the two areas which will shape the development of mobile technology more than the US or Europe. Europe and America are the new Old World (if you see what I mean), and people who want to look to the future of mobile computing ought to look at what is happening in Asia.

If Symbian is under threat, it's not from Windows Mobile or Palm, it's from Linux.

Re: Fring for S60v3 is out, Goodbye VOIP, Hello MOIP

krisse — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:43:43 -0000

Potential benefits of VOIP / MOIP:

-Free international calls (like you said), saves a heck of a lot of money

-Merging of PC phone calls and conventional phone network calls, people looking at their Skype lists while using their computer will be able to contact you even when you're out and about. People won't ever be out of range of any phone service.

-Lets you use the same number whether you're calling on the move or calling through VOIP

-Lets you use the same service on many different types of infrastructure (wi-fi, USB or bluetooth passthrough on your PC, mobile phone networks, wimax etc). It separates the application from the network, basically.

...but yeah, as long as mobile data use is expensive this is of limited use. That won't be the case forever though, the average price of data now is a fraction of what it was 5 years ago, and in another 5 or 10 years the landscape could have changed completely, allowing things like MOIP to take over from conventional phone calls.

Re: Nokia 6121, New S60 Candybar

krisse — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 06:42:47 -0000

The 6121 is exactly the same as the 6120, they both have quadband GSM and dualband 3G, but they have a slightly different set of 3G frequencies (presumably for networks in different territories).

Their specs are actually pretty good considering the small size and price, they have HSDPA compatibility which (if the phone network supports it!) lets you get up to 14 megabits per second download speeds.

Re: Nokia 6120/1 - Pics, Videos, and a Review

krisse — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 10:35:18 -0000

"It's good to see decent entry-level devices like this."

That's what I think too, it will be very healthy for Symbian to have cheaper phones as well as expensive ones.

While some people will complain about the lack of wifi, there are already plenty of wifi-compatible S60 models for people who want it. The point of something like the 6120/6121 is to expand the market to cover people who don't currently use smartphones. The two most popular features of phones right now sound dull but are very important: low price and small size.

The average unsubsidised sale price of a new mobile phone worldwide is about 100 US Dollars, so that's the price to move towards if you want your phone platform to become the dominant one. The 6120 isn't quite there, it's in the shops sim-free with no contract for about $250 plus taxes, but it's far far far nearer to $100 than the N95 or the iPhone.

Re: TibiaME – First Mobile MMORPG

krisse — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 18:31:15 -0000

"short of attaching a video showing actual gameplay."

Actually... I did! I put a link at the end of the review to a gameplay video I'd posted on my gaming blog:

http://nokiagaming.blogspot.com/2007/07/tibiame-for-s60-3rd-edition-video.html

Phono, after publishing the review I got a mail from Cipsoft (the Tibia ME developers) saying that they would discuss all of the problems I raised in the review at their next development meeting. They also said that they are working on a high resolution client for QVGA phones, as well as an upgrade of the existing 176x208 client.

Re: Pink and Purple E65s?!

krisse — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 10:06:05 -0000

I love purple, think it looks great, but then I love fluorescent green and bright orange phones too... :-)

Re: N95 8GB, N81 8GB, and N-Gage Videos

krisse — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 09:17:04 -0000

Okay, here's a bit of a radical idea: Nokia might do better advertising the N800 internet tablet in the US. The N800 seems to be selling far far better on Amazon US than on any of the European Amazon sites, for example. It has a permanent position in Amazon US's laptop top 5, whereas it's barely in the top 1000 on European sites. I recently started a Nokia tablet site to go with a Nokia phone site I run, and while the phone site gets mostly European and Asian visitors, the tablet site gets mostly American visitors.

If this is all representative of the wider situation, then the tablet would seem to be a much better bet for getting Nokia a good name in the US.

The N800's computing-centric design seems more in tune with what appeals to American high end portable device users, whereas in Europe and Asia people prefer something which is phone-centric. It's also the most iPhone-beating product that Nokia has on sale right now: it works with fingers or stylus (or bluetooth keyboard), you can use it with Skype for free or cheap phone calls, its screen is much bigger and its browser is a lot better than the iPhone's.

It would also be a way of drawing Americans' attention to the fact that Nokia does make very easy to use and powerful portable computing products. This "halo effect" might rub off onto their smartphones.

On top of that, it would totally sidestep the network operator lockdown that the US suffers from, as the tablet can connect through phones from any manufacturer running on any operator, as well as wifi which has no large operators. Any retailer who wants to sell the tablet could do so, it would be just like selling iPods.

I'm not saying it's perfect by any means, just that it probably pushes more of the right buttons in America than Nokia's phones do. America seems to have a very different portable device market to Europe and Asia, so it makes sense that they should promote a very different product in the US.

"These may of course also be just "promo" videos, not actually meant for TV. "

The N-gage video was first shown at the recent Go Play event in front of the press, and was shortly afterwards distributed to various websites, so I assume this is meant to be more for media use than direct commercials.

Re: Driving With The Guru - Ep 31 - Rita's Covering

krisse — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 10:04:07 -0000

You don't need to get the N-Gage games with zip files, they can be downloaded straight into the phone's N-Gage application over wi-fi or the phone network. It's no more difficult than downloading a ringtone, wallpaper or java game.

Re: The First Sign Of Trouble For N-Gage

krisse — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:26:58 -0000

The linked-to-profile solution is so obviously the best one, I just don't understand why Nokia abandoned it after Go Play (we did suggest such a solution too in our article, and many people have previously asked for it on the official N-Gage forums as well).

Linking games to profiles would also eliminate the need for individual game activation codes, because the Nokia server could simply keep a record of which games you've purchased and activate them automatically when you log in. It would actually make it much easier to purchase and reinstall games, improving the overall N-Gage experience.

As long as the games only work on one phone at a time, such a system can't possibly help piracy, so it's difficult to see why Nokia and/or third party publishers would be worried about it.

Maybe Nokia ran into a technical hitch over it? Who knows... the point is they shouldn't have started selling games until they'd solved this issue. You cannot let people buy phone games and then expect them to re-buy them when they upgrade to a newer model, especially when it's one of your models that you've made a big fat profit from.

Re: The First Sign Of Trouble For N-Gage

krisse — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:59:01 -0000

"think that, at one point, this profile setup was planned, but somewhere along the line it was scrapped,"

It was definitely planned, AAS/AAN heard reps saying exactly the same thing. The official N-Gage forums' moderators are STILL saying some kind of game transfer system is planned, if you read between the lines.

Who knows what the actual decision makers think though. Hopefully the totally negative reaction to this news will convince them to reconsider.

Re: Gamers Talk, Nokia Responds

krisse — Sat, 24 May 2008 02:41:54 -0000

I agree, this response is adequate, and even if we can't have transfers today the fact they're promising them for the near future makes me feel confident about buying new games.

Y'know, if Nokia gets this response publicised widely enough, this whole controversy could turn out to actually benefit N-Gage because:

1. It shows Nokia responding to fan criticism appropriately and VERY quickly.

2. It gives the new N-Gage platform more publicity than it's ever had up until now.

3. By their very nature the news items all emphasise the phone-to-phone angle, which gets across that this is no longer a single gaming-oriented device but a platform available across a range of "ordinary" phones.

Re: Sims 2 Pets Hits N-Gage, Batman Coming

krisse — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:10:09 -0000

The Sims series is great, Nintendogs is great, I love them both, and I thought the N-Gage Sims 2 Pets would be excellent, but...

"Second, there’s a wealth of different activities to do with your new pet,"

Unfortunately not in the N-Gage version. The N-Gage version's graphics and interface are very good, but there just isn't anything new to see or do or unlock once you've played it for about ten minutes.

Here's a little gameplay video:

http://share.ovi.com/media/allaboutngage.public...

Re: Brothers In Arms Shoots It Up On N-Gage

krisse — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:31:16 -0000

Thanks for the link! :-)

"Unfortunately, the full version will set you back a whopping $13.50, which is incredibly pricey for a mobile game, in my opinion."

That's the weakness of the dollar rather than any deliberate pricing strategy.

All N-Gage games are priced in Euros (10 for full price, 7 for budget) because it's a European company, and most of N-Gage's potential customers are in Europe too because that's where S60 ownership is highest.

The Euro is currently extremely strong against the dollar, the strongest it's ever been. Just to put some perspective on this, here are some other game-related prices in Europe expressed in dollar terms:

- A Nintendo DS game costs about $60

- A PS3 or Xbox 360 game costs about $100

- A Nintendo Wii console costs about $400

- A PS3 console costs about $600

- The original launch price of the PS3 console in Europe was $900

Re: Brothers In Arms Shoots It Up On N-Gage

krisse — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 04:36:01 -0000

"Downloading 37mb for a 20 second trial really sucks. They will never learn it."

Well, bear in mind the demo is actually a locked version of the full game, so when you buy the full game you don't have to download or install anything, it just unlocks the demo.

But I do agree that even with a small download size having such brief time-limited demos is ridiculous, it will do nothing but harm to Gameloft's sales. They've done this before on Block Breaker (30 seconds) and Midnight Pool (60 seconds).

It's only Gameloft that uses time-limited demos on N-Gage though, all the other publishers have more conventional demos that include first levels or first stages.

Re: Brothers In Arms Shoots It Up On N-Gage

krisse — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:59:18 -0000

Well... I'm not sure N-Gage has really officially launched in the US anyway. There aren't any American S60 devices on the official compatibility list (scroll right to the bottom):

http://www.n-gage.com/ngi/ngage/web/g0/en/get_n...

I suspect the bottom line is that S60 devices sell very badly in America, so the N-Gage team aren't going to give US localisation priority when they've got enough core stuff to deal with anyway (client bugs, new releases, website upgrades, new hardware features etc).

Nintendo used to do this to Europe during the 80s and 90s, they'd give priority to Japan and the US because Nintendo consoles never sold very well in Europe (most European gamers preferred computer games to video games during that period).

I know people talk about N-Gage games helping to sell S60 phones, but I honestly don't think many people buy a phone for its games. IMHO phone games are the equivalent of a hotel minibar, there to tempt you to spend a little more after you've already booked the room. For most people, games are part of a package rather than a main feature.

Nokia Music Store is perhaps a bit different because that will work on cheap non-smart phones too, and you don't actually need a phone at all (that's what the monthly NMS subscription involves, unlimited tracks for PC playback only). There's also a much wider audience for music than for games, so even a small market would have more potential customers.

Re: No More BlackBerry Connect Updates For Eseries

krisse — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 13:23:11 -0000

Is there no way that RIM could release a Blackberry add-on solution, such as an app you install on the phone yourself?

S60 is an open platform after all, and there are a lot of S60 phones out there so it's a big potential market for RIM.

It's not just Nokia that make S60, Samsung is about to release a very high spec S60 model called the INNOV8, and other companies have S60 licences too.

Re: Nokia 5320 XpressMusic Impressions

krisse — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:20:46 -0000

What The Guru said, totally agree.

Nokia's gone out of their way to make their devices work on as many networks and frequencies as possible, they're even bringing in Wimax compatibility soon. It's in their interests to do this because more network compatibility = more hardware sales. Nokia only get their money from hardware sales, they don't get a share of your phone bill.

If anyone is in need of an anti-trust investigation it's the phone network operators who lock phones, as there is no technical reason for doing so. The only reason they do that is to reduce competition, exactly the kind of thing that anti-trust laws are meant to stop. I know this for sure because I've lived in a country where phone locking was illegal, and the phone system didn't have any problems because of it.

If you want to buy a car in installments you don't have it locked to one brand of fuel, so why should a phone bought in installments be locked to one brand of network?

Re: Reset Generation Now On N-Gage, PC Too

krisse — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:03:38 -0000

The website has just gone live, so you can play the full game there (it's compatible with Windows using Firefox or IE).

Here it is:

http://www.resetgeneration.com/

And if you click on the "embed me" button below the game you'll get some HTML code so you can embed it on your own site.

Re: Nokia Listens, Hooks Up With Zeemote

krisse — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:06:06 -0000

If the Zeemote supported the HID Bluetooth profile, you could ALREADY have N-Gage, S60 and Java game support. That's why you can control all these games with Bluetooth keyboards, because they're HID compatible.

Alas, Zeemote isn't HID compatible, so it only works with games written specially for it, which is daft.

Re: Nokia Listens, Hooks Up With Zeemote

krisse — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:10:01 -0000

Incidentally, here are some N-Gage games being played wirelessly on a TV using an HID-compatible Bluetooth keyboard:

http://www.allaboutngage.com/features/item/N-Ga...

Why can't we have a joypad casing with BT keyboard components inside it? It would work with all existing games, because all S60 phones have built-in drivers for Bluetooth HID keyboards.

"why cannot we have various developers working for the same platform?"

N-Gage already has lots of publishers and developers working on it, Gameloft is just one of them. The only reason Gameloft is mentioned in the article is because they're dealing directly with the makers of the Zeemote.

Re: Dirk Dagger Investigates On N-Gage

krisse — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:21:54 -0000

Cheung Yuen Wong, you posted a word-for-word identical rant on All About N-Gage.

As I said in my reply on there, if you want Nokia to listen to you, post on official sites (like the Arena Forums, the N-Gage Uservoice site and the N-Gage Blog). Unofficial sites are much less likely to be noticed by them.

"The game just looks completely silly to me."

That's the whole point of the game! :-)

It's a comedy adventure, in the style of Monkey Island or Space Quest.

Of course if you don't like comedy adventures...

Re: Green Baby Steps: Nokia's 3110 Evolve

krisse — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 20:23:10 -0000

Environmental impact is much more complex than looking at the product itself when you're talking about mobile phones.

The impact of mobiles goes beyond the actual devices, as they seem to produce tremendous efficiency gains, especially in developing countries. This efficiency gain often means less resources go to waste, which means less overall pollution than before. The pollution caused by making a phone may be wiped out by the pollution that the phone prevents.

Here's a concrete example:

The BBC did a series of articles about Tanzania several years ago, and one of them featured a taxi driver in Zanzibar who had bought a mobile phone. You can read the original article at this link:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3141157.stm

In the old days he would just drive round town hoping to pick up passengers at random, which wasted a lot of petrol and caused excessive pollution. After he got a mobile phone he just had to advertise his number, wait for calls, and then drive straight to the customer who had phoned him, which meant he used the minimum amount of fuel.

In other words, owning a mobile phone reduced his car's pollution to its lowest possible level, so the net effect of the phone may have been to remove pollution rather than cause it.

The extra efficiency also meant he made a lot more money, more than doubling his income, so (assuming he bought a basic $40 or $50 model) the mobile phone must have paid for itself fairly quickly.

Obviously not everyone uses a phone in this way, but a lot of people do, especially in developing countries where landline networks often just don't exist. In these cases, you have to look at the effect of the phone on other sources of pollution before you decide if the phone itself causes overall pollution.