Category: mobile-technology

Ok its coming up to a few months since my contract ended for my mobile phone. My Ericsson T68 is doing odd things when it comes to Bluetooth and GPRS. I want to change but I would like a phone with a built in camera, as I'm using it more and more for shots.

So I saw Orange are finally bring out the SPV2. Its the first Microsoft smartphone which has built in Bluetooth and a camera, all packed into the same size package as a SPV, which makes me very happy.

I always liked the orginal SPV, but the lack of Bluetooth wrote it off for me. There have been a few other Microsoft Smartphone's which are good but none of them have had bluetooth to date. I'm also hoping Orange will do what they did with the Orginal SPV, sell it very cheap on a new contract. I remember when it was released it sold for about 139 pounds then was quickly dropped to 99 pounds then 79 pounds. I think just before Christmas when I go on holiday I will get a SPV2 at a decent enough price.

My contract is up on my 2.5g phone, I currently own a T68 which has been upgraded to a T68i.

But all that aside, I'm going to pass my T68 on to my wife whos on pay as you go. But I need a phone just like my T68 but with a decent camera. Ideally it would beable to take videos not only pictures.

So whats the choices?


Sony Ericsson Z600, even though I hate flip phones this is better than the T610 I feel.

The Sony Ericsson T610 is the natrual choice and is currently free with a new contract. I noticed the T610's picture resoultion is half of the T68 with the extra camera

I have considered buying a different brand, but I need a phone with decent bluetooth support. Some of the Siemans are looking decent now. The only Nokia I would consider is the Nokia 3650 because its not quite a smartphone so it wont replace the features of my ipaq. But it has a MMC and can record mpeg4 video. And I bet its smoother than my 3g phone. I was also going to say I could get a smartphone and duplicate some features.

Something like the Sony Ericsson P800 or even the P810 now. Or I could consider the Orange SPV or SPV2 if that had a decent camera.

I think I'm gonna wait a little longer before i make the jump.

In regards to my post Your move : 3g update. I was wondering if three deployed a walled garden. Well it would seem so going by techdirt wireless. What a idiotic move by three. Makes me want to send the phone back to three.

Its been a while since I've done a update on a few things, one of those updates should be my 3g phone. I was sparked into doing this because Three finally sent me a letter asking me to make a choice by October 2nd.

Also been meaning to share this with my blogger too,
Gsmbox.com tests my 3g phone

I still cant not work out if three have deployed a walled garden or not. Everytime I type a url in manually (when i got 3g signal of course). The phone says not all content is viewable, then it tries and fails, every single time. I even tried wap sites to make sure it wasnt because the browser didnt fully support xhtml.

But then yeah its odd because its says it should work. Then dont even get me started on the java aspect! I still to this day have not got a single java applet working on the phone.

So what am I going to do, well it seems I can keep the phone if I stay on 3toGo pay as you go. If I goto the video price plans they will give me 100 pounds in credit, but would i use it? No chance! My 3rd option is to leave three, and return the handset to them. And sometimes I do consider it to be the best option.

More stories pointing towards user generated content. Yep we've all heard it before, move on nothing to see.

Personal Life Annotation Devices and Power to the Mobile People. Both look at blogs for a reason, like we never thought about that… move on!

The new palms have now caught up with the pocketpcs, in speed, wireless options and screen quality. But it seems Bluetooth is still not as smooth as pocketpc 2003 it would seem. Larry Garfield does make a great point about a dumb phone. I also would like a dumb phone but with a camera either on the phone or palmtop.

View: The Bluetooth Blues

Heard about flash mobbing a while back but knew of it as flocking smart.What ever the hell you call it, its finally come to the UK. Hurahhh.

Heres a story, Cities on 'flash mob' hitlist from the BBC
And they provides some good links in related section.
London Mob,
Warren Ellis' weblog ,
Cheese Bikini,
Flashmob.info

Its kinda of like meetup
with no reason. Cant see it lasting too long once you get thousands of people going to one place, then the police get called and people get arrested. Blah blah blah… Of course it will go underground again, like most things.

Its already happening actually.

I went to this thing yesterday with Dave and SarahK. It was better than I expected and hosted at the design council, Convert Garden. The title was – Understanding the future of mobile devices, which instantly rings alarm bells in my head.

It was my first time to this event, so I was a little uneasy about the format of the meeting (as such), not enough questions from the floor for my liking and no real debate. But I was attracted to the event my friend dmarks and by the listings of previous meetings, also on the website.

The key points for me were Joe Odukoya's talk, which was a round up of different technologies and when were expecting to see them become common place. I did question the lack of discovery in his chart but mainly to start a debate, which didnt work. But yeah over all good simple and entertaining presentation. Just the kinda person I would invite to talk in college. Maybe just maybe?
One of the suprising things for me was the fact eastern markets prefer cables, hence why bluetooth, wifi and even infra red were not common place. Scarey! Also he pointed out the America market is run by the corps while the european market is run by consumers, hence why wireless instant messaging will be more popular here than wireless email or push to talk.

Ok till then I was ok with everything, then this guy Dr Simon Roberts does his presentation.
He presented the idea of bottom up content rather than top down – yes because we havent heard that before. But then he went off on how the early adopters are to blame for a lot the issues with mobile technology. I was like what the fcuk! Anyway, it didnt take long for people to challenge him and a guy from IDEO said the most sensible thing of the night. Give the technology to the kids and they will do something different. The point he was putting across was the fact technology when it first comes out is expensive, yes of course the early adopters will be a certain group. Make it cheap and afforable and give it away and you will see a new group of early adopters doing different things.
Early adoption isnt bad, just in its current state only a few can be the adopters.
However Simon did bring up some good points and a subject I've never heard of before. Kinship? – I tapped down, The study of linkage, Relationship of people and content.
And i was wondering how sematics and otologies fits into this?
Also he had some good quotes including this one. We use people to find content, we use conent to find people
and this European have a fear of falling. Eastern Asians have a playful nature.

Remind myself to get there early next time and get a seat in the crowd rather than the edge. Will be going to the next event for sure…

Infosync have a small compact review of the Nokia observation camera.I also forgot to add a link to the register news article from a while back, which talks about the uk data protection act in regards to the nokia camera.

So at last Nokia have realeased there little secret image viewer. The SU-2. I remember seeing it on the Nokia stand a while back but they wouldnt show me it working. Previous blog about it

I found a review of it on infosync just a moment ago.Review: Nokia Image Viewer SU-2

The review praises the SU-2, whoever came up with the idea of the Nokia Image Viewer SU-2 must have had a stroke of genius.

I think the conclusion was fair. For triggerhappy camera phone users, the Nokia Image Viewer offers an excellent solution to the problem of how to share and enjoy pictures in a more relaxed environment than on a PC or even the phone itself. It does only what it needs to do, is small and portable and runs on battery power for when a charger is not available or inconvenient to carry – such as when visiting friends or at the cottage. And although it's not cheap, it's not too expensive either.

Things which stike me.
Why is the pictures only limited to 640×480? why not 352×288 as well? Is 3 meg really enough? Why not have more? It supports the Bluetooth OBEX object push profile which opens it up to palmtops and laptops too. And I have to agree this is a brilliant concept but needs lot more work. I mean if it plugged into a tv why not take advantage and support mpeg4 video too?
Oh well we shall see, maybe in SU-3 or 4?