Archive for the 'nokia' Category

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Fallen in love again with my N91

Published on January 8, 2007 in nokia. 7 Comments

naomi campbellI have an ambiguous relationship with my Nokia N91. When I received it for testing, it seemed to be all a mobile tech-savvy user could wish for. But time and time again, something happened that pissed me off: battery life, application crashes, losing data, and 2 months ago: refusing to boot. I got fed up with giving it a second chance, and a third …, and threw it in a drawer. In girl-terms, the phone was a Naomi Campbell: really pretty, but independable on the verge of bipolar. She might work, she might not. Impeccable behaviour or a slap in the face, no way to predict.

britney spearsThen I bought myself a medium priced SonyEricsson V600 and was not really satisfied with it. Everything about it felt wrong. For some reason, I like the Nokia user interface much better, or even the Samsung one. The V600 buttons felt toy-like, not sturdy. Its USB interface did not have a full or mini USB connector, but something proprietary. In short, it might be an OK phone, but not for me. In girl terms: more like a Britney Spears. Predictably boring and styleless.
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Mobile etiquette: Caller ID

Published on November 3, 2006 in nokia. 3 Comments
On the Internet no one knows you're a dog
photo by uncle buck

Do you remember the days before mobile phones? When being on the road meant that you could not be reached? When curly phone cords entangled in a sort of DNA structure? When you had to type the number without screen feedback and when you missed one digit, you had to start over? And when you received a call, you had no idea who it was? Nowadays we’re all used to Caller ID (or CLI), some of us even have pictures of callers popping up. I don’t know about you, but I like Caller ID, and I don’t like it when people turn it off (for some reason a lot of ‘sales’ people seem to do that). If I didn’t have this one customer who blocks their numbers, I would never answer the phone on a ‘Private number’.

Five reasons why you should NOT switch caller-ID off:

  1. the called person can screen your call. That is not necessarily negative, there is such a thing as ‘a bad time to call’.
  2. the called person can easily call you back. No need to spell out your phone number twice on the voice mail.
  3. if you called 5 times without getting through, both of you know that. Without Caller ID, those 5 missed calls could be from anyone, and so you have no reason to complain if it is not treated as an urgent call.
  4. disabling your Caller ID makes you look like a telemarketing agent or stalker. No one likes getting calls from those.
  5. a lot of people don’t like getting anonymous phone calls (that includes me). You’re starting the conversation with one participant already annoyed.

I don’t think I’m the only one: on the Nokia forums, most discussions on Caller ID are about how to enable it, not how to get rid of it. This is how you switch it ON:
Activate Incoming (CLIP): *30# [SEND]
Activate Outgoing (CLIR): *31# [SEND]
(via gsm-security.net)

How about you? Do you also think switched off caller-ID is impolite?

Nokia N91 – first impressions

Published on April 12, 2006 in Belgium, mobile and nokia. 2 Comments

SWITCHING PHONES
SIM CardBack in the old days, switching your mobile phone was easier: you just popped your SIM card out of the old one and threw it into the new one. That only works if your telephone numbers are actually stored on the SIM card. Since these cards still have ridiculously little storage space (250 numbers of max 16 characters) , you’re tempted to just use the phone instead for storing your data. My Samsung phone had a function ‘copy SIM to phone’ so that’s what I did. Unfortunately it did not have a ‘copy phone memory to SIM’. It took me a couple of hours, spread over 2-3 days, to figure out a way to get the numbers on the SIM so they turn up on my Nokia N91. The Bluetooth connectivity on the Samsung never worked great for synchronisation, but eventually I figured out a way to export and re-import my numbers.The Nokia, on the other hand, does not have a ‘copy the whole SIM to memory’ function so I have to do it one by one. Oh well…
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Nokia N91: return of the Fin

Published on April 8, 2006 in Belgium, mobile and nokia. 2 Comments Tags: , , , .

I complained back in 2004 that Nokia didn’t have any model that pleased me. I had used 5 Nokia mobile phones at that point, wanted to buy a new one and did’t find anything suitable. Some months later I bought me a Samsung 720: a small clamshell phone with a nice design, lots of features and unfortunately one main flaw: voice quality. The number of people that have asked me: “are you in a tunnel or something? I can hardly hear you“. Those days may be over.

Beause Nokia now has the opportunity to return with a vengeance. I have been asked by the kind people of TheseDays to take the new Nokia N91 phone for an elaborate test drive. A phone with a 4GB hard drive and Wifi (802.11g) built-in, I wasn’t too difficult to convince.
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