Tom Raftery’s Social Media

Two stories being reported today point to how Apple got it right with the iPhone/iPod Touch.

In the first story, coming out of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, EE Times is reporting that:

A blue-ribbon panel of human behavior and technology experts at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain agreed that the best recent advance in the mobile telecommunications user space came not from a mobile telecom company but from Apple Inc. — the iPhone.

Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing for Adobe, cited a study showing that 77 percent of iPhone purchasers described themselves as “very satisfied” with their user experience

Going even further than that, AppleInsider today published a story about how Google said it has seen

50 times more search requests coming from Apple iPhones than any other mobile handset — a revelation so astonishing that the company originally suspected it had made an error culling its own data

So despite the fact that the iPhone is only on sale in 4 countries and is significantly outsold by Nokia et al handsets, the vast majority to Google from mobile devides is from the iPhone.

Why is this? Because Apple made it easy to do. Not only that, they made it a fun experience (turn the device, the page reformats to the new orientation, two finger zoom, etc.).

The iPhone/iPod Touch user experience is so far ahead of anything the competition (Symbian, Windows Mobile) are producing that it will take them several years to catch up. If, in the meantime, Apple can add features like Bluetooth, and 3G and sign deals with more mobile operators they have a strong chance of becoming the dominant handset manufacturer as well as the dominant mp3 player.

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According to Nokia, the latest version of firmware (the phone’s operating system) for the N95 is 20.0.015. This was released in November 2007. According to AllAboutSymbian, this was a significant update which included:

demand paging (!), so 30MB plus free RAM after booting, faster operation, N-Gage game store previews and portal stub, new camera software, integrated Search, new Welcome apps and more

You can check your firmware version by entering *#0000# on your phone and you can update using the Nokia Software Updater .

However, sometimes even if you do have the most recent firmware, the software updater can’t update the phone. This is usually because there is a version of the firmware on your phone specifically for your mobile operator. This typically has some aspect of the phone’s functionality disabled (i.e. the SIP stack).

To get around this you can download an application called Nemesis Service Suite (NSS). This is an application which allows you to change the product code of the firmware version on your phone.

I found the following list of product codes for generic (non-mobile operator altered) firmware on Nokia-N95.net along with more detailed instructions on changing the product code:
0534841 EURO1 – Sand
0534842 FRANCE
0534843 ALPS
0534844 EURO2
0534845 TURKEY
0534847 SCANDINAVIA
0534848 BALTIAN
0534849 RUSSIAN
0534850 UKRAINE
0534851 CIS, Bulgaria
0534852 EURO3
0534853 BALKANS
0534854 GREECE, CYPROS
0534857 ISRAEL
0536058 BELARUS/MOLDOVA
0534833 SINGAPORE

0536062 EURO1 – Plum
0536063 FRANCE
0536064 ALPS
0536065 EURO2
0536066 TURKEY
0536068 SCANDINAVIA
0536069 BALTIAN
0536070 RUSSIAN
0536071 UKRAINE
0536072 CIS, Bulgaria
0536073 BELARUS/MOLDOVA
0536074 EURO3
0536075 BALKANS
0536076 GREECE, CYPROS
0536079 ISRAEL

Once youhave edited the firmware’s product code, you can now run the Nokia Software Updater once more and this time it will update the firmware on your phone.

Be aware with all these hacks that there is always the possibility of bricking your phone and always back up all your info before updating your phone.

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I received a present of a Nokia N810 recently from a client. This was in lieu of payment for some work I did for them.

To say that I am underwhelmed with the device would be putting it mildly!

The N810 is an internet tablet. It has a browser and a radio and GPS built-in. It accesses the internet over wifi or using your phone as a modem over bluetooth. Sounds cool enough, so why am I unimpressed?

A number of reasons. First off the maps for the GPS are terrible. They don’t include many Irish addresses (including Rushbrooke, the townland I live in) and the GPS application doesn’t plot routes either – one of the most useful functions of a GPS device, I would have thought.

Next is the low memory of the device. I was trying it out yesterday when I got a message that it couldn’t open the Welcome program because there wasn’t enough memory! I closed one of the running programs and the Welcome program opened no problem. I only had around 3 applications running at the time so I was surprised that this consumed all the RAM on the device.

The UI is really clunky. I mean really clunky! In this regard I have been spoilt by my iPod Touch experience.

It is slow opening/running applications and the browsing experience is painful compared to Safari on the iPod.

The display doesn’t change orientation if you turn the device through 90 degrees.

It is a brick – big and heavy. Am I likely to carry this and my N95 with me when I am traveling? I don’t think so!

Compare the size of the N810 with the N95 below

to my iPod Touch with the same N95

I have most of the same functionality with the combination of the iPod Touch and the N95 as I do with the N810 and the N95 for a fraction the pocket real estate!

And given that the iPhone Developer Kit is being released in the coming weeks, my iPod Touch is likely to become even more useful!

On the plus side it has an Internet radio!

Is there some useful functionality of the N810 that I am missing?

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Fellow BlogTalk 2008 organiser Thomas Burg is running a pre-launch games contest over on his new Playoo site.

The competition is to create flash lite games for mobile phones and there is a top prize of $10,000 and a total prize fund of $25,000!

Mobile phone gaming is going to be a huge area and Flash Lite would seem to be an ideal delivery mechanism.

Adobe have a page on their site listing the mobile handsets which support Flash Lite.

Good luck to all the participants

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Rumour has it that the first 50,000 Gphones will ship from Taiwanese handset-maker HTC’s manufacturing facility before the end of the year.

While 50,000 may seem like a modest number,

“These initial phones are not going to be for sale,” Benjamin Schachter, one of the [UBS] analysts who worked on the report, said in a phone call earlier today. “These are going to be available for developers only to understand how the software works.”

There’s all kinds of speculation about the Gphone and the business model which will come with it. Some are postulating that it will be free but will display ads.

There’s no news yet on if/when it will come to Europe.

The mobile space is a no-brainer for Google though. Of the 6.billion people on the planet, only 1 billion have easy Internet access. Google’s long-term intention is to use these phones as a cheap way to Internet enable billions more people.

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MaxRoam was launched today by Pat Phelan’s Cubic Telecom.

MaxRoam initially offers a sim card for your mobile phone which you use when roaming. The sim card costs €29.99. You can add multiple numbers to the sim card so that, if you live in Ireland, for instance but visit Spain frequently, you can have Irish and Spanish numbers mapped to the phone. You give the Irish number to your Irish contacts and the Spanish number to your Spanish contacts and everyone is making low cost calls.

This is great. €29.99 is about 1/10th of my last Vodafone bill when I was abroad!

Where it is even more impressive though is when you are in Spain (again, for example), receiving calls, the cost is far lower than receiving calls using your standard mobile operator.

Consider the Spanish MaxRoam charges

Now compare them to the Vodafone costs (I choose Vodafone as they are my mobile operator)

If I send or receive texts in Spain on Vodafone’s network they charge me 49c (on any other Spanish network they charge me 65c). With MaxRoam receiving texts in Spain is free and sending texts on any network is 37c.

Call charges with MaxRoam are similarly cheaper. Receiving a call is 25c (per minute, I assume), making a call is 33c p/m. Vodafone charge 29c p/m to receive call, 59c p/m to call within the EU €1.19 p/m for calls to the Americas and an eye-watering €3.19 per minute for calls to the rest of the world.

I choose Spain for this example ‘cos I have family living in Spain and go there regularly but you will get similar numbers for other countries.

What I am not clear on is when you are in another country, are you locked to a particular local mobile provider or will any work.

I know Pat well and while he’s a lovely guy, I know he’s not doing this out of the goodness of his heart. If Pat can charge these low rates and still make a profit, how much are the mobile operators coining in?

Whoop their asses Pat!

UPDATE – In Pat’s post about the launch he says:

What we will do is put YOU first, here’s my mobile +353872049121, if we leave YOU down in any way call me up and give me a piece of your mind.

And renowned Technology writer David Pogue gives MaxRoam a great write-up in the New York Times.

Now that’s impressive.

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