First Impressions of the E75

I recently bought a Nokia E75 and got a very good deal thanks to a special notice posted by IntoMobile.com. I only paid $265 because I purchased the phone on the Saturday before Father’s day between 9:00 PM and Midnight.

The E75 is a very nice phone and feels great in the hand. It has the very solid feel that is standard for E-series phones. I like the screen and it works well in both the portrait and landscape mode. In addition to a very good screen, the numeric (front) keypad is also very good. The keys are a little small but they are sloped towards each other, which increases the accuracy of the key presses. The inner keyboard is a little more difficult to use because the keys are all perfectly flat. Despite this, it works very well for thumb typing. You can comfortably compose and reply to email using the inner QWERTY keyboard but would not want to type out a novel on it. The E75 has a standard 3.5 mm headphone port. While the 2.5 mm ports on earlier E-series phones were never a big deal for me, it was the cause of many complaints by others. Finally, the materials and construction of the E75 are all first class. In addition to all this, the E75 incorporates an accelerometer and has turn and/or tap to silence calls and alarms. The physical design of the E75 is near perfect and the only thing its missing is TV Out.

I have read other reviews that said that the E75's call quality was not as good as other E-series phones but I have not found that to be true. In fact, I found just the opposite to be true. The E75's call quality is outstanding on both cellular and Internet calls. In addition, the cellular signal strength is better than any other E-series phone I've used, except for possibly the E90 Communicator. Even in very low signal strength areas, the E75 had a usable signal. If you read my review of the E71 last year you'll know that my one complaint on this outstanding phone was the placement of the antenna and the pronounced signal degradation when holding the phone from the bottom. Nokia has completely resolved this issue with the E75 and has even gone one better.

The firmware on the E75 is s60 3rd edition feature pack 2. This version of s60 brings several features that s60 3rd edition has been missing since it was first introduced. One feature, although seemingly minor, is the addition of an adjustable snooze duration in the alarm clock. This feature enables the snooze duration to be adjustable from 1 minute to 60 minutes in 1 minute increments. I know this sounds trivial but I like a 10 minute snooze duration and all previous s60 3rd edition phones had a fixed 5 minute snooze duration. The two other major new features of the FP2 firmware are the new Nokia Email application, which incorporates Mail for Exchange and (finally) HTML, and VoIP version 3. The new Email application, in addition to adding Mail for Exchange to the firmware, also provides access to email folders (other than Inbox). These are both features that have been missing for a long time and make the E75 a messaging powerhouse. As for VoIP, version 3 offers much greater customization by including in the firmware options previously only available by downloading and installing the VoIP Settings application. This version of VoIP has also eliminated the Internet Telephone application by incorporating this functionality into Contacts. After setting up your SIP profile(s), you select your default profile (the profile used to make outgoing calls) from within Contacts. Once activated, all of your contacts are then copied into a mirror directory. This allows you to make normal cellular calls by selecting a contact in the default Contacts directory or Internet calls by selecting a contact in the active Internet Call directory. In previous version of s60 3rd edition, you had to specify the default call type, either cellular or Internet. To place a call using the non-default call type required extra steps to select the call type.

Up until this point there has been a lot to like about the FP2 firmware. Unfortunately, that was the good; now for the bad. First, the initial firmware is very buggy, even more so than usual for an early release of a new feature pack. You'll notice that there are no included screen shots in this post. The reason is that after installing a very few 3rd party applications, the E75 became too unstable to use. Specifically, after installing Handy Shell and setting up Email, the phone went into an infinite loop cycling between the active standby screen, the Handy Shell screen, and the new Email application. I could not find a way to break this loop and had to hard reset the phone. Next, the Mail for Exchange feature of the new Email application has a very serious memory leak. Within a few hours of setting up Email using the Mail for Exchange option, the phone's memory was filled up, making the phone unusable. Specifically, the Other directory in the phone memory became filled with 82 MEG of files. Changing the default email location from the phone memory to the memory card made no difference; the phones memory was still filled up within a couple of hours. Lastly, the VoIP application, in spite of the above noted improvements, is unusable out of the box. In order to actually use VoIP, it is first necessary to download an application from Forum Nokia. Furthermore, I only discovered this necessary additional application by searching the Internet for a solution.

To conclude, the E75 design and materials are both great. However, while the FP2 firmware has great promise, it is so unstable in its initial release that the E75 is essentially unusable. Finally, two of the major features of this Enterprise phone, Email (Mail for Exchange) and VoIP are either unusable and seriously degraded. While I'm confident that these problems will be fixed in a firmware upgrade, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed in Nokia for releasing a phone with firmware that is this buggy.

Mobile VoIP

By the fall of 2005 I had been using Vonage for a couple of years and had really come to appreciate the flexibility of VoIP but was looking to combine that flexibility with the features of my mobile phone. Then Nokia announced the first E series phones, all of which had native SIP (session initiation protocol) applications, and I knew I had found the device for which I had been looking. I purchased my first E series (and first Smartphone), an E60, in May of 2006 and immediately started experimenting with VoIP. I say experimenting because there was almost no information available on how to setup an E series phone for Internet telephony and we were all very much experimenting. Within a few weeks, we discovered the correct setup information only to find that all of our calls were disconnected after 30 seconds. The initial SIP stack used by Nokia on their E series phones could not handle NAT (network address translation) Traversal. That is, the phones had no way to maintain a connection across the Internet to the connected phone and could only be used on the inside of a firewall. Fortunately, we found one company, VoIPtalk (see SIP Profile below), that used reverse NAT detection to overcome this deficiency in the Nokia SIP stack.

VoIPtalk SIP Profile:

Profile name: VoIPtalk
Service Profile: IETF
Default Access point: *your wifi access point*
Public user name: sip:voiptalk_ID@voiptalk.org
Use compression: No
Registration: On demand
Use security: No

Proxy server

Proxy server address: sip:217.14.132.172
Realm: 217.14.132.172
User name: voiptalk_ID
Password: *your voiptalk password*
Allow loose routing: Yes
Transport Type: TCP Port:5065 ------ not 5060

Registrar Server
Registrat serv. addr.: sip:voiptalk.org
Realm: voiptalk.org
User name: voiptalk_ID
Password: *your voiptalk password*
Transport Type: TCP
Port:5060

VoIPtalk provided very good quality VoIP calling services but their prices were a little high, not much different than conventional land lines for calls to Eastern Europe, which is my primary calling destination.

Then in September of 2006, Nokia released version 2 firmware for the E60, 61, and 70. This new firmware incorporated a new version of the SIP stack that included STUN (Simple Traversal of UDP through Network Address Translators) to facilitate NAT translation. This removed the previous E series Internet Telephony limitation and opened the door to a large variety of VoIP Service Providers. At this point Truphone emerged as a real leader in Internet Telephony for Nokia E series phones. Unlike other VoIP providers, Truphone was designed specifically for Nokia mobile phones and, instead of manually inputting a SIP profile, Truphone developed a wizard application that automatically and quickly downloads the necessary SIP information. I have been using Truphone for nearly 2.5 years and have found them to be an excellent VoIP provider. They offer great rates for calls within the USA and good rates (but not always the best rates) for calls to the rest of the world. In addition, Truphone to Truphone calls are free, allowing me to talk regularly to my old college buddy in Stockholm. However, I’m still stuck with calls to Eastern Europe being not very much cheaper that standard land line rates (however new rates just announced by Truphone are much better). This is where Sipgate (see Sipgate SIP Profile below) comes in to play. I first heard of Sipgate from a forum member on My-Symbian.com and have found them to consistently have the best rates of any VoIP Provider for calls to Eastern Europe. AT&T charges $0.32/minute for calls to Ukraine, Vonage and Truphone charge $0.16/minute for the same call but Sipgate only charges $0.08/minute.

Sipgate SIP Profile:

Profile name: Sipgate
Service Profile: IETF
Default Access point: *your wifi access point*
Public user name: sip:Sipgate_username@sipgate.co.uk
Use compression: No
Registration: On demand
Use security: No

Proxy server

Proxy server address: sip: sipgate.co.uk
Realm: sipgate.co.uk
User name: Sipgate_username
Password: Sipgate password
Allow loose routing: Yes
Transport Type: UDP
Port: 5060

Registrar Server
Registrar serv. addr.: sip: sipgate.co.uk
Realm: sipgate.co.uk
User name: Sipgate_username
Password: Sipgate password
Transport Type: UDP
Port:5060

Currently, I use Truphone for calling in the USA while I’m at the office or home (I also use Truphone while traveling and always make certain that my hotel has broadband Internet connectivity), I use my regular mobile number when I’m away from home or the office, and I use Sipgate for calls to Eastern Europe. When I’m in Europe, I buy a local SIM card. Therefore, my Nokia E90 always has at least 3 phone numbers with which it in associated: my regular mobile number from AT&T in Dallas, TX, my London, UK Sipgate number, and my Truphone number in Seattle, WA. This provides great functionality and has greatly reduced my international long distance expences, which used to run as high as $2000/month to less than $100/month now. The use of Truphone has also reduced my use of mobile minutes from about 800 minutes/month to about 50 minutes/month.

E63: Another Winner from Nokia

I been away for a while on an assignment and haven't had time to make a post for several weeks but I'm back now with a GREAT entry level messaging centric phone from Nokia to review. WOM World (thanks guys) sent me this great little phone yesterday. I was quite surprised as this is the first time they sent me a phone that had not yet been released.

The E63 is the cheaper "little brother" of the E71, which WOM World sent me over the summer. I was so impressed with the E71 that I bought it. While the E63 is not a phone I'd buy (it does not have an internal GPS or HSDPA), it is a great entry level messaging centric phone. The E63 is made out of plastic but it doesn't feel cheap at all. In fact , it feels really good when you hold it. In addition, as good as the keyboard is on the E71, the E63's is better. There are 2 additional keys on the bottom row of the QWERTY keyboard. While this necessitated a small space bar, it allows the CTRL and CHR keys to each have their own key. This is a very good improvement over the E71, as both of these keys are heavily used. The small space bar has not proved to be a problem at all and includes the interesting feature of a flash light (torch for out friends across the pond) feature that allows you to turn on the camera LEDs by pressing the space bar from the active standby screen.

Aside from the lack of a GPS, HSDPA, a 2MP camera, and being a few mm thicker, the E63 has the same features and functions as the E71. There is a MODES native application that allows you to have a business or personal centric active standby screen, there is a native encryption application and SIP stack for Internet Telephony. Finally, the E63 has a 3.5 mm headphone jack, a feature which I suspect the target demographic will greatly appreciate. I suspect that the CPU in the E63 is the same as the CPU in the E71 because the E63 seems to be just as fast and if you've seem my E71 review you'll know that that's very fast.

I just bought a mobile phone for my business partner's daughter (a college student). She wanted an AT&T Tilt, a WiMo 6.1 device. While it went a little against the grain to buy a WiMo device, the $200 price (w/ contract) was the right price for her. I had considered talking her into an E71 (she wanted a phone with a QWERTY keyboard for messaging), but at over $400, it was outside her price range. I expect the price of the E63 to settle out in the $250 to $300 range (after an initial release at a higher price) and at that price it would have been the perfect phone for her, and I suspect many of her peers as well.

Nokia has another winner here and I'm glad to see an entry level device in the E series family. If I were in college or just starting out in the real world, this is exactly the phone I'd want. I suspect that we'll see a lot of interest in the E63 from exactly this demographic, which I suspect is the reason that Nokia developed this phone. By getting young people interested in Nokia, many will become life long customers. A very smart move on Nokia's part.

Nokia OpenLabs 2008 Thoughts

This was my first Nokia sponsored event and I was very impressed. I have been an engineer for over 25 years and have been training young engineers for almost as long and I have to say how very impressed I was with all of the young engineers that I met in Helsinki last week. They were all enthusiastic, very intelligent, open minded and very responsible. Nokia obviously takes recruiting engineers very seriously because they have put together an outstanding group. I would also like to say how impressed with the people from Nokia and WOM World who organized this event and kept us on track. I have had to organize and lead groups of engineers in meetings and workshops before and understand how truly challenging it can be.

As far as OpenLabs is concerned, I have waited a week to post my thoughts because this workshop was one of the most intense workshops that I’ve ever intended and it has taken me a while to sort out everything in my own mind. First, Nokia clearly stated that the purpose of this workshop was to look 5 years into the future, an aggressive goal. There were actually 5 workshops: Neighborhood, Connected Life, Entertainment, Work (all identified in my previous post) and then on Saturday there was a workshop on the how all of the very cool mobile technology that we had discussed the day before can affect the Environment.

In the first workshop, Neighborhood, we discussed how social media has changed the advertizing and marketing. Companies can no longer tell you what they want you to believe because within a day the truth will be posted on a dozen blogs and forums around the Internet. This is great for the consumer but represents a fundamental paradigm shift for most businesses. I think that this is are area where Nokia is way out ahead of most other companies because they actively seek out regular bloggers, such as myself, and give us their products and ask us to tell them what we like and what we don’t like. Somewhat surprisingly, they actually seem more interested in what we don’t like and freely share this with the rest of the blogsphere.

The next workshop covered “Connected Life” and really opened my eyes to truly practically applications 6to the social media trend. We discussed targeted geospatial advertizing which I found to be not only a very cool idea but potentially really useful. An example of this would be as follows: I’m on a business trip in a city that I’m not familiar with and 4:00 PM rolls around and my stomach starts growling and I start to think about where to have dinner. My phone knows I’m in this city and starts to pick up ads from nearby restraints advertizing their menus and even offering electronic coupons. In addition, I have subscribed to another application, perhaps a new Facebook feature, which lets me automatically get restaurant reviews from my Facebook contacts. So no I not only know which restraints are near me and what they offer, I also know what my friends thought of them they last time they visited the same city. This is, of course, just one possible application.

The next workshop was Entertainment and because this is such a wide open area, we were broken into 4 groups and each assigned one task. The group I was with was assigned to come up with an idea for a new form of entertainment not available today. The idea we developed we called MeMedia and centered on the idea that we, the end user, will be creating our own games, music, movies, etc (media) in the future. Instead of just reading an eBook, we will be creating new stories based on the worlds and stories created by the whole of the user community. This will allow us to create not only new adventures for existing characters but new characters that will interact with existing characters and give us new perspectives on events already created. This could also be applied to games, where actual games are not created and sold but the tools to create a game universe are developed and sold. These user created worlds would be either entirely or partially subsidized by advertising. If, for example, one of the characters is using a new mobile phone that I think is cool, I could buy that phone. In addition, if I but a new device in the real world, I could also buy, for an extra cost, a virtual version of the same device to use in the game, movie, etc.; all in all, a very intriguing idea.

In the next workshop we discussed work and how social media could be used in a work context. One of the members of the group I was with made a statement that bordered on an epiphany. She said that meetings should be for collaborating, not to provide information updates. Existing social media applications such as blogs, Wikis, etc. can be used to more effectively provide information so that when less frequent meetings are held, everyone already knows the same information and the meeting time can be used for purposes of collaboration, brainstorming, etc. As an engineer I have wasted several years (years I’ll never get back) of my career in meetings where my participation in a 3 or 4 hour meeting was to provide a less than 5 minute update on some topic. I’m forced to wonder now what might I have been able to accomplish had I been able to spend those lost years in truly productive pursuits.

The last workshop was centered on the environment and how our mobile technology affects it and what could be changed to help the environment. The group I was with developed the idea of a LifePhone. Instead of disposing of a mobile phone every year or two, the individual components of the phone would be upgradeable. When a 5 megapixel camera becomes affordable, I can simply replace my 3.2 megapixel camera and “recycle” my 3.2 megapixel camera into my sons camera. Similarly, cpu, screen, etc would all be upgradable because common hardware protocols would be used universally. Replaced components would be “recycled” into lower grade phones until eventually they are recycled to make new components. Ideas from other groups included use of RFIDs on cans and bottles that automatically credit your account, through you phone, when placed in a recycle bin.

Finally, I would like to say thank you to Nokia and WOM World for inviting me to this event. It opened my eyes to possibilities I had not previously considered. I have already started applying some of the ideas we discussed during OpenLabs 2008 in my business.

Epocware's Handy Shell: A Replacement for the Active Standby Screen?

For about two weeks I have been trying a new application in Epocware's Handy line of applications: Handy Shell. Handy Shell seeks to replace the native S60 Active Standby screen and there is a lot to like in this latest Handy application, especially having weather on the home screen. This is something that I've missed since my old Windows PDA days.

Basically, Handy Shell provides a new (replacement) active standby screen but also offers several very nice additional features. First, Handy Shell provides easy access to both contacts and applications from the Today (Active Standby) screen. Just start typing the name of the contact or an application and after a few letters, a short list of names and applications appears and you can easily then select the one you want. Nokia's newest FP1 devices, the E66 and E71, have part of this capability, allowing you to access a contact by typing the name on the active standby by screen but for all of those with earlier devices, this is a very nice feature. Although I have an E71 and find that the inclusion of the applications into this feature is a great addition.

The top of the Handy Shell Today screen is a large clock, larger than on the default clock on the native Active Standby screen and very nicely done. The day, month, and year are also displayed, as well as the time of the next alarm.

Next, Handy Shell provides two rows of application shortcuts/icons. The first row is similar to the active standby shortcuts on the native active standby screen. Although the second row of shortcuts is fixed and cannot be changed by the user it does offer good functionality by showing the Bluetooth radio status (on/off) and allowing you to change this state. Then there are icons that show missed calls, unread SMS messages, and unread email. Unfortunately, the email icon only works with the native POP/IMAP email application and nothing else, not even Nokia’s own Mail for Exchange. I hope that this is something Epocware can add in version 2 of this product. Next, there are icons that allow access to Profiles and Themes, allowing you to easily change either from the Today screen.

The last two rows on the Today screen are appointments and, if you own Handy Weather, the next 5 day weather forecast for your home city. Although the appointments are the same as in Nokia’s native active standby screen, Handy Shell makes better use of the Today screen “real estate.” By placing the clock on the top row, instead on at the top on the left side, as with the native application, Handy Shell is able to display more information about your appointment (two full rows of text).

In addition to all of the above, Handy Shell lets the user determine if native applications (Clock, Calendar, Alarm) are used or if the equivalent Handy applications (Handy Clock, Handy Alarm Pro, and Handy Calendar) are used. This is another nice touch that makes this application usable even if you don’t own any other Handy applications.

There are also three other screens in Handy Shell, an applications screen allowing you to specify 12 shortcuts to installed applications, a contacts screen allowing quick access to 12 contacts, and a Task switching application, similar to Best Taskman.

I found Handy Shell both stable and functional, but not perfect. As I already stated, I would liked to have seen support Mail for Exchange. In addition, while I like the second row of icons, I would like to see more options for what can be displayed here, such as settings, connection manager, search, etc. The user should be able to select the 6 icons that they find most useful. Finally, although the top row can display the time of the next alarm, this is true only if you use the native alarm application. Even though Handy Shell gives you easy access to either Handy Clock or Handy Alarm Pro, alarms set in either of these applications are not displayed on the Today screen. While the last two of these faults are minor, the lack of support for any other email besides the native POP/IMAP is a more serious issue. A work around for this issue however is available in that you can toggle between the native Active Standby screen and Handy Shell’s Today screen by pressing the red end key. In effect, this provides a mode switching function similar to that found on the E66 and E71, giving you essentially two different “Desktops.”

In conclusion, although Handy Shell is not perfect, it does provide some long awaited functionality and is an excellent initial version of a alternate S60 Desktop. I will be using it (as I do most of the Handy line of applications) and recommend it to anyone with an S60 device.

Big Brother is alive and well and living in the USA

I started this blog for fun because I like mobile technology and I like talking about mobile technology. However, today's post is going to be more political commentary than about any kind of technology. I read a news article http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/09/17/38FE-tech-policy-gotchas_1.html) on line today that really upset me. It seems that it is perfectly legal for customs inspectors to take your laptop, smartphone, or any other technology you have with you when returning to the US and examine and copy all of your data. All of this is done under the guise of protecting the country but I think that the protectors are worse than the people they are supposedly protecting us from. The US claims to be the protectors of democracy and yet we have imprisoned hundreds of people and given them no legal recourse, we have unlawfully invaded a sovereign country, and now even citizens of this country are subject to unreasonable searches. I am forced to wonder what will be next and cannot help but think of something from the Holocaust: ":First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out, I was not a Communist :Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, I was not a socialist :Next they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, I was not a unionist. :And then they came for me and there was no one left to speak!". We cannot allow our rights as citizens to be eroded away by an administration that is drunk with power and greed. President Bush is not only guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he is also a traitor who deprives his own countrymen of the basic rights for which Americans have fought and died to preserve for over two centuries.

Update 2 from Nokia Open Labs 2008

Well, it's almost 10:00 PM in Helsinki and I'm exhausted. It has been a very exciting, interesting, and intense day. We talked about so many different and exciting ideas today I think it will take me a few days to make sense out of my notes but I will post a detailed description of all the ideas that came out next week after I get home.