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.

Update on E71 Reception Issue

This is just a short post that is a follow-up on yesterday's post on the E71 cellular reception problems. I had a lot of running around to do today and spent very little time in the office. This gave me an opportunity to test the E71's reception in a number of different locations. It is clear that if the signal is weak to begin with, holding on to the E71 from the bottom and covering up the antenna, will cause signal degradation and possible loss of signal. However, if the signal is strong, this is not a factor. In a strong signal area I even held the E71 against my body and the signal did not degrade. Therefore, reception should not be a major issue. If you are in a strong signal area you will not notice any signal loss, no matter how you hold the phone and if you're in a weak signal area, you can reduce reception problems by being careful in how you hold the phone.

I continue to be impressed by the speed of the E71 and web browsing is great. The screen is a good size for viewing web pages and is very bright and clear. I also love the upgraded calendar and contact applications. VoIP is similar to what I observed on the E66. It works fine with Truphone and Sipgate but Vonage is giving me a few problems. However, as I said in my review of the E66, I really believe that this is a Vonage issue. On a final note, I had lunch today with one of my colleagues who is participating in the "collective seeding" real world test. His main device is a Blackberry but he had previously used an E62. He was very impressed with the improvements made in the native web browser, saying that it was "quite good". This is pretty high praise as he operates an Internet company and designs and maintains web sites.

E71 Collective Seeding Test

The great and very cool people at WOM World have sent five E71s for me and four of my colleagues to use for a month (thanks Dons). I received the devices today and passed the out with great fanfare. My initial impressions however are a little mixed. The E71 is fast, thin, sexy, and fast. It's also very fast. I've never before seen any mobile devise even come close to the speed of the E71, there is literally no lag after executing a command. Web browsing is as fast on the E71 as it is on my desktop (a 2.93 GIG Quad Core). As I haven't had time for much more than setting up the E71, that's it for the pros so far. The con is that the reception problems reported on various web sites are accurate. The E71s antenna is located at the bottom of the device, where you would normally hold the phone. If you hold the E71 at the bottom you will experience signal degradation and possible loss of signal. I have performed several tests at my home, which despite being in relatively close proximity to a cell tower has always experienced flaky reception. My old Nokia 6310i and E60 had no signal most of the time but walking up or down the street just a couple hundred feet would give me full bars. However, the E61/E62 and my E90 usually had a good signal. As for the E71, I have observed that as long as you keep your hand away from the bottom of the phone, the E71's signal is comparable to my E90. I have not yet tested the E71 in an area where the signal is strong but I will to determine if the signal strength is a factor. Regardless, the placement of the antenna was an unfortunate design compromise on the part of the Nokia engineers and only time will tell how annoying it turns out to be and will depend on how easy it is to break old habits.

Over the next four weeks, my colleagues and I will be putting the E71 through it's paces, testing it's general usability, it's native applications, and it's performance in a variety of real world situations, including how it runs many third party applications. If there is a particular function or application that you'd like tested, please leave me a comment and we'll do our best to to test it out. As these are all the European version of the E71, I will be unable to test the 3G functions. Also, if you have any questions, leave me a comment and I'll do my best to answer them.

Review: Nokia E66

Well, I've just finished 2 weeks with the new E66 (thank you very much WOM World) and I have to say that I'm very impressed. My usual phone is an E90 Communicator and although I missed the QWERTY keyboard, everything else on the E66 was great. The first thing you notice when you pick up the E66 is how good it feels in your hand and how thin it is. The build quality is just excellent and it feels very solid with absolutely not creaks or rattles. Moving on to firmware and software, there have been some significant improvements. The three things that I liked best were the improvements to both the contacts and the calendar and the fact that Mail for Exchange comes pre-loaded. As Mail for Exchange is the first application I install on a new phone, this made transitioning to the E66 very fast. Basically 5 minutes after putting my SIM card into the E66 I was up and running. I have a business Exchange account (Exchange 2007) from mail2web.com and the new email wizard on the E66 worked perfectly. I simply entered the wizard, input my email address and password and my Mail for Exchange email profile was automatically setup. I also really liked the new calendar application. The displays show more information (some being very Outlook-like) and inputting new meetings was also easier. This was a big improvement from the old calendar. As impressed as I was with the email and calendar, I was even more impressed with the contacts application. First, the E66 introduces a new contacts function that allows you to enter the contact you're looking for directly from the active standby screen and then contacts that match appear on the screen. After 3 or 4 letters, you have the contact you want and can immediately dial the number. In addition to this predictive function, the contacts application itself has been greatly improved. Contact groups have been combined with the old Team Suites software to create a very easy and functional method of setting up conference calls. As I use my mobile phone as my primary business phone, conference calling is a very important feature for me and this works great on the E66. In addition to the above application improvements, I found the E66 firmware to be very stable. In the nearly 2 weeks that I used the phone, I did not experience a single crash and this was using all of the normal third party software that I use normally, including: Best Taskman Interactive Voice Call Master (IVCM) Best Profiles Y-Browser As the first three are tied to the IMEI number of my E90, I used trial versions. Best Taskman and Best profiles are great and mature products and simply work great. IVCM is an extremely powerful application that I use as the main telephone system for my small company. It intercepts calls, allows the user to select various options, such as leaving a message or transferring the call to me or one of my colleagues. It also allows you to set different profiles for nights and weekends. As I said, it's very powerful and even my E90 is pressed to handle everything. However, in the 7 days I ran IVCM on the E66 I had absolutely no problems. The faster CPU and, I think, optimized operating system, handled the load without any problems. In addition to the above third party applications, I also used the native SIP application that is standard in all E-series phones. This application has really come a long way in the two years since the first E-series devices were released and is now a very mature application. Again, the E66 connected to my wifi router and I made and received mVoIP calls routinely over the two weeks I used the phone. I normally use Truphone as my preferred mVoIP application, but the E66 is not yet supported. Therefore, I used my Vonage account, which I use because I can have a local number in Dallas, TX. I also use Sipgate to call Europe, as they have much better international rates. Sipgate worked flawlessly but I had a few problems with Vonage. I would routinely get a message when trying to place a call through Vonage saying that a connection could not be made. I believe this was a Vonage problem, especially since I never experienced this error using Sipgate, but I'm not certain. As for battery life, I have read a few early reviews of the E66 stating disappointing battery life and I have to say that the battery is the E66's weakest point. However, I was always able to make it through an entire day without having to charge the phone. Being in the US, I was not able to use 3G and therefore cannot comment on the affect that it would have on battery life. However, I was constantly connected to wifi, both in my office and at home in the evening. While I have never experimented to determine whether wifi or 3G uses more or less energy, I suspect that they are roughly comparable. Finally, I found that GPS (using Nokia Maps), the web, and auto screen rotation all worked flawlessly. In fact, friends were very impressed by both the auto screen rotation and the flash abilities of the S60 web browser. As I use my phone mainly as a business device, I did not extensively explore the multimedia applications. I did take a few photos and played back some TV shows that I recorded on my PC and transferred to my phone, both without problems. I also listened to some music and again had no problems. The business and email capabilities of E-series devices are the reason that they are my phones of choice and the E66 excels in these areas. The multimedia functions are not quite as good as my friend's N95 but you can certainly pass a two hour flight watching a movie or take an adequate photo of the kids. If you're looking for a new phone and don't need a QWERTY keyboard, I strongly recommend the E66. Nokia has built a real winner.