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Nokia Asha 302 & Series 40 vs. Android

May 15, 2012 by Tero Lehto

Series 40 today has a bit same kind of an active today screen Symbian S60 used to have. It's nice thay have managed to integrate Exchange calendar, contacts and e-mail this well.

Series 40 has a bit same kind of an active today screen Symbian S60 used to have. It’s nice they have managed to integrate Exchange calendar, contacts and e-mail this well.

Even though most of the media publicity around mobile phones is about smartphones, more affordable feature phones are still important for Nokia in emerging markets. However, Nokia has lost attraction in countries like China and India, where very affordable Android smartphones have gained more market share. Nokia and many analysts claim the Nokia Series 40 feature phone platform has become close to smartphones. Is this really true? I wanted to try it myself.

Asha 302 is one Nokia’s latest QWERTY models with the latest Series 40 OS version.  Having used this for two weeks now I have mixed feelings. One thing I am sure about: It definitely is not competing with even the low-end Android smartphones from Huawei or ZTE, but there are many benefits too.

First, the pros: the battery lasts for many days, the thumb QWRTY keyboard is rather nice (compared to typing with touch screens) and the latest version of Series 40 has a decent active main menu with a few widgets. There are many apps and games from the Nokia Store too. For example, I have surprised how they have managed to bring Mail for Exchange client (currently in beta) Activesync on Series 40 calendar, contacts and e-mail synchronization, and it was quite easy to setup with my corporate Exchange account and security lock code

The device has surprisingly good video playback performance, even though the screen is too small for this in my opinion. MP3 music playback from a microSD card was good enough for my background listening.

Posting status updates and images to Facebook was quite easy too, and you can even add a social media widget to the main menu.

Then the cons:  The web browser is still very slow and renders even many mobile sites very badly.  I would have expected some kind of multi-tasking features so that I could leave the basic applications (such as the browser) in the background in an idle mode.  There are some good improvements, though. The  URL address bar and search tools have been merged so that accessing new sites is easier.

Some say “use Opera Mini”, but at least at the moment didn’t work properly due to a few bugs (with the keypad, for example).

Most of all, I disappointed with how sluggish the Series 40 user interface actually is on Asha 302, even though it looks quite simple and this device supposedly has a 1 GHz processor. Or maybe it’s been too long since I’ve used Series 40?

Earlier I have tried the touch screen based Series 40 device Nokia X3 Touch and Type which was terrible. The resistive touch screen combined with a user interface not designed for touch screens is not a good combination. I will try this again after Nokia has updated the Series 40 platform for touch screen devices which they are working with the help of technology and know-how acquired with the Norwegian Smarterphone company.

I have also tried Samsung Wave with the Bada platform, and it showed you can actually bring simple multi-tasking and a decent touch UI to a feature phone platform too.  The problem was getting software developer support, and I guess that’s why Samsung decided to merge Bada with Intel’s Tizen platform.

As a summary, I don’t think Nokia Asha 302 with Series 40 is a bad device. I actually liked it as a backup device for phone calls and text messages. I just don’t see it capable to compete with even the low-end smartphones, mainly Android devices from Huawei and ZTE which I’ve also played with.

Posted in Android, Smartphones | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Stephen Elop and vision for Nokia

May 4, 2012 by Tero Lehto

Yesterday I attended a short media briefing and Q&A before Nokia’s annual general meeting in Helsinki, where CEO Stephen Elop and the new Chairman of the Board Risto Siilasmaa answered a few questions. It felt like one more missed chance to convince things are improving at Nokia.

Mr. Siilasmaa emphasized Nokia’s Finnish cultural roots, but we didn’t hear any news on how he could actually help Nokia proceed with its new strategy.  However, he is just starting in his new role, so he deserves time to show he can help Elop’s team.

Stephen Elop appeared like he wouldn’t have anything to share about Nokia’s vision and battle strategy against competition. I assume they cannot get growth just by cutting costs and laying off people.

Elop has had time to communicate Nokia’s new strategy and vision for almost two years now, and I’ve been surprised how little we have heard about this yet. Yes, Nokia is using the Windows Phone platform, but so are many others too. How does Nokia compete with Apple and Samsung, and what’s their future strategy? Are services like navigation bringing results?

Nokia’s former Symbian executive Lee Williams said in an interview for CNET UK there seems to be a lack vision for future. I have to agree Stephen Elop has not been able to convince yet. Mostly we have heard about cutting costs, and earlier those famous statements about how bad Symbian is.

I also attended Nokia’s press conference at Mobile World Congress in February where they announced a few new Lumia phones and the “monster camera-phone” Nokia 808 PureView. The latter is impressive technology, but it was still considered a technology demo, because Symbian has been called almost obsolete by Nokia themselves.

One kind of a sad irony is that Symbian finally has a quite decent touch user interface and many nice apps after the latest Belle software update. Almost no one just cares anymore. Unfortunately some people could not even update their Nokia E7 or N8 to Belle, because the update was not anymore available over the air (FOTA) or using the Mac OS X client.

How could Nokia inprove their public image? I think they should quickly tell more about what kind of cool stuff their talented people are working on.  I have met many designers, software specialists and R&D engineers from Nokia. They seem to be excited about their work, and they are developing interesting things. I think Nokia should communicate this more openly. Bringing their camera team specialists “Juha and Eero” to the MWC press conference was a good start, but we should see more of this.

Posted in General, Smartphones, Symbian, Windows Phone | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

Windows Phone 7.5 needs better multi-tasking

March 18, 2012 by Tero Lehto

I have now used Windows Phone Mango and Nokia Lumia 800 more or less every day since the end of November. I’m mostly satisfied with them, but there are a few problems too. The first one is very bad multi-tasking. And I’m not talking about some geeky specifications, but real useability issues.

Before Windows Phone I mostly used Symbian smartphones. Thay all had big problems, such as sluggish user interface and overall instability. But simple multi-tasking usually worked; I could leave apps running in the background and return to them later, as long as there weren’t too many applications running at the same time causing memory problems.

The same does not apply to Windows Phone 7.5, at least not with Nokia Lumia 800. I am writing about this now, because I have a  fresh example from just yesterday. I had Sports Tracker running in the background to record my walking route. When I arrived at the destination, nothing was stored, but instead a new session of the app launched without any data for yesterday. Apparently it had closed from the background or I had accidentally closed it myself.

The problem is, in Windows Phone you can’t just switch between 3rd party apps by going to the main menu (Metro UI start screen), but instead you have to hold down the physical “back” button for a few seconds, and then you switch to another apps from a visual view. The apps are left in a special frozen state with a minimal CPU and memory comsumption.

In my experience this system is too complicated and awkward to use.  The same has happened several times with many apps like Spotify, gMaps Pro, and many Finnish services (such as news apps for Helsingin Sanomat and Yle).

And it’s not only 3rd party apps. Even the Microsoft Lync 2010 client is pretty much useless, because I can never rely on it running in the background.  Even though I have properly used the back button to navigate to another apps, Lync often has closes itself. (I could also write a separate blog post about how bad the Lync 2010 client for WP is; it does not integrate with the platform at all like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. I guess they haven’t had time to make a good app.)

I know Microsoft has chosen this kind a limited multi-tasking to save the battery, memory and CPU, but I think they should still optimize it for power users. Hopefully, maybe, this could even be improved with forth-coming firmware updates. I wouldn’t expect this to happen very soon, though. Many feel Windows Phone devices have even larger problems with bad battery performance, even though the latest firmware update at least for Lumia 800 is supposed to fix the issue to some extend.

Maybe we’ll see more advanced multi-tasking with the next major release, Windows Phone 8 or whatever they call it. Some optimistic estimates say it would be coming after summer or at least by the end of this year. Microsoft has not confirmed the schedule, or whether it will become available for current Windows Phone devices.

Update 18.3.2012 @ 22:16. According to technical documentation by Microsoft, the background in Windows Phone is supposed to work by bressing the Windows button too. In my opinion this does not change the point of unreliability of the background mode.  You can judge yourselves, I am just more confused.

Posted in Smartphones, Windows Phone | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Pre-paid mobile data in Malaysia

January 2, 2012 by Tero Lehto

I have now spent eight days of vacation in Malaysia, at first five days in the capital city Kuala Lumpur, and then the rest of the time on the largest island, Langkawi. As a Facebook and news addict I took my Symbian and Windows Phone smartphones, and of course laptop (MacBook Air) here with me. In Finland I have a multi-SIM subscription (with two cards) from my employet and a separate subscription for mobile data (USB stick). However, I can’t use them here due to very expensive roaming charges.

So I looked for options already in advance. In many forum discussions, most people recommended Celcom or Maxis brands of which I have heard of. So when I landed at the Langkawi airport, I just headed to the first operator store which happened to be Celcom branded. They offered a flat-rate deal with 3G for 40 MYR (about 10 EUR) for two weeks. It sounded very tempting, so I bought the pre-paid package. They were friendly and even activated the service for my Huawei E5 modem.

The reality outcome was not that great anyway. I never got any 3G (UMTS or HSPA) connection in Kuala Lumpur or Langkawi. The service stopped working after one week. The instructions I was given for continuing the service for the second week did not work.

So, here in Langkawi I went to another mobile operator store asking for mobile internet service. Service was again very friendly, and the two salespersons I asked immediately understood what I want.

On my mobile phones (Nokia N8 and Lumia 800) I have noticed ”My Maxis” has 3,5G (HSPA) service here, so I asked for that. The salesperson said I’d need to activate that myself, and it might not be possible in English. He once again recommended Celcom, but insisted I could still get 3G access up to 384 kbit/s /standard UMTS downlink speed). That would be enough me, so I paid 22,5 MYR (about 5,6 EUR) for one weeks of access. I immediately tried it on my Huawei E5 and got a working 3G link.

3G coverage has been very limited here so far, and having two friends close to me with 3G phones or USB modems often drops my link to a high latency and slow 2,5G (EDGE) mode. My neighbour has a Sony Vaio laptop with an integrated 2G/3G/3,5G. He seems to get an HSPA link most of the time, so I guess his laptop has a better (larger size?) antenna than my Huawei E5.

But when the 3G mode randomly works, this is a very affordable and useable option for searching for open WiFi hotspots. My hotel also offers WiFi access, but they charge a ridiculous price and sell access inconveniently by hourly rates. .

As a conclusion, my advice for travelers in Malaysia would be to try get the Maxis service (working in the same network as Celcom as far as I know), but to make sure you can get the correct settings somehow. It might be a good idea to take your laptop or modem with you to the store and immediately test the right settings.

Most important of all, my operator in Finland, TeliaSonera, does not not get any money from my mobile surfing here. Roaming charges are so outrageous. To ensure this, I have disabled mobile data roaming abroad in my Sonera SIM cards.

I would be happy to hear about other experiences of pre-paid mobile data in Malaysia and other countries.

Posted in Mobile data, Networks | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Nokia Lumia 800 quickly from Germany

November 30, 2011 by Tero Lehto

The first Nokia Windows Phone, Lumia 800 is not available in very many countries yet. Nokia is not shipping it in Finland yet, and they haven’t sent test devices for media even today. So I got tire of waiting and ordered the device from Germany.

I used a German online store  comtech.de which is now selling Lumia 800 for 439 euros plus some shipping costs.  I paid using my credit card connected with my Amazon.co.uk account.  They seem to ship to 24 countries in addition to Germany. The store is in German, but you only have to know a few German words (start by clicking ‘jetzt kaufen’, buy now). Unfortunately only the black colour seemed to be available.

I ordered it online on Monday last week, and it was on my home front door on Friday. I wasn’t at home, since I was at work, and DHL once again didn’t bother to call me. Don’t they ever learn?. So I finally got it on Monday.

The black Lumia 800 I received is a device tailored for T-Mobile.  That means the T-Mobile logo will show during the boot for a few seconds. The initial language is German, you can change it to one of those almost 20 languages WP Mango supports at the moment.  

Amazon.de also seems to sell Lumia 800 now, but  I haven’t confirmed how many countries they ship to.  

The device also comes pre-installed with some T-Mobile apps and services in German language which don’t even seem to work with my Finnish SIM card. That’s not a problem, because you can easily remove them.  I’ve now used this for almost two days without any problems.

However,  I had a bit hassle with the Windows Live ID. Microsoft has limited the amount of mobile devices connected to a Live account to five devices. As I test many devices,  I have had five different WP smartphones. I removed those old devices on WindowsPhone.com, but that didn’t seem to be enough.  WP notified I need to install the Zune client for Windows and remove the old devices there. The Mac client for WP I’m using does not support this. I solved this by creating a new Live ID with a new e-mail alias. I also had to reset Lumia 800 to factory default settings.

Of course, this hassle is not Nokia’s fault. However, this Live ID account limitation is good to remember if you play with many WP devices.

A few of my friends have order Lumia 800 from Germany too, because even many developers interested in the Windows Phone platform haven’t been able to get this device from Nokia yet. I hope the situation will improve quickly, as there aren’t very many Finnish apps or services on the WP Marketplace yet.

Posted in Smartphones, Windows Phone | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments »

Positive impressions: HTC Radar and Nokia Lumia 800

November 20, 2011 by Tero Lehto

Nokia Lumia 800 is coming to the Finnish market sometime early next year. Only the black model was on show this week.My first experiences of using Windows Phone Mango were not very good, because the LG device I tested was unreliable, and often sluggish in performance too. Now I have had chance to try two newer WP 7.5 (Mango) smartphones, and I am fairly optimistic about the platform.

First I got to try HTC Radar for over two weeks now. It has been reliable and smooth. I haven’t experienced any of the problems I had with the LG device. A few of my friends commented they have had the same LG E900 model without same kind of problems. So I may have had an unlucky bad sample from the factory.

HTC Radar has the basic specifications and nothing special. The aluminum unibody chassis has the same feeling and style alike many others, such as Nokia N8. I think the gray and black colours are boring. CPU is the minimum required for WP 7.5, Qualcomm Snapdragon based Scorpion running at 1 GHz, but I haven’t experienced any performance problems. However, there’s one major disappoinment, the camera: HTC has never put very much effort in this area, and HTC Radar is even worse than many others. Especially in low light and with the LED light results are awful.

HTC Radar is a no surprises business phone with a decent 3,8 inch screen. I can recommend it, if you get a tempting enough price offer. I would not pay very much for this, because better options are on the way soon.

* * *

The second Windows Phone 7.5 smartphone I played with is the highly anticipated Nokia Lumia 800. Microsoft held two events, Hello Helsinki for consumers and TechNet for developers and IT pros. There I had the chance to try Lumia 800, but just for about one hour, in two sessions. Even though Lumia 800 does not yet bring anything very special to the Windows Phone platform, I have to say it’s absolutely the best looking and feeling Windows Phone device so far. It’s almost as great piece of art as Nokia N9, and somewhat even better.

Lumia 800 has got very good reviews online. Many have written it’s probably the best smartphone Nokia has ever done. Of course, it’s good to note Americans haven’t got most of Nokia’s smartphones to the United States, and it seems they never got used to Symbian. Nokia N9 (MeeGo) is not shipping there either.

Lumia 800 has the same kind of nice polycarbonate chassis as N9, which means a special quality of plastic. In this case plastic is not a bad thing, because the device feels very robust and sturdy. And the material enables having very vivid colours of cyan, magenta and black. And if you scratch the device, the colour surface should remain the same, because all of the plastic material has been painted. The last argument is from Nokia, I haven’t actually seen that in real life yet.

Nokia Lumia 800 contains the same physical size as Nokia N9, but the display is only 3,7 inch diagonal, compared to 3,9 inch of N9. Lumia 800 has one benefit, a special camera button, which also works when the device is in device lock mode (thanks to Windows Phone).

Nokia has put some unique software features, such as an online radio music player, and most importantly, a full car navigation software with voice guidance.

Looking at hardware specifications, Nokia Lumia 800 is not the best WP Mango device available. HTC and Samsung have models with front cameras for video calls. HTC Titan also boasts an impressive 4,7 inch screen and faster Qualcomm Snapdragon 1,5 GHz processor.

I was disappointed to note Lumia 800 uses the same, very modest standard camera application of the Windows Phone platform. As mobile cameras are Nokia’s core know-how, I would have expected them to shine in this area with the same kind of an application we’ve seen on MeeGo and Symbian. I took a few pictures live at the event, but I couldn’t figure the image quality based on that yet. However, in those dim light conditions the result did not look as good as what I’ve used to with N8 and N9 based on what I saw on the screen.

Albert Shum was a keynote speaker at the Microsoft TechNet event. There was a whole one day track about the Windows Phone UI for Finnish developers.

Albert Shum was a keynote speaker at the Microsoft TechNet event. There was a whole one day track about the Windows Phone UI for Finnish developers.

It’s clear Nokia can do a lot better than what Lumia 800 shows, and fortunately they are already working on this. I got to meet Albert Shum from Microsoft at the same event. He is the man responsible for the Metro UI of the Windows Phone platform. Shum told they have very close co-operation with Nokia. He has described his work on this YouTube video.

Even though Shum obviously couldn’t reveal any specific new features of future Nokia device, based on the interview I’m convinced we will see more personalisation and more features specific to Nokia. The camera application and integration to other parts of the OS are important. People centric features will become even more advanced. IM and VoIP will be integrated with Lync and Skype support. Lync should come already before the end of this year, for Skype the schedule is more uncertain.

You could possibly see where people are, what they’re doing. invite them for a coffee based on your map location, or pictures taken with the camera could be shown on your map location, et cetera.

It’s also interesting to see which features will be specific to Nokia, and which ones will become available for all the vendors. I will blog more about the interview with Albert Shum if I have time later.

Nokia Maps was already available for download for Lumia 800. According to Nokia, it will become available for other vendors' Windows Phone smartphones too.

Nokia Maps was already available for download for Lumia 800. According to Nokia, it will become available for other vendors' Windows Phone smartphones too.

Posted in Smartphones, Windows Phone | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

4G marketing getting wilder in Finland

November 19, 2011 by Tero Lehto

This week the largest mobile network operator in Finland, Elisa opened their LTE (4G) network service for consumers and businesses. Before they had commercial trials with a few  enterprise customers. Elisa has LTE coverage only in Helsinki and Tampere, but they claim to offer “4G speeds” in over 100 cities by the end of this year. The trick is to call their latest 3G networks updated with the Dual-Carrier HSDPA technology as 4G too.

DC-HSDPA (also known as Dual-Cell HSDPA) improves downlink speeds up to 43 Mbps, and Elisa’s competitors DNA and Sonera (part of TeliaSonera group) are also deploying this technology in Finland. Network vendors support it too; at least the three largest mobile network vendors Ericsson, Huawei and Nokia Siemens Networks offer this as hardware and software upgrades to existing networks.

Elisa’s competitors DNA and TeliaSonera have used the term “4G” for their LTE networks which they have have in a few cities. Elisa now takes a very different approach by hyping 4G speeds soon in over 100 cities. It’s easy to guess DNA and Sonera will follow. Sonera has already commercially launched LTE service in Helsinki and Turku, and DNA will launch it by the end of this year. These pperators are now building LTE at 1800 and 2600 MHz, and they will use 800 MHz as soon as possible for wider coverage too.

Elisa showed LTE speeds with the Speedtest.net service, but they also said they won't be marketing certain maximum speeds. 4G sticks for laptops from Huawei and ZTE are quite large, and you may need a cable if you have many USB devices. They very power hungry too.

Elisa showed LTE speeds with the Speedtest.net service, but they also said they won't be marketing certain maximum speeds. 4G sticks for laptops from Huawei and ZTE are quite large, and you may need a cable if you have many USB devices. They very power hungry too.

Elisa can justify this kind of 4G marketing with a few arguments. First of all, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) announced in December 2010 HSPA+ technologies can also be called 4G. As far as I know, the ITU gave up under pressure from operators to accept HSPA+ as 4G too. Secondly, 4G has never been a specific technology, but instead a marketing term, said CTO of Nokia Siemens Networks Hossein Moiin when I interviewed him earlier this year.

Technology wise it also makes sense to bundle these terms, because the latest base stations and software upgrades support multiple radios and frequencies all the way from 2G (GPRS(EDGE) to 3G (UMTS(HSPA) and the latest DC-HSPA and LTE technologies. Then again, some telecommunications engineers think not until the LTE-Advanced networks (with theoretical downlink speeds up to 300 Mbps, or 1 Gbps in the future) come we can talk about real 4G.

But for consumers it’s still quite a different service, if you compare an HSPA+ modem to an LTE modem considering downlink and uplink speeds and response times (latency). Elisa has tried to make this sensible by selling different classes of speeds for flat-fee data; 19,90 euros up to 50 Mbps downlink speeds and 39,90 euros without speed limitations, which means theoritically up to 100 Mbps downlink and around 25 Mbps uplink.

Paying for the latter package only makes sense if you are on LTE coverage area, which means only Helsinki and Tampere at the moment. Elisa’s CEO Veli-Matti Mattila said in the press conference they’d build LTE coverage in many cities, but he did not share specific details yet.

However, Elisa’s executives told expanding their LTE coverage very much depends on how fast they can start deploying 800 MHz networks, and the license terms for this frequency. The Finnish government is expected to decide this by the end of this year. Some kind of an auction is likely based on a recent statement from the Ministry of Tansport and Communications.

Posted in Mobile data, Networks | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

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