Iran: Will Nokia achieve what Bush couldn’t?

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

Over the past week I’ve been dipping into the flood of “tweets” pouring out of Tehran. And I’ve been impressed: primarily, of course, by the spirit of the Iranian people, but also by the way Twitter has kept me informed with an immediacy and rawness that mainstream media coverage can’t match. What we’re seeing in the east is a landmark event, not only in geopolitical history, but also in the history of the internet

But while Twitter has undoubtedly played a major role in events, there’s a technology which I think has been even more pivotal. I’m talking about camera-phones — such as the one that captured the last living moments of a young Iranian woman named Neda, shot dead during a protest on Saturday in the streets of Tehran. (more…)

Yesterday once more on the Nokia E71

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

I’m not sure if one of Nokia’s engineers is a closet Carpenters’ fan, but it’s been yesterday once more on my Nokia E71 an awful lot recently. I’m suddenly interrupted half-way through the day with a reminder for a meeting that I attended yesterday, because the phone has arbitrarily decided to turn the clock back 24 hours. 

It’s the most bizarre bug I’ve encountered on a phone – and it appears I’m not the only one suffering from E-series Groundhog Day. This post on the Nokia Support Forum speculates that the problem occurs when you turn the phone off overnight, with the date occasionally failing to roll over correctly. 

I’ve tried setting the phone to synchronise the date with the network, but that doesn’t appear to work. Has anyone else come across this bizarre bug? Or found a way to cure it? Let me know on comments below. I’ll read them yesterday. 

Just in: Nokia E71

Monday, June 16th, 2008

I was quite impressed by the handfeel* of the Toshiba Portégé G710 when I reviewed it last week, but it is as nothing to the E71. This drop-dead sexy beast is satisfyingly weighty, with the metal chassis perfectly fitting its boardroom looks.

So far, I also prefer the Nokia’s slightly larger keys. There’s no space between them, so theoretically you could accidentally nudge the wrong one, but this hasn’t yet been an issue.

Another big advantage is speed, with the Symbian OS here proving much, much more responsive than the Toshiba G710 running Windows Mobile 6.

One of Nokia’s biggest selling points, though, is ease-of-setup. Just enter your email address and password, the marketing chief claimed, and then worry no more – everything would just work. And with support for “thousands” of ISPs, it’s more likely than not that it will.

I tried it with my Gmail account, but initially hit a problem with the setup routine – it was using Vodafone Live! to connect rather than the usual Vodafone internet access point. Once I’d corrected this, though, it worked like a dream. Well, a slightly dull dream involving access to email via a phone.

I’ll keep on using the phone over the next few days, so look out for the full review soon.

*Handfeel. n. 1 Like mouthfeel, but in the hand.

How long does your phone take to boot?

Thursday, May 1st, 2008

David Fearon recently lamented the fact that, from the moment he presses the power button, his bleeding-edge PC takes a staggering seven-and-a-half minutes to doing anything vaguely useful. Well, I’ve begun to notice that today’s so-called “smartphones” are becoming similarly sluggish.

I own a reasonably bog-standard Nokia N73. In the smartphone world, this is the equivalent of a 2:1 from an ex-Polytechnic, as compared to say, the first-class honours from Oxford that is the Apple iPhone. There’s a mere smattering of non-core applications installed on the thing – the Opera Mini browser, the Gmail mobile app. No antivirus software or anything else that could potentially interfere with the boot process.

So why on earth does it take 50 seconds to get from pressing the power button to a phone that can actually, well, phone? I always turn my phone off at night to save battery and stop random drunk idiots waking me up at 4am in the morning, when they dial the number their mate Carl had 12 years ago. But should I wake up one night to find my house burning to the ground with only my mobile in reach, I’ll be suing Nokia for the 50 seconds it took my phone to kick into life, display a gruesome welcome message, and blast out that infuriatingly twee jingle, while my family are busy choking on the fumes.

And I bet the N73 isn’t the worst offender, either. Let us know how long your phone takes to wake up using the comments feature below.