- Me (doing the moderating)
- Stuart Dredge (Mobile Entertainment magazine, Guardian)
- Cedric Giorgi (TechCrunch France and Seesmic)
- Ben Smith (Wirelessworker.net, The Really Mobile Project)
- Rafe Blandford (All About Symbian)

There were some good points made by the panel — I particularly enjoyed the discussion about the crowd-funding of television shows. (This is also an excellent opportunity to check out MIR favourites Ben Smith and Rafe Blandford ‘in the flesh’ as I hurl questions at them.)

We have a chance – let’s kill ‘unlimited’ once and for all

The word ‘unlimited’ has been abused too much and too long by telecoms companies to be rehabilitated. It should be killed off now we have a chance.

via Opinion: We have a chance – let’s kill ‘unlimited’ once and for all | Wireless Worker.

What do you think? I reckon he makes a very good set of points, particularly around defining related terms like ‘fair use’.

The good:

1. Call quality is excellent. Speaker sound from device is crisp and clear.
2. The phone has a nice weight. Feels good in hand in ‘candy bar’ mode.
3. All the settings options are now behind a ‘control panel’ icon.
4. The e-mail client is even further improved over the Nokia messaging version tested with the E63. It has better configuration options and graphics.
5. The build quality of the device feels solid and the internal QWERTY keypad has a good rubberised finish which improves accuracy and prevents sliding onto adjacent keys.
6. Has a great crisp screen with a nice bright finish which copes well in direct sunlight. Lacks the attractive FP2 transitions that the N86 had though.
7. The slide-out keyboard really has a ‘wow factor’ and impressed colleagues.
8. Best of all! The keypad tones are now off by default – the first Nokia I’ve ever tested where this isn’t the first thing I turn off!

The ‘not sure’:

1. If used flat on a desk with the QWERTY keypad open, the device falls backwards when the D-pad button is used.
2. With ‘tap to silence’ turned on the device only rings for a second or two before silencing (even if untouched on a desk) – could be a bug or user error, will check further.
3. No ‘full-stop and space’ feature on space-bar double-tap like the iPhone and Android.
4. Camera images are a bit too ‘contrasty’ with some colour over-saturated. So far ‘good enough’, but low light tests will be the decider (see the demo images below).
5. No charging via USB port – it’s only just being added to the more expensive N-series devices, but it would have been nice to see.

The bad:

1. When using the D-pad in QWERTY ‘mode’ it’s easy to hit surrounding short-cut keys such as Calendar or E-mail.  This seems much less of a problem in ‘candy bar’ orientation.
2. The E75, like the E71, is still a finger-print magnet – the patterned metal back is already looking mucky after only 15 minutes of handling.
3. My unit has a large gap at one end when the QWERTY keyboard is closed. Could be a manufacturing defect (although slide mechanism is rock-solid).
4. The memory card slot on this unit is so tight I can’t open it.
5. There’s no ‘leather’ sleeve like the E71 and E66 have – it might be a bit naff, but it saved my E71 from a certain death drop.

Overwhelmingly first impressions are good – including (and it’s been a long time since I’ve said this) the software enhancements which are beginning to address some of the usability / complexity issues Nokia and S60 have been suffering from for a while.

Here’s a few camera demo shots in good light.  Low-light ones (where most E-series struggle) to follow:

There’s plenty of video upcoming from our trip to Prague this weekend including an exclusive first-look at the N86 in real-world conditions – as you can see above it’s a tough life, this international playboy-blogger thing we’ve got going on right now…

But, Hi-Def video takes some time to edit and publish (see the MWC hands-on until then) so here’s a quick update on the N86 we took with us – the one you will have been able to see ‘in the flesh’ if you were able to attend our own man Whatley’s ‘Mobile Geeks‘ event on Thursday… The unit’s an early prototype so these are a few more general observations.

The good:

Materials and build quality – Even on this prototype unit the finish is excellent.  The new (introduced with the N97) metal bezel styling looks good and feels good in the hand.  The unit is well weighted adding to the feeling of quality, without being too heavy (in my opinion).  The minuscule holes in the metal menu button that are invisible until it is illuminated are a particularly elegant touch.

The number keypad – Silly small number keys are banished in favour of good-sized number keys with a pleasant action.  There’s also some haptic feedback too on menu button clicks which feels nice.

The screen – The OLED unit is crisp and bright (with one caveat below) – it looks great with what feels like deeper blacks and brighter whites.  Performance is snappy, but slick transitions enhance this sensation even further.  Transitions between portrait and landscape mode where also sensed quickly and rendered well – this stood out next to it’s older brother the N82 which has always been a bit slow off the mark in this regard.

The camera (probably) – Although not performing reliably on this unit a good number of the images we did manage to take impressed as did the sample images in Barcelona so this, at least, bodes well.  Nokia are shouting as loudly about the imaging system upgrades as much as the raw megapixels and the signs are good.

Call and network performance - Not a surprise with Nokia any more, but the N86 handled poor signal and jumping between 2G and 3G networks with style were other handsets where upset (notably the G1).

The bad:

The function buttons - The main D-pad assembly and menu  key are still a bit ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’, but either way work well.  However, the two function keys at the top are low-profile with little travel and difficult to press with anything other than a fingernail.

The OLED screen in daylight – In contrast to its performance at any other time, in direct sunlight the screen washes out to nothing where the iPhone’s comes alive. Most handsets struggle in this situation, but an imaging-centric handset like this will probably see plenty of action outside.

The memory card slot - It’s only accessible by taking the rear cover off completely.  Admittedly with 8GB on-board it’s going to be needed less frequently than on other devices, but the process to remove the back cover is a bit fiddly and more elegant solution doesn’t feel like an unreasonable request.

The software – Yes this old chestnut… The N86 is already looking like a brilliantly refined handset and the hardware seriously impresses – this will surely take the N95′s mantle and attract a huge following – but with the tweaks, extra features and options the software is still a maze of menus which don’t always feel consistent.  It’s a wider failing across newer S60 devices, but how many excellent features will users simply never discover because they’re buried in the menus?

Having been very disappointed with my first hands-on N97 experience recently, this restores some of my faith in Nokia – the N86 is already hugely impressive…. but where it’s a hardware tour de force, the maze of menus and settings disappoints.  This has to be the next area of attention for Nokia.

Watch out for our hands-on video from Prague coming soon and fire us any questions in the comments.

Backed by a £5.5m promotional spend on television, print and online media, O2 are hoping to make their 11.8m pre-pay subscribers feel special… and it wouldn’t hurt if customers of other networks noticed they weren’t getting prizes for topping up either.

…and whilst I’m looking forward to seeing the water-filled bus-stop panels with real rubber ducks, intended to ‘quack’ as people pass (we make our own fun ’round here), one of the most interesting aspects of this campaign is that it’s being powered by Italian-firm Buongiorno‘s web system – a company we made contact with recently after our trip to Rome (preview here, watch out for the full videos soon). We’ve fired them some questions over and will be publishing an introduction to this Italian power-house behind mobile entertainment projects in 53 countries and 100 network operators.

In advance of our trip to Prague tomorrow I met up with James Whatley and we talked Nokia Maps and whether Rafe Blandford’s comments about side-loading map data and pre-planning points of interest could be right.  We also waved a pre-release Nokia N86 about a bit for good measure.

Watch the site and our Twitter streams (Site feed: @MIReview, Ewan: @ew4n, Dan: @danlane
and Ben: @bensmithuk) for updates throughout the trip.

I’m two hours into loading Nokia Maps 3, the PC suite applications and some map data onto my N82 right now… Guess how it’s going so far…

We will be bringing you some super Palm Pre coverage shortly.

But there’s a bigger problem here – with both the operators and handset manufacturers now generating revenue from application sales old friends have now become competitors.  How will the operators feel about the Blackberry store offering competitive navigation or music store offerings to their own?  And will operators want to allow the handset vendor’s stores onto their branded handsets when they could keep that revenue for themselves?

Ask the people involved (and I have) and there’s much talk of partnerships, co-operation and marketplace-growth.  In face, if I hear the phrase ‘bigger pie, not bigger slice’ used once more it may turn nasty… but the question remains to be answered: Apple’s making hundreds of millions of dollars from app sales.  Those numbers are too big for this to stay friendly.

N86 First Look At The Launch Event from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

During filming we noted the handset was labelled as ‘N85 8MP’ and speculated whether that was a late change in naming (extending the N85 range like the N95 did with several variants) or just a disguise or an error. Having spent some more time with the device and noted the ‘N85′ term cropping up in some of the software config (the Exif camera data – other areas use the anonymous ‘NXX’).
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We now think a late branding change is the most likely explanation – possibly to extend the life of the current N85 and highlight the sheer number of differences between the two devices (which go beyond just the imaging components).

Other winners at the awards were the BBC for mobile iPlayer, Nokia for Sportstracker and the government of France for government leadership.

Nokia have launched the E55 and E75 business handsets – Like so much of their recent announcements the hardware of these devices really impresses.  I challenge anyone not to be impressed with the build quality and attention to detail…  The E75 is as widely leaked.  The E55 is a pleasant surprise – even thinner than it’s older sibling the E51, it packs a huge battery and an almost Blackberry Pearl-like keyboard that’s 5 keys wide (each one serving as 2 characters across a QWERTY keyboard) with the central 3 laid out in a traditional 1 to 9 block.  In the hand it feels exceptional.  Software is improved – Nokia have finally included the improved mail client out of the box – but compared to the exceptional hardware build it’s still to easy to get buried in menu systems or the complexity of the S60 OS.

Nokia and Microsoft have launched the Ovi Store and Windows Marketplace respectively – To complete the set (Android announced paid-for apps yesterday), today the last two major platforms added their official ‘market places’.  The Windows Marketplace was announced without fanfare… a box-ticking exercise amidst higher-profile news (Windows Mobile 6.5 and MyPhone).  The Ovi store came with more details – notably operator billing, the inclusion of ‘content’ (games and media) and a social recommendations engine, but questions about user experience and quality assurance of the applications remain.  Ultimately this is unglamourous news, but signals (if ever it were needed) that app discovery is going to get great deal easier for consumers very soon.  It’s ubiquity, however,  will mean it’s not a factor that will attract consumers to any particular platform.  The cynics amongst us (and there are a few) wonder if, given the slow speed the idea has been taken up whether it will be another 2 to 3 years before we see them well executed.

Android news is really thin on the ground and Microsoft are everywhere - There are rumours of an HTC G2 Android device being announced later during the show and Huawei have a non-working prototype of their forthcoming handset, but otherwise we’re set to wait until later in the year for LG and Samsung’s Android offerings.  Conversely, many are noting that both have instead made significant announcements of handsets running Windows Mobile 6.5 with Toshiba and Asus also in on the act.  With Steve Ballmer fronting the Microsoft press event it was slick, if not a bit cringe-worthy at times (they’re not employing the cream of comedy script writing), but it’s worth noting that we’ve seen absolutely no presence from Google here at all representing Android.  At all.  And with this many developers attending that seems really odd.

Day 2 looks promising with another widely-leaked Nokia announcement due and some opportunities to meet a few less high-profile companies.

But it’s far from a dead-loss… the real value of these events is the unplanned meetings.  Like Andrea, the Italian industry analyst, we met this morning whilst marching around Barcelona’s marina event in search of a Nokia event.  Fresh back from Rome, I still couldn’t understand why there was so muh talk of mobile TV (DVB-H) from Italy, but little evidence of any real usage.  Andrea assured us we should believe our eyes – Vodafone and TIM were leaving their mobile TV offering to go stale… un-marketed and un-loved.  Three, although more actively pushing the service (as we witnessed in their stores) was struggling financially.  The official subscriber numbers, he said, were misleading – they represent customers receiving free access to mobile TV services as part of a subscription, not a source of additional revenue for the operators.

And so, in 5 minutes, more useful information than all of the heavily scripted and stage-managed Microsoft event that followed… Perhaps we should scrap all our briefings and hang round the bar a bit more… Hmmmm….

Anyone want a MIR sticker?

Today Sony Ericsson is announcing a deal to pre-load the Fun Text application onto one of its new handsets –  the new C905 Plus on 3 UK, which is to launch in Q2 this year. Fun Text will enable easy access from the handset to online galleries of animation and video content designed for messaging. The application also integrates with the address book on the handset.

 

“With 8.1 megapixels, the C905 already enables the best in user generated content and we are delighted to complement this with the best in professionally generated content”, said James Pycock, business development director at Fun Text.

As well as being a MIR Show contributor — and that already sticks him in the pantheon of the Gods as far as I’m concerned — Ben Smith has taken on the rail industry in the UK and left them looking like the damp squids that they are.

His UKTrains Tweet-Alert system has evolved to the next level with crowd-sourced alert functionality.

From today we are testing crowd-sourcing of train travel information in addition to the operator-sourced data we get via the BBC. To have your message automatically retweeted, ensure you are following the Twitter account you want to send an alert to, then add a star character after the name of the twitter account you are addressing:

@

Tweet

* [Message to be re-tweeted]

e.g.

Retweeted: @uktrains * All trains out of Waterloo are delayed at the moment. [star indicates message should be re-tweeted]

Retweeted: @uktr_ virgin * Virgin service earlier dealys seem to have cleared. [star indicates message should be re-tweeted]

Retweeted: @uktr_firstcc* Services into Kings Cross stuck delayed by 20mins. [space between twitter name and * is optional]

Not re-tweeted: @uktr_londonmid Thanks very much for the warning of this morning’s delays! [no star included]

At present the service is built only to act as a proof of concept to gather feedback from users. As such re-tweeting may be delayed by up to an hour (although more typically 10mins). If successful a more rapid service will be provided which treats direct messages in the same way.

In this version twitter accounts for specific operators (the ones beginning @uktr_…) re-tweet messages directed at them. The @uktrains account re-tweets alerts from all operators.

As ever, feedback is welcomed to @bensmithuk.

At the event, the team also announced the INQ1 had been short-listed as one of five devices in the GSMA Global Mobile Awards ‘Best Handset / Device‘ category to be announced at Mobile World Congress in a fortnight and the launch of a media and blogger-relations programme ‘INQ+’ intended to provide a forum for feedback and beta testing of forthcoming software / devices.

Our very own Ben Smith is being hunted by the BBC this afternoon. All things being equal I think he’ll be on BBC Radio 4 later today.

They’re after him because of of his brilliant creation: UKTrains.

Here’s the service overview:

Inspired by this tweet from MP Tom Watson and enabled by the excellent BBC Backstage’s travel feeds, this prototype service tweets disruption alerts for 25 UK train operators. The original data is processed and shortened to less than 140 characters (in most cases) by Yahoo Pipes and tweeted via Twitterfeed which also adds a short-link back to the original BBC report. Tweetlater provides the automated welcome DM.

I’ve been using it for a week or so now and it’s come in REALLY, REALLY handy. It’s excellent to have the updates appear in my Twitter stream.

Of course, services like this shouldn’t have to exist. But our rail companies resonating with neolithic incompetence can’t even get their trains running properly (“wrong kind of snow”), let alone get you decent feeds like this.

Instead you end up having to pay 25p plus the cost of a text message to be notified when your train operator has screwed up. That is class-A rubbish.

So kudos to Ben for creating the service.

Head over to the UKTrains site for more information and to subscribe to alerts for your area: http://uktrains.pbwiki.com/.

Update:

Listen to Ben’s interview!

Priced at £249 SIM-free, it’s expected to be free with contract on most tariffs and – we’re all agreed – is pretty exceptional value, although some are dissappointed it’s not a ‘Comes With Music‘ handset yet.  Nokia shifted 500,000 of these things in 30 days of sales, with over a million sold even before the UK launch.

At the event James reprised his ‘normob walkabout’ role in the queue of eager first-customers, we spoke to Mark Loughran (Managing Director, Nokia UK and Ireland), got a demo of the device and even managed to get ten minutes with friend-of-the-show Rafe Blandford from the excellent AllAboutSymbian.com.

A 5 minute extract of the Mark Loughran is available on YouTube or the full show is embedded below and hitting the podcast feeds right now.  Take a look:

Nokia 5800 ‘Tube’ Launch at Nokia’s Regent St flagship store from Ben Smith on Vimeo.

‘Just for fun’ there’s also a brief outtakes reel for the people who have drunkenly told me ‘they were the best bit’.  Feel free to ignore it if you’re a sensible person…

Nokia 5800 Launch – Out Takes from Ben Smith on Vimeo.

In their own words:

nru shows you things to do near you, either a compass-like circle of things around you if you hold the phone flat, or a straight-ahead view of things in each direction if you hold the phone up.  Right now we have all our fonefood restaurants and deals in there, as well as a host of useful content from Qype, everything from cafes and cinemas to bars and bowling alleys.

It’s available in the Android marketplace now, so go and try it out or if you need to jog your memory, check out their original preview video:

Anyway, there was a load of dancing and loud music there which we ignored, but you can read more about (remixes, dance floors, music tours, some ‘fella called ‘Bimbo Jones’) at www.nokiatubedance.com.  But we did manage to chat to a few early customers, interview Mark Loughran (UK and Ireland Nokia, Managing Director) and do a live unboxing with friend of the show Rafe Blandford from the excellent AllAboutSymbian.

Watch out for our video footage and write-up coming tonight… In the meantime you can get a SIM-free 5800 for an impressively low £249 from Nokia’s online shop (yes, we know it still says ‘February’ there right now, but their press release says it’s today… honest!) or its stores in Regent Street or Heathrow Terminal 5.  All the major UK networks except Three will have it from Friday 30th.  Personally, I’d recommend waiting (if you can) for the ‘Comes With Music’ version which, although not announced yet, is as pretty much a certainty and will add a year’s free downloads from the Nokia Music Store for a small premium.

A whole load of emails just ‘leaked’ from my phone to an SMS recipient,  impossible surely?! They were deleted emails (the full content)…  my deleted emails are set to auto-empty normally. The handset is an O2 XDA Orbit 1.

[For those not familiar with the XDA, it's a re-badged HTC Artemis (HTC P3300) also marketed by T-Mobile as the MDA Compact III.]

Apart from ‘never ever touch Windows Mobile with a barge poll’, can anyone offer any help?  Is this (could it be) a known bug?

I’m going to politely ignore the ‘human error’ option for the moment as this chap knows his tech…

Well, having just emailed them their prize choices, I’m pleased to announce they were (in order):

1. Jonas Jaanimagi
2. Aaron Vergara
3. AJ Connolly
4. Ed Hodges
5. Matthew Noble
6. Darren King
7. Rafe Blandford
8. Mark Redhead
9. Rob Stonehouse

Thanks to all our donors and prize-suppliers!

Building on the search feature of FoneFood this application takes advantage of the magnetometer (compass to you and me) and GPS built into the G1 to locate entertainment venues, restaurants, landmarks and other stuff on a radar-like interface.  At last!  A way to find the nearest Pizza Express wherever you are without relying on Ewan’s legendary instinct.

We’re going to try it out as soon as we can.

Check it out:

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Thanks Kerl – I’m looking forward to trying the service out!