However — and it’s a big however — it’s distorted the market completely and made the business of competition a little bit more challenging. When most operators have at least 50% of their customers locked away on multi-year contracts, the incentive to do anything resembling innovation is limited. Yes, when there’s a bit of pain at the end of the contract when you have to give a few hundred extra minutes to a bleeting customer to avoid them churning, but that’s nothing when compared to actually having to get off your arse and run a successful change programme.

So should the UK do ‘a Chile’? They’ve mandated that every handset sold must now be unlocked so it can be used on any carrier.

This removes one of the primary retention strategies for contract customers. That could only be good for the market, surely?

What do you think?

The Republic of Chile has announced that all cellphones sold within the country starting last Monday, January 2nd, must be unlocked for use on any carrier.

via All cellphones in Chile must be sold unlocked from January 2nd | The Verge.

The challenge then, with Nokia, is that since the products (or, actually the user experience) have been a bit iffy, the marketing has been rather questionable. Nokia has some of the finest marketing minds on hand. They also retain some of the best and most innovative agencies around. There’s not much they can do when they’re — if you excuse the vulgarity — polishing turds.

I’ve always maintained that once Nokia gets one or two decent handsets to crow about (with a nice or at least passable user experience), the marketing folks could go to town.

Well, they’re already doing so.

Kudos to the team at My Nokia Blog for picking this one up. In the UK at least, Nokia has begun trailing (what we presume to be) their 800 Windows Phone 7 handset. They’re doing it in a very smart fashion though.

Have a look at this video for an example. You’ll see it starts mid-way through an advert and then there’s an interstitial of the Nokia phone for perhaps 1-2 seconds and then another advert plays out. And so on. Very very smart:

However you’ll be wanting to see the whole thing patched together, right? Yes. They’ve been patched together by the My Nokia Blog team into this rather illuminating video:

From these videos the device is already looking smart. It appears to be a similar look and feel to the Nokia N9 which is simply gorgeous. So a Windows Phone version of this? Aimed at the mass consumer? Yes please.

The market is going to get rather interesting if we’re going to start seeing this level of marketing and ingenuity across the next few quarters.

Bring on Nokia World on Wednesday…

Steve Rowlands walked into a Vodafone shop recently to buy an HTC Desire. He was still in his 24-month contract and thus expecting to be asked to fork out a lot of cash for the privilege of swapping to the Desire.

(By the way, Steve is another Symbian/Nokia fanatic who couldn’t be bothered waiting for Nokia to get their act together — that 24-month contract was for an N97)

Steve walked into the shop with his credit card ready. He didn’t really care what the deal was. He’d buy the phone PAYG or he’d extend/upgrade/change his contract. He was expecting the sales people to embrace him with a commercially astute spirit. He knew he was going to be charged the best part of £400 or so.

No.

That was the answer he received:

“We can’t do that Sir”.

“What? Not on PAYG?”

“Ok, I’ll give you lots of money to upgrade my contract early”.

“No sorry Sir, computer says no”.

“Right, last chance, you are a shop, have HTC Desire’s in your stock room, how much do I have to pay to get one? Not PAYG, not an upgrade, just cash for a box. Just beep it through the till, hammer my card, and I’ll walk away happy.”

“Sorry Sir, we don’t sell phones in that way”.

Ok I give up.

Since when did Vodafone stop selling phones?

I wonder if it was around the time they stopped actually helping existing customers in their stores. I remember walking into a Vodafone shop a little while ago to ask them to change around my price plans. I wanted to do a bit of price plan management since I was regularly blowing 500 quid a month.

No. They told me to phone up. As an existing customer, they could only help me if I wanted to do an upgrade.

It’s not all bad news though:

Instead, I had to go to the bunch of cowboys in the Carphone Warehouse over the road, and they promptly snatched the cash out of my wallet before I even knew they had any Desire’s in stock!

Anyway, I now have my HTC Desire, I just didn’t realise businesses would be so fussy over selling stuff in this troubled economic time.

Steve also points out that he got an unrelated phone call from a chap in a Vodafone call centre abroad who helped him out by moving him from the 500MB data plan to one of the iPhone data plans (1GB data) at no extra charge.

Nice. If data’s becoming an issue for you on Vodafone, you might want to ask them to move you to one of their iPhone plans.

Have a look at that screenshot there. It’s from yesterday’s online London Telegraph story about the twins who were reportedly mauled by a fox.

The blurry picture you see was taken by one of the first police officers to arrive at the family’s home. It shows a crazily blurred image of a fox. Or perhaps a fox cub. Well, it looks generally like a fox.

It’s so blurred, though, you can’t really make much out.

Look at the door panes too. Blurred. Rubbish.

I think it’s excellent that the police officer had the presence of mind to snap a shot on his phone.

But it’s simply ridiculous that he or she has clearly had to use a bollocks handset with a rubbish camera to take the photo. If I had to guess, I’d say it was a BlackBerry camera. The 9700′s camera is a lot better now, but the 9000 or similar can be super-blurry in the wrong conditions.

There are, of course, serious issues with police officers taking photos.

Is the photo they’ve just snapped evidence? Can it be reliably traced to their handset and their location? Can it be used in court? Can it be used as circumstantial perspective by a jury? Does it prove there was a fox at the house when the police arrived?

There’s a whole host of issues here.

First, though: Get a better camera on the phone. An N86 would, for example, have delivered a decent snap. It might have needed the flash too, but it would have been viewable.

Second? Well, it’s time to get in touch with Pierre and his team at Handheld PCs. They’ve create a super service thus:

They offer a service by the name of Hand-e-Pix. And it’s a piece of genius. It enables mobile device photography to be timestamped and geo-located and managed securely using an organisation’s Active Directory policies. So organisations like Police forces, local councils, traffic wardens, civil engineering firms and so on — they can now enable their people to use the cameras on their corporate handsets. The implications of this are vast.

I’m quoting from a post I published on Mobile Developer TV late last year after I filmed an interview with Pierre at RIM’s European Alliance event.

Here’s the interview:

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

Here’s the video — and remember, if you’re viewing on an iPad or iPhone, the video will play right-away thanks to our gorgeous new HTML5 video support update.

Download M4V Video | Subscribe to Podcast | Embed video

And if you’d like to see some more pics, here’s the Rio Flickr gallery I created.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

I’ve just begun using the device so I’ll let you know how I get on with it.

Let’s get started with the Q&A…

1: Glenda, in Barcelona I kept hearing about mobile virtualization and what a big deal it is. But it sounds complex. Can you explain, in a nutshell, what your company does?

Glenda: Sure, first off, VirtualLogix is a mobile virtualization software supplier with a long history. We are here because of smartphones. The big need we address is enabling low cost consumer smartphones.

2: Yes, we are hearing a lot about the sub $100 smartphone. Can you comment on what you see happening in the industry right now and where VirtualLogix fits in?

Glenda: Sure, this is what I see happening and where we play:

1) There is no question that as an industry we are seeing Moore’s Law take affect in lowering the cost of silicon, we saw this help along the PC industry, and we are seeing the need for a similar transition in mobile.

2) Our customers are ultimately the end users of handsets but the way we add value is by helping silicon vendors– including our newest customers announced at MWC, ST Ericsson and Infineon —- to take a low cost single chip implementation and turn it into rich functioning platform that OEMs can design on.

3: Ok, that is a good overview. Can you take it a level deeper to really outline the big benefits we can see from mobile virtualization technologies like yours?

Glenda: Of course. In the past, hardware, operating systems and peripherals were all integrated because there was not enough horsepower. Now, you can slip in a virtualization layer, right onto the metal, which is what we do. This abstracts and removes interdependencies of the hardware and the core layer from the OS and from various platform management technologies. So we are able to remove some of hardware dependencies through our patented technology that ultimately achieves much faster time to market for device makers.

But what is a mobile device now? New e-readers, new classes of handheld devices where gadget guys need lots of resources with video and graphics also want to compete in the handset space. So we create software that allows devices to be customized so it is easier to modify a phone into an e-reader. We will see a whole host of OEMs in Asia with a real strength in electronics doing this.

4: Last year, everyone was talking about Google and how Android was going to be fantastic. But we’ve seen quite a delay. What do you see?

Glenda: Android needs to grow up from an open source OS to a battle-hardened phone platform. Sure, it’s Linux, but look, RedHat and Novell have made businesses around Linux. The challenge with Android is that Google needs to understand how to make a business around open source and be able to lose some control of the brand.

5: Does your software work on any platform?

Glenda: Yes. The background on the company is around an engineering team that has been together for 20 years working with every form of OS environment. Our focus is on mobile with ARM platforms, and we are the only supplier that is both X86 and ARM complaint. Because of the team’s knowledge, we know how to design for mobile.

6: How are carriers part of the virtualization equation?

Glenda: We have had specific carriers that are more involved than others. Some, like China Mobile for example, very actively look at hardware architectures and are aware of how we play into that. The silicon customers or OEMs that we work with are having these discussions with the carrier or us directly.

What we say is they need an environment where they can both create compelling service solutions for subscribers to deliver best and stickiest service and need platforms to do this. We enable them to do that because of what our software enables, faster time to market, lower handset costs, and another piece that is growing issue is that of security. As these carriers subscribers use more resources like licensed video content and e-wallets then security is a huge issue.

Because our software creates safety zones to allow secure resources to stop malware, worms, viruses, etc. at the handset level. Have not seen attacks on handsets yet —- but we are hearing more concerns from OEMs and operators as smarter hackers are born.

- – - – -

Thank you very much for taking the time, Glenda!

You can find out a lot more about VirtualLogix on their site: http://www.virtuallogix.com/

INQ, the handset manufacturer owned by parent company Hutchison Whampoa was always going to have an easy time of it with the 3 group of companies. A couple of phone calls from the big man and woosh, INQ had clients coming out of its ears. And their handsets, targeted at the mass market, have been very positively received by end-users around the planet (not least because although the devices are certainly capable, they’re also priced in a very attractive manner).

The challenge has been unlocking the rest of the non-Hutchison marketplace. That challenge gets just a little bit easier today though, as INQ have signed a deal with Indian network, Aircel, to distribute both the INQ Mini and the INQ Chat. I think the devices — with their data laden capabilities and attractive price, will be a roaring success in India.

Just to give you an idea of the potential of this deal — the INQ devices will shortly be available in over 5,000 outlets. Plus, cricket legend M.S. Dhoni is fronting the introductory marketing campaign. Yup. That’s a recipe for success in India.

Congratulations INQ and congratulations Aircel. I look forward to posting the ‘we’ve sold a million already‘ news in short order.

(Here’s the INQ blog post announcing Aircel)

The delicious Kevin Michaluk of CrackBerry has posted some nicer photos and more details about the all new BlackBerry Bold Slider handset. All the smart money is — as Kevin points out — on the slider being part of the Bold category of devices.

For those burning to find out more, Kevin has helpfully compiled a ‘slider-rumour’ frequently asked questions post.

I’m content to let nature take it’s course and for the Slider to be launched as and when RIM decide. I could be tempted. I absolutely adore the BlackBerry keyboard (although I was shocked, last night, to find I can type really fast with both thumbs on an iPhone 3GS). The Slider configuration would give a heck of a lot more screen real estate on the BlackBerry — and I’m a fan of that. Although I’ve never taken to the Storm(s), I always loved the amount of data you could pack into their giant screens.

Kevin reckons the Slider might hit in the summer. Bring it on!

Theoretically Nokia could spend the next year in bed and still be the dominant player this time next year. The reality of course is that the company is focused on it’s mid-tier portfolio, as the Garnter analyst, Ms Milanesi, points out:

“Nokia will face a tough first half of 2010 as improvement to Symbian and new products based on the Meego platform will not reach the market well before the second half of 2010,” said Ms Milanesi. “Its very strong mid-tier portfolio will help it hold market share, but its ongoing weakness at the high end of the portfolio will hurt its share of market value.”

The developing markets are still going to be buying bucketloads of Nokia handsets, so Nokia’s top chaps are still going to get their bonuses. For us here in the West, though, hoping to once again actually obsess over new high-end Nokia devices, well… it’s going to be quite a long wait.

As for Symbian, well, they’re still comfortably occupying the top spot in the ever mysterious ‘smartphone’ category with 80.8 million units sold this year against RIM’s 34m and iPhones 24m. Of course we’ve seen a decline — Symbian owned 52.4% of the Smartphone market in 2008 against 46.9% in 2009. Android — ever the poster boy of the ‘open’ platforms (which isn’t really very open at all), is languishing at almost 7m devices. Still good, but quite a way to go yet.

If you sit and look at this table, you have to wonder why developers are even bothering with iPhone, Android — and especially Palm:

If you add up iPhone, Android and Palm Smartphone sales in 2009, the total comes to just under 33 million devices. Symbian shipped more than double that. The challenges for developing on the Nokia/Symbian platform are well documented — but the moment Qt becomes a realistic, usable choice for developers (and that moment is coming) — it’s going to be very interesting to see how Symbian users will react to easily consumable mobile applications and services.

Qt, if you haven’t come across it yet, is an all new write-once run-anywhere (well, any supported device) developer environment for Symbian, MeeGo and a whole host of other devices. We’ve got some videos of this coming shortly and whilst it isn’t necessarily going to be all that useful for the current addressable Symbian/Nokia market, the next generation are looking to be phenomenally accessible.

If you’re a mobile developer — or you work in that area, definitely take a look at the videos we’re publishing shortly. I strongly recommend keeping one eye on Symbian and MeeGo whilst your efforts are elsewhere.

What does Lee Williams, Executive Director of Symbian make of the Gartner news?

Here’s a quote I got into my inbox this afternoon:

“We certainly welcome Gartner’s predictions around the renewed vitality of the mobile device market. Earlier this month, we not only announced the latest version of the Symbian platform, Symbian^3, but also that the source code for our platform is now fully open source. The latter announcement represents ten years of investment and billions of dollars worth of code – all of which is now available for download and development by the developer community, for free.

This will foster even greater creativity and innovation in the mobile industry, as now any individual or organisation can take, use and modify the code for any purpose. We look forward to keeping apace with Gartner’s prediction for double digit growth for the mobile industry in 2010.”

That’s Edmund Blackadder’s advice for navigating the country of Wales.  Me, I’m much closer to my celtic — or semi-celtic — brotherhood.

I don’t speak any Welsh at all, though.

But if you’re Welsh and you’ve been longing for a mobile handset that actually uses that language, stand-up and be counted — thanks to Orange.  They’ve launched a Welsh language handset from Samsung.

# Orange and Samsung join forces to put Welsh language on a mobile phone for the first time

# The innovative phone includes never-before-available features including menus and predictive text in Welsh

# The phone and service will be available exclusively through Orange from September

# Wales’ Minister for Heritage, Alun Ffred Jones and S4C Presenter, Alex Jones joined Orange and Samsung to unveil the phone at The National Eisteddfod of Wales

via Orange newsroom.

Just a preface: We’re at America’s largest, most influential trade show. Motorola’s spend hundreds of thousands to deliver a big stand, they’ve flown in all their top people and … this is the bollocks they’ve got to show off:

I kid ye not.

A bollocks flip phone. With a bollocks camera. And — contain your excitement — I’m pretty sure this one comes with an Alarm Clock function.

Goodness me.

I couldn’t bear to look at the other devices on show. I simply couldn’t suppress my utter, utter disappointment. I didn’t want to start vomiting over the nice helpful Motorola team.

When I arrived on stand, there was a 40-year old chap going nuts with excitement over the next generation RAZR-bollocks handset. (Yes there was a RAZR in his holster on his belt).

“OH WOW! This is the new RAZR?” he said, picking it up as the Motorola stand person beamed with delight.

“Yeah!” she said, watching the chap obsess over it, before listing the rubbish specifications to the pure joy of the chap.

I felt like ripping it out of his hands and jamming it up his arse.

With his holster.

Is this the best Motorola have got to show for their few billion dollars worth of investment over the past months?

Come on.

I’m sure they’re working on some good stuff.

I hope they are.

Original post by Ewan and software by Elliott Back

This was particularly relevant to me since I’ve spent most of the week running out of Blackberry battery power at about 2pm much to my *intense* annoyance.

Have a look at this development coming to mobile handsets. Here’s the video:

Techtium Demonstrate Their Mobile Power Products from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

The chaps behind it are from Techtium. I can’t wait to get something like this. The flexibility of having TWO power supplies is fantastic. You can rely on your main battery — supplementing when/if you need to with any AAA you can find at any corner shop. Genius when you’re roaming.

Big time.

There’s no toe-in-the-water nonsense from Hyundai. Nope. They’re hitting the market with 2, followed by 10 to 15 new handsets this year.

That’s THE FIRST HALF of this year.

Come on!

A little bit of competition, eh? Plus you might get a discount on your next Yaris. Or Taris. Or… Hyundai [something]. I can’t, alas, name a Hyundai car model without resorting to Google. And that would be cheating.

I’m going to do more on this shortly. For now, here are two images to whet your appetite.

This one, unsurprisingly (from the description on the screen), has — as I infer — a touchscreen:

No word on actual operating system specifics. I tell you what, if Hyundai simply HINTED at the SLIGHT POSSIBILITY of manufacturing 200m Android handsets this year, I’m willing to bet half the industry would wet their pants. Some with delight, others not so much.

Anyway, more soon.

For one, Jaiku means nothing to your average punter. Google Docs means something. Google Jaiku? Rubbish. Doesn’t fit on a superficial branding level.

It’s the people. The people who were mad enough to come up with such a brilliant concept (I mean ‘mad’ in a good way) even faced with such shitty rubbish infrastructure as your common-or-garden Nokia/Symbian device, … well… if they can DO that with Symbian, what do you reckon they could do with their own handsets and operating system?

Right.

There’s your strategy.

Do you want sod about with Jaiku… or do you want to work on the next generation operating systems and applications that REAL people — tens and hundreds of millions (as apposed to thousands) will use?

Deal done.

So Jaiku users, stop maoning, get over it and — if you’re really, really committed, get yourself a T-Mobile G1 and start hassling Jyri and his colleagues about the collaboration, location-based lifestreaming developments. If they can get it right, Google can nail it and it’ll be SO brilliant. The efforts and attentions of Jaiku’s biggest and most loyal fans are far better invested in the next generation rather than kicking, screaming and demanding redress.

This is the phone that is apparently approved — or at least possible for — Mr President-Elect Obama to use.

You know how he’s ‘addicted’ to Blackberry?

Well, give him one of these and watch him become immediately un-addicted.

Windows Mobile. Total total unmitigated rubbish when you ACTUALLY want to use a device that can respond swiftly and immediately to your requirements.

Anyone who’s ever done a send/receive with their Windows Mobile device will tell you, it’s 100% rubbish if you do anything else other than wait for it to complete.

You can’t actually USE it. Because the OS is using 100% of resources to connect to your IMAP server and sod about downloading your email.

Add on a few more layers of security and geez, it’ll take years to do anything decent.

Still, the General Dynamics handset Secterea Edge looks pretty nifty.

Instead of $350, they’ve sensibly added a zero.

Well, it’s the Goverment, right?

So one of these babies:

… Will set you back $3,350. And, as ZDnet points out, even the accessories are stupidly expensive. ($100 for a cigarette-lighter charger).

Here’s a quote from the ZDnet piece:

The Sectera runs a mobile version of Microsoft Windows, including versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Windows Media Player. The NSA claims that the installed versions of Internet Explorer, WordPad, and Windows Messenger are good enough for data that’s classified at a level of Secret. Presumably the federal spooks have found a way to protect IE from the numerous security flaws that continue to plague the Internet’s most popular browser.

The NSA declined to comment on Monday.

You bet they are. They’re probably still waiting for the device’s little circle egg-timer thing to stop whirring.

Here’s the full image of the device:

Place your orders for the Sectera at the General Dynamics C4 site.

I don’t know why HTC bothers to keep these things secret. We want to know.

Provided it’s good news.

And it looks like it may well be.

Rob pulled out the Tungsten handset in his overview earlier today and, I have to say, if this is anything like the reality — and if it’s engineered to HTC’s TouchPro-style devices, the future for Android is looking pretty sexy:

(Photos & leak via PPC Geeks — check the link for a whole RAFT of upcoming HTC devices – tons!).

As Rob pointed out, if you can get an HTC Touch HD Pro — that DOESN’T run Windows Mobile (which really does hamper the experience, unless you screw your eyes up tightly) — HTC’s Android equivalent will definitely set hearts-a-flutter.

It’s going to be interesting comparing this Tungsten Android with Nokia’s new N97.

As part of the MIR ShoZu Campaign, we will be giving away a handset every week shortly. Exact details are coming soon, but before then, I need to determine the best handset most appropriate for ShoZu use. And then go and buy them.

What’s your recommendation?

Nokia N82?

The trusty N95? That’s the handset that really opened up ShoZu for me, because of it’s fantastic camera. The N95 is a bit old though.

Or what about the brilliant, brilliant Sony Ericsson K800i? 3.2 megapixels of sheer camera excellence.

Michael took issue with the manner in which we’ve covered the INQ1 launch. So much so he knocked me over a text about it this morning. I responded asking him to expand on his viewpoint so we could publish his opinion here. Over to Michael!

- – - – -

Hi Ewan,

I sent you an SMS about the INQ1 coverage on MIR earlier today.

To expand on it:

It seems the whole MIR redaction has fallen in love with the new INQ1 phone. A more balanced view of the device could be useful to the MIR readers.

The INQ1 is the third attempt from manufacturer Amoi to create a Skype-friendly handset.

It is also the first one that is remotely usable by third-party application developers.

It still has teething problems like the complexity of customizing a shortcut icon.

It is still based on a cheap Qualcomm chipset with limited audio capabilities.

It is still using a security model that is actually laughable.

However, Amoi is a good manufacturer when it comes to responding to developer feedback and producing improved firmwares. Hopefully, all the alpha and beta testing developers have gone through with this phone over the last few months will make for a good user experience now that the INQ1 is available in the shops.

The INQ software layer in itself, including the Skype VoIP and Facebook social networking clients, certainly looks exiting.

One last comment about the UK marketing campaign: Over-exposition reeks of desperation.

Regards,

Michael Aubert
http://developer.symbian.com/quick

- – - – -

Michael, thanks very much for taking the time to write and to rebalance the sometimes rather keen coverage we’ve been delivering here on Mobile Industry Review. You’ve made some fair points there — I’m looking forward to getting the perspective of the wider audience on the INQ1 too.

(And I’m just away to go and buy one!)

I do like it. It’s the sort of thing I can see a 17 or 18 year old girl walking into Carphone Warehouse and selecting. It’s cheaper than the Renoir (I’ll find out exactly how much it retails for shortly), yet it still has a lot of cool features — and it’s touchscreen. For those on a budget who want a decent handset, the LG Cookie looks like the way ahead.

But, I’d like to do a challenge.

I’d like to try using it as my primary handset for a week. Can it handle the usage? I’m sure it can. But in order to do this, at a bare minimum, I need to transfer my contacts. Ideally my calendar too.

But let’s try contacts first — they’re synched across multiple areas of the web and my devices — but they also appear in a bog standard Microsoft Outlook install too. I keep that for the purposes of testing — like now.

So I’ve installed the software from the mini cd supplied with the handset.

Then I spent a good few minutes clicking on the array of stupid Windows menus. I must have had to click about 25 times, yes, yes, install, yes, yes, next, next, finish, yes, install, yes, yes I am sure, yes. That’s Windows for you.

Then we get the connection wizard screen:

Choose a connection type… I’m not even going to bother with Bluetooth at the moment. USB is my preference:

OK, first piece of joy of the day:

I try again.

No.

It’s not having it.

What a total arse.

Let’s try again.

I’ll unplug the handset, right? Then plug it in again.

No. That didn’t work then.

I took an exclusive tour around the Nokia Handset Test Laboratory in Farnborough yesterday — see what you think. It really has given me a different viewpoint on (and a new-found respect for) Nokia handsets. I’ve always found them reliable and generally well-built, but when you take a look at the level of punishing tests they subject every revision of their handsets to, it really does demonstrate why they’re so well made.

(This is one of Nokia’s 11 handset test laboratories around the world).

I’ll be posting more shortly…

When I bought my last handset I took the view that what I actually wanted was a communications device. I wanted to be able to make calls, text, email, and access social networking services easily and seamlessly. Anything else would be useful – but a device that did the comms piece well was essential. I went for the Nokia E51, despite it not being available on a consumer tariff, because it’s designed for communication. It gives me:

• 3G/GSM voice – Speaks for itself, obviously, and on my handset is ably supported by SpinVox for voice message delivery by SMS.
• WiFi & VoIP – DeFi and Truphone are essential to me for cost effective and quality mobile coverage at home as well as in WiFi hotspots elsewhere. DeFi also gives me a London number on my mobile so people can call me at lower rates.
• SMS – SMS has been a key communication method for me ever since I started sending messages via foreign operator SMSC’s back in 1994 to get around the lack of operator interconnection in the UK at the time.
• Email – The Nokia Email service delivers copies of my messages to the handset home screen for easy reference.
• Web access – The principle communication requirement here is Twitter. A flat rate data tariff is essential to provide certainty of expenditure.
• Nokia E Series ‘Active standby’ mode – Displays essential information on the home screen, for example both my SMS and my email inboxes are displayed concurrently.
• Excellent form factor – The E51 is a very slim handset that slips comfortably into a shirt pocket, unlike the bigger N and E Series devices.
• Great keypad – Proper keys in the right places!

So what about the stuff that’s missing from the E51?

• High-end camera – I don’t need a mobile camera for capturing high quality images. I use the E51 camera for snapping photos of stuff I need to remember and sending a copy to Evernote via Shozu. When I want high quality images I use a pocket size Nikon that has done the job well for several years now.
• GPS – I’ve tried satnav via Nokia handsets using Google Maps or Nokia Maps and they don’t come close to my TomTom. The TomTom has a screen you can actually read in the car (surprisingly useful!), simple setup via the touch screen and can be used by others in the family.
• Music – I don’t listen to a great of music but the E51 player is fine when I need it, although for sheer style you still can’t beat an iPod!

I suspect my next device will have a decent camera and GPS, if only because these will increasingly be standard features in quality handsets, but for now my E51 does the job!

—

Jonathan’s also at Sevendotzero.

And, er, since it’s electronic, it’s trackable. So let’s track it!

So goes the thinking behind the latest plans here in the UK to protect the nation.

If you buy a mobile phone on contract, your identity is already confirmed.

If you buy a mobile phone on PAYG — Pay As You Go — you don’t need to prove your identity.

Ergo huge, huge breeding ground for terrorists. Apparently.

With 72% of Vodafone’s almost 19 million UK customers earmarked as potential terrorists , it’s essential that they’re all passported the next time they buy a handset, right?

It’s time for rolling of eyes and acceptance with a wry smile.

The Times of London has the details.

Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.

Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase. Privacy campaigners fear it marks the latest government move to create a surveillance society.

A compulsory national register for the owners of all 72m mobile phones in Britain would be part of a much bigger database to combat terrorism and crime. Whitehall officials have raised the idea of a register containing the names and addresses of everyone who buys a phone in recent talks with Vodafone and other telephone companies, insiders say.

The move is targeted at monitoring the owners of Britain’s estimated 40m prepaid mobile phones. They can be purchased with cash by customers who do not wish to give their names, addresses or credit card details.

I hardly think this is going to be very useful for the tracking of would-be terrorists. Tracking guns, drugs and hand grenades might be a little bit more effective.

Still.

Everyone needs a mobile phone, right? Even would-be-terrorists. Who will need to show their fake ID to buy a handset.

Or who will simply steal registered PAYG handsets to make their calls. Like stealing cars.

Or who will buy unlocked handsets from abroad.

Or who will simply use the millions of unregistered PAYG handsets already in the country. There’s plenty of them.

I suppose this could potentially be useful. If you think someone’s going to attack, say, the Houses of Parliament (goodness knows what the folk at GCHQ are thinking of all the keywords in this post already… WARNING WARNING!), and you think the baddie is in the vicinity… simply fire up your black boxes and list every handset operational within 5 miles of the location.

THEN filter out all the ones that are registered to (apparently) real people. With apparent real IDs.

Then you’ll — theoretically — be left with a list of unregistered baddies. Some of which will be 62 year old Mavis, the cleaner, who hasn’t changed her handset for 14 years… and ideally — at least from the point of the anti-terrorist chaps — you should also see some suspicious looking possible-nasty folk that want locking up for 42 days.

This kind of privacy-creep is inevitable.

And I suppose, from a commerce viewpoint, if you have to introduce it into the industry, now’s the time to do it — when the industry is mature.

Think through the ramifications. Every MVNO is going to have a total arse. You’ll no longer be able to walk into huge retailer, Argos, and buy a phone. They simply don’t have the infrastructure to check IDs.

Neither does the likes of Tesco or your average petrol (“Gas”) station where these things are being flogged as impulse purchases. None of these retailers are going to want to faff about with ID recording.

I suppose retailers could insist you purchase with a Switch/Maestro (“Bank Card”) or Credit Card — that way all purchases are theoretically trackable.

But I reckon what the intelligence agencies really want is to be able to type in a mobile phone number and… woosh… within 2 seconds, have the owner’s identity up on screen together with cross-referenced frequently called numbers (and their IDs) and so on.

I’d just like to specify that I work in the mobile industry, right? So when you’re pulling up 07769 658 104, finding the ID Ewan MacLeod and finding that I have an account on *every* network and oodles of handsets, I’d like that displayed. Better still, could you cross reference that with a series of posts from Mobile Industry Review, proving it?

And that record for the Motorola RAZR back a few years ago? Don’t judge me. It was just a phase I was going through…

(Well spotted Denny)

Just 10 minutes. Popped to the shop to get some stuff then back again.

Didn’t take my phone. I was traveling light. Living for now. Frankly I couldn’t be arsed to stick the Nokia E90 into my jeans pocket.

On the way to the shop I passed a guy who’s car had obviously broken down. A nice new BMW X6. He was a bit annoyed judging by his expression on his face as he (presumably) called the AA.

When I drove back home I saw the AA had already arrived. The chap was being taken care of. No need for me to stop and offer assistance.

It got me thinking though.

I felt naked without a handset.

I normally take a handset (or two) with me whenever I go out. But on this occasion I didn’t. And it would have been typical if that had been the time when the oil or whatever screwed up on my Range Rover and woosh, I find myself stuck in the middle of nowhere with a long walk ahead of me. And no handset.

So maybe I should have an emergency PAYG handset in the glove box. That’s what I started thinking.

Then I thought I better ask the MIR audience and see what they do. They’ll know best.

Thoughts? Should I go and get one, stick a tenner on it and leave it in the glovebox?

That’s a close-up of the box.

If you’ve guessed the identity of the handset, don’t spoil it for the other readers as I’m sure it’s not on everyone’s lips at the moment.

All will be revealed on Monday 10th.