The screen on the Joggler is incredibly bright and crisp and the device itself feels very solid and well-made with a fixed sturdy stand on the back. Also on the back of the unit is a power socket (No batteries here, this is a wired device), an ethernet port and an audio out jack. On the side is a USB socket and on top is an LED but I didn’t see any applications taking advantage of this. Inside the device is powered by an Intel Atom processor, has WiFi connectivity and runs an O2 branded version of the OpenFrame software (which appears to be based on Ubuntu linux with hacking opportunities aplenty!).

Overall I found the Joggler to be a bit of a disappointment. I’m familiar with the OpenFrame platform this is based on and was expecting to find the same Flickr, YouTube and RSS content included. Unfortunately the only place the Joggler can show photos from is the built-in 1GB of storage or a USB stick. O2 are definitely downplaying the photo frame aspect of the Joggler and concentrating on the O2 Calendar integration which itself has a few disappointing aspects such as not having any sync capabilities. I think it’s safe to assume that any family that’s tech-savvy enough to buy one of these on launch has someone in it that already uses an online calendar such as that provided by Exchange or Google and it would make sense to sync with that calendar. The kids might not need to know that Daddy is in a meeting with his boss but at least some availability information would be useful. The biggest disappointment of all is that I know the OpenFrame platform has a Dominos Pizza button and the Joggler does not!

I think the Joggler is a good start to what is essentially a new market for MNOs but I can’t help but think that an untouched OpenFrame device would be more appealing to a wider audience. I certainly know of some other MNOs that are working on similar device offerings so this should be a very interesting market to watch over the next 12 months.

Alongside the Joggler, O2 announced the O2 Calendar, a free family oriented web-based service that is available to anyone in the UK regardless of them being an O2 customer or not. For those users who are O2 customers the service provides free SMS reminders of appointments and integrates with the Joggler device. O2 also announced a family bolt-on for existing customers allowing one person to pay a monthly fee to add a number of other O2 customers to their family group. Once part of the group every family member can make calls or send SMS or MMS to other members of the group completely free of charge.

The O2 Joggler will be available in April from O2 stores and their website priced £149.99 or free if taken instead of a handset when upgrading or signing a new 18 or 24 month contract. Pricing for the O2 family bolt-on has yet to be announced.

Here’s the video:

Nokia N86 8MP Launch – Initial Opinion from Rafe Blandford from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

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).

There was a private press pre briefing today in London all under embargo that we weren’t invited to, but we’re hearing good things are afoot.

We’d like to bring you more details, but there just aren’t any to offer – sorry.

Stay tuned and we’ll bring you any ground breaking news that arrives.

Who knows what it could be; it might even be the 16GB Samsung Omnia we’re all hearing news of *cough*

Or even the 12megapixel camera phone they’re bringing out *cough* *cough*

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.

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.

Trust 3 to be right there on the innovation curve. Each audio book costs around 5 pounds and is billed directly to your 3 account. Genius. I’m going to dig out my 3 sim and give this a go.

The delightful Jemima Kiss from The Guardian has the details.

SAS soldier turned best-selling author Andy McNab is extending his reach further into the mobile market through a deal with phone operator 3.

McNab founded the audiobook-for-mobile firm GoSpoken in April last year and has been working on a series of deals to increase the number of distribution outlets and titles on offer.

The latest deal with 3 will add GoSpoken’s inventory to Planet 3, the free entertainment and information service available on all the operator’s handsets.

Late today we’re at the launch of the new LG PRADA phone, set to be the next exclusive designer mobile from the joint partnership of those two industry players.

It’s their second handset from the venture, with the first arriving on the scene like a sex machine in mid 2007.

The new model almost mimics the first, and why mess with perfection which is why American Football should go back to its roots of Rugby.

Only this time around it has a slide out keyboard, with the thinness of a size zero model making it look almost like it freshly purged that morning ready for the catwalk.

It’s an often forgotten fact that the original Prada phone made a wee bit of history by being the first full touchscreen phone hitting the market, beating Apple and HTC by months. With more than 1 million sales beneath its designer belt, the successor is bound to be highly awaited with its expensive look.

This time around it’s capable of 3G with video calling, where the previous was only a Tri-band EDGE at its best. There’s also a 5 mega pixel camera lens by Schneider-Kreuznach onboard, the best the last phone could muster was just a poor 2MP at the time.

We’ve been informed the new Prada mobile will hit the stores at a starting price of 600 Euros, although we’ll confirm that later today.

Once again, if there’s anything you wish to ask LG or Prada but were too afraid to ask please fire them away in the comments below. We’ll endeavour to have them answered.

Full photo set here

The initial temptation is to dismiss this handset as ‘just a plastic E71′ – it certainly shares much of the E71′s design and is intended to be sold at a lower price point, but I’m not convinced that’s fair:

The main differences appear to be:

• The E63 has a coloured plastic shell versus the E71′s metal one.  The front is a metallic-finish, whilst the back cover is a soft-touch finish – both attract far few fingerprints than the E71′s.
• The E63 is nearly identical in dimensions to the E71 except for the depth – the E63 is around 1.5 times the depth of the E71.
• The E63 has a 3.5mm jack on top versus the E71′s 2.5mm jack on the side.  This appears to be the first E-series to have a standard headphone socket – something normally saved for N-series.
• The E63 has no side buttons for volume or voice recording.  It’s also missing the E71′s IR window.
• The E63 has a revised keyboard layout, adding a ‘/’ button on the lower row, shortening the space bar.
• The E63 appears to have a slightly smaller dimension screen although it is the same 320 by 240 pixels as the E71.
• The E63 lacks internal GPS.
• The E63 does not support HSDPA data.
• The E63 has the same 110 meg internal memory, but is shipped without an additional memory card (although a slot to add one is present).
• The E63 has a 2MP camera versus the E71′s 3.2MP and has a fixed focus.
• The E63 adds a flashlight function that allows the camera’s LED flash to be used as a torch.
• The E63 lacks the E71′s faux-leather slip case.

And whilst it is clearly a cut-down model – I don’t find any of these differences make the E63 a bad device.  The camera particularly is little sacrifice as the E71′s unit, regardless of resolution, was dire and the E63′s one appears no worse for its lower res.  I’d even take the slight size increase and plastic case without too many complaints – in use a smudged and smeary E71 doesn’t look that much better than the E63.

But lets be clear – consumers aren’t the target market here – businesses are… and the key business features are all still here:

• WiFi
• 3G (there had been some rumours this was 2G only)
• Microsoft Exchange sync via MailForExchange
• Expandable memory
• Fast operation and stable S60 3rd Edition FP1 OS
• Pre-installed QuickOffice
• E-series security and encryption functions
• Huge 1500mAh battery

…and now all of these things can be obtained from Nokia without also incurring the cost of high-end cases and GPS.  The executives may still have the E71s but the rest of us will get the E63s… Looking at the popularity of the lower-spec Blackberry devices around the large corporates I know (where they’re deployed in the hundreds or thousands) this is a smart move.

What Nokia have to do now is price this correctly relative to the E71 – nothing’s been announced so far… Watch this space, but I’d guess (and it is just a guess) at pricing around 60% of the E71. (see below for update)

I’ll be testing the device out over the next few days and we’ll have it on the show early next week.

As ever – post your questions below and I’ll do my best to answer them.

–

Update: It will be available in blue as well as the red pictured above for €199 pre-tax SIM-free (which will typically equate to £199 in the UK once taxes are included).  Full press release here.

This Thursday we’re at the launch event by the network 3 of their latest handset the INQ 1 – a purpose built phone by their parent company Hutchison Whampoa.

Supposedly this handset has great Facebook and social networking integration; some are calling this the very first Facebook phone.

Pronounced ‘INK’, the phone is set to be the first in a series of handsets within this new range. Reports have come out so far it will have a plethora of data facilities built in, such as instant messaging, mobile email and Skype, all out of the box too.

It’s also been said that it’ll arrive on prepay contracts, all hoping to mightily surge forward business for 3 in an effort to improve its subscriber base.

Prices have yet to be fully confirmed, but we believe from sources the first handset will be in the range of £50 to £80. With another six phones due out next year. All with the same theme of being aimed at users who don’t want to pay the high prices associated with the iPhone or BlackBerrys.

Apparently the idea for the phone came from their Skypephone, where Hutchison decided to develop a range of handsets for the mass market all with data services in mind.

We’ll tell you more when we get the full skinny, the complete low down, the full enchilada – everything you needed to know but were too afraid to ask about the INQ on the day.

On that very note, if there’s any questions you have about the phone ask away in the comments below. We’ll endeavour to have them answered at the event and more successfully than we did over the Storm, grrrrrrr!

Before we start our official coverage of the BlackBerry Storm, we thought we’d rant a little for a while on how well it all went.

Firstly, events tailoring for journalists to attend should be just that – tailored for journalists that are attending.

So when one turns up at the allotted time we were given, then is ushered away from the main location into a neighbouring people-carrier then promptly bombarded with marketing jargon from the get go, things begin to turn awry for us.

Then when things just seem to go on and on and on, and we wish for the finer moments of Clover Field to happen just for sweet merciful relief – you know it’s going badly.

After a well rehearsed presentation from the double act that is the Vodafone and RIM product managers, we then began to ask some difficult questions. These they barely answered, but countered with well thought out diversions from the initial question in pseudo politician speak that would even make Jeremy Paxman proud. Some more questions hit very awkward chilling moments when brought up, these related to the flaws in the handset and things they’ve clearly overlooked.

When it moved on to the later stages of their handset demo and presentation, we brought up reader questions. To which they said we could answer on the actual Storm Bus, as we needed to set up the laptop and 3G modem connection.

After a while whilst standing in the pouring rain, we were told this wasn’t going to happen. As they needed to research the questions fully, in order to have them answered fully. Meaning these guys almost knew nothing other than what they’ve been told to say and their knowledge stretches no further than marketing gobbledygook.

We made some calls and have left them now in the well trusted hands of someone at their PR company to have them fully answered.

What added to the days disaster was the battery on both our phone and netbook giving up the ghost. Then having our rucksack with all the notes and life basically vanish in the best Paul Daniels routine – only to appear the next day with none of the content on eBay.

Here endeth the rant.

I know four people who got one yesterday without a hitch. But Kai was definitely not having a good day — he went on to list out his experiences yesterday on his blog:

* Though I signed up and pre-registered T-mobile’s newsletter did not provide any information how to purchase the G1
* I called up my local T-mobile branch in Woking and they said they’ll only get the device in late in November
* I surprisingly found out today you could buy a G1 from SMStextNews.
* I call the Oxford circus store, but I can’t get through. I even call T-mobile customer services, who can’t tell what their stock levels are and they can’t reach the store either. Arf.
* So in London I rushed to the Oxford street store to see if I could purchase a G1.
* T-mobile store had about 20 staff. Pity most of them could only demonstrate the phone and they couldn’t actually sell the device. Retarded.
* After asking for a black G1, the manager says she has to check in the back room. WTF? You’re almost out? I don’t believe this. Anyway I have a meeting over at OMTP and I’ll come back in a couple of hours after reserving one.
* I return to Oxford street and entered the wrong store at 393 Oxford street, they say don’t worry I can buy the phone here.
* I go through a tiresome credit check where they ask too much information. Feck, I could afford to buy it outright!
* So I’ve signed up for 40GBP for 18months. Deep breath.
* Shop assistant can’t figure out how to open the battery cover. Four staff are taking turns trying to open it.
* Eventually back cover flies off. I am thinking its damaged. No visible damage though. Phew.
* SIM card in, firing up… takes a bit of time… sign in and can’t connect! There is a problem communicating with the Google servers !!
* Shop assistant says I need to wait up to 24hours until my phone is registered on the Web. Eh? I want to use the phone now!
* I ask the assistant if they can disable voicebox/answering service. He says he can’t do that. I need to call customer services myself. Argh, crap service.
* I ask how many phones were sold. This is 6pm btw. 5 in this store and about 40 in the Oxford circus launch store. GULP. No fucking way. What a disaster…
* I notice the London paper running a T-mobile advertisement for phones under 50GBP a month. No mention of the Android G1. What?
* No one seems to know the G1 launched today. Nothing in BBC news about the launch. Even the geeks at the Ubuntu Intrepid launch party didn’t know it came out today. Honestly, what a PR FAIL.

Some of Kai’s experience can be put down to the big-cumbersome-giant syndrome — the fact that launching a handset isn’t as easy as one might expect. Teething troubles are bound to occur.

Indeed, our very own Ben Smith was pressure-sold insurance in the Fleet Street store (if memory serves). He was given so much bollocks he thought he was in a Government press briefing. Words to the effect of ‘You MUST buy this with insurance’ and ‘If you don’t insure it, and you lose it, well, we won’t have many in stock and…’ as well as ‘If you lose it, there isn’t a proper system for getting you a new one.. so’.

I’ll let Ben go into more detail.

However one point in Ka i’s experience that is highly, highly inexcusable is the fact that he had to wait a whole sodding day for his handset to ‘activate’. It was only until 1030am today that the 3G icon appeared and he got data services.

Anyway, he’s, ‘enjoying this little sucker now’ so I look forward to more of Kai’s experiences.

And to address the ‘are you paid to talk up the G1 launch’ point Kai, if only. If only T-Mobile and the other mobile operators recognised the value of Mobile Industry Review and the value of each of our readers. The site isn’t run by a series of arses sat in their underpants. But it will be a good few years until the majority of marketing chaps even take a look at independent online media such as us, I’m pretty confident of that.

I tell you what I would have liked to do though, Kai — but we’d have needed extra resource in the form of some kind of sponsorship or cash from the likes of T-Mobile to do this — I’d have liked to have run G1 Day.

I’d have liked to have painted the site pink for a day and run an all day live blogging session, detailing reactions from those who had already bought the device, showing off pictures and video from delighted readers and crucially, enabling T-Mobile to SWIFTLY react to issues such as yours. I’d have liked to have published some cool videos featuring interviews with T-Mobile executives (they’d have needed to have been recorded a few days beforehand) and I’d have liked to have done a normob walkabout on the queues of people outside the main Oxford Street store.

Further, I’d have liked to have put on an Unlimited Drinks G1 party last night where, if you come along, you can get the device there-and-then on an exclusive £35 a month tariff (or something like that). I’d have liked to have been publishing interviews with lots of developers in the run up to the launch all discussing their views about the device. And I’d have liked to have given away 10 devices yesterday to developers at 9am in the morning. We’d have couriered the devices to them to arrive by 10am — with the express purpose of the developers coming along to the Unlimited Drinks party to show the applications they’d created THAT DAY.

It would have been ace.

But you need a bit of cash and resource to organise that kind of thing. And you need the buy-in of a mainstream-media-obsessed mobile operator marketing team.

So I paid for all the coverage Kai. I paid for the fuel, the fooking annoying parking fees (24 quid!), the congestion charge and the other sundry expenses. If it was T-Mobile supported coverage, I’d have made it ultra clear.

I was up at half five this morning. Half past FIVE! That’s how dedicated we are here at Mobile Industry Review.

I grabbed the cameras, jumped into the car and sped into London as fast as possible. I’m not normally a native of the 6am shift — so I was rather surprised to find the M25 almost chock-a-block and the A13 into London was doing 30mph permanently.

When I arrived at about 8am, there were queues already. Big time. In fact I discovered quickly that some serious G1 fans were queuing from 5am. Hardcore.

I got out the film camera and captured some outside shots then I popped into film the shenanigans. Organised. Busy. Energy. The place was raidiating energy and enthusiasm. Every one of the, what, 8 tills, was busy. G1s were flying out the door. Much, much better managed than your average iPhone scramble. I talked to T-Mobile’s head of Social Media (yes, they have a chap who’s responsible for that now!) and filmed a little bit with Richard (the chap who gave us the demo at the press launch last month). I’ll aim to have that edited and published probably for tomorrow.

Right. More to come.

(And here’s the Flickr gallery of some of the photos I took)

Now school’s are a hostile environment (well, at least mine is), and navigating the Sixth Form common room is something like an assault course. But it’s so much more than that too! It’s buzzing with technology, and young people who know things, right?

I’ve been keeping my eye out for mobile news, and reading MIR, and of course the news in general. The Google Android is by no means a small piece of ignorable news at the moment, so how is it then, no one is talking about it?

After the twelve-week summer holiday some people were showing off their new gadgets, namely Sony mobiles, and the odd iTouch; in the three hundred student strong Sixth Form I’ve only seen a single iPhone. That’s just one.

Now before I criticise my peers for being totally unaware about the world of technology, computing and mobile phones; there are some techno-people like myself too; maybe even more technologically experienced. So why then is it that no one is talking?

From what I’ve gathered, no one particularly cares. Of course, I care, the rest of the MIR team cares, and I’ll hazard a guess that you the reader may also care too. The mobile phone industry is of course interesting, fast paced, and constantly evolving. But could this be the problem?

From what I’ve seen is that for those who I know (and you may beg to differ on this), the world of technology is just too fast paced to keep up with; and as a result, they don’t bother to keep up at all. If you ask someone about the new Nokia 5310, you’ll get a blank stare and no hint of excitement at the prospect of free music. Why? Well they don’t know about it!
For me this is quite an interesting piece of news, I won’t buy the phone as it doesn’t actually interest me, or grab me enough to go and spend money on it; but its certainly something of interest, and a product which is really targeting what I do the most – download music.

So back to the Android:
Well, there’s nothing to say. I think the device itself looks good (although for the videos I’ve seen, slightly slower than the iPhone), and if it’s priced correctly it should fly off the shelves. But where is the buzz from the Sixth Formers? The sixteen to eighteen year olds with plenty of disposable income, and a constant desire to keep up with the times just have no desire, or even no knowledge of this remarkable piece of news.

Then I think about this, why don’t my friends know about this? Or even the people who I see everyday, why don’t I hear them talking about the latest mobile phones? I hear them chatting about the new Manhunter game, and Gears of War, and maybe debating what’s best, the Playstation 3 or the Xbox 360? Why, and I’ve said this before, isn’t there more advertising, or promotions for the young people of today?
Obviously there is an issue here. Either my outer-London school and its students are blissfully unaware, or advertising just isn’t doing its job.

For all I know, I could be totally wrong; but in the numerous times I’ve tried to talk about mobiles or something I feel like I’m talking a different language. And, I don’t know about you or anyone else really, but in this day and age, who would expect that? What’s more, how is it, that Nokia with their 5310 which is so obviously designed and aimed at young people, aren’t they targeting us?

So to Nokia, and Google, what’s going to happen? You both have quite possibly big selling devices, but what are you doing about it? The 5310 launches tomorrow and I’m certainly not feeling, nor seeing any of the buzz.

If you have a differing opinion on this, or want my opinion on any particular aspect of the mobile industry please feel free to leave comments or e-mail me at samantha@mobileindustryreview.com

1. Always check the signal

It doesn’t matter who it is, from the lowly application developer to the mobile network operator, they all fail at this point.

It’s going to be rather difficult to check out the speed and dexterity if your handset/application/service/dongle if there’s no signal in the venue.

2. Cut out the music

Although you think it makes the place seem as though it’s got attitude and a good ‘vibe’, it simply means we ask the least amount of questions possible because it’s too loud. We can’t go into detail with you, we can’t explore tangents during the conversation. We end up screaming THAAANKKK-YOUUUUU and nodding very enthusiastically before pocketing the press release and hoping it’s got everything we need on it.

Case in point: The best feature of the LG Renoir is apparently the Dolby speaker system. Never heard it. Couldn’t try it. The bar music was loud (and, actually very funky). So we never tried it and we didn’t capture it on film for you to experience either.

3. Pay attention to the food

We’re often ravenous. Think pizza rather than really fancy bits of salmon-on-sticks. Pizza is good because one slice is pretty good, it’s whole — it doesn’t usually fall apart in your hands — and you can munch it down really quickly and get on with the learning & looking.

4. Free drinks isn’t necessarily a draw, nor important.

Free soft drinks is useful as that cuts down the friction of having to arse about with money, coins and the like. The MIR team typically chug on a few diet/regular cokes. Whatley will sometimes have a fancy cocktail if one’s going.

5. USB press packs are good

A press pack on a USB drive is excellent. Any more stuff to carry — unless it’s a decent handset that you’ve given us to trial/use/give-away — is a distraction. If it’s paper stuff, make sure we can fold it to put it in our pockets. Seriously. When you’re carrying cameras, laptops, stuff-from-work and a whole load of other stuff, a simple USB drive with the details is much more efficient. Better still, email it to us on the morning of the event. Or the next day.

Or consider publishing before the event (under NDA if necessary – we’re big boys and can respect them) so we can arrived prepared and able to ask relevant questions. Also, we like to ask our audience to submit questions in advance of product launches.

6. Lighting

I am usually good with faces and names, but when it comes to blogging and networking, I’m generally appalling. Often because whenever I’m out meeting people, I can’t actually see them. (Or hear them). Keep it bright, keep it easy to see the product and experience it. Remember we actually care about the products and services. If we’re turning up, we’ve had to PAY to get there and it’s a bit of an arse for us (vs Journalists who turn up because-its-their-job). So we’d like to SEE what you’re showing off. And take good pictures and video of it for our audience.

7. Speeches

Speeches are good. Keep’em brief and let us get in front of the technology.

8. Product Samples

A room filled with 50 people with two samples on show isn’t any good. Make sure there’s a shit load to play with.

9. Handsets

Never, ever underestimate the draw and the lure of the free handset. Consider that we often bring a team of four to an event (me, Dan Lane, Ben Smith, James Whatley). Each of us is expecting a handset. Because we’re all vocal and influential. We see little, little value in giving a handset to one of us whilst the other three forget about it. That’s almost literally what happens. Let’s be clear: We’re not into getting free stuff for the fun of it. We’ve generally got too many handsets lying around. But our viewers and readers don’t. We like to give them away as competition prizes. Huge, huge draw for the audience.

Consider telling us that we will receive a free handset on the day. So we can plan for this. Plan who’s going to take it apart and play with it, plan who’s going to write the review, plan WHEN we put it into the MIR Show, plan WHEN we give it away as a competition prize.

Do not NOT NOT underestimate the value of providing free handsets if you’re marketing an application. Patrick Smith, formerly of Sonus PR (and now at Joshua PR) called me once and asked if I’d like to check out Good Mobile Messaging. It didn’t work on my Blackberry so I was not inclined to hear what he had to say. I was planning on just doing a write up. “Look, come and have a drink and we’ll give you a Nokia handset to try it on,” he said.

Interesting. Ok. Lo and behold I picked up the device — I wasn’t entirely impressed with the E61 — but the Good Mobile Messaging service, I loved and converted to within days.

If it’s a network operator exclusive handset consider providing an unlocked version even if it’s just on loan – if it’s a handset we’re reviewing we’ll only be able to make a half-decent job of it if we can use our everyday SIMs in it to make and receive calls.

10. Contacts

Put your mobile number on all emails. I know it sounds a bit simple this one, but really — I was late for an interview the other day which would have given the company in question exposure out to our quarter-of-a-million audience. I tried to call ahead to reschedule or see if they were still at the meeting point — I scoured my email archive for mobile phone numbers. Curiously there were none at all on the email conversation. AND what’s worse, the PR wasn’t using mobile email. Ergo I couldn’t contact them. Ergo no interview. Ergo I’m a bit frustrated.

11. Timing

Please include us when the launch or announcement is new. Our readers expect news ahead of mainstream media so don’t ask us to wait until they’ve finished with all the review units. We will go out of our way to come to you if access to something is limited.

12. Link to us

If you’ve got a blog for the event, company or product, link to us. Put a note up saying you’re looking forward to seeing us at the event. We’ll get a Google Alert and we’ll see the pingback. It’s good subconscious memory prodding for us. And it’s nice to get a link. Similarly, after the event, knock up a few ‘nice to see you Twitter messages’ and blog posts. When we publish a post about you, knock us over a link again. It make it feel just that little bit more worthwhile for us.

13. Photos

It’s surprising how many people don’t have photos of their products/services ready for us to post. A big surprise for me is how many PRs don’t have screenshots of applications/services they are marketing. Get on to the clients and get some decent quality ones. If it’s on Nokia, Screenshot by Anthony Pranata is a super app. The iPhone’s got it built in now — and most other platforms have some kind of screenshot capability.

14. Engage

We want to talk about the products and it’s great to meet and interview people who are happy and confident to talk not just about the product, but the firm, industry or technology. The best events are often when we can meet product managers to discuss the design of the product.

15. Consistency

With so many bloggers it’s tempting to spread the invites around so everyone gets a fair share… no problem, good idea. But if there’s not space for us this time around let us know about the event and send us a press pack anyway. We’ll still mention the launch and maybe even invite another site we respect to contribute as Rafe from All About Symbian does this week (although we were there with him). Just to hear about it afterwards makes us sad…

16. Let us help you

Give us a shout before the launch – we love talking to firms as they plan their products and launches and we’ll try to help as much as we can. If there’s something specific you need we can probably connect you to the right people.

17. This isn’t Paxman

We’re people, you’re people… we get stuff wrong, you’ll forget if it’s the same battery as that unit last year. We’re cool with that… we’re excited about the product or service you’re launching. If we’re chatting it’s OK not to know stuff or even for us to disagree about things (we can’t agree amongst ourselves half the time). You don’t need a PR minder whispering in your ear. The best firms accept criticism as readily as praise.

18. Time of Day

Some of us have other jobs. This means there is absolutely no way we’ll all make the 10am briefing. If it’s bloggers you’re targeting, think about making the event after 5pm at least.

19. Location

Choose a central London (in this example) location that is easily reachable unless there’s a specific reason. If in doubt, remember the blogger is coming for the product/service launch and not to admire the venue.

The U990, is the successor to the previous two TD-SCDMA handsets by ZTE, the U980 and U981, none of which had HSDPA. The phone is powered by WindowsMobile 6.0 (No, not 6.1) and is the first ZTE phone to feature a Microsoft OS. It features a full touchscreen and claims to have an high-speed transmission rate of 2.8Mbps and integrated EDGE, with seamless transition between the two. There’s also a front facing camera, a Micro-SD card slot and a mini-USB connector. ZTE have also thrown in GPS/AGPS for advanced navigation.

The phone is primarily aimed at the Chinese Mobile Market.

China Mobile is expected to officially launch the Apple iPhone on its network shortly – but with some of the functionality removed to comply with Chinese regulations. The South China Morning Post, citing a report from the Daiwa Institute of Research said that the 3G and Wi-Fi services would be disabled on the Chinese model.

Apparently Apple is not insisting on revenue-share any more. One assumes they want to sell as many iPhones as possible to the estimated 28 million Chinese who’re up for buying one.

The KC910 is heading this way very quickly. We’ll be there tomorrow night at the LG blogger launch. In fact we’re doing a lot of the filming for next week’s MIR show there.

If you remember at the last LG launch, I was a bit repetitive with the UK Marketing Director about their total lack of developer support.

I wonder, frankly, if the iPhone, T-Mobile USA Application Store and even Nokia bleeting on about their ’100m application downloads’, is reversing this position.

The KC910 is the successor to the Viewty. It’s got a 240×400 3″ display, fully touchscreen. ISO1600 8MP camera, image stabiliser, geotagging from it’s integrated GPS. VGA at 30fps video or 120fps at QVGA standards. HSDPA. Wifi. TV-Out. SD card capacity of 8GB max.

Interesting.

The LGs have never really been a go-er for me personally, or for anyone on the Mobile Industry Review team. They simply don’t cut it in terms of add-on facilities.

I *need* to be able to get stuff off my handset quickly. And I mean now. I don’t mean arsing about with Bluetooth. I want my media sent to the web in the background. I want to utilise the collective genius of millions of developers by installing their best works on to my handset.

I have no doubt the LG KC910 will be a piece of brilliance though. More soon.

Ever since the official carriers for iPhone 3G announced the pricing, there has been widespread disappointment among the people, thanks to the high prices set for phone. Hoping to cash in on this phenomenon, Nokia India had announced the launch of the Nokia N96 for the Indian Markets. People immediately started calling it the iPhone Killer, owing to the high feature set that it comes along. Compared to the other phones in its category, the Nokia N96 is so far the most powerful handset in the market and wins hands down over other through its fancy looks.

However, today’s announcement might come as a dampener to the public. According to Nokia, the phone will be available in retail outlets from September 15th, 2008 and will be priced at Rs. 34,999 (around 440 GBP).

Mr. Devinder Kishore, MD of Nokia India, said:

In the Web 2.0 era, the new Nokia N96 places the power to shape in internet in your hands. Nokia N96 offers the most personalised mobile internet experience to date and it defines convergence by blending phone and multimedia options seamlessly.

Nokia is the most popular handset manufacturer in the country and their N-series phones are becoming a popular trend among the youth.

Oh, how he laughed…

One reader I talked to — who works for a UK operator — was privately horrified to find that the briefings given to the operator’s customer service teams was more or less inaccurate. Along the lines of Krystal’s experience earlier.

I’m expecting a call from 3UK’s customer services in the coming weeks to try and get me signed up to another 12 month contract. Remember I popped in to their shop a while ago offering to take on an 18-month commitment in return for a N95 8GB — and they said ‘yeah, if you pay a 250 quid early upgrade fee’? (Or words to the effect)

2 months on, the market has changed — as I explained to 3UK CS, so that conversation will be rather exciting. I’d much rather spend a bit of dosh on an iPhone 3G version than avail myself of an N95 8GB and another fixed term.

Jason Bradbury from Channel 5′s Gadget show was on-hand to work the crowd and was officially the first person into the store (with an impressive roll under the half-close shutter) shortly followed by yours truly (with a much less elegant errr crawl under the shutter).

The queue outside is growing and they are operating a one-out one-in policy on the door. Reports from other Carphone Warehouse stores are that some are already out of stock of the 16GB model and that customers can order the 16GB model for collection on Monday.

8:46am and O2′s credit checking system has died. The Carphone Warehouse guys are going to switch their systems over to their own in-house system in the next five minutes and get the sales lines back up and running.

This time it’s the OpenMoku’s Linux based FreeRunner smartphone, launched last Friday. Since January developers have been working on making it a stable platform for consumers to use. I have a habit of finding the glitches in 30s – my Nokia 6500 is quickly approaching 50 crashes – so hopefully one will be sent my way to see if they’ve managed to get it working well enough to sell.

As well as being completely open source – both its hard and software is – the phone is really sexy. I’m not sure if it will have usability to rival the iPhone but for now the looks definitely do.

According to Ars Technica:

In many ways, OpenMoko’s platform strategy mirrors the diversity of the Linux desktop software ecosystem. There are a multitude of parallel options with many layers and varying degrees of overlap. This provides end users with an enormous amount of flexibility, but it also creates a lot of complexity. The choices are difficult to navigate, and the lack of a cohesive direction contributes to fragmentation and redundancy. OpenMoko’s potential for success will be heavily predicated on the ability to turn choice and diversity into an asset rather than an impediment.

There are currently three separate software stacks that are available for OpenMoko handsets. The original OpenMoko software environment was built on top of GNOME Mobile and Embedded technologies including the GTK+ toolkit. As the FreeRunner launch date approached and the development priorities began to shift towards a stronger emphasis on mainstream consumer adoption, OpenMoko reevaluated its approach and decided to build a new stack on top of Trolltech’s proven Qtopia mobile environment. The third stack, which will implement the FreeSmartphone.org APIs, is part of a long-term framework initiative that OpenMoko hopes will eventually ameliorate the problems created by fragmentation and redundancy while still offering developers a full range of choices.

All that really remains is a nice iPhone style YouTube clip to be generated. In fact, send a phone my way and I’ll create it for you.