The Sony Ericsson P990i and P1i have a nice trick of automatically switching to the fastest and cheapest data bearer, usually WiFi, saving users a tremendous amount of money and improving performance.

Unfortunately Nokia’s S60 platform can’t do this, though both UIQ and S60 are based on the same underlying Symbian OS.  So Psiloc has stepped into the breach with their Psiloc Connect (See Psiloc ) software that locks onto a WiFi signal before dropping down to 3G.  It costs €10 but could be just what is needed if you regularly download videos or email attachments. 

Of course Nokia should be providing this feature free of charge, especially as the iPhone can already auto switch.

 iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

If Apple is really targeting business users why isn’t there an easy way of transferring documents without having to rely on a third party application?

Although no longer sold by iGo, their Stowaway Ultra Slim Bluetooth keyboard is an ideal companion for heavy typing with an OQO or Nokia 7710.  Good clicky keys, a prop to hold a device at the correct angle and a reasonable battery life sealed the deal for me.

Whilst Nokia’s 7710 should have been replaced by the iPhone 3G, the one feature amongst my long list of iPhone must have’s, the one I must have, would be standard Bluetooth profiles found on most handsets, especially the HID/keyboard one.

Until then the 7710 will have to make do for my on the hoof editing.

French company, Bluetrek, recently launched their Bizz Bluetooth headset.  Yawn I hear…  This one is different and answers a problem I have had since micro SD cards hit my mobiles.  If I haven’t got a lead how do I transfer my phone’s media to my laptop (Bluetooth is far too slow).

Bluetrek’s headset splits in two revealing a USB plug to allow the headset battery to be charged in a laptop, plus a slot for a microSD card, up to 8GB.  

So if you have loads of pictures and videos on your camera phone, simply slip out the microSD card, insert the card into the headset and then into your laptop’s USB socket and you have access at USB 2 speeds to all your lovely data.  No messing with cables, or loosing converters.

The kit comes in flashy steel packaging, USB extension cable and an in car charger. 

This is such a great idea.

See Bluetrek Bizz

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

The E71 has it, the Nokia 6600 had it, so why can’t the iPhone print docs.

Garmin pretty much covers all the bases when it comes to personal navigation systems, be they car sat navs or mobile phone software.  

However in January they created quite a bit of excitement with the announcement of the touch screen nüvifone integrating the best of their navigation experience with a phone and user interface to match that of the iPhone 3G.

The specification of the handset certainly looked impressive, perhaps too much so, as they are now finding difficult to meet operator demands delaying delivery from the profitable Christmas stocking end of 2008 to the Easter egg spot in 2009.  At least its camera will take videos.

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

Why can’t emails be read or created in landscape?  The old Alcatel One Touch Com touch screen phone from 1998 could.

Eight years ago one of the more innovative internet companies, Breathe, collapsed after over extending itself and having produced a very fine, but pointless, TV campaign.  Breathe.com - YouTube

The Orange “I am” campaign has met with bewilderment from staff (as reported by the industry magazine Mobile Today), and no doubt customers.  This is a lifestyle push, yet there is little of substance underpinning it.  Where are the new services, handsets, tariffs?

T-Mobile’s approach is much more simplistic, with their recently launched Combi/Solo £30 plan that guarantees to beat any other £30 price plan.  No doubt there are wrinkles, but customers understand value, do they understand “I am”?

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

This is a stupid one, but the iPhone can’t be propped up when watching YouTube.  The chrome is just too shiny, but who would want it any other way.  However the Nokia 7710 came with a simple stand set at a perfect angle for viewing the screen.  Couldn’t Apple have done the same?

Thanks to blackberrysync.com for spotting this.  RIM have seemingly, and exclusively(?), launched their latest desktop software through Vodafone Germany. 

As of today, Monday the 28^th of July, BlackBerry’s users will have little luck finding this on BB’s US or UK sites.  In fact though 4.5 is available from the US, only 4.3 is available from European (English) website.

This smacks of a little disorganisation but, as noted by BBSync, at least this heralds the release of the BlackBerry Bold.  The second half of 2008 is sizing up to be quite a fight now that 3 are offering the Nokia E71 free of charge on low end tariffs (negotiate hard), and Apple will hopefully release further business enhancements within the iPhone 3G 2.1 firmware update.

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

Why can’t the iPhone new message tone be changed?  Who can hear or feel a single beep & vibration in a noisy bar?

Thanks to intomobile.com for the latest Nokia Tube images.  I’m still wiping the tears of laughter away.

Can this really be Nokia’s answer to the iPhone or just a quick cludge to get a touch user interface into the market?  Whilst their 7710 was not ideal, at least it had an amazing amount of functionality and potential, and Opera Mini is a dream to use on it. 

Yet the Nokia Tube, allegedly to be released for the Christmas push, lacks any of the sophisticated look of the Apple iPhone; I’m sure I saw the menu on Alcatel’s One Touch Com of 1998.  This is not how Nokia should be fighting back. 

Hopefully the images are faked, but if not 2009 will not be a happy time for 2008’s biggest handset manufacturer. 

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

Come on Apple, my Siemens S1 Marathon can forward text messages.  A FOURTEEN year old handset has a function that was thought of before SMS was a glimmer of a pre pay eye so why the blazes has the iPhone 3G not got it!

What is Nokia thinking off?  Many of their largest and important customers use BlackBerry’s BES as part of their mobile security strategy.  Of course not all employees want a BlackBerry handset so have, until now, been able to be provided a Nokia or Sony Ericsson handset with BlackBerry’s Connect client.  This made the comp. secretary happy, IT happy and the user happy.

On top of that, at least BB Connect allowed access to GroupWise and Lotus Notes.

This agreement being bust, will mean that many companies will have to give the latest E71 two fingers as they will have no incentive to buy Intellisync in addition to their existing BES.

Come on Nokia, smell the coffee!

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

So you have an iPhone app that needs to access Safari, your taken to the web page then want to go back.  Without using the home button and restarting the original application, precisely how does the user do that?  They can’t.  Multi tasking, huh, dream on.

Having lost UK customers and voice revenue in their last quarter results Vodafone should be looking at ways to stop this slide.  Someone has other ideas.

Considering that a significant amount of their growth is due to pre-pay and easy access to top ups, Vodafone should be encouraging retailers to push the Vodafone brand in every corner shop.  Unfortunately Vodafone has decided to reduce retailer commission by 1%, which is a significant amount to a small outlet.

So retailers are fighting back and boycotting Vodafone top ups in a succession of two day strikes, and potentially much longer. 

This will particularly hit the younger user, the very people that Vodafone need in the future. 

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

With Kodak photo kiosks in many supermarkets it would seem sensible that you could print your iPhone pictures just by sending them by Bluetooth.  ‘Fraid not as Apple have not enabled Bluetooth Object Push.

I would have believed that by now that mobile broadband is pretty much done and dusted. 

For the last year or so there has been an exponential rise in the use of laptops with dongles, and in many cases mobile networks replacing fixed broadband.  This is especially true as CPW and PC World are selling free (if that’s the word) laptops to students and small businesses.

There are loads of deals available, but what surprised me is that only Three are offering pay as you go mobile broadband.  So as was the case yesterday, up and down Kensington High Street no other network would offer an occasional visitor to the UK anything other than a normal contract, or monthly rolling contract (which is useless as you have to give a month’s notice; what do you do sign up then terminate on the same day!). 

So as Three was the only option, we checked the Three signal and low and behold, very low in-fact, only GPRS is supported, this in the centre of London!  So O2, Vodafone, Orange and T-Mobile you lost a customer, and Three lost one because of it’s lousy signal.

iPhone 3G feature wish for the day –

Battery life is appalling (6-8 hours max), as bad as Three’s A925 handset of a few years ago.  At least with that one you could swap batteries.  I only hope the rumour of a bigger battery is true as battery life trumps weight any day.

The markets were tough on Vodafone yesterday with its shares falling by almost 14%.

Whilst group revenue is up by 19.1%, this is mostly by acquisition, exchange rate fluctuations and increasing data sales rather than organic growth.  This left Vodafone with the tricky task of reducing city expectations for the near term. 

Vodafone are predicting tougher times ahead as the credit crunch and rising bills hits consumer spending, especially in its more traditional markets.  Market saturation is yet another problem as all the networks can do now is to churn each others connections, neither gaining nor loosing customers, but at a very high cost just to remain static.

As the EU squeezes further revenue out of Vodafone’s European business, the only way for them to grow is in under developed nations.  Expect Vodafone to buy more marginal African, Asian and South American network operators over the next couple of years.

iPhone feature wish for the day –

Tough luck if you want to find that vital email with the iPhone.  Other mobile email systems enable searches of the thousands of emails in your Exchange inbox (if your disorganised) or in your folders.  Why can’t the iPhone?

Thanks to Ewan of SMS Text News who pottered along to the launch of Three’s new handset range for the second half of the year.

Three have had a very poor range of handsets for consumer and business users for what seems to be a year now.  The E65 and N73 are still listed on their X-Series micro site, and their latest phone for business users is the TyTN II, at least a year old now! 

Thankfully this is all about to change.  Delights such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia, BlackBerry Bold, Skype Phone V2,  and Nokia E71 are heading our way, plus the less than delightful Nokia N96 (no Xenon flash on a multimedia flagship phone!) and Samsung’s Tocco.

Having had a Three contract myself for the last four years, there was little to inspire me to upgrade.  Perhaps I can be persuaded, though If launch dates are missed I fear it will be adieus Three, hello iPhone 3G.

iPhone feature wish for the day –

Using Dataviz, when replying or forwarding Exchange email Outlook’s inbox will show the reply/forward indicator, why can’t the iPhone do the same?

According to the GSA Secretariat, HSDPA upgrades have been made to over 200 3G networks across the world. 

Offering up to 7.2Mbps download speeds (ok theoretical speed), all forms of HSPA networks be they slower or faster are rapidly replacing fixed broadband as the price drops and flexibility increases. 

Increasingly households are replacing desktops with laptops and using cheap dongles as their main means of internet connection. 

So why pay BT for the privilege of a telephone line when it is rarely used (mobile & Skype replaces calls) and the broadband speeds BT supplies are often slower than HSDPA anyway?

Good news for mere mortals, those not carrying an iPhone, Opera have released their Beta Opera browser for Microsoft Mobile.

Considering the truly appalling Microsoft Mobile Explorer, the Opera browser is well up to the standards set by Opera Mini and the iPhones’ Safari browsers. 

Being a Beta version there are a few bugs to be expected, but pages are rendered well, and quickly, and it is very intuitive to use. 

Trouble is that none of the garnishing offered by Opera, cheap data packages, and designer led handsets from HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and many others, can make the Microsoft platform look anything other than antiquated.

After Friday’s manic queues and O2, CPW and iTunes failures, the shiny white gloss of the launch has gone a little yellow.

But what of the device itself?  Was it worth the wait?

Many of the iPhone 3G were sold to pre-existing owners, but I borrowed a friend’s (he’s porting his number) and used it for a couple of days.  So as a newbie to both Apple and iPhone here are my opinions.

First off the screen is fantastic, making every other mobile device look like an old black and white TV.  The UI only takes just a few moments to get used to, which is good, but mainly because there is so little in it.  Settings are minimal, functions are missing all over the place (SMS forwarding, SMS delivery reports, assigning a new tone to mail received…).  GPS also appears very insensitive.  Of course the camera is also a bête noir with some users (no flash or video!).

On the upside, Exchange Push email works faster than many other devices, and YouTube is just plain brilliant.  Plus there are some seriously useful free of charge applications available. 

However all the good stuff means that it will be used much more reducing battery life to an unacceptable extent.  Invariably there will be a big market for piggy back batteries to keep it going for over a day.  This in itself is a good indicator for Apple.

I can’t help thinking that the iPhone technology is still very much in development, but the simplicity of the device, usable applications and specialised web sites will encourage more users and developers, making the next iPhone an even greater success.

When the original iPhone was launched there were high expectations of queues and shortages.  In reality the only queue appeared to be outside the Apple store in Regent Street.

iPhone 3G is another matter.  Passing through a town centre at 7:45 this morning for a breakfast meetingka, queues had already formed outside both O2 and CPW.  Coming back 2 hours later and the O2 store had sold out, and still people were trying to buy. 

The iPhone 3G is truly a marketing success story.  Build up anticipation, go short of stock on-line and then drive users mad with human pinball – I’m sure Oxford Street must have seen the hordes bouncing between stores for stock.

Typically though the O2 credit system collapsed!  Pesky customers.

With queues forming all over the world, and a sell out on O2 and Carphone Warehouse web sites, the iPhone 3G is already a tremendous success.  The images from Japan, courtesy of akihabaranews.com, all show blacked out eyes of those queuing, out of embarrassment perhaps? 

With the vast number iPhones being sold there is going to be much more toxic scrap floating around.  According to a Nokia survey of 6,500 people, only 3% of us bother to recycle their handsets, 4% throw theirs  into landfill, leaving an astonishing 93% storing them in drawers, garages or passing the duds on to family.

At some point the disposal of these billions of handsets must be dealt with, but the pace of technological change and, especially, fashion, means that a solution must be found, and urgently.

Trust Apple competitors to try to rain on the iPhone 3G devotees waiting patiently in line.  I suppose they are getting their own back for taking away the industries kudos at MWC 2008.

Whilst Nokia are keeping a low profile, some one has sneaked out a few photos, via blackberrysync.com, of BlackBerry’s touch screen phone, Thunder.  Purely coincidental timing of course!  But wait, another rumour has it that the Thunder is still in late alpha development so won’t be available any time soon.  Now there’s a surprise!

Microsoft on the other hand decided to have a crack at Apple’s Mobile Me by announcing their own hosted service.  Not only is this opportunistic, but all the other Microsoft Exchange hosting companies must be seething at Microsoft’s misfired disruption ploy. 

Of course, this being Wednesday, a new virus has been found for Symbian, the Isexplayer malware.  Though of course to be infected you have to install the sis file and ignore all the warnings that it is an untrusted application and has no security signature etc.  Not much of a virus then.

So only another day and a bit to iPhone splendour…

If you’re desperate for an iPhone 3G, didn’t crash into the O2 web site on Monday, live in the sticks and have a hangover, you have another 1 hour of snooze time on Friday morning.

Whilst the queues in London will be moving at 8.02, elsewhere bleary eyed O2 staff will be opening stores at 9am for the inundation of iPhone punters.  This leaves our city friends with 58 minutes of prime iPhone lording. 

But wait.  If the O2 web site was overloaded on Monday, will they be able to cope on Friday?  Best guess is no, so take a friend to ferry the Starbucks whilst you wait for the interminable credit check to complete.  Remember your credit/debit card.

Recent research by Vodafone tells us that a tenth of businesses expect a response to an email within 30 minutes.

Was it only 25 years ago that the best response most of us had was three days snail mail?  Although of course we did have the wonder of modern communication, the telex, and its recalcitrant operator.

Then in the early 90’s, after the umpteenth postal strike, fax took over as the ‘instant’ communication of choice, though still the secretary had to type it out, unless you had the wonders of fax mail.

But now two hours is evidently the expected norm allowed for a response.  So thinking on your feet with mobile email is a necessity, but at what cost.  Sometimes the best response requires mulling over, but now we can only expect second best.  

From today, prospective Apple iPhone 3G junkies, me included, are invited to sign up for their new shiny plastic toy.

O2 sent the emails out first thing this morning, and their web site shop promptly expired under the load.  Try, try and try again the iPhone of marketing dreams could be chosen, but when it came to pay, you were requested to wait a minute and then the web page fell back to the start. 

No purchase.  But be warned, O2’s cookies have captured your attempt and if your not careful you could end up buying not one but 4,5,6 or however many iPhone ‘attempts’ you made. 

Now that would make for a surprise delivery on Friday, and more surprising bill.

Nokia’s recent launch of free push email sounds, on the face of it, another strategic drive into the mobile services space.   However Nokia only support ten handsets so far, and only Symbian at that.

Emoze on the other hand has supplied a similar service for the last few years and built a firm user base, recently expanded to encompass the SME sector.  Nokia’s move could have made their business vulnerable, but Emoze has a great card up their sleeve.

From next month Emoze will support Java enabled handsets, not just Symbian or Windows Mobile.  Users will be able to choose from 100’s of handsets and still receive push email. 

Perhaps Nokia should have bought Emoze?

If my recent experience is anything to go by, Tom Alexander, Orange’s CEO, will have to accelerate changes in his organisation if he wants to retain small business users.

A small business decided to properly deploy Exchange in Microsoft’s SBS2003 server to get ‘proper’ mobile access to its email.  For a year now it has had two BlackBerry’s, one on T-Mobile and another on Orange, both receiving email using BlackBerry’s internet service.

To get each on to BlackBerry’s professional service was a vastly different experience.  One 5 minute phone call to T-Mobile had their BlackBerry on to BB Professional at an extra £5 a month, plus a free user licence.  No problems here.

A call to Orange however could not be handled by the first, second or third agent.  The owner was then told to call a number which turned out to be the first one called.  He tried again, only to be told that they had never heard of BlackBerry Professional, and that his contract would need to be turned into a business account at an additional £35 a month.

In three months Orange will lose his business to T-Mobile. 

Thursday is, of course, the new Friday, though if you want a new iPhone 3G for the weekend, don’t over imbibe on Thursday the 10^th.

According to a report in the Register O2 will allow customers to walk out with a new shiny plastic iPhone 3G from 7am on Friday the 11^th.  For those of us celebrating Thursday, it would be doubtful we would be alert enough to sign a new iPhone contract.

Better still, have a party outside O2 in the queue so at least you can say that the drinks were keeping you warm.