Slingbox on X-Series Review

My long-delayed Slingbox on X-Series review went up on SMS Text News this morning.

S60 London Rumour Update

Could this be what the nameless, slightly alchohically-relaxed man was talking about here in relation to Vodafone?

Link:  GoMoNews – Vodafone and Nokia launch integrated services on mobile device

Oooops!

Link: 3 expands payment options

Someone at Three’s web design team appears to have taken the phrase ‘we accept Delta’ and applied the first graphic that Google returned!

It’s fixed now.

An Evening with S60 in London: Rumour and Speculation

Overheard and probably baseless, the source remains nameless because I didn’t ask for more detail on this:

• Google is releasing a Linux-based phone before Christmas and possibly middle of November.
• Vodafone has invested $0.5 billion dollars in developing their own platform to compete with Win mobile, S60 etc.  Could it be this or this?
• The S60 Touch announcements are the tip of a massive platform / device shake-up in the industry that will be very apparent by Feb 2008.

Not putting any money on any of these, but it’s fun to wait and see!

An Evening with S60 in London: S60 Touch

Having seen the press release and videos during the day I was excited to speak to the S60 folks last night about the detail, but they were being very tight lipped… Key comments of note I thought were:

• This isn’t driven by the iPhone – that’s a ‘closed device’ and this is about a broad range of devices.
• There’s around 50 devices in the works already.
• The first touch devices will be available to consumers in 2008.
• The backwards compatability will enable a smooth transition for existing S60 users and leverage the huge (tens of millions) existing install base.
• The UI isn’t supposed to look hugey different – it’s a natural progression and users will be familar with using the interface.
• S60 won’t become touch only and there will still be traditional form-factor devices – not all will use touch.
• Adding these capabilited enhances the platform – the licensees (including Nokia and Samsung) will inovate in their implementation.
• The devices shown so far are mock-ups not actual products.

I’m not sure I agree with all of that – I’m particularly skeptical that the existing users and applications will travel well… most applications already need to be customised for each handset to cope with the particular niggles or display issues. Adding touch screen or moving to a iPhone-like touch only device is going to be a challenging transition. Also the general air of ‘we were going to do this anyway’ doesn’t really ring true – sure Apple might not be about to steal the entire mass market, but they have raised the bar for what consumers will expect their interface experience to feel like in the future and S60’s been around long enough that this sudden ‘overnight change’ in so many areas feels like a reaction.

The absence of detail is also a little disappointing – the repeated explanations that these are capabilities being added to the platform, whilst true, avoided the detail of how and what. This coupled with all of 2008 as a time-frame feels like there’s still plenty to be decided and the first of the handsets will just scrape that 2008 deadline.

At least this is a move in the right direction though… better late than never S60 is the most open and useful platform I’ve found to-date (it enables all the X-Series apps for instance – the UIQ versions are still lagging way behind) .  I just hope it isn’t allowed to get this far behind the cutting edge again.

An Evening with S60 in London: Handsets

Took a look a a few of the new S60 handsets during the Evening with S60 in London event last night. They seemed to be the same ones that have been fairly widely commented on from the Smartphone Show going on at Excel yesterday and today, but it was nice to get some hands-on time anyway.

No specs for the handsets (beyond what was already known) were available, but the S60 site has them all.

Samsung i520 and i560 – Two slim slide phones that look very similar to the existing Samsung slider range that seems to be very popular amongst the ‘normal mobile’ users I know. In use it’s very obviously S60 although the icons and fonts have a Samsung look. Build quality feels good and more compact than any of the N-series handsets I’ve seen so far so I can image these will be popular with people who want stylish handsets with the options to add applications or browse the mobile web. Unbelievably the i560 has GPS built-in without any apparent effect on the size or weight… I wonder what the battery life will be like?

Samsung i450 – Another slider, but featuring an N95-esque two-way slide mechanism that exposes a curved touch input device at the top which can be used, similar to a part-exposed iPod wheel, to navigate music and videos.

Samsung i550 – A thin, but tall and wide phone most noteable for the Blackberry Pearl-style track ball. This was obviously a pre-production model, but the trackball felt too recessed and required too much movement to scroll around the menus in my opinion. Also, the keys are slim buttons underneath the printed character which was a bit fiddly – especially in the low light of the bar. This handset has GPS and HSDPA although I wasn’t able to test either. It also appeared to feature a Google search box at the bottom of the home screen which opened a browser window to execute the search.

Nokia N81 8GB – An elegent gloss black phone – it was the most attractive and stylish-looking of all the ones shown. In addition to the expected N-series media capabilities this handset also offers the N-Gage gaming platform which looked slick and produced some nice-looking 3D graphics on the games I previewed. Although I may not be remembering correctly, this two had the Google Search home-screen box so I think this may be a feature we see more widely in future.

Nokia N95 8GB – The largest of all the handsets, this is the most capable of all the handsets I looked at – the screen for this new version appeared brighter and slightly larger against a standard N95 another attendee had, although we agreed this could be an optical illusion due to the different coloured surrounds. Although not a stylish as the gloss black N81 the huge screen is predictably excellent for viewing media, taking pictures or web browsing… I’d love to try the Slingplayer client on it to see quality of playback on that resolution. I’d also be interested to see how long it is before there’s a direct Samsung competitor too, though as with an additional memory card the i560 is only a few screen inches away from having a very competitive feature set.

An Evening with S60 in London: Overview

Attended the ‘Evening with S60‘ event last night. Met a few people I knew but otherwise it was a bit too crowded and shouty for really quality networking. Having said that the S60 folks hadn’t skimped on the hospitality and the venue is a favourite of mine anyway so it was fun. Had a chat with one of the S60 folks about the day’s Touch announcement and had a play with some of the newest handsets (Nokia and Samsung).

All in all, a good night. Thanks also to the organisers for our gift bags on departure – amongst the ‘usual’ pens and sweets there was a rather snazy bluetooth headset. I don’t have much need for one at the moment so it will probably be given away as a gift, but it was a very pleasant surprise.

Three tariff changes

Three announced a new set of tariffs today… Similar to T-Mobile’s ‘Flext’ tariffs they provide an allowance of credit that can be spent on minutes of voice calls or text messages – 1 min = 1 text. However, there’s a few other changes on their website which have otherwise gone un-commented:

• All tariffs are now 18 months.
• X-Series Gold is listed as available with a free Slingbox (Actually it’s listed twice… Once with, once without, but both at the same price – £10 per month – so why wouldn’t you have it?)
• All handsets are now ‘free’ at the time of purchase, but add an additional monthly payment to the handset tariff – from nothing (all the usual free models) to £12 per month (for the N95).

I think this last move is particularly smart – if you do the maths, the handsets are still the same price as before, but effectively provided with ‘interest free’ credit over the contract. This makes handsets more accessible to those who’d like to spread the cost without the pain of credit-card interest rates and (since the handset price remains the same per month regardless of tariff) makes the higher value tariffs appear better value for money as they don’t include larger handset subsidies…

N95 with 300 mins or texts per month, plus X-Series Gold and a free SlingBox = £666 over 18 months. No comment (except that’s market-leading pricing!)

3 Italy gets another cool X-Series phone first

Link: Into Mobile | 3 Italia launches LG U960 DVB-H/HSDPA X-Series phone

Three have launched a new LG handset in Italy capable of DVB-H which they’ve been pushing hard over there – it has a cool looking ‘twisty’ screen to view it on too.  It appears to support a lot of the X-Series apps – more than any other non-Nokia handset to date from what I can tell.  However, it probably won’t be coming to the UK soon as DVB-H isn’t being pushed here so aggressively and each geography decides on handsets independently (which is why Italy got the N95 first too…).

3G iPhone in Feb ‘08? Rubbish!

Links: 1, 2, 3, 4

OK, ‘Mystic Ben‘ says: The mobile tech press needs to take a deep breath and calm down with all this… Not a single 3G iPhone (with or without HSDPA, GPS or 16GB) will be available for sale in January or February 2008 anywhere in the world. I’ll even put my money where my mouth it – I’ll donate £50 (US$100) to a charity chosen by the first person to prove otherwise.

Steve Jobs announced the original iPhone in the US on January 9th in preparation for a June 29th launch – unusual for Apple which normally announces products for immediate release. Apple were forced to do this because the FCC (the mobile tech journalists’ best friend) posts detailed specs of the handsets they approve during the approval process which effectively leaks all of the juiciest details and a few pictures too. Apple filed for some confidentiality of the details submitted, but they knew that wouldn’t be sufficient (and it wasn’t). So they had no choice – they had to announce early.

Any handset due for sale in February 2008 would be announcing right now for exactly the same reason and it’s not hard to work out what effect that would have on European iPhone sales which are all slated to start 9th November. And, yes, it is feasible (although unlikely) that Apple would launch a 3G variant outside the US first, but they couldn’t risk needing to modify an in-manufacturing model to achieve an FCC approval. As they’ve shown with the iPod and current iPhone, they don’t believe in regional variants.

If a 3G iPhone is announced in 2008 it won’t be on sale in the US before late July (or possibly even later if AT&T’s 3G coverage needs improvement) and a staggered release to give Apple time to update their agreements with the networks in Europe and maximise the international press coverage feels likely too.

Link: Apple’s iPhone filing with the FCC

Link: iPhone passes FCC approval just over 4 months after being publicly announced