Mobile Choffee

I have added a mobile version of choffee using the Mowser mobile service.

Mowser is quite a nice service. It works by stripping down a site for mobile browsing you can setup your site to use it or you can browse other sites from your mobile.

Skype, Fring, Google Chat and more

I have installed Fring on my phone and given it a go. I now have Skype and google chat but no Battery.

Installing it is simple, go to the site select the link and you are off. You then setup and account, put in you credentials for the services you are interested in in my case Skype, Google talk and twitter. Then you are online. You can chat with contacts, make skype and google calls and post to your twitter thing.

That's the theory but I found that it was not that simple. I have not been able to make any calls except to the test number and nobody has responded to my chats!

The phone keeps searching and switching between 2G, 3G and 3.5G all the time and fring keeps dropping off. Then it stops and asks me if I want to try to reconnect. In this day and age no mobile applicaiton should be asking be for a retry. It should just back off exponentially then when the phone gets some signal have aother go.

Anyhoo the result of all this activity is that it managed to drain my batttery for the last two days in a little over 5 hours. So that is getting the bin for now. Nice idea just that the technology is not quite there yet. I am not to sure if it's the phone or fring or both that need the extra work but perhaps when the next version comes out I will try again.

It does do SIP as well though which is nice as this is going to be the new Skype.

I may do another post later on how I think that all this is a waste of time anyway as it wants to be a nice open standard and built into the phone as a service. S60 has SIP so we are getting there.

Why is the iPhone so expensive?

No really, it's not more complex than any other phone. In fact I would say that it's simpler. Really it should be less than a lot of the top end smart phones.

The components of the iPhone are pretty simple in phone terms. It has no keyboard so that is quite a big saving. It has a larger screen but the resolution is no greater so that should be cheaper to manufacturer. It has a touch screen but so do the ?SonyEricsson P800, P900, and P1i. It has no 3G setup and all the RF electronics that have to go with that. The one difference it may have is that the video and CPU chipsets may be slightly beefier than some others but no by much I would wager. So why should people pay and extra £200 or so over the two years of the contract? ( This may be more as I think that data tariffs are going to drop pretty soon. 3 already do all you can eat data from your phone for a fiver a month)

Keep it simple

I know you, my reader, have been hanging off the edge of your seat waiting to find out about my phone purchace. Did he go big? Did he keep it simple? Did he get the same again? To put you all out of your misery I got the the Nokia 6120 Classic in the end.

Pretty good choice if you ask me but why not the N95 for it has all the features, I hear you cry. Well there are a couple of reasons. Battery life, I have heard that some people have made it last nearly 8 hours. Cost, it would have been an extra six pounds a month. Camera, no really, I know it has a 5Mpix camera but to be honest the photos that people are getting with it look not that much better than the 3Mpix ones of the SE K800. Speed, most reports that I have read say that it is a little sluggish, the camera takes about 10 seconds to start up for instance. So all in all it's not the bargin that I was thinking off. Lets hope the N82 is a bit better.

The Nokia 6120 on the other hand is tiny, has a reasonable battery life, really fast and runs all the Series 60 apps that everybody is developing. Best of all it's free! I have to say I am impresessed about he buzz that Nokia is creating around the S60 operating systems in terms of developers. There are loads of Nokia hosted resources for that one.

I have so far opted for the the x-series silver tariff for data. This means that I have an unlimited* data allowance for using the internet from the phone. Including email. I have to say that I have been using that pretty heavely right now and it's quite cool to try things like streaming radio and not to have to worry about the cost.

Bad points so far. I have noticed that sometimes it's struggles to get an internet connection hopping from 3G to 3.5G and back before finally settleing back on 3G. This may be just because I am in a bad reception area but who knows. I have not used the voice much yet as I am trying to use up the last of the old voda contract first.

There are loads of apps to download and I am trying them all! I will report back if I find any good ones but please feel free to make any suggestions.