The Nokia 5000 with OperaMini and E-Mail

Nokia 500 small
The battery of my 'voice call only' phone has pretty much given up after several years of use so it was time to buy a new low-end phone just for this purpose. Or almost. Inspired by this article of Krisse at All About Symbian, I decided to go for a Nokia 5000. While being an entry level phone and available for 90 euros without a contract, taxes and shipping included, it has a 320 x 240 pixels display that is really stunning. The resolution is the same as for example the display on the N95 but much smaller, hence, the the graphics are even sharper. With 65k colors the display can't quite match that of the N95 with 16 million, but it doesn't make a difference for the other main application besides making voice calls: web browsing.

Yes, you read correctly, web browsing. Nokia delivers the phone with Opera Mini pre-installed and I was looking forward to see how well web browsing works on such an entry level device. I quickly replaced the pre-installed Opera Mini with the latest version (4.1) as the original version had an ugly quick, it didn't save some of the settings I made in the browser. But the latest version works flawlessly.

Configuration and Startup Time

Launching Opera Mini takes a bit longer than on the N95 but 12 seconds is still quite acceptable. Once Opera Mini has started one can surf the web straight away. No APN or other configuration was required, as the Nokia 5000 seems to have an internal database of networks and their corresponding APNs. I tried with several different SIM cards and the correct APN was configured automatically in all cases. Well done Nokia, this is how it should be!

Page Load Times

Pages also don't load quite as quickly as on the N95 even though the device is EDGE capable. While downloading the latest version I could experience the speed gain of EDGE over GPRS. While loading a web page, however, the transmission is quite slow, probably because the browser is downloading and rendering the page at the same time, which seems to take a lot of processing power that is missing for treating incoming data quickly. Despite pages loading slower than on the N95, the experience is still o.k.

Scrolling

Scrolling up and down in the page is, yes, you guessed right, also slower than on the N95. However, using the full page up/down feature of the browser instead of scrolling line by line much improves the experience. Also switching off soft scrolling 'visual effects' in the configuration menu brings quite a significant speedup.

Memory Management

Memory seems to be quite scarce on the device. After loading a couple of big pages, a 'memory full' error message pops up every now and then with the screen remaining empty. Ignoring the message and reloading the page solves the issue, Opera Mini seems to use the notification to clear up memory. However, the number of pages one can scroll back is quite limited. Depending on the size of the pages, it's only possible to go back 2 to 4 pages without triggering a reload. On the N95 on the other hand, one can go back almost indefinitely without reloading earlier pages. Still, the experience is o.k.

No Multitasking

While being a bit slower than what I am used to which is quite o.k., there is one limitations which I have difficulties to cope with: No multitasking. While browsing the web on my N95 I am quite used to jump seamlessly between Opera Mini, the calendar to make notes when something comes to mind while browsing the web and the e-mail inbox to copy/paste links. The Nokia 5000, however, is a single tasking OS as far as user applications are concerned so I can't exit the browser without closing it.

The E-Mail Client

The second most important application on my mobile phone is e-mail. The S40 e-mail client looks quite o.k. and it gets all the required settings from a server on the network after typing in the email address. Impressive. The downside of automatic configuration is, however, that I can't get to the configuration information afterwards so I have no idea if my e-mails are encrypted during transmission. When configuring an e-mail account manually, this can be set during the configuration process and changed later on. While receiving email works quite well, the client can unfortunately only retrieve the full e-mail or only the header, but nothing in between. This makes the client completely unusable for me as I often receive e-mails with attachments. While I am usually not interested in the attachments on the phone, I'd like to read the message itself and not only the header. I can't quite understand why this feature didn't make it into the e-mail client!? But o.k. there's still the mobile web client for my inbox.

Summary

For phone that costs 'only' 90 euros, the Nokia 5000 is extraordinarily versatile. The biggest disadvantages I could make out are the somewhat slow but still acceptable scrolling in the browser, no multitasking and the missing support for partial e-mail downloads. On the positive side there is the Opera Mini browser that works really well, renders even full web pages just as on my N95 and also the auto-configuration of the packet data parameters. So if you don't have a lot of money and want to browse the web from a mobile with a good screen, this is the phone for you!

Qt on S60

This week, Trolltech / Nokia have released their Qt cross platform application framework for the Symbian / S60 platform, the OS and GUI of Nokia's flagship N- and Eseries phones. Qt is probably best known as the toolkit used in KDE, one of the most popular graphical user interfaces for Linux and programs such as Skype and Google Earth. The promise of this framework is to code once and deploy everywhere.

Qt does not only standardize GUI development across platforms but has many libraries to do other tasks such as networking, database access, scripting, etc. in a cross-platform way. With three mobile platforms now supported, i.e. Windows Mobile, mobile Linux and S60, it will become easier than ever do write mobile software for different hardware platforms.

Despite using the native GUI elements of the different OSes I wonder how Qt applications will look like on S60!? Will programmers be sensitive enough to customize the user interface of their programs to the look and feel of the individual operating systems, which of course reduces the benefits of the cross platform approach, or will they go for a more relaxed style and try to make the application work the same on all platforms they plan to make their application available? Or maybe the major benefit of this move is less cross-platform deployment and more attracting developers to the S60 platform that already know Qt? Time will tell.

A Prepaid Broadband SIM without an APN

In an ideal world you take your notebook wherever you want and that built in 3G modem or USB dongle gives you access anywhere. That pretty much works today while you stay in the country of the network operator you are with. As soon as you move out of the country, however, hyper expensive roaming charges spell the end of the fun. Mrs. Reding will surely improve the situation over time but it won't come quickly, especially for notebook access.

The practical solution today is to buy a prepaid broadband SIM, now available in many countries , and replace the home operators SIM while staying abroad, if the 3G device is not locked. The main issue for most users, however, comes afterwards. Usually, each network operator uses it's own access point name (APN) and sometimes even a username and password that has to be set on the notebook. This is an action that most people are not really very comfortable doing.

The thing is that this is totally unnecessary. O2 in Germany for example has recently introduced a feature in their network to accept any APN. As a consequence no matter what the user configures or even if he leaves the APN blank the connection will be established. While I don't like O2's approch to do it for all SIM cards, it would have benefit when being used in combination with prepaid broadband SIMs. Add to that a big fat note on the sales package that no configuration is required beyond putting the SIM in your already existing open 3G device and you've got a sure winner.

A simple thing to be done and I would not be surprised if operators in countries such as Austria, where you can buy prepaid SIM cards for Internet access in any supermarket for a couple of euros, would start to implement this feature soon to make it easy to switch to them. Switching to them, that's the incentive for them to do it! And a strong one at that.

So this is the practical scenario: You arrive at the airport in another country and after baggage claim you head straight for the next 'I sell everything and nothing' shop at the airport to get such a SIM. You put it into your dongle or notebook and that's it. Or even better, it's sold by the plane's cabin crew on the flight.

The only thing that stands in the way of this in many countries is the requirement to identify yourself when buying a SIM card. But in countries such as Austria and the U.K. where this is not required, it's totally feasible and operators have the will to think about it. And in countries were identification is required, how about identifying the user via a landing page where he has to type in his name, address and maybe credit card information that can be checked? In some countries like Germany, name, address and passport number is all that is required and SIM cards are activated by some prepaid vendors like that over the Internet.

I think many travelers wouldn't think twice about paying 20 euros for a gigabyte or so even if they are just in the country for a couple of days. And it's likely that most of them wouldn't fully use the 1GB anyway. A good deal I would say for everyone involved!

Remotely Connecting To Your Home Services

For those of you who have been following my blog entries on femtos, home services and DLNA in the past couple of days, here's a link to a previous blog entry on Ericsson's ideas on how one could connect back to home services while not being at home.

I wished that the currently defined set of home services could be extended to other things such as a centralized calendar, notes, address book, etc. as I am one of the few people who would like to have this data stored at home rather than in the cloud. But I guess the current DLNA initiative is more about multimedia content than personal information.

Telstra to Upgrate to HSPA+

A tip from a reader brought me to this article on Telstra in Australia saying that they intend to upgrade their 3.5G network in Australia first to 21 MBit/s in 2009 and later on to 42 MBit/s. The step to 21 MBit/s seems logical. According to the 3GPP standards, that's an upgrade to 64QAM modulation. If they have the latest base stations from Ericsson, they might be able to do this without a hardware upgrade.

Concerning the 42 MBit/s, that sounds like the 28 MBit/s one gets with MIMO plus 64QAM modulation on top. When I last had a look at the standards document referenced above, there was not yet a terminal class for this maximum speed.

A note of caution: Such speeds can only be reached under very special circumstances, i.e. no other subscribers in the cell and the base station antenna very close by.

DLNA – Nokia N95 Streaming Multimedia Content over Wifi

Here's a little follow up on my previous thoughts on how mobile devices could interact with devices in your home network. This video of Nokia shows how the uPNP DLNA compatible Nokia N95 is used as a Mobile Digital Media Server (M-DMS) by a game console and a TV screen to get pictures and music. Quite impressive!

First ‘One Tunnel’ Network Sighted in the Wild

While LTE is in development, loads in 3G networks are increasing and network operators are looking for ways to reduce their costs. One such move seems to be moving to a 'One Tunnel' architecture in which the user data packets bypass one of the packet core nodes, the SGSN.

Instead of tunneling the packets between the mobile device and the Internet through the base station, the RNC, the SGSN and the GGSN, this approach directly connects the RNC and the GGSN. As a consequence, fewer resources are required on the SGSN since it doesn't have to 're-package' the frames from one tunnel into another (hence the feature's name 'One Tunnel'). For details see this blog entry.

Nokia Siemens Networks now reports that network operator '3' in Austria is their first customer for the One Tunnel feature in this podcast that can be found here. I can imagine that they are quite keen to use the feature since Austria is a very competitive market and SIM cards and USB data sticks for 3G Internet access can be bought in every supermarket for next to nothing.

HSDPA Alongside A CS Voice Call

Back a year ago I noticed that an incoming circuit-switched voice call during a 3.5G HSDPA packet-switched data session forced the packet connection to go back to 64 kbit/s dedicated bearer while the call was ongoing. After the call the bearer was upgraded to 384 kbit/s but was only put back on the High Speed Shared Channels once the download was finished. Looks like the software on the network side has advanced a bit in the meantime as I recently noticed that even during a phone call an ongoing download continued at HSDPA speeds. Very nice!

Note: The test a year earlier was performed in the German Vodafone network while my latest observation is from the Orange France network. The RAN vendors might not necessarily be the same and it's even likely that they are not.

Smartphones: Units, Revenue, Profits

Recently, David Wood shared a couple of interesting numbers on his blog on the importance and relation of smartphones compared to 'ordinary' phones. In his post he says that while smartphones only account for 10-15% of sales units, the sales revenue is between 20-25% and profits may even exceed 40%.

So far, I wondered if big mobile manufacturers are mainly working on smarthphones as a way to secure their future by developing new features on these platforms and then work on finding ways of implementing them on cheapter platforms. These numbers, however, suggest that even for their running business, smartphones have a major impact on the bottom line, despite the small unit numbers.

Femtocells and Connected Home Services

Last week I met Thierry Samama in Paris, who is looking after ip.access' pico- and femtocell business in France to discuss a bit about the wireless industry and, of course, about femto cells. I asked him what he thinks about accessing devices at home via a 3G device directly via the femtocell instead of going through an operators core network. It was good to hear that ip.access is actually already working on this and he pointed me to this video in which they demo their connected home services capabilities. The video doesn't give many technical details but the applications shown are just what I had in mind concerning interaction between 3G handsets and devices at home such as a media server, TV set, etc.

The Key To The User's Heart

To me, accessing the home network via the femtocell holds the key for users actually wanting a femtocell at home. An alternative are of course dual mode devices with a Wifi interface. However, without pre-configuration of those devices by the mobile operator, who could of course do that if they wanted to, most people will have difficulties configuring the device to make use of them in the home network. Definitely an advantage for femtocells since no configuration of the mobile is required.

The video doesn't say exactly how local access works and how the applications on the Windows Mobile driven devices access devices and in the home network. UPNP perhaps? Nokia has already made strides in this direction with UPNP, which is part of S60 and Nseries phones which come equipped with a Wifi interface.

Femto In A Bundle

So I think femtos packaged together in a single box with Wifi and DSL/cable access sold by a converged fixed/mobile operator will best sell in a bundle which also includes mobile devices, pre-configured applications on them that can access resources in the home network, a media server at home and some IPTV. So instead of getting a subscription for a DSL line which includes IPTV and fixed line telephony offered these days in many countries, I could very well imagine that the femto that allows local access forms the bridge to the wireless world and removes the need for that extra telephone line. Others like Nokia are likely to take the Wifi/UPNP approach and it will be interesting to see how the different approaches compete with each other.

For more info on Femtos, connected home services, handover, autoconfiguration etc. have a look at ip.access' home page, they've got some good ressources there.