Life2go.net Get a life ...to go.

I have had a number of Nokia smart phones for ten years now and during these ten years I have bought only one application for them.

There have always been add-on software available for Nokia's smart phones. Nokia has been pushing the software development kit (SDK) and generally tried to encourage third party software development for Nokias mobile platform trough all kinds of support programs. The potential market has also been huge, Nokia has been the largest handset manufacturer for years.

During my first few weeks with the iPhone I already bought three applications. I have also installed far more free applications in these few weeks than I ever did with my different Nokia Communicators and Symbian phones.

Why? Buying and installing applications for Nokia phones is complicated while doing the same with the iPhone is a joy. Not only is the App Store a simple to use uniform marketplace that makes finding software simple and and paying for them safe. The App Store is also a place where you don't have to worry about being fooled into installing malware and know software will live up to certain basic quality standards.

Developers have been complaining about the restrictions Apple put on them - no being able to run applications in the background and so on. I love this restriction. Of all the free applications that I installed in my Nokia phones, half took the liberty to run in the background.

Did they run smoothly and withouth making the phone unstable? Of course not.
Did they even need to run in the background in the first place? Of course not.

Not allowing third party applications to run in the background is the only option and I salute Apple for having the currage to stand up to developers and forcing them to play nice with peoples phones.

The iPhone is a tightly controlled and locked down environment and the App Store a carefully controlled walled garden and this is it's streangth.

I don't want every 15-year-old self-taught coder to invent his or her own user interface standard or making his or her own additions to the Application Programming Interface. OpenClip? No thank you.

What is good for the developer may give short term gains but to get long term gains you have to do what is good for the end users that expect simplicity and consistency.

There is room in the market space for the other extreme too, the fully open anything goes platform Android. Both models have their own benefits as neither can offer everything to everyone.

Screenshot: GTS World Racing on the iPhone 3G (5,99 € in AppStore)

One week later than all the cool kids, but now I too have bought an iPhone 3G. The iPhone will be replacing my Nokia E90 Communicator although the iPhone, even unsubsidized, costs far less than the E90 (about 520€ compared to about 820€).

The touch-screen -keyboard used in the iPhone is terrible while the large qwerty keyboard in the E90 is superb. Apart from that, the iPhone is superior: more responsive, more stable, easier to use, more fun, smaller and so on. I have read some complaints about battery life and slow 3G speed but I have not had any of those problems.

One really big improvement over the E90 is the quick positioning service. With the E90 I spent minutes waiting for a GPS signal but the iPhone finds my position immediately and with great precision - even indoors, probably by using the wifi based Skyhook positioning system if a GPS signal is unavailable. And then there is the AppStore - it is a joy to search for and install additional software compared to doing it with a Symbian phone and it keeps all your third party softwares perfectly up-to-date.

Front page, full page ad in Finland's largest newspaper advertising the iPhone 3G on Sunday the 13th of July - two days after it was launched ... and sold out.

The text says "iPhone, that you have been waiting for". It really should say "iPhone, that you are still waiting for".

On Monday (14th of July), I called different stores that Sonera (the operator selling the iPhone in Finland) listed as places selling the iPhone and none had any, they where all sold out.

Well, kind of. They do have phones, but their not for sale as they are reserved.

About a month ago when Jobs showed of the new iPhone, said it would cost a maximum of 200 dollars around the world and the launch date was set - Sonera, started a reservation list. The price in Finland was not published, but it seems many belived the price would actually be something like 125€ - not realizing that the price of the phone is just an arbitrary number as it is subsidized and the real price is made up trough large montly "subscription" fees. By the time the phone went on sale and these same persons realized it would end up costing something like 800€ and not offer unlimited data, many on the reservation list chose not to buy the phone - but they did not cancel their place on the list either. So now stores have phones that are reserved by people with no intention of buying one while those intent on buying have to walk out of stores empty handed.

I was going to update the firmware in my Nokia E90 so I launched VMWare Fusion under OS X to get Windows going. Problem is, Nokia Software Updater requires XP. That's right, no OS X support and no Vista support. It seems the Vista SP1 update broke Nokia's updater software and they still haven't managed to fix it.

I wish they would simply have an update application in the phone that would periodically check for updates and when found, offer to download over WiFi or 3G to the memory card and then allow you to install the new firmware right there in the phone. Now you have to install a poorly functional Windows application and you actually have to pop the battery in the phone to find a serial number in order to check on-line if there is an update available. This is the kind of thing built in auto-update software is supposed to keep track of.

Sonera, the largest telecom operator in Finland, published prices for the upcoming iPhone 3G yesterday (27.6.2008). Unfortunately, they have left out the unlimited data option available with other phones so people are going to end up paying 1,49 € per exceeding MB - that is about 4 € per minute or 251 € per hour at 3G speed.

Nokia today said it would become the sole owner of Symbian, buying out Ericsson, Siemens, Samsung and Panasonic. In reality, Symbian has been very Nokia centric for quite some time already so this move is not surprising.

More surprising is Nokia's intention to make Symbian open source trough the Symbian Foundation. This is clearly a pre-emptive attack on Google's Android project, the open source Linux based operating system for cell phones that will be put to use in the first cell phones later this year.

An important question needs to be answered: is Nokia successful because of Symbian or despite of Symbian?

Symbian has been around since 1998 and is based on Psion's EPOC that was made for PDA's in the late 1980s when processing power and memory were much more limited than today. Much has been done to modernize Symbian but a common complain from software developers is still that Symbian tries to be resource friendly and "light" by putting a lot of burden on the software developer. In contrast, more modern competitors such as Android seem to be much simpler to use for developers and simply designed for the kind of mobile devices we have today. Apple has also created a lot of interest in their iPhone trough a very impressive looking and easy to use software development kit (SDK). Developers are claiming they can make mobile software in weeks for the iPhone that used to take months for other mobile operating systems, ie Symbian.

It is indeed a sorry sight, all those road warriors sitting on the floor in convention centers and at airports in order to be close to one of the few electrical outlets that can be found in such places.

Now The New York Times reports that La Guardia airport in New York has installed "power poles", simply a pole with a number of electrical outlets.

It is a great move by the airport but it is sad that being able to find electrical outlets makes front page news.

My Nokia E90 cell phone works well in almost any corner of the world, including here in the US. Still, I can not allow it to connect to the network because as soon as I do, the GPRS data connection icon pops up. I don't know which application causes the connection to be made, it might be several, but with data transfer prices ridiculously high while using a foreign network, there is no way I can keep the phone connected and allow the phone to transfer data at will.

Some applications have options like "warn before connecting while roaming" but obviously not all. Nor would it make any sense to choose "always ask before connecting" for all applications since I want them to connect automatically when needed - as long as I am in Finland where I have a fixed monthly price for unlimited data transfers.

Nokia needs to add an option where users can temporarily choose to not allow any application to connect to the network without explicit approval - while on trips abroad for example.

My transition to the Mac side is now complete.

I have been living with almost daily blue screens in Windows Vista Ultimate for a year now and nothing helps. I have hanged in there, thinking that things will improve once service pack 1 arrives. Today SP1 finally came and I immediately installed it. Once installed, Windows told me I needed to active Windows. Again? Well, ok.

But when I tried, it told me the key was already in use. Well of course it is already in use, I used it to activate the product a year ago when I bought it. So now it is offering me to either call the infamous automated Microsoft phone system and explain myself by pressing buttons on my cell phone or TO BUY A NEW LICENCE!

Ok, I give up on Vista. I have had it.