The Digest V1 # 596

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The Digest Fri, 17 Sep 2004 Volume 01 : Number 596

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Sent to: 756 subscribers

In today's digest 09 messages:

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- Re: Last Chance Saloon

- Thanks, Prar !

- Re: 9500 questions

- 9210 email app

- Symbian founder on mobile past, present and future

- Re: Sony T610

- RE: T610

- Re: 9300

- Revos from Carphone

*++++++++++&

Date: 16 Sep 2004 23:58:24 -0500

From: Alan Morris

Subject: Re: Last Chance Saloon

Jack

> I tried ordering 2 revos on the Carphonewarehouse site

> But they don't accept checkout from outside UK!

> Would some nice UK psioner around here accept to order these

> 2 Revos for me ?

Jack, I spent 26 minutes on their very slow web site last night ordering just one. Today (Thursday) I received an e-mail confirming my order and later another telling me they were out of stock.

Big waste of time. But thanks to the original poster for the information.

Alan R Morris, G4ENS.

Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, UK.

Using a Psion netBook & Nokia 6210e.

*++++++++++&

Date: 16 Sep 2004 19:49:18 -0500

From: Timothy H.D. Williams

Subject: Thanks, Prar !

On 14 Sep 2004, at 23:26, Prar wrote:

> Carphone Warehouse are having a clear out of old stock which includes

> Revos for £40.

Two hours after reading that, I dropped my 24mb Revo and smashed the

screen !!

Thanks Prar for pointing me in the right direction - I've just bought

two. And hope they are the last Psion Revos I will have to buy.

I can't live without a Revo.

Whenever I travel - and I travel light with a folding bike - I have to

take my iBook for downloading photos.

Whenever I walk, I take the Revo.

*++++++++++&

Date: 16 Sep 2004 18:02:24 -0500

From: Mike Dyer

Subject: Re: 9500 questions

>Date: 15 Sep 2004 21:21:18 -0500

>From: Kevin Thorne >Subject: 9500 questions

>Such a shame that most mobile PAYG operators don't allow fax or data.

Not true!, I have used data on Orange PAYG for nearly 3 years now.

I recently phoned their customer service so they could upgrade my sim card for GPRS and they were absolutely brilliant.

Regards,

Mike Dyer.

*++++++++++&

Date: 16 Sep 2004 17:50:19 -0500

From: Kevin Thorne

Subject: 9210 email app

To Mike Dyer:

Hi Mike,

I'm not sure if I've missed something or you are actually referring to a different Kevin but I did own a 9210 until about a year ago so if you have any questions regarding the email app (or anything else about it) then do feel free to ask!

Regards

Kevin Thorne

*++++++++++&

Date: 16 Sep 2004 14:59:48 -0500

From: Manuel Campos Galvan

Subject: Symbian founder on mobile past, present and future

Published on the Register recently:

Symbian founder on mobile past, present and future

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco

Published Wednesday 21st July 2004 17:28 GMT

Exclusive Colly Myers has had a pretty low profile since leaving Symbian

two years ago.

For the former Managing Director of Psion, the Symbian OS is very much his

baby. Before Psion, he was a mainframe programmer, and always wanted to see

a mainframe-class operating system on a handheld. So he instigated the

project, ten years ago this November, and led the kernel team. In 1998

Psion nudged Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola into investing in the OS to

create a standalone company.

Now he's back with the phone answers service AQA (text 63336 and for a

quid, you'll get a researched answer back by SMS in a few minutes). So we

were pretty curious about how he took stock of the current business, what

lies ahead and what he's learned. Some of the answers may surprise you.

Software is a service

The most surprising revelation came when we asked how many Symbian

applications are running on his phone (a Nokia 6600).

"Not one," he says. He simply doesn't see a mass market for software.

Instead, he thinks, most people will want "a lot of things you can get on

the Internet on your phone translated as a service, piece by piece".

"For raw OS software there isn't a market - it will become a Java market;

one where you can download and run applications everywhere." The data

downloads market for ringtones is worth billions, but that's a service, he

points out.

We rifled through our back interviews and pulled one out from February

2000. Even then Myers when asked if the killer app for phone really might

be something as simple as talking to people, "I really don't know [and] I

don't think anyone knows".

At the time he forecast 100 million wireless information devices by 2003-4,

in line with analysts and as we all know that's about 80 million short of

predictions. That said, he's bullish about the prospects for Symbian and

for the mobile industry as a whole, once it realizes how much transactions

are worth, and developers realize that software is a service.

Myers characterized the much-hyped VoIP operators like Skype as a "chimera"

and predicted the winners and losers.

But the other surprising answer is that he doesn't have much faith in the

success of feature-packed phones that do a little bit of everything, not

very well.

"I used to think you could convert a lot of things [to an all-in-one

smartphone] but I'm older and wiser, I think," he told us. Instead he sees

a bright future for best of breed devices such as the iPod.

"You end up with a 'spork' - a combination of a spoon and a fork. It's no

good as a spoon and no good as a fork."

(This interview was conducted before the pre-emption process and new

financing arrangement for Symbian were announced. One observation of Myers

proved to be prescient. "Nokia haven't proven themselves to be bad," he

said. "So you might as well go along with it until they start behaving

badly." That seems to be the prevailing mood, as the refinancing boosted

the head count and saw increased commitment from the other partners.)

So where's the mass market for software developers?

There were always two sides to this: Palm with their talk of a 'Palm

economy' which is a lot of claptrap, and the PC side and the consumer side

on the other. For raw OS software there isn't a consumer market. It will

become a Java market: one where you can download and run applications

everywhere.

The data download market is for songs and ring tones and bits of software

that are part of a service. But it's service orientated, not application

oriented.

There are no signature apps that aren't already in the phone. Everything is

built into your phone already. I always thought that was a trivial

argument. But the real market for Symbian developers is as providers of

software to the phones; the telephony apps, T9, and so on.

I'm really surprised you don't have any Symbian apps on your Symbian phone.

What advice would you have to, say, Lee Epting, who's got the job of

evangelizing Nokia developers?

My point is that there is not a mass consumer market for C++ applications,

with the emphasis on consumer and C++. My theory is that any really

successful C++ application will become a signature application and will end

up being built into the phone. Opera is a perfect example.

So there will be a large market for C++ applications but the market will be

to ODMs [Original Device Manufacturers] and handset manufacturers, and

possibly, in time, network operators. There will be a large consumer market

for downloadable applications but it will be for smaller and lightweight

applications and they will be in Java. They must be cost effective to

download and they will have increasingly shorter shelf lives. It will be

Java because a large target market must exist, and for mobile phones this

will only be for Java MIDP phones. Lee still needs to do whatever she's

doing because the market needs the powerful C++ signature applications, but

she can spend less time trying to target the applications at a consumer market.

The best thing she can do is to try and promote a cross network operator

platform that allows developers of Java programs to offer their software

across all networks so as to increase the size of the market. This platform

must allow the phone easy access to the apps available for download and

must bill the customer. The platform must allow any developer to make their

program available on the platform, set its price and receive an agreed

share of the revenue billed by the network operator. This will create the

right whole product offering to allow the market for downloadable software

to let the market take off.

So is there a market for this abstract thing, mobile 'data' ?

The appetite for data cannot be underestimated - people are just looking at

the wrong type. It's just not going to be download or video data - it's

going to be transaction data. They're going to need every bit of data they

can get their hands on - voice traffic and transaction traffic. It's hard

to see any other means by which you can run transactions.

OFDM and other new technologies will just be subsumed into the network,

just like ADSL was subsumed. In two or three years data will be economic

and by 2009 it will be in the midrange.

It's down that alignment of the value chain we always talked about.

Everything has to be in place.

When you've got real end-to-end computing, you need to know the IP address

of each client, which is why IP6, Mobile IP are so important. You've got to

have secure transaction handling too. 3G does everything here - you can

back-add it all to 2.5G, but it's all part of the system in 3GPP.

We also need the final bit from the phone to the merchant. We already have

ticketing or tills that take Bluetooth, but the industry will need to

campaign to get people happy putting it in their phones; and the mechanics

of this is happening.

Until then people will avoid it. You already don't carry money or a ticket

with you. I have a wireless card for my car and I don't carry keys: if only

I could get rid of my wallet! Then my passport. This has a very high

consumer appeal, but you've got to make it easy to access.

Everyone can count - it's easier than texting.

Won't there by some resistance to putting all this in a phone when your

phone can be nicked so easily?

But it's not your whole bank account you're carrying around. You just put

in £10 a day. Risk is not a factor - you'll download money into the phone

over the phone. It'll be like a float. People will be carrying less money

with them than they do now. I think there'll be no problem overcoming that

prejudice.

Not even something like WorldMate, which gives me the weather and the

exchanges rates?

That's a service.

Issuebits was set up to publish Java software, but there's no mass market

for it. It may be 2007 or 2008 before Java software is sold on mobile

phones, and you're never going to make a big living out of it.

Symbian is doing its job. The products that are being built are reliable

and well positioned for next ranges of phones. It's way beyond the

engineering of most PCs and routers: everything you've ever seen is crammed

into one device, and it's got to be simple. Symbian has persuaded DoCoMo to

buy in, it's got Nokia Series 60 and UIQ which are successful, and the

licensees are very happy.

We moved away from doing user interfaces at Symbian, because it wasn't a

product company. It's a technology company. It provides a service and

really anchors the telephony handset market. It ensures that there are

standards that are built up.

How important is timing? In 1999 or 2000, we seemed to think that Symbian

had a huge competitive advantage by being several months' lead over the rivals…

The systems integration problem is so huge that dealing with it takes a

surprisingly long time, even if you have all the experience in the world.

We're coming up to November 2004, and that's the 10 year anniversary of

when I began to write the [Symbian OS] code. When I started, I said it

wouldn't get into a stable system on a cost basis until 2001, and that

included the phone segment.

We were a couple of years too early, even then. Even now it's showing up

for mid-range phones and is now starting to deliver sensible quantities:

Nokia shipped 10 million Symbian phones, and that's a lot. Our good friends

at Palm used to get excited when they shipped two million.

There's so much more to a phone that the technology.

What really happened in that period was the unbelievable uncertainty in the

value chain. With location based services, things are coming to an end; WAP

is showing a bit of life; Java is coming to phones, but it's still nothing

to write home about.

WAP, the paradigm of browsing on a phone wasn't one that was going to go

anywhere, and of course they oversold the system dramatically. You could

have a 640 by 480 screen and have the same content available even if you

messed about with it but it's still not the right metaphor for a phone. You

want a lot of things you can get on the Internet on your phone translated

as a service, piece by piece.

You know, I used to think you could convert a lot of things to work well on

the phone, but I'm older and wiser, I think. For example, making a phone a

browser and an mp3 player. Each of those things are a lesser thing and you

end up with what we call a 'spork' - you end up with a spoon and a fork.

It's no good as a spoon and no good as a fork, but it's got both things.

The reality is that trying to push everything into everything just doesn't

make sense. We'll see an unfolding of more things like the iPod - focused

at a particular consumer solution. Everything doesn't go into there. Where

you can break out groups of functions - the phone and the camera may work

for some segments but not others; some might never want it, or might never

use it. As we get more and more digital, all this complexity has to be

tamed in a way that the consumer can access it.

People are trying to solve the computer problem, not the human problem,

which is aligning the whole value chain. Everyone is fighting each other

left, right and center - when they should be focusing on delivering a

service for a customer. No customers ever expressed the wish that they

wanted WAP.

So what we've done at IssueBits is focus on a service, clearly the

customers want to answer questions on their mobile phones, so we do that

really well. We make sure it's easily accessible and easily viewable when

you get it back. That's the way to bring in the next level of services.

But we're seeing non-Symbian smartphones with features that we never

thought we'd see, like the Sony Ericsson 700s - removable media, gigapixel

cameras and Bluetooth. Isn't that good enough for most people?

They are! 2G or 2.5G has carried value through. In terms of the radio, it's

all integrated into that OS. And there's hell of a value to staying on that

platform. There's a lot of engineering in 2G and 2.5G, and a lot more is

required to leave it.

But as you get into 3G, that problem reverses, because there is so much

complexity that you can't manage. For example, you have to have fallback to

GSM, and do CDMA. There, the cost value falls apart and it's much better to

get a Symbian OS phone. DoCoMo weren't coping with a proprietary OS for 3G;

they've licensed Symbian and now they are very happy.

Isn't there cost pressure, and Symbian phones are more expensive to make?

Not really. 3G adds the costs, and Symbian doesn't add much more. Nokia has

Symbian in the middle range and it will push down. The 6600 will go where

the 2200 is today.

Won't a Java phone won't be significantly cheaper?

Perhaps once they've got a proper, clean cut version. But they've evolved

it over time without being able to claw back features. AWT was replaced by

SWING and they're both still in there. So it's a very big system.

Standards tend to be bad when they're arrived at in a higgledy-piggledy

way, like Microsoft and Java. Symbian was arrived at in a very clean way.

Then there's all the other rubbish you have to put on top of them.

Java's value, which I'm a great fan of, is being able to run objects

anywhere. It's a distributed world. But Java is too slow for running the

low-level stuff and it has a problem where it's not in control of its

memory. It can only clean up memory. You don't have a control process, so

it has to do garbage collection in a real time environment. If you run out

of memory, you're dead. That's a fundamental problem which Symbian doesn't

have. [Symbian announced a real-time capable version of its OS last

February - ao]

But people talk a lot of twaddle about it because they don't know what

they're talking about.

You simply don't see Linux cutting it?

There's as much missing as there is in it. Motorola is trying to do that -

but there's a huge amount to provide, it's hard to catch up from where

Symbian is, it's well ahead of MS with all the communication stacks; you

have to put all that in there.

The proposition remains consistent in that a standard for the next

generation of mobile phones is a good thing;

But the demand for 4GB iPods has surprised everyone - critics said it was

rotten value and it wouldn't sell. And two or three years out, phones will

have 4GB of storage…

But if you think of user getting access to a service, what's the real

possibility that a phone manufacturer is actually going to give you the

whole package? There's the iTunes software, there's synchronization that

works, there's the easy to access menu, the stereo headphones, the iTunes

store and shop, the distribution of the songs - all that's got to be good.

Maybe it will take ten years to get together, but it's a long process.

We as technologists remember our favorite things, not the whole product.

For us to be the early adopters we'll put up with it because we like these.

So what if there's a bit of sync missing. But that mass market won't do

this. The more we add, the more we have to put it together ourselves.

[At Psion] we learned a lesson from Lotus in the early days. With Sinclair

we produced four easy-to-use software packages and integrated them tightly.

They were the four second best products in their field: word processing,

spreadsheet, graphics, and a database. Lotus produced the best spreadsheet,

so-so other applications and no word processor at all - and they won. The

very best will always beat second best.

Symbian OS is a very, very good OS for a phone. It remains well ahead of

the Microsoft offerings. All the comms side that we haven't seen will come

into play yet. It's already in the phone - such as MobileIP and IPv6 - and

that's real comms value for the Nokias.

Let's talk about VoIP - over here in California that's thought to be very

revolutionary. I've always thought these arguments forget about incumbent

advantage

Yes. VoIP is going to go over broadband, the incumbents sell broadband, and

they have a way of connecting the local loop to the Internet, so the BTs

are going to be very happy.

Some companies won't be here, some grow and some disappear. It's also true

that gorillas in one sector that don't make that transition to next sector.

They can skip a generation like IBM. So some people we know today will be gone.

IPv6 will be next thing we move to.

But one interesting question is will we get all the services and benefits

we're promised. I learned from Ericsson that they invented 260 services for

PBXs and four only ever caught on. Voicemail and Caller ID were a couple.

So what innovation and what services do you think we are going to see?

Ask yourself, what are people going to with all their pictures in the

future? What are they going to do? Is writing to CD-ROM really safe? Sorry

- it's gone in a few years. Are people going to do a 3-stage offering, or

make one of their copies in an alternative geographical location? Nobody

does that.

With digital you can do things better; for a really simple straight forward

things.

No one has designed architecture for the home. We've got Wi-Fi and

broadband and Bluetooth but there's no way to put it all together.

So who, then? We've seen that even with the best intentions Wintel can't do

a good job. It has to come from the consumer electronics people;

So it has to go back to being vertically integrated; you have to tackle the

product offering yourself. You start doing something vertically because you

can't work with everybody. So somebody has to break through, starting with

a niche.

Like Apple?

That's one way. Whoever does this has got to do the hardware, and the

software, and the systems infrastructure, and not many people can do that;

and they must have a brand that the consumer respects. On the one hand they

have to be known for style going into the home, and on the other be able to

manage infrastructure. And they've got to be big.

So they need to establish a beach-head, and some companies wouldn't even

bother to try to cross this chasm. And it needs a really big organization

to be able to deliver. So I don't even know if they know they should be

doing this.

But isn't there a real advantage to an open network?

Yes but the voice problem doesn't go away.

It's like a magic trick. Skype is not offering a whole product in a mass

market. It's in a small market and it's a chimera. Skype couldn't roll out

their service to compete with anything, globally. OK, they might be able

to, but it would be an awful and probably still couldn't get it to work

everywhere you go. That's even true for 3G, now!

What would you do differently, if you had your time as CEO again?

We wouldn't have spent time on user interfaces. We'd have left that much

earlier. [In 2001, Symbian left the business of designing UIs to its

licensees, with the exception of UIQ, which remains part of the company].

Everyone was keen to share and we tried hard for two years, but it was

never going to happen. Everything about those companies [phone OEMs] is

based in their own UIs. So that was two years wasted.

In hindsight we came to the right view; but we never learnt that lesson.

There were other things people were keen for us to get into early, for

example WAP. We could never have NOT done it, but I had a pretty good

feeling it wasn't going to be worth it. But I wasn't the customers.®

*++++++++++&

Date: 16 Sep 2004 06:53:51 -0500

From: Ian Chapple

Subject: Re: Sony T610

Date: 15 Sep 2004 14:02:28 -0500

From: Hoffman, Susan Subject:

Susan,

>>Does anyone know if the Sony T610 uses EPOC? It comes with an unidentified synch program for Outlook. I'd like to synch with my Psion 5mx, if possible. It talks about using a cable to synch with a PC, but doesn't say anything about what kind of cable.<<

It'll be that very expensive one that you can only get from Sony, and which you can't use for anything else...

Cheers, Ian.

*++++++++++&

Date: 16 Sep 2004 06:39:02 -0500

From: Wong Koi Hin

Subject: RE: T610

Reply to Susan Hoffman

Dear Susan,

SH>>Does anyone know if the Sony T610 uses EPOC? It comes with an unidentified synch program for Outlook. I'd like to synch with my Psion 5mx, if possible. It talks about using a cable to synch with a PC, but doesn't say anything about what kind of cable.

You can't synch directly between the phone and your 5mx. The cable it is referring to is a Sony Ericsson Data Cable. Be sure to get one that works with the T610, older SE cables may have problems. They come in both serial and USB. IMO, if you end up synching with your PC rather than your Psion, then best to get a Bluetooth adapter for your PC and synch that way. Cheaper and you get a more versatile accessory.

The synch program is probably XTNDConnect which is a stripped down version of the full software and does not support synching with anything else except between Outlook and your T610. At least this is the case with my T610 purchased more than a year ago.

Warm regards,

Koi Hin

*++++++++++&

Date: 16 Sep 2004 06:39:01 -0500

From: Wong Koi Hin

Subject: Re: 9300

Reply to Itamar Engelsman

IE>>Re.: Nokia 9300 - Somehow I still can't see how a Nokia 9300 or 9500 would replace my mBook. My spreadsheets would be almost unreadable on the smaller screens and the typing would be a lot slower than my 8 finger typing on the mB (no, I do have 10 fingers, just don't use them all to type <G>).

I don't see the 9300 replacing my MnetBook either, however I would still personally be very interested in the 9300 as an always-with-me communicator. I would have liked a camera in the phone, however it is something I would most happily trade a keyboard for, small as it is on the 9300. Back in the days when my Revo was my sole Psion device, I spend many hours typing up various documents on that little machine while travelling on land or air or as the fancy strike me. At first i was put off with the lack of touch-screen (having been spoiled by my Psions) however on second thoughts with 2 hands on the machine, a touchscreen might not be the best; better to have good selection tools from the keyboard itself, I say.

While it is true the screen is small, my understanding is there are magnifying options ala Psions (but dont quote me on this) also the higher resolution means sharper text.

Having a 'gizmo' that includes everything but the kitchen sink currently means settling for a larger form-factor. Form-factor is, however, an important consideration for me.

The fact remains the 9300 has not been released, looking forward to some actual reviews from folks on this digest.

Warm regards,

Koi Hin

*++++++++++&

Date: 17 Sep 2004 13:56:49 -0500

From: Timothy H.D. Williams

Subject: Revos from Carphone

I placed an order with Carphone for two Revo plus at 39 gbp each. This morning I get a mail saying they are out of stock.