Roland Tanglao's Weblog

Courtesy of the Hill and Knowlton (Hill and Knowlton Blog) Motorola Bloggers Relation Program, I picked up my free trial Motorola KRZR K1 phone (complete with new phone number and unfortunately locked to Rogers) yesterday. Bottom line so far: for the power multi-media creator user, Nokia's phones are much better and I would pay my own money for a Nokia N95 or N93 or my mythical N999, I wouldn't pay my own money for the KRZR.

Cool

1. Came in an awesome aluminum briefcase
2. Great form factor and light weight
3. USB Charging
4. Text Auto Complete even with ITAP turned off
5. Camera has a nice mirror for self portraits

NOT COOL:

1. Cheesy Operating System (ugly to me but YMMV)
2. Adapter for normal headphones must be unplugged to answer a call!
3. no flash for camera - Nokia flash is not great but better than nothing. Sony Ericsson flashes are much better!
4. the web browser doesn't allow you to change the home page (Rogers bug not Motorola bug?)
5. the web browser is primitive and bad - sorry to be harsh, but compared to Nokia's Web kit browser or Opera, this browser is a toy: it doesn't support upload of attachments to mobile gmail, no way to enter a URL to surf to (you have to create a bookmark), many, many problems
6. ShoZu doesn't work on this phone (Rogers bug?). A phone without ShoZu is like a phone without sunshine :-) !
7. No WiFi - I wouldn't pay my own money for a phone without WiFi
8. No obvious way to upload your photos or videos without going through USB or Bluetooth "chain of pain" - I prefer ShoZu but there's no support to upload photos to flickr and photos and video to Vox which the built in Nokia gallery app on all recent N series phones does
9. Voice Recognition doesn't work for all commands (e,g, I can't turn off Bluetooth with a voice command)

David Ayre likes his Blackberry Pearl and found an unexpected bonus: watching video on his 45 minute (one way) commute into Bryght!

The first in my occasional series of videoblogs where real people review smartphones. In this installment, Zak Greant reviews the Sony Ericsson W810i. He likes it but it's still a bit rough around the edges (e.g. no real integration with iTunes or any other music player app). As an open source evangelist for eZ Systems and formerly sxip and MySQL as well as doing work for Mozilla Foundation and others, Zak travels a lot, so he loves the quad band. Of course Zak bought the phone outside of Canada since it was not available in Canada at that time. Finally, come on Sony and Nokia, put standard headphone jacks in your music phones!

[NOTE to self, turn image stabilization on next time and film in a place with more light than Take 5.]

6 minutes 10 seconds, recorded 19 December 2006 at Take 5 Cafe at 429 Granville using a Nokia N93 at 640x480 30fps in MPEG-4 format

ShoZu rocks! With the N91 and WiFi, you can set it up so that if you live in a "sea of WiFi" (i.e. spend most of your time at places with WiFi like I do), that it will automatically upload photos and videos over WiFi to flickr or wherever you want. No r*poff GPRS or 3G data plan needed.

Shozu is great on the N91 .... when it works. Unfortunately even though I am using the latest firmware on the N91 and the latest version of ShoZu, reformatted the Hard Drive, crossed my 't's and dotted my 'i's and tried throwing salt over my left shoulder :-( ShoZu starts freezing the phone after 50 or so photos.

I don't think my phone is a lemon :( Everything else works! My unfortunate reality is that adding ShoZu to the mix, destabilizes my N91. Lifeblog (even though I hate its 10 photos at a time limitation) works so it's not the WiFi stack (or so it would appear).

I blame ShoZu's tight integration with the operating system. My guess is that ShoZu has some sort of event handler or interrupt or some such operating system integration which is buggy or problematic in Symbian Series 60 v3. I figure it's a V3 issue since I uploaded over GPRS thousands of photos with ShoZu and the 7610 and N70 (both of which are v2 phones) without this instability.

Lazyweb HELP! I'll buy whoever fixes my problem lunch. Until then, I'll keep doing the ShoZu reset dance every 50 or so photos.

Spoke about the phones pictured below:

Wanted to speak about these phones:

Here are my notes :

- smartphone = a phone that can do more than just phone
    - usually email, also PDA functions (appointments) and some have
      camera, video, etc.
    - do you really need always on email with a full keyboard and the
      bulk? no! unless you are in real time business like stocks IMHO
      Otherwise, SMS good enough for emergency alerts.
- what to buy
    - I. mainstream - blackberry p: original is still best for email
      lovers c: not hip, not funky, no camera, no apps $ telus 99-549
      device $22.50-$155/month for voice and email  rogers 249-549 for
      device voice and email $45-90/month
        - 2nd choice treo 650 p:lots of apps c: not hip, not funky,
          clunky, no camera $ telus 99-499 for device $22.50-$155/month
          for voice and email rogers 349-699 for device $45-100/mont
          for voice and email
        - 3rd choice: motorola q p:cool style, size  c: windows mobile,
          new $ telus 249-599 device $22.50-$155/month for voice and
          email
    - II. instant messaging addicts - hiptop p: cheap! awesome keyboard
      gives best IM and email experience, ghetto chic c: no apps,
      ghetto chic $ fido 200-550 unlimited (!) data (email, im, web)
      $20/month voice: $20-100/month
    - III. wannabe europeans/asians/geeks: nokia e61 p:lots of cool
      apps c: only for geeks and power users who don't mind getting it
      in asia or europe or gray market
    - IV mobile music mavens: n91 p: my phone, 4GB hard drive wifi,
      engineered in Burnaby c: doesn't work with itunes, same as e61
    - V mobile photographers,  bloggers and videobloggers: n90 (and n93
      Q3 2006) p:fantastic photos and video c: same as e61, size
        - second choice: sony k750i, k800i etc p: great camera c: no
          apps, same as e61
- technology
    - GSM="VHS", CDMA="Betamax" You can use a new GSM device from any
      manufacturer by moving SIM chip. Can't do that with CDMA = major
      disadvantage
    - whole world except canada, usa, korea, japan use GSM
    - GSM in Canada = Rogers and Fido (not so great coverage outside
      cities), Bell and Telus = CDMA
    - GSM becoming more popular in US, nonexistent in 1998 now almost
      everywhere thanks to T Mobile and Cingular
    - If you buy from Bell and Telus you are locked into their limited
      CDMA devices
    - Recommendation: go with Fido or Rogers and don't get a contract
      if you can afford not to! unless you need the great rural
      coverage of Bell and Telus so you can buy cool devices from grey
      market/asia/europe if/when you need them. Bell, Telus, Fido and
      Rogers don't offer any really cool mobile devices.
- future (2010 and beyond)
    - flat rate pricing, current pricing is byzantine 
    - all devices work anywhere in the world, no need to worry about
      CDMA, GSM and other crazy tech terms
    - create and share anything (phone calls, video calls, audio, text,
      videos, photos)  anytime with anybody from your mobile device for
      $50-$100/month, no Canadian affordable unlimited general purpose
      plans to do this today and the networks are too slow
- Mobile Power user or geek
    - Come to BarCamp Vancouver August 25th and participate or lead   
      a session, it's free (suggested 20$ donation)
    - barcamp.org/BarCampVancouver