S60 Open to new features

Sounds very cool. But how about costs? It seems that the phone must be connected to the network services at all time...

Alexandre: Like with email, you can go online / offline manually: there's no need to keep Jaiku always on if you don't want to continuosuly broadcast your presence.

We've tried to make data transfer as smart as possible so that even if you keep Jaiku running in the background, it transfers a minimal amount of data. For instance, it's safe to leave Jaiku on during the night since it transfers almost zero data until you touch your phone again in the morning.

An average user who shares their presence continuously transfers around 10 MB / month, but this varies depending how many contacts you have and how actively you and your contacts post new updates. Here in Finland a standard package from an operator sells 25MB for 4 euros / month, which should be enough for normal Jaiku usage and leave room for emailing and other data traffic too.

To prevent accidental costly roaming charges, Jaiku automatically asks you if you want to stop data trasfers when you are roaming away from your home network.

Hope this helps.

Posted by: Jyri Engestrom | March 9, 2007 06:45 PM

I am so happy to see that this has finally made it to 3rd edition!!

Yes, the cost part is explained, but how about battery? A 3g connection always on, must drink a lot of juice, right? ;)

Don't get me wrong. I find the application very appealing!!

"Here in Finland a standard package from an operator sells 25MB for 4 euros / month"

...and for 10 euros a month you can get unlimited use, data usage cost is clearly going down very fast.

Can it switch profiles based on cell info? I'd need only this function.

Keeping your phone in 3G mode while continuously running Jaiku will require nightly charging. We're currently working to improve battery life with some nifty new low-level gauges that let us determine exactly how much power various operations consume. So you'll see the battery life improving as we keep optimizing the application.

If battery life's a big concern then it might be a viable option to switch your phone to GPRS mode. Generally, the battery life is significantly better when running data services in 2G mode. Even though switching back to 2G might sound regressive, QOS tends to be better on 2G networks. The amount of data that Jaiku transfers is so limited that it's very GPRS-friendly. Even if you're using more data-intensive apps like Shozu, the Web and email alot (as I am), I see occasions where GPRS actually performs better than 3G. Let's hope the 3G operators keep improving their networks :)

Posted by: Jyri Engestrom | March 11, 2007 03:10 PM

Sebhelyesfarku: I'm not sure what exactly you mean by "Can it switch profiles based on cell info?"

If you are referring to functionality that would e.g. automatically switch the ring profile of the phone to "Silent" when you enter a particular cell, the answer's no, Jaiku doesn't currently automate such actions and we do not currently have plans to implement this.

However, on the medium term we're planning an API that would potentially allow any third-party developer to write a Python script that did that.

Posted by: Jyri Engestrom | March 11, 2007 03:17 PM

I've been trying this out for the past week or so. Unfortunately at the moment it's only me using it, so no friends on it, but it does look good.

One concern I have is that this is all part of the IMS features that the phone should already have. I don't really want to have to run yet another application in the background (I now have quite a few, like ShoZu and Fring) which means (on my seemingly low-memory E70) that I can't run Smart2Go or other power-hungry applications without it either telling me to quit applications or just going ahead and quitting them all for me (very unhelpful).

I've wanted this kind of presence information on my contact list for quite a while, at least this looks like a step in the right direction.

@Duncan - I agree with you 100%. This is how an "internet company" who's motto is "Connecting People"'s contact app SHOULD look.

This is where IM and Mobile SHOULD have come together. Not an external app that I have to download and open and check periodically. I should be able to pull up my contacts list and from there be able to contact them however necessary: voice, email, sms, mms, whatever.

Posted by: Ricky Cadden | March 12, 2007 06:08 PM

Just a quick plug... I've just posted an article about how the IMS applications built into phones can either be used or replaced by nicely integrated applications. Obviously Jaiku features highly for the 'presence' application.

Follow the link through to my blog to read more.

@Ricky. You can use Jaiku phonebook to make voice calls, send sms, mms and email. Creating video call or internet call seem not to be possible. Anyway it's a quite complete phonebook and in a way it is replacing the original S60 phonebook. The original contact data stays in S60 phonebook and anyway it's not possible to remove S60 phonebook. As S60 marketing person I can't recommend even to think about removing:-) Of course you can more S60 phonebook to bottom of some folder if you wish and leave it unused. (wow this was also politically wrong recommendation. Anyway S60 platform apps should be so flexible and have extensibility option and then I don't need to give advice like this. That's the direction to what we're developing the platform)

I don't see it so big deal that application had to be downloaded, installed. Did it once, setup was easy and application works perfectly. Preintallation is important for mass market take up but when utility is big enough and word spreads, take-up can be fast. You can also set it open automatically on startup so it works like "platform" application.

@Duncan. It seems that this app is not that power or processing hungry. Probably some other app is root cause for out of memory. Of course there should be enough memory to run few apps at the same time, but memory costs something, phone becomes more expensive, market smaller, you know the cycle.

@ Duncan about IMS. I was worried that you really write about IMS applications. IMS success might have something in common with WAP:-)

Jaiku causes intermittent crashes on my Nokia N80ie so i have uninstalled it now. Good tool but waiting for it to mature