S60 Open to new features

S60 truphone client is getting better. There are several improvements including presence tag which is absolutely essential in new VoIP services. I'd love to try this and write more about this fascinating VoIP solution but Truphone account doesn't work for me anymore. I just have this message under "My account":  "there was a problem creating your account. Please contact customer service" message appears on ". Truphone customer service hasn't been interested to reply to my question in one month, so it has been kind of hard to try this. Anyway for those of you interested about free calls on mobile, having S60 with WiFi and being lucky to have valid Truphone account this it might be worth of trying.

Widget support for S60 was announced today. Demos are available in Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco and Nokia CEO CTO Tero Ojanperä is starting web cast now 13.15 CET. Developers can use standard Web technologies such as AJAX, HTML, CSS, Java Script and easily create small applications, Widgets, for users. Widget support will be part of S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 and makes S60 developer platform even stronger.

Widget is an embodiment of S60 Web Run-Time. Web Run-Time allows Web developers to build new Widgets for mobile and even migrate existing widgets from other platforms to S60 with minimal effort.

Web Run-Time lowers the barrier to develop applications for mobile. No need for Symbian programming experience. No need for application signing. Do it fast and distribute on Web for everyone. Use common Web tools, documentation will be available. When bringing existing Widgets to S60, few things has to be taken into account. Screen is smaller, no mouse, two softkeys: options and exit. The core of the existing Widget can be utilized and migration is easy. We have worked with several companies to create demo Widges and usually migration took only few days. I'm impressed.

Ebays, Amazons etc. big Internet names are already on mobile but I believe this is a great step to make long tail available on mobile. We have had the best mobile browser which is making billions of Web pages available for S60 users. But now there is going to be easy way for every Internet company to make mobile user experience even better. Widgets make access to Web services fast and pleasant.

With Widgets smartphone users gain instant and easy access to commonly used Web services. In the first phase Widget functionality allows access to Web and displays information for user in mobile optimized way. Widget user experience on S60 is similar to any other application (Symbian or Java). Widgets can be downloaded and launched in similar way that other applications. Several Widgets can be run at the same time and be seen and switched from multitasker menu.

Open to new features. This has never been more true than today.

Have a look to the right column of this page. There is a new box which shows my presence information. The info comes from Jaiku.  S60 3rd Edition version of Jaiku beta is now available. It offers phonebook with the presence service which allows you to share availability, location and calendar status (subjects or busy data only) data with your friends.

Presence information is visible naturally in Jaiku phone client, but you can see it on Jaiku web pages or add it to your own blog, like I did. You can post short notes, called Jaikus, and have them immediately appear on web page or contact list of mobile phone.

The S60 Jaiku has excellent integration to the phone applications and very good setup wizard. It checks when the phone is set to a silent mode and info is automatically shared. So when you see red tab on my Jaiku box, my phone is on silent. Yellow colour means that I'm in a meeting and green indicates general mode. There is a small Jaiku icon on S60 active idle showing when application is on. You can set it to open on phone startup as well. Phone contacts are linked to Jaiku. Those ones having also Jaiku contact are displayed in the beginning of the list. The original S60 calendar is linked to app as well. The S60 Jaiku also monitors via bluetooth how many people and friends are around.

The location information is very clever indeed. It's based on Cell ID, no GPS needed and works well with existing devices. I have tagged home and office cells and couple of other locations and location info is automatically updated when I move around.

I don't remember when it was a last time when I was exited like this about a new app. Good work!!! 

So this was my engineer approach to this nice application. How it changes life and privacy topic is interesting too. I will touch that later on.

Nokia is providing free downloadable maps for different platforms including S60. Press release can be found from here. Smart2go mapping and navigation platform is going to be available for free download on Saturday, February 10th.

Navigation and mapping is usually needed when outside of home country. Then people face problems with outrageous data roaming fees. This application seems to be very clever. "When traveling to a new country for holiday one can download the relevant maps via PC in advance and subscribe to the navigation service for the duration of the holiday at affordable cost." Brilliant! When backpacking around the world, just pop in to internet cafe and download maps for next country.

Mobile VoIP clients are not perfect. I have been using Eseries and Truphone for few weeks and I must say that solution is not ready for mass market yet. Many problems point to device itself so I’m not here to blame service provider.

Plusses:
+Truphone has the best ever SIP "out of box experience". Sis file fixes settings right, which is total nightmare otherwise.

+Calling to traditional numbers, both fixed and mobile, works fine. Giving 2$ credit is an excellent idea.

+Integration to familiar phone calling UI. Dial number, select VoIP or cellular (under reserve, finetuning needed, see below)

Minuses:
-VoIP doesn't work seemlesly at all, if you want to use it only over WLAN at home (or in hotspot). Use case: home access over WLAN is enabled and you go out of that zone. Later you return but SIP client can't connect back to home WLAN. Phone has to be rebooted to get back logged in.

-Lack of presence function and name search is a major issue. How I can know who is having truphone service and minimize my calling cost with he/she? There is no search function by name on device. This is basic stuff and one of the success factors of Skype.

-S60 lacks context sensitivity. If I'm not logged in to truphone, I'm out of WLAN zone and I try to make phone call. There is no way I can make internet call, I haven’t configured VoIP settings for GPRS or WCDMA or paranormal 5G satellite network. Why is device giving this option for me then? It means one more click and very often it happens that I dial number press green button and take phone to ear. I’m waiting and nothing happens because phone is asking this question and waiting my selection (select call type: cellular / internet call).

-Battery consumption is a real issue. Eats battery too much, even on standby.

This is the current situation. Somebody has to fix the total user experience before mass VoIP on mobile will happen. I don’t care is that solution proprietary or SIP or what, but mobile VoIP is still geek stuff. Luckily so many companies are working in this area. Go Packet Mobile, Barablu, Skype, Truphone, SIPphone, Nimbuzz, Nokia…! Just do it.

When somebody finally puts user experience right, knows how to do marketing and distribution, things start to change. People start to minimize phone calls over cellular network and use VoIP as much as possible. It will happen over WLAN. It can happen over packet data, if flat fee data is available and has reasonable price (for example TMO 10 gig monthly fee is 22.5£=34€ which is not really squeezing down monthly bill if you are average user and VoIP is the main driver for data). So I think price of flat fee might be initially too high for real optimization if we talk about average users which are not making many international calls. Next step comes from operators and they will introduce more competitive flat fee packages for voice (domestic calls). Then there isn’t much incentive to play with VoIP and make life more complicated. Operator voice revenues decrease but customers are kept. Then MVNOs could have interesting play. MRKTNGman MVNO comes and provides minute charges again. Some consumers will start to optimize again. “I just call few minutes over cellular so I go for MRKGTNman”. They use VoIP over WLAN and cellular is only backup. “I use instant messaging on the road and call when back home.”

Different markets have different dynamics. Regulation prevents real competition in some cases. Regulation might even prevent VoIP to happen if governmental ownership is high enough.

Competing with VoIP over unlicensed spectrum will be hard. Flat fees for domestic CS calls are doable but for international calls it’s difficult. How about roaming and competing against VoIP/WLAN. “Calling charges will go down to zero anyway”, said someone in Telco 2.0. No need to repeat. It won’t mean that business goes down to zero. Or if it goes, you have been sleeping. Never have been the devices so capable to create innovative services and create new revenues than today. Plain only voice is important and big driver, but voice is just one element. Multiplayer games with VoIP, browsing & click to call. When it’s all just IP, things get more simple. Not necessary more reliable, but definitely more exiting.

VoIP area is really getting hot. We are still waiting for Skype for S60 but there are few SIP based VoIP solutions available. Try out Truphone. Truphone provides free phone calls across the US and Canada until end of this year and UK users can call free to landlines in 40 countries worldwide. IP calls between Truphone users are naturally free. I had old SW version in my E60 so I had to try famous Nokia software services. It worked perfectly. Then just installing of Truphone.

For some reason I was not able to download it OTA to device. I got SMS link for download as promised but error message “unable to download Truphone” was very persistent. Fortunately there is another solution. You can download sis-file and settings to PC and transfer to phone over IR, BT or cable. It worked. One small trick was needed. SIP registration has to be changed to always on (default on the phone is “when needed”). I’m also using this over WCDMA now, so some configuration manipulation needed there (as default and recommended mode is WLAN), but nothing too complicated. Anyway I made test call to Finnish landline and it WORKED! Finland was not mentioned in the country list with free calls, but seems to be OK in here as well. So here it is, feely available voice calls, unlimited minutes. Seems to work also to mobile phones now in Finland. You can start to make free phone calls over WLAN at home and hot spots. Supported devices are E60, E61, E70 and it will be soon release for N80, N70, N71, N90, N91, N92, N93.

The biggest S60 news of the week has been announcement of 3 new S60 NSeries multimedia computers by Nokia. In the Open Studio event Nokia demonstrated interesting beta version of forthcoming application. It’s a Nokia Podcasting Application! Manual, automatic and scheduled update of Podcasts is possible over 3G or WLAN. If you use it over cellular, flat rate data packet is absolutely necessary. The application itself is independent of a particular service or service provider. You can preview audio and video Podcasts while they are downloading. Search engine provides URLs as OPML files for summary and easy subscription. Also sending and receiving of Podcasts & links is possible over Bluetooth or MMS.

Stuff magazine writes:

We were also shown a cool new podcasting feature that will be available to download from Nokia’s site for the latest Series 60 phones – which rules out the N70 – to let you browse and search for shows with keywords via Wi-Fi and download them. You can search for all audio ‘casts, like Stuff’s, and some MP4 video shows will be available too.

Free Download will available on www.nokia.com around early July. It’s compatible only with S60 3rd Edition.

It is very difficult to get to my favorite application list i.e. to be an application what I use daily or almost daily and over long period of time. According the user studies I’m not an exception. There is a long list of standard platform applications I use and I continue usage when changing the phone to new e.g. calendar, Clock, Messaging etc. Now I’m also proud S60 browser user. The first time actually quality in the browser coming with platform fulfills my requirements (and I consider myself as quite normal prosumer).

There was an exellent hint on Russell's blog. You can download free Flash Lite 2.0 player from Macromedia by following this link. Seems to work.

In didn’t have too much time to go around 3GSM because my schedule on own S60 booth was so tight. I visited couple of companies providing location solutions for mobile phones. Navicore and Telmap are both basically working in the same area but have very different approach to location services.