Monthly Archives: June 2008

N78 shipping domestically

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Nokia’s N78 3G smart phone is now shipping in the U.S.  Features include a 3.2 mpixel Zeiss Optics digital camera, GPS with mapping service and photo geotagging (cool!), and a MicroSD slot with room for 8 GB.  Like previous N7X phones, the 78 is a candy-bar unit with a self-facing camera for video-calling and buddy snapshots.  The unit also offers WiFi connectivity, though I don’t know if SIP/VoIP is supported yet. Somebody let me know.  Street price is $560.

Palringo gives Blackberry one up on the iPhone

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With the rather disappointing list of missing features that arose from Steve Jobs’ intro of iPhone 2.0 last week, Blackberry and its partner developers, like Palringo, are licking their chops.

The newest iteration of code from Palringo adds voice chat and picture messaging to Blackberry devices, giving the new iPhone a swift smack on the rump. The new services works with Curve, 8800, and Pearl devices from RIM, and supports just about every well-known I.M. network. Take that, iChat.

With an OS X version in alpha right now, one wonders how long it will be before Palringo is doing the same thing for the iPhone that it’s doing for Blackberries.

Nokia Readies Exchange Mail on E-Series Devices

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One of my beefs with the N-Series from Nokia has been its rather wimpy pop/smtp client, which is dogged and gets hung up all the time. At one point I was flowing all my mail through Gmail just so I could run the Gmail client on the Nokia N95–which is an awesome solution, by the way. The only thing missing? Yep, push mail.

Well, that’s no longer a problem for Nokia, at least not for users of the new E71 and E66 devices from Nokia. These phones support MS Exchange out of the box, presumably using Outlook Web Access, the same mechanism that provides Exchange support for Windows Mobile devices and the new iPhone.

If I can get my mitts on one of these puppies, I’ll let you know how it works.

Safari written off yet? Think again

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$200 iPhones with an open SDK and a reduced contract requirement from AT&T are going to combine to accelerate the iPhone into corporate America.  Safari may just become the de-facto mobile browser standard. What’s more, all those banks and credit card sites that don’t work with Safari today are soon going to have 10 million customers for whom Safari support is important–the 10 million iPhone users Jobs is likely to have gained a few months after the 2nd-generation iPhone hits later today at WWDC.

If the new iPhone doesn’t have iChat, Apple doesn’t care about consumer freedom

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Bottom line. Give me VoIP and give me SMS-free text messaging and you give the power to buck the powers that be (ie. AT&T).  So VoIP and fully-featured iChat on the iPhone help me, the consumer, out.

But they also help Apple. Apple may not have wanted a heavy-handed 2-year agreement attached to all iPhone sales.  Crap, that’s why most of us who should have an iPhone, for free even, don’t own one yet. 2 years is an eternity these days.  So VoIP-enabled iChat spits of the rebellion Apple used to be famous for.  It’s a way of telling AT&T Apple still runs the show, even IF Apple is taking a piece of the service revenue.

Come on Apple, show us you care about US.