Cell Phone News

News Archive for March, 2007

Video: Nokia 6265i Commercial, I like it

By Stefan Constantinescu on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 5:40 PM PST
In Videos

Maybe its because I like to see things blow up … maybe its because they didn’t choose Moby as a soundtrack, all I know is I like it:

Direct link to video

Nokia 7088 hits the FCC

By Stefan Constantinescu on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 4:48 PM PST
In Devices

Direct link to FCC listing

Source: Engadget Mobile

The only picture available:

7088 page 1 1 Nokia 7088 hits the FCC

Things to note: It’s very … round, made in China and it is a CDMA phone.

Will we see it at CTIA? Who knows!

Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo forfeits his bonus for the second half of 2006

By Stefan Constantinescu on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 3:53 PM PST
In Financial/Corporate News

Community Intelligence:

Clipboard07
In the wake of employee howls of injustice and protest, Finish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reports that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo has decided to give up his personal bonus for the second half of 2006. Kallasvuo announced his decision in a blog entry on the company intranet on the heals of employee outcries over a cancelled bonus program.

Despite reporting record profit and revenue in January, Nokia announced that it would not be paying out special employee bonuses because the company failed to meet the board’s goals. Employees were not to be paid, but under the plan executives were still to reap handsome bonuses. The outrage was predictable.

Worse yet, in spite of everything, Nokia recently announced 700 job cuts. Despite some innovative damage control on the corporate intranet, some 8000 white collar employees walked off the job in protest. 

Initially Kallasvuo used the intranet to justify the cancellation of the bonuses in an online video speech. HR and communications managers also used discussion boards on the intranet to help calm the storm.

Nokia is proof positive that regardless of the efforts, skills and technology used by communications staff, no mount of PR can reverse a bad business decision.

Talk about all for one, one for all.

Taking one for the team really shows us how much you love your company Olli!

Update: More information found on Helsingin Sanomat:

Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the President and CEO of the mobile telephone manufacturer Nokia, has decided to give up his personal bonus pertaining to the second half of 2006. Kallasvuo announced his decision on the company’s intranet pages on January 29th – four days after the company’s result for 2006 had been published.

Kallasvuo’s basic annual salary is EUR one million, and his personal bonus could be up to 150 per cent of his basic salary, provided that all targets are met.

Nokia E90 will NOT have triband WCDMA

By Stefan Constantinescu on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 3:24 PM PST
In Devices

Engadget reported the E90 would do WCDMA 850/1700/1900.

PhoneBoy, a Nokia employee, calls shenanigans:

Clipboard06
I’m not sure where Engadget is getting their information,
but based on everything that is publicly available, as well as private
information I’ve seen in Nokia (NYSE: NOK), I believe that the only 3G band
supported on the Nokia E90 will be WCDMA 2100.  I would love for Engadget to be right on this, though, but there’s no evidence they are.

We could always go with the Nokia E90 technical specifications page on Nokia’s site, but let’s go with the FCC documentation
that Engadget links to. I poured through all of the PDF files and could
not find a single page on any of the documents that matched the one
they pictured in the story. Nothing in any of the documentation Engadget links to even mentions WCDMA 1700. You would think that WCDMA 1700 would appear in the SAR reports if it supported that band, don’t you think?

This is either sloppy reporting or someone is making this up. Or they’re talking about the phone after the Nokia E90. Whatever, but I have no reason to believe they’re right on this one.

I’ll trust PhoneBoy over Engadget any day of the week.

I apologize for propagating incorrect information.

A proper Nokia E65 unboxing

By Stefan Constantinescu on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 9:34 PM PST
In Devices

Most people don’t care what sort of box their new phone comes in, as long as it isn’t damaged.

I’m one of those people.

I do enjoy watching other people unbox their toys however. Weird, I know.

Howard Forums member rapolu got himself an E65 and took plenty of pictures. I’ve uploaded them to my Flickr gallery. Here is the retail box:

dsc07306ie7

How Steve Garfield creates and consumes Internet TV

By Stefan Constantinescu on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 9:27 PM PST
In Uncategorized

Stevegarfieldhowicreateandwatchinternett

Just go to his blog and watch the video, right now!

I’m utterly impressed with how far we’ve come since the year 2000.

Great job Steve. Are you using an FTP client on your N95 to upload your video to Blip?

Geek Porn: Internal shots of the Nokia E90 Communicator

By Stefan Constantinescu on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 8:53 PM PST
In Devices

The FCC brings us some very nice gifts!

Here is a direct link to the E90 listing at the FCC

The user manual (PDF)

Best of all … they took it apart! The picture below is only a sample of what to expect. Check out my Flickr gallery to get to the good stuff.

Clipboard05

The Nokia E90 will be a triband WCDMA device according to the FCC!

By Stefan Constantinescu on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 8:33 PM PST
In Devices

UPDATE: This Engadget post has been proven incorrect by PhoneBoy

Engadget:

Nokiae90umts1700fcc

Wait up just a second, let us get this straight: after years of teasing Americans with 3G smartphone after sweet 3G smartphone — none of which packed even a lick of compatibility on US bands — Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s going to rock its newest undisputed king of the hill, the E90, with every band we could possibly hope for? Of course, we don’t want to count our chickens ‘fore their hatched lest we get fooled again, but the presence of Nokia’s latest QWERTY-based Communicator device in the FCC’s trusted hands sporting WCDMA on the 850, 1700, and 1900MHz bands is a very promising sign, indeed. As a refresher, T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) will be launching its WCDMA network this year — the last of the four national carriers to go 3G — on the freshly-minted 1700MHz band, leaving future users without much of a handset selection from which to choose (as in, zero devices so far and few on the roadmap). But hey, with phones like this seemingly sitting in T-Mobile’s pipeline, that’s just fine by us.

I thought T-Mobile was going to use 2100 MHz? Who makes this triband chip?

I’ve gone googling. Give me a few hours.

Video: Nokia CTO Dr. Tero Ojanpera at the O’Reilly ETel Conference

By Stefan Constantinescu on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 8:16 PM PST
In Videos

Ken Camp is in California at the O’Reilly ETel Conference with his Nokia (NYSE: NOK) N93. He just happened to record this great presentation:

Thank you Ken!

Augmented mobile reality just blew my mind away. I have a vivid imagination when it comes to user scenarios and I literally had to pause the video, blink a few times, then continue watching.

What would I have to do to get a tour of the Palo Alto R&D Labs?

Brief Nokia E70 review

By Stefan Constantinescu on Friday, March 2nd, 2007 at 7:30 PM PST
In Devices

Clipboard04_3

KVET.CH:

Folding out the E70 reveals the keyboard, of course.

It takes a little getting used to, and honestly I don’t think I’m as fast on it as the BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) but this is mainly because the BlackBerry has amazing autotext functionality that S60 does not. For example, if you hit space twice on a BlackBerry, you get a period, if it thinks you’re typing an email address because you’re in a field that says “Email Address”, a spacebar will put in a ’@’ for you. Little things like that and only having a little bit of travel in the keyboard makes the E70 seem a bit too spread out. And if you have small girlish hands like I do, the E70 is a cinch to thumb on, but if you have bigger hands, the proximity of the keys and the shallow travel in the keyboard will be problematic, as the keys are very close to one another without the distinct separation between them that the Treo and ‘Berry have.

So, why mobile email? And why on S60 instead of the BlackBerry or a Treo?

Will, simply put, I like the S60 OS a lot better at the end of the day than the Treo or the BlackBerry, and if I wanted BlackBerry email I could get that on the E70 anyway, and the PIM functions on the BlackBerry are archaic and the GoodLink’ed Treos have a disconnect between your server-side PIM functionality and the built-in functions which makes synchronization a bit of a pain in the ass if you’re not using Outlook and Exchange.

Another thing I like a lot about the E70? It doesn’t spastically flash LEDs at you like a neon sign outside a liquor store coaxing in the alcoholics with promises of gratification. In fact, in the current firmware, you can’t even turn it on if you wanted to. There is an LED, it just isn’t being used today. No idea why. Don’t care.

I like LED’s that are useful and not just there to be noticed.

Concise review from what seems to be a power user.