Nokia E71 Update

I've had the Nokia E71 for a couple of weeks now.

Most of the points I raised turned out to be no big deal.

The static noise in the headphones has gone away since using the clip to clip it to my jacket, YouTube has its own mobile phone player that works much better than the built-in one, and Nokia appear to be making a better program for copying music to your phone.

The main problem I had was with my Bluetooth headset, which worked some times, but others not.

It also had a tendency to stay locked on 2G if the 3G signal became poor, even after I moved to a new area where there was good 3G coverage (fixed by manually selecting the network).

The camera was adequate, but no replacement for a real one.

Outside on an overcast day

Close-up of the post box

A few minutes later, facing the other direction

Outside on a sunny Winter's day

Inside without flash (incandescent room light)

Inside with flash

At night (with night mode)

There's lots of other little niggles, but none of them are fatal.

• Have to manually tell it which connection to use if WLAN is unavailable
• Can't have a dd mmm yyyy date format (e.g. 2 Sep 2008)
• PiZero's themes have white text on a white background in obscure places
• There's no way to disable the startup sound or the camera sound
• Can't easily select multiple text messages
• There is no way to insert smileys :-(

Nokia E71 Review

My mobile phone contract was nearly over, so I called 3 to ask about my options, thinking I'd try to get a Nokia 6220 classic.

The salesman suggested the Nokia E71 was better and was available free on a $49 cap, so I got it instead.

The Nokia E71 (white)

It supports wireless LANs, VoIP, and has a longer battery life, but the camera isn't as good as the 6220's. It also does all the other usual stuff, including web, music, calendar, and games.

After using it for a day, I'm pleasantly surprised.

The keyboard layout is a bit different, being a full QWERTY keyboard. It's fine to use, but the right Navi key no longer works as backspace: instead it cancels the current operation - not a good thing if you're writing a long message. Still, you quickly get used to it.

It's smaller than it looks. It's very thin, and it's just narrow enough to hold it with one large hand.

Nokia E71 in my hand

It had a setup wizard that asked me if I wanted to copy all my contacts, appointments, and notes from my old phone over Bluetooth. Apart from the backspace key not working when entering a name for my new phone, it seems to have worked well.

The default 3 theme is fine but not particularly good looking and the Nokia ones are worse. Downloading some of PiZero's free themes makes it look and feel much nicer.

3 default theme

Nokia's icons

PiZero's icons

The screen is good. I can see more than I used to on my 6280, but obviously it's not as big as the iPhone's. Very clear, tho, and good fonts. Quite OK for browsing.

The built in browser isn't bad, but Opera Mini works a little better. The phone also supports Flash applications such as YouTube, but the sound was too choppy to be worthwhile.

Browsing The Age web site with Opera Mini

Google Maps uses the phone's builtin GPS receiver to show the current location on the map. It works OK, and looks really cool, but sometimes it takes over a minute to lock in.

Google Maps with GPS

The clock is really neat. When the phone is locked, you can hold the middle button down to see a full screen clock. I reduced the screensaver timeout to 10 seconds to make this work more to my liking.

Big clock

I've tried taking some photos, and the results are acceptable. As with all digital cameras I've tried, photos in poor light look quite grainy, but photos in good light look OK. I'll have to get some photos printed before I can really say how good the camera is.

On the home screen, there is an application shortcut list and a list of upcoming appointments, but it works a bit differently from my old Nokia 6280. Now, the so-called "active standby screen" means I can't press up, down, left, or right to launch an application. Instead, there are dedicated contacts, calendar, and messages keys, and you're better off using the application shortcut bar for everything else. I put the music player, Opera Mini, Gmail, the camera, and the clock there.

At first I was disappointed that there was no dedicated camera button, but the combination of the shortcut bar and the middle button to take the picture seem to work fine.

You can also rearrange most menus. This is pretty much necessary, since the default menus are cluttered. Thankfully the shortcut bar and shortcut keys should mean you don't have to even go into the menu very often.

I tried making a call last night with the supplied headphones, and you could easily hear noise. I think this was caused by the microphone brushing on my jacket. I'll try clipping it to my top next time. (Now I understand why my old headphones had an annoying neck loop.)

The ringtones sound really nice in a quiet environment or with the headphones, but the only one suitable for loud environments is the "Nostalgia" old style telephone. Still, one's better than none.

The power socket is the 2mm Nokia connector, so I can use all my old Nokia chargers. It also includes a USB to microUSB cable. It's only capable of USB 1.1, meaning the transfers will be slow but not painful at around one megabyte per second, for example it would take roughly one minute to copy an album of MP3s.

The Wi-Fi has been good for browsing the web and testing out the assisted GPS, but the killer application should be using it as a VoIP handset. Eventually I found a guide on Whirlpool that gave me the information I needed to set it up.

Making an internet phone call

The only other note I have to make is it's been pretty stable. It crashes reliably if you try to download a .sis theme file that it doesn't understand (presumably due to the wrong MIME type being sent by the server), but other than that I haven't noticed any problems, even while multi-tasking.

I'll try to post some photos I took with it tomorrow.

MOTORAZR V6 on Telstra Next G

I got a new phone for work yesterday, a Motorola MOTORAZR maxx V6. It seems to be a pretty good phone. Much better than I was expecting.

When I last used a Motorola several years ago, the menus were less intuitive than the Ericsson or Nokia ones. Now I feel that both of those have taken a step or two backwards, and the Motorola is no worse. The menu hierarchy is quite logical, and the keypad is very direct and responsive. It's definitely better than my Sony Ericsson Z610i, which is especially good considering it's only about 1 cm thick.

I tried to get it synchronizing my contacts and calendar with Linux. Unfortunately, it's quite a new phone, so it's not supported yet. Instead, I set up an account on ScheduleWorld and transferred my contacts over the internet using a protocol called SyncML, which most new phones seem to support. It worked well and didn't cost me anything other than the data costs.

It's on the Telstra Next G network, which offers broadband internet access, and has much better coverage than the other 3G networks. The phone and network also support HSDPA, which is supposed to offer download speeds of up to 14 megabits (14,000 kilobits) per second. So far the best I've got is 400 kilobits per second, but that's still fast enuff to do my work. I'm connecting to it as a GPRS modem over Bluetooth so I can access the internet from my laptop.

So far so good!

Update: December 31, 2007

The phone stops making and receiving phone calls after a while. A reboot makes it work again. The dealer is sending it back to Motorola to get it fixed. (It's running software version R26111VL-AS_U_96.66.74R.)

Finally! Internet Without Line Rental!

iiNet just announced their new "Naked DSL" plans today. It's an ADSL2+ broadband connection without a landline service, meaning you don't need to pay $27 to Telstra for a phone line you never use.

The plan also comes with a VoIP service with excellent call rates, so you can buy an analog telephone adapter or a VoIP-capable router, save on phone call costs, and still keep your old number (just in case you did use the phone).

The best bit of news for me is it should (according to Whirlpool) involve minimal downtime when switching from an ADSL1 service, the main reason I haven't already got ADSL2.

Goodbye iiNet, Hello Internode!

The saga of my home ADSL connection.

• No ADSL2 for you!
• Choosing a new plan
• The waiting game
• Modem setup
• Success!

No ADSL2 for you! (a.k.a. Internet in Australia sucks)

When I first moved to Elsternwick in November 2005, one of my important decisions was which internet service provider to use. I had previously been with iiNet, then Internode. Their ADSL plans were both quite reliable, which was essential, since I run my web site (including this blog) over my ADSL connection. The main factors in my decision were price and speed.

Around this time, iiNet said on their ADSL2+ coverage page that they were planning to install the required equipment (an ADSL2+ capable DSLAM) in my exchange in November/December. Their prices were very good (in fact, cheaper than most of their slower ADSL1 products), and the speeds should have been excellent. (According to Whereis, I'm 1.43 km from the Elsternwick exchange, and this graph of ADSL2+ speeds suggests I could get up to 20 Mb/s at that distance.) iiNet also don't block ports and allow using the connection to run servers, so it seemed like a no-brainer.

I applied for the service at the beginning of November.

About a week later, I had an ADSL1 service.

That was fine, since I knew they hadn't installed their DSLAM in Elsternwick yet, so I would be connected to a Telstra DSLAM, who at the time only offered ADSL1.

At the end of November, I received an email from iiNet saying "Congratulations, your exchange has been selected for a Broadband upgrade". This was great, and was what I was waiting to hear!

The date came and went, and I was still on ADSL1. Apparently the upgrade had been postponed.

I received another message in January 2006 telling me the same thing. Some time around the beginning of February, they actually installed their DSLAM and started migrating customers to ADSL2+. Unfortunately I wasn't one of them.

I contacted iiNet, and was told that I wasn't migrated because iiNet has to submit the list of customers to migrate to Telstra well in advance of the migration, and they had done so in October, before I was even a customer. I was told to wait for the "next migration".

Every few months, I contacted iiNet to ask when the migration would be. I was told they only performed bulk migrations (at least twenty customers at a time), and there were no plans to do such a bulk migration (presumably because I was one of the few customers who didn't get migrated in February).

In mid-2006, there were discussions of a single-port migration process, probably starting in September. Telstra called this a "single service migration" or a "single service transfer", depending on whether you were staying with the same ISP or changing to another one.

Several deadlines for single-service migration slipped, then it sounded like it might really happen in February 2007.

It did, but not for iiNet. For some reason, Internode and some other ISPs supported the process, but since Internode only had ADSL1, I had to wait for iiNet to get on board if I wanted ADSL2+.

Last month, it seemed like iiNet were joining the migration process, but I contacted them and they advised I still couldn't transfer. I would have to do a full disconnect, wait for about two weeks for the "lines codes" to be removed, then apply as a new customer and pay the full $200 connection fee. Since I rely on this connection for my web site and email, I can't accept a two-week outage.

The final straw was trying to watch a low-bandwidth video on YouTube the other day, and the playback kept stopping because my connection wasn't fast enuff.

Choosing a new ISP (a.k.a. which plan sucks the least)

I checked out the plans on Broadband Choice. Internode were cost competitive (they're all too expensive and slow, but Internode isn't much more expensive than the other options for my usage), and they're known to be a very reliable company. Indeed, they're ranked #1 by the users on Broadband Choice. They also allow me to run servers and have a local mirror site where I can get my Linux downloads fast and free. I looked at some of the other, newer ADSL2 providers such as Spin, hoping they would support single-service transfers, but they also had a long contract period and higher set-up cost, which my house mates weren't happy with, so Internode it was!

The churn process (a.k.a. I can't live without Internet)

To complicate things, Internode don't provide phone services like iiNet do, and Telstra (Australia's near-monopoly telco) requires we have an active landline phone service to get ADSL. The only real option was Telstra, who provide a $20 a month plan called HomeLine Budget, but they don't let you sign up for that if you want to use another company for ADSL. Instead I would have to go with their next-least-expensive plan, HomeLine Complete, which costs $27 a month.

I read the forums on the Whirlpool broadband user group web site to figure out whether it would be better to change the phone to Telstra or the internet to Internode first, in order to minimize downtime. I came to the conclusion that I could get my faster internet sooner if I changed my internet provider first, and that there were no downsides to doing it that way. In Australia, the process of changing an existing ADSL connection from one ISP to another ISP is called "churning" (however most Telstra documentation calls it a "rapid transfer").

I signed up for the Internode HOME-1500-Power-10 plan, a 1.5 Mb/s plan for $49.95 a month, and heard back from them within a couple of days. They sent an email detailing the new plan and the process for transferring to them. It included a PDF telling me that I should not change phone providers once my Internode plan went active, as this could remove the "ADSL line codes", causing an outage of a few days.

I immediately called Internode to confirm this, then ended up having to cancel the process.

I had to go to plan B: changing my phone provider to Telstra first, so I called Telstra to do so. I was told this would take a few weeks. It did, and in the mean time, Internode changed the price on the plan I wanted from $49.95 to $54.95. I decided to go ahead with it anyway, since it would now cost the same as the old arrangements with iiNet ($33.36 + $49.95 versus $26.95 + $54.95).

Two weeks later, and finally my phone was with Telstra. I called Internode to re-apply, accepting the new plan price.

Last night, I got an SMS telling me that the ADSL service was provisioned, i.e. was now ready to use!

Setting up my new connection (a.k.a. why doesn't my Internet work?)

I left work around 6.15pm, eager to set up the new connection.

I set the DNS of my web site to my backup server (on a frend's ADSL connection), pointed my Debian PPP configuration to the Internode "dsl-provider" account details, restarted PPP and crossed my fingers. Of course, it didn't work.

I learned two things:

• On Debian, you need to change three files, /etc/ppp/dsl-provider, /etc/ppp/provider, and /etc/network/interfaces
• My D-Link DSL-300 modem is really strange to configure in bridge mode

The first is because there are three sets of PPP initialization scripts.

ppp_on_boot (dsl-provider)

I think this used to be called from a script in /etc/init.d. It used dsl-provider, but is no longer referenced.

pon/off (provider)

This is used by pon and poff, the old dial-up ("dip",) scripts that allow privileged users to start and stop the PPP connection.

ifup (interfaces)

PPP devices can now be configured along with Ethernet devices in the standard Debian interfaces file. The provider is named in that file.

In all cases, the script for each provider is stored in /etc/ppp/peers, for example /etc/ppp/peers/internode.

The second is weirder, since there is no documentation (I never got a manual, and there's nothing helpful on the D-Link web site), so it's more a matter of trial-and-error.

I was receiving the familiar "Timeout waiting for PADO packets" message (note that it's PADO with the letter O, not PAD0 with the number 0) which I've seen numerous times before with there were connection problems.

The first thing I did was to add an account on the ADSL modem to test whether my iiNet or Internode account was active, and whether the username and password were correct. I determined that my Internode account was indeed working.

I then enabled debug mode in pppd, and noticed some other messages before the PADO timeout message, in particular "LCP: timeout sending Config-Requests". I figured the problem would have to be that pppd couldn't set up the connection on the modem, so wondered whether the modem was in bridge mode (which it needed to be to allow my Debian server to override the address configuration and provide other services such as address translation that allow me to share the connection between multiple computers).

Account Configuration Page

I checked the main "account configuration" page and ensured there was no username and password entered, that on-demand connection was disabled, and that the connection was disconnected. When I clicked OK, I let it save its settings to Flash memory and reboot. Still nothing.

Next, I tried setting the connection type to "RFC1483 Bridge" mode. It still didn't work.

Finally, I played the old game I learned from years of using Microsoft products: go thru every menu and see what settings are where they shouldn't be. (At least with this modem, there aren't too many settings to get lost in!)

I went to the accounts management page, and noticed there was an entry for some account. The fields didn't give much information, but I figured the best idea was to make sure there was as little configuration on the modem itself. (Besides, the current setup wasn't working, why not give it a try!)

Accounts Management Page

After deleting the entry it still didn't work, but after powering the modem off and on, my "pon" script worked, and I had an internet connection!

Success! (a.k.a. this Internet connection sucks less!)

I made sure my server settings were correct, redirected my web site to my new connection, and sent a test message thru the new Internode email server. All went well!

The very next thing I did was enter youtube.com in my browser. I clicked on the first link it showed me to some dodgy party with beer movie. It played without pausing!

Mission accomplished!

Telstra FTTN Proposal

I was in a waiting room the other day, so I picked up the newspaper. Telstra had a full-page ad comparing their fibre-to-the-node broadband proposal against the G9 proposal (a consortium made up of Australia's other major internet service providers, including Optus, AAPT, iiNet and Internode). Telstra's side had tick marks next to each point, while G9 had crosses. I guess that's the end of the debate then!

There were two particular points that got my attention:
1) G9 is "foreign owned"
2) Telstra's prices are "guaranteed for 14 years"

The first point is only partially true: AAPT is owned by Telecom New Zealand, Optus is owned by SingTel, and Primus is based in the US. The other members are all Australian. They include iiNet, Internode, Macquarie Telecom, PowerTel, Soul, and TransACT. In any case, the major criteria should be speed, reliability, and price.

The second point is true, but you wouldn't want it to be. Telstra haven't released their full wholesale pricing, but they did let slip that their basic 512 kb/s service will cost $59.

Compare that to the G9 pricing, where the slowest service will be three times faster (1.5 Mb/s) and will cost just $14.23. Even their fastest plan will cost just $35.38.

It's one thing for Telstra to be more expensive. We expect that. What's not acceptable is their proposal would cause prices to be higher than they are now for the same product. That would reduce broadband adoption, reduce business competitiveness, and cripple new services such as Internet TV and movies on demand.

For instance, I currently pay $26.95 for a home phone service and $54.95 for a 1.5 Mb/s ADSL service, which makes $81.90 together. ADSL pricing is based on a $22 fee to access Telstra's copper phone line, plus the ISP's costs and margin, which make up the remaining $32.95. Assuming the phone access component of the wholesale price in Telstra's proposal is $26.95 (it's likely to be less, since that the retail price rather than the wholesale price), the internet component would be $59 - $26.95 = $32.05, $10.05 more than the current wholesale price, for a service that's three times slower!

At this point, Telstra have failed to make a case for their proposal. The average consumer would be better off if they did nothing.