Data Roaming Warning When Changing Phones

Many of us are pretty cluey about how to avoid getting punished by the phone company for rogue data charges. In my case, I get slugged when my 3 connection goes roaming. Some of the things that I make sure on my phone phone is that I do not allow my phone to check emails when roaming. However, when you switch phones, it's easy to drop your guard. Your new touchscreen phone with widgets keep downloading updates from news sites that you will never read, using your internet connection whether or not you are roaming. So this is just a short post to remind everyone to watch their bills and be careful what your phone is doing behind your back.

So what inspired this post? Receiving my 3 phone bill after using a trial phone and discovering a little surprise in my roaming charges.

This one's for you E72 fans - Nokia E6

If you were following various blogs and websites, you would have heard yesterday of the announcement that Nokia is lining up the next E series phone that looks to replace your E72, with a touchscreen Symbian "Anna" version of your beloved phone.

It was only around two weeks ago, we posted our review of the Nokia E7. Some of the comments about how it is more of a two handed phone than what E72 users may be used to. As if to read our minds, the E6 offers everything that the E7 brings to the board room such as: 

USB to go - Allows you to read/edit anything on a thumb drive via your E72 sized device

TV-out - Projects your phone screen on to a TV screen, but I don't think it is HDMI

Joikuspot Premium - An essential app that enables internet sharing by using your phone as an internet hotspot

HD video recording - Filming professional videos of your conference/holiday from your phone. 

The difference? 

QWERTY - a real E72 keypad that you can't accidentally open apps or call people when you are juggling your phone with other things (this is one annoyance I found with complete touchscreen phones like E7 and N8).  

Symbian Anna - Newer version of the Symbian^3 with a new browser and faster/better/friendlier interface. In terms of home screens, you will get five, of which each allows you to vary the size and look of each icon. 

What do you lose? 

Autofocus camera - the 8MP camera is a full focus camera which from my limited experience with the E7 and C7, makes me wonder why we can't just move up to autofocus and forget full focus existed? However, I speak in ignorance having not tried the camera on the E6.. so watch this space. 

Scanner - We lamented this in our post about the E7, but here we go again. How many of you showed off to friends the feature of capturing a business card contacts using the multiscanner on the E72. Well, cherish those moments. 

As I said before on twitter, I am the kind of person who likes to type faster than one thinks, whilst others are the look-and-poke type phone operators. The touchscreens like the N8 and C7 are mostly for the latter and the E6 is for those that like to know where things are ahead of time. We'll talk more about this phone when we get a chance to play with one.

Nokia Ovi Suite 3.1 Now at Betalabs

You can catch the newest update of the Nokia Ovi Suite at Nokia Betalabs. Here are the exciting changes in the new beta which I will definitely download and check it out.

• Update both your phone and newest versions of your installed software in one go.
• Downloading apps, games, and more from Ovi Store is now even simpler. Now, the direct link to the app is sent to your phone. 
• Sync log view allows  you to see all the details that were added, updated or deleted and where each of these changes took place.
• Syncing with Microsoft Outlook has been improved with critical fixes.
• Connections Creating the connection between your device and computer is now more reliable.
• Sending text messages to groups is now possible. You can create contact groups in the Contacts view and easily send messages to all the members of a specific group in the Messaging view.
• Playing high-definition videos captured with your phone takes place in a more optimised and smooth way.
• Keeping track of your map downloads is easy. Click Downloads in the Maps view to view your download queue.

I am looking forward mostly to the improvements to the synchronising Nokia with Microsoft Outlook which should be an essential arrangement. Syncing usually scares people because of the potential to lose everything in one go. Hopefully this phobia has also been taken care of in this new update. 

Redefining Success E7 Competition

If you lined up 20 people from the street and asked them what they think success is, their answers will explain the colourful and fascinating world that we live in. Nokia's E7 that has recently been launched wants you to remember that "Success is what you make it", similar to the Nokia N8 promotion "Its not the technology, its what you do with it". Both approaches reflect the different people that use Nokias in very different ways to reach their goals and make it big in the way that only they know how.

So it is with great interest we will watch the development of the latest competition from Nokia which asks the world, how do you define success? E7 is not a measure of your success, it is the tool by which you reach success. Successful people don't rely on their phones to define success, but to achieve success. And with phones like the E7, you can see why we don't need 2 million apps. The E7 is for those looking to achieve success, not just pass time.

How do you define success? Leave a comment as I am personally very interested in how you all respond to this. However, don't forget to enter the competition which you can reach at www.youtube.com/nokia. There's a $10,000 carrot to keep you interested.

For a sample video, check out this video about a Nokia product designer in Hong Kong and see how he measures success in his life very differently to most of us.