Month / June 2012

by programx360

My free Monster Purity HD headphones for the Nokia Lumia range

In deciding what to do about getting a new Windows Phone 7 phone, in particular, investing in Nokia, a key element in the decision was the Free Monster Purity HD Headphones offer worth £199. A phone for £350 plus a free pair of headphones mitigates the risk of missing out on an upgrade of the phone to Windows Phone 8. After some headaches in applying for them, they are here, and …

… the headphones are excellent. I’m no audiophile, but I can appreciate a solid, rich sound and these headphones definitely deliver that. This time, the marketing superlatives on the back of the box stand up. “Amazing”, “incredible”, “quality”, “rich” and of course, we cannot forget “dynamic”. Okay, maybe this is just some marketing executive justifying his salary in difficult times. Once on, background noise is minimised. Equally, and more importantly, unless driving the headphones at exceedingly loud volumes, there is no leakage. When you are working in an office, this is essential. You don’t even need to “drive” these headphones, a perfectly adequate and safe listening experience can be had at 14/30 on a Nokia Lumia 800. If I was to have one complaint, it is the inteference with the radios of the mobile phone itself running through the wire, resulting in the inevitable blipbippbipibipibpbibibippbip. This, however, is more likely due to the design of the phone. Again, the Lumia 800 may be a beautiful phone, but elements of it just don’t work. Screening of the audio hardware seems to have been neglected.

Headset offer

I mentioned “headaches”. The offer certainly put up “barriers of eligibility” which challenged you legally and emotionally to make sure you that you were not only eligible for the offer, but could also be bothered to complete the process. Cashback offers from HP Servers have a similarly typical onerous process, requiring all documents in place and submitted correctly for the offer to be processed. After having started the final stage of the application, by entering my IMEI into the offer web-page, I was told that the “IMEI is not valid”. Alarm bells. I then called Nokia Customer Services, who although they tried their hardest, I suspect their hardest was really nothing more than blocking my call and passing it off to another department. With the greatest respect to out-sourced call centres, this was an abonimable experience. I was told, in a heavy Indian accent, that I was speaking first to “Mike” (indeed, the only person in the entire team with that name) and then “Sophie”. After failing to explain the simplest things, including coming up with my own phonetic alphabet in a desperate attempt to spell my name (“Panda-bear”, “Language”, “Elephant” … ok, maybe I was just enjoying winding dear “Sophie” up), I was just told it would be “processed”.

As with most things regarding customer service, you just need to speak to someone who knows what they are doing, have access to the correct systems and procedures and cares enough about their brand to take ownership of the problem. So I tweeted @NokiaHelps, and they took it on. Indeed, 5 days later, I now have the headphones! Lesson to all companies: if you use out-sourced call-centres do not insult my intelligence by giving people English names and make sure they are well versed with the entire customer service requirements. And make damn sure you have an alternative channel of support, in this case, Twitter.

But why are they offering this rather generous promotion?

Clearly, £200 is a retail value and Nokia would not be paying anywhere near this amount to provide this promotion. But, the company is still in dire straits both financially and with regards its increasingly insignificant market position. So how can they afford it?

Maybe it’s factored into a percentage of Lumia sales’ profits. Some people will buy the Lumia with no knowlege of the offer. A smaller percentage would buy the Lumia and although they know of the offer, they do not opt to use it. A smaller percentage again may apply but for whatever reason pull out, possibly due to disqualification or maybe due to the onerous requirements of the offer. That leaves a relatively small number of people whose applications may be financially viable.

Another possibility could be the proximity of the Windows Phone 8 devices. Nokia have done an awesome job of marketing Windows Phone 7 and grabbing people onto their phones as opposed to the more established models of their competitors. All this, knowing that Windows Phone 8 is around the corner and probably also knowing of the limited upgrade opportunities for the current generation of handsets due to the different OS core. While the headphones are compatible with other operating systems, they are distinctly aimed at Nokia Windows Phone 7 devices – a nice change having to wade through hundreds of i*-only products. By enticing users into a distinctly Nokia-based experience and branding (even down to the 90-degree angle on the 3.5mm plug on the phone-end), maybe they are hoping to secure users’ upgrading to a Nokia Windows Phone 8 rather than a competitor’s model?

by programx360

Aggregating a “living” language

Community dudesBetween work, TT and various obligations I’ve finally managed to finish what is the majority of the second key phase of Taggloo.im: social content.

Language is nothing if not used in a social context, and using Manx online is no different. I’m a big fan of Social Media and particularly how it can be used to promote the visibility (if not learning/teaching) of our island’s language and heritage. Modern technology is already leveraged very well by teachers and learners of Manx using mediums such as Twitter, You Tube, blogs and Facebook.

It was always my intention to bring together what is currently a disparate and siloed set of high quality language content and aggregate it for presentation and showcasing it, alongside other, similar content. In the spirit of open-data, why not take the content, re-form it and publish it side-by-side?

Currently, Taggloo is pulling in content from:

  • Twitter (based on a set of rules which should hopefully provide fairly relevant Manx content)
  • You Tube (specifically the Gaelg You Tube channel)

Taggloo community screenshot

Try it out: http://taggloo.im/Community

Hopefully by integrating this live Manx content, it will encourage users not only to develop their understanding of the language by accessing previously unseen channels, but also to participate in the discussion using Twitter.

Maybe in the future I’ll also add a Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr feed, or just more content from You Tube or more blogs. If you’d like to see a particular set of data included, make sure you suggest it on our UserVoice site. The site is able to gather and parse a wide variety of data-formats, which will increase as more content feeds are discovered.

Remember, if you’re using Twitter to write in Manx, add the #Gaelg hash-tag!

by programx360

Lumia 800 – my hands-on

It’s here. It’s in my hand. The reputed saviour of Windows Phone 7 as a platform. The Nokia Lumia 800.

If you hadn’t guessed, I’m a big fan of Windows Phone 7. (See the tiles on the right hand side?) I feel like I’ve been the unofficial, unrecognised and unrewarded one-man marketing department of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 on the Isle of Man due to the shocking support previously shown by our local Telco’s. Microsoft are crap at blowing their own trumpet, and it took someone like Nokia – and the precarious position they are in – to jump in and back the platform, despite the naysayers. And they have done a really good job, transforming even the idea of a black-slab Smartphone to a chiselled, striking and robust design. Now we have hardware as great looking as the operating system!

Throw away your prejudices of Microsoft’s mobile phones, and close the “technical journalists'” blogs that spout doom for Redmond’s efforts. Empty your mind, and just have a play with the phone. You might not like it, but you cannot deny it is striking and is just what the market needs.

I was practically sitting on the doorstep of Manx Telecom’s shop when Windows Phone 7.0 was launched and soon bagged myself an HTC HD7. Not having used an HTC before, I was dubious. I was also dubious of the total touch-screen interface, but the device and the operating system were a dream. But, after 18 months of heavy use (including being dropped through the TT Grandstand seating from 10 foot up onto concrete) it was time to move on. Besides, the curves on the Lumia were … curvy.

But which Lumia? 800 or 900? Get the 800 and the price would be marginally cheaper but the phone was smaller than I was used to. Get the 900 and pay full whack at launch, but then even Siri agreed it was the Best Smartphone on the market. The elephant in the room is Windows Phone 8, which is due out at the end of the year. As a developer, I “need” to get hold of one of these phones, but that would immediately cut 6-months of life off the phone I was about to buy. The seemingly endless delays to the 900 coming over due to he huge demand in the US was also causing me concern. So, I decided to go for the 800, which has had time to be bug fixed and dropped in price slightly, and redeploy it to a grateful owner in 6 months time.

Nokia Lumia 800 phonesOverall, I’m very impressed with the phone. It is sleek, damned sexy and it just wants to be held. No operating system could look as good on the device, and no other device looks as good with the operating system. It is a perfect match. A problem Microsoft may find in their [rightful] clamping down on customisations and modifications to the OS, however, is that as all phones will essentially only be differentiated by slight hardware differences or external appearance, the urge to upgrade an existing Windows Phone 7 is somewhat reduced.

In the same breath, if a user upgrades their Windows Phone 7 handset to another Windows Phone 7 handset, they should expect a very similar experience. Bar a few OEM apps and hardware modifications, there should be no difference.

Alas, not so with Nokia – and not in a good way. I left Nokia because they had made a perfectly good operating system (Symbian) into a hideous mess after taking a controlling interest in it. But making a hideous mess isn’t necessarily going to mean the death of the platform (look at Android); failing to realise what the market is crying out for will. Their phones were largely incompatible (“app” writing was often in C++, a fairly high barrier of entry that other platforms didn’t have) and the processors in the phones often performed extraordinarily poorly after a few months’ use. On the other hand, they did get one thing right which still eludes Smartphones: battery life!

Letting down Windows Phone 7

Using the Nokia Lumia 800 has been mostly a pleasurable experience, but for one thing … and this is the killer as far as a pleasurable Windows Phone 7 experience is concerned: the display has a tendency to lag. Swooshing and swiping those tiles and feeling the inertia as you hit boundaries is a fundamental part of the Metro experience. As soon as your finger disconnects from this [almost] kinetic experience, the feeling is lost. And when the screen does not work at all for touch? Well, the phone is now totally useless. This tends to happen after a day’s use, often when plugging in the power on an evening. I suspect this is to do with the synchronisation with Zune Windows Phone 7 does transparently in the background when plugged in with a known WiFi connection. But this is transparent, and should not be noticable to the user. It certainly wasn’t for the HD7. The only thing that has changed is the handset.

Reliability of the phone is also less than great. I know a three others with Lumia 800s and while they praise the phone’s look and feel and operating system, they all have similar – or worse – experiences:

Me:

After just 4 days’ use, the phone crashed. My HTC HD7 crashed once in 18 months, and even then it was with a Beta version of the “Mango” operating system – and you expect that to crash! With the HTC HD7, it’s simple, you pop the battery and you’re back up and running again. But the Lumia 800 is a sealed unit, and as such, you cannot pop the battery – or anything else for that matter. So it was straight to me HTC HD7 to look up on the internet how to reset my Lumia 800. Ah, good old black slab HTC HD7. Sexy you are not, but sometimes the most unsexy is the most reliable.

The touch-screen occasionally fails to respond. This seems to be due to a CPU issue, as it sometimes comes back to life once it has completed processing whatever it was doing. Now don’t get me wrong, Android users; this is NOT due to a single-core processor. The same operating system works flawlessly on my HTC HD7 and the HTC Trophy. It is a hardware deficiency. Now here’s the problem for Nokia: my HTC HD7 had a 1GHz processor, but the Nokia Lumia 800, has a 1.4GHz processor. Something is very wrong.

Nokia Lumia 800 phonesOverall, the phone has crashed about 6 times in the last 3 weeks. I have now turned off Wifi synchronisation when I plug in the power and the phone is a lot more reliable. So, Nokia, you broke something.

Person #2:

Equally impressed with the phone, this user was keen to take it out and road-test it by tracking his progress around his many hikes on the island. While he does have frustrations with regards the task switching – or lack of – in the navigation apps he uses, he has a largely positive experience. But then, the phone crashes. His phone has crashed a number of times, probably occurring about once a month and typically when using GPS applications.

Person #3:

Having switched from BlackBerry, this user was expecting great things from Nokia and Windows Phone 7. Initially very pleased with the device, he was keen to show it off to help me in my own buying decision. Then, the phone stopped updating his social media updates. He tried rebooting. Now the phone is completely dead and is requiring to be switched out by the operator.

So, Nokia, that is 3 out of 3 failures. Based on users I know who are succesfully using HTC, LG and Samsung devices, this is a horrendous record. I left Nokia because of their wrecking of Symbian. And now it seems they are about to take a perfectly good operating system and wreck that, too. Maybe it’s a symptom of having rushed the Lumia 800 to market. It certainly was not without teething troubles, but these were swiftly addressed through software updates.

But I need to be clear. The phone is very nice and the Lumia 900 has gone down a total storm around the world. The Nokia Drive application is brilliantly simple AND FAST. I was very pleased that Nokia jumped on board the Windows Phone 7 wagon, it was the push it needed to succeed and I’ve evangelised about both Nokia and Microsoft’s contribution since launch. More importantly, this in no way implies anything about the quality of Windows Phone 7. The beauty of having a “locked down” OS is that the experience should be the same across handsets bar minor customisations. It’s about setting expectations, and maintaining those across not only difference mobile phones, but with XBox 360 and Windows 8. Now, I feel I have been let down and I have let down those users I suggested look at Nokia and how they have received a negative impression of an awesome OS.

But if you’re still undecided, check out my  “No sexiness required” guide.