ON THE ROAD WE GO!

If I owned a VERTU phone I probably could not resist an opening line such as “Patience is a Vertu” but for the ordinary person like me, there’s a saying, “Good things come to those who wait!” And wait I did for the day when computing became mobile. Not just the convenience of going online on the road but doing so without giving up the speeds we’re accustomed to at home! Or not. I’ve waited and waited for the day when mobile broadband becomes a reality—for me, that is. I consider myself a late adopter of stuff so last Christmas I bought a 3.5G Nokia E51 phone to replace my (cough, cough) Nokia 6020. Without knowing it, I got a HSDPA phone before I knew what it meant and certainly before I got to know that my carrier would be providing this service.

© Jan Shim Photography

To cut a long story short, I discovered much to my delight that a previously obscured modem driver installed by Nokia PC Suite software has twice the the connection speed that I wish I had discovered sooner. Some of the more obvious places I had looked showed a maximum speed of 480 Kbps. I wasn’t thrilled considering there was a possibility of connecting at much higher speeds in HSDPA mode and capped at 480 Kbps this was going to be same or slower than my home broadband. To cut another possibly long story short, I “found” the right menu where twice the speed of 921 Kbps can be configured (applies to Windows XP). There are a number of places where the modem driver can be found and for some strange reason the other menus do not go beyond 480 Kbps. What you want is Control Panel | Network Connections | Right-click “Properties of Nokia E51 Modem (OTA)”

You’ll see the following window possibly showing 480 Kbps or so and the drop down menu reveals the magic number, 921,600 bps.

I took an extra step of disabling the internal modem of my Dell Inspiron 8500 so that the Nokia modem becomes the only default I need. I took the opportunity to update the Nokia PC Suite software to the latest release 200.34.36 including an phone software and USB Cable Driver 8.6.0.2 upgrade.

This morning I took my laptop and phone on the road and decided to surprise my IM contacts from the BILLIONTH BARREL MONUMENT parking where the team DONNAVVENTURA visited not too long ago. One laptop, one phone and a bunch of cables later, I was online and chat with a few friends whom I thought would be keen to share the experience. Mobile 3G broadband isn’t exactly new technology but when our first 3G provider made its debut everything was costly. The cost of 3G phones alone were prohibitive to say the least and I wasn’t keen to have another monthly bill to settle. So I waited.

© Jan Shim Photography

This is a 150w inverter that plugs into the car’s cigarette lighter socket and it powers my laptop. It has enough juice to power items such as TV, game consoles, fax machine, mobile phone and camera chargers among other things. The inverter allows me to use the laptop as long as I want to as long the engine is running and the car battery is being charged. I drive a roomy MPV that has a second power ciggy socket right behind the driver seat so it’s perfect aligned to my needs.

© Jan Shim Photography

I’m satisfied for now that I’m able to connect at speeds twice that of my home broadband when I’m on the road. I now have a back up broadband connection when the home network suffers an outage as it has proven worthy a number of times. Whether or not I’m connecting to the internet from a laptop of just accessing the net on the phone, the Nokia E51 has become an indispensible productivity tool. Being able to choose between WiFi or 3.5G connectivity gives me the best of both world.

That said, I am going to be knocking on Nokia’s doors (again) for a modem driver that gives us at least 3.6 Mbps considering that 14.x Mbps HSDPA is rumoured to be in the pipeline. At the car park, I ran a speed test and at the request of an associate who insisted that I publish the result of this one test I did from the car park, here it is! This might just be a spike but even at 1 Mbit it’s already twice as fast compared to the 480-ish Kbps I’m getting at home.

What I consider TRULY MOBILE computing taking into account data risks, power consumption etc is when emerging Solid State Disk (SSD) technology replaces the hard drive. Although companies such as Dell now offers SDD as an option, 64GB at SGD$1,200 is far from being affordable but I’m very excited at the possibility. Imagine all the advantages that SSD attracts: extremely reliable data storage, no moving parts means no heat or risk of crashes, and certainly longer lasting battery performance.

WARNING The phone’s new software performed a reset and wiped out all my SMS and Email messages including my Gmail and Yahoo mailboxes and configuration. Even my MP3 songs and custom dictionary entries were not spared. Wiping out the previously stored dictionary entries was a good thing though. Some words that I had added to supplement predictive texting turned out to be a nuisance, am glad to have them reset.

NOKIA E51. FINALLY IT MAKES SENSE.

For over a decade now, mobile phones have come in all shapes and sizes and are available in so many different form factors. So much so that trying to find one that fits your hands like a good pair of gloves is enough to make your head spin. And I should know. December 27, 2007 was my 11th anniversary as DST Prima subscriber and in the time the mobile phone market exploded, my head has been in a constant state of Russian roulette each time I looked and gave up. This means I have not, in the past decade, owned many phones. The phones I have and do own have always been a Nokia—Walk on the Blue Side 8250, 6020 and very recently, the E51—the one that makes the most sense, to me!

Nokia E51 © Jan Shim Photography

I know for a fact that I am not alone when I say I am perhaps also a decade behind most people when it comes to mobile phone ownership. Would you believe until I got the E51, I’ve never had a phone that had capabilities in MP3 audio, Wifi, high definition LCD, Emails—sad but true. The time between the 8250 and the E51 had left me in the stone age of mobile communications. Quite the irony for an IT exec whose career spanned just as long.

Why the E51? For starters, the form factor (called the Candy Bar) is just right and the phone oozes appeal in every sense of the world—slim, black, stainless steel casing, improved keypad ergonomics and most of all not obvious to non-Nokia users are the interface improvements and extremely intuitive/common sense menus. Plenty of E51 specs and reviews on the web so I shan’t repeat them here.

Calender and Appointments. While this isn’t any ground-breaking news, I can finally sync my Outlook calendar between my PC and laptop (a big big thumbs-up). Anyone who’s tried to keep two instances of their Outlook calendar in sync between two or more computers know how inconvenient it is and there are no tools that let you accomplish this without going Ggrrrr! The E51 once connected with either computer automatically performs the updates. For years, I’ve had to wait to power up my laptop or PC to check my calendar then get back to clients if I was available for a job. That’s no longer the case as long as they’re sync’d.

The Screen. The LCD is the one single component that we spend 100% of the time using and looking at. While just 2-inch, the 240 x 320 pixel LCD supports 16 million colours and amazingly high resolution that make the graphics pop! Also, the transreflective LCD ensures visual legibility even in bright sunlight!

Migration. Moving from one Nokia to another is a cinch. Nokia has a tool called SWITCH which can very easily transfer/synchronize all your Contacts and Notes from your other Nokia phones using infrared (a transfer protocol that’s available on even the most basic of models) so if you have several hundred contacts, there’s no fuss.

FM Radio. Every country has a popular radio station but when we’re abroad, we don’t bother tuning in for obvious reasons. We’re hardly in the hotel room and nobody carries a radio in their pockets. I can think of more than one reason where a handy FM Radio is useful.

Multimedia capabilities: includes RealPlayer for MPEG-4, MP4, 3GP, RV, RA, AMR and MIDI playback while Music Player plays back sound files in MP3 and AAC extensions. Though not a music head, I’m impressed with the high fidelity this phone is capable of. For those of you who use a Recorder this phone is also a high quality voice recorder and lets you record up to 60 minutes of voice memo. I’m guessing one hour of voice recording is quite good though I am unable to find info of whether recording time can be extended if saving to external MicroSD card (recorder function activated via a factory programmed but user configurable shortcut key—essentially by pressing the Email Icon for one second)

Mobility and Connectivity. With WiFi technology, I can now sign on to the many free internet services available today when I am on the road and check my emails when I prefer not to have the burden of my 15.4″ laptop with me (in the absence of WiFi connectivity, there’s also the provider’s GPRS packet service though whether that’s roamed or not remains to be discovered). For instance, I posted my first blog comment on the E51 while I was taking a break in between my badminton game where the venue has free public WiFi access. Also, I should mention the use of standard miniUSB slot is a big bonus compared to proprietary connectors still used in many newer Nokia phones. You can very easily find miniUSB cables used in items such as Flash card readers, same USB cables supplied with most digital cameras I know so forgetting to bring one or misplacing the original is not life threatening!

© Jan Shim Photography

There are many more features on the E51 that makes the phone worthy. In short, it has made mobile communication interesting again for me. I was on the verge of switching to EASI Pre Paid end last year when I thought all I needed was text messaging and the occasional phone call. With my work now taking me on the road more than before, a laptop isn’t always a practical solution!

Update: May 23 2008 Since this post I have connected the phone to my laptop as a HSDPA modem and have successful gone online using Nokia PC Suite software. The E51 though a full HSDPA-compliant device is not capable of connecting at 7.2mbps due to (I suspect) Windows hardware driver limitation. It appears to always connect at 480kbps and actual throughput is decent to get work done on the go!

E51 with standard Mini-USB connector © Jan Shim Photography

EASI COME EASI GO

PREPAID phone cards are an explosive worldwide business phenomenon. Its convenience and relative cost effectiveness make it a popular choice among mobile phone users.  Brunei’s premier communications and entertainment carrier DSTcom knows this better than anyone in the cellular business.

The Billionth Barrel Monument in Seria town

A rare sunrise moment in Kampong Sungai Bera when flocks of egrets roamed the skyline during mating season

Another rare sunrise moment in Seria captured from my kitchen balcony

A quick stop-over at the Lumut beach bridge after a corporate event shoot nearby.

Silhouette of Jamie and Jewel at the end of 2008 Dumpling Festival at Seria beach.

I recently provided DSTcom 7 images to appear on EASI prepaid cards, five of which can be seen above. Each image has a 100,000 card circulation to satisfy strong demands with a total of 700,000 cards going to all distribution outlets in the country. Being a postpaid user for over a decade, I’ve decided to make a switch to prepaid and be a part of the explosive statistics, a compelling reason for first time and returning travellers to pick one up. For more information about EASI Prepaid Services.

HORNBILL and EGRETS added June 05 2008

An Oriental pied hornbill over the Kampong Sungai Bera skyline

Egrets in a panic flight in Panaga during a joint Brunei Nature Society and Panaga Natural History Society outing in Seria

Tasek Merimbun is probably one of the more internationally known park in Brunei. It is the only one in the country to be declared an ASEAN National Heritage Site way back in 1984.

All images © Jan Shim Photography