ThoughtFactory.CreateThought() A random collection of thoughts from an easily bored developer

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Phone

There was a time when I didn't care for mobile phones. I was one of the last amongst my group of friends to get one, and I didn't do so until it was absolutely necessary. My first phone was a hand-me-down from my sister who is 4 years my junior, which shows just how long I left it.

The phone was a Bosch. I had no idea they even made phones. It could send text messages (BUT ONLY IN CAPS, funnily enough. Someone forgot to include the full ASCII character set on their phone..), and had about 10 minutes of talk time on a full charge. Needless to say, it didn't exactly convince me that a phone was an essential piece of equipment.

My friends and co-workers were starting to get sick of being told by a monotone voice that my phone was unavailable or switched off. Then one day in late 2002 I heard that an electronics store was selling off the Nokia 5510, a phone with a full qwerty keyboard that could play MP3s, all for only AUD200. It even had 64MB of storage. Remember, this was pre-iPod when you could spend AUD200 on a 32Meg Mp3 player that ran on AA batteries that lasted around 3 minutes before needing to be replaced. I could fit a whole album on there if I was conservative with the bit rate. Finally I had found a device that appealed to my gadget loving side without being too new and scary. There would be no reason to learn how to do that silly predictive text stuff, so I'd be typing up a storm in no time.

Finally I was starting to like the idea of having a mobile phone. There was only one problem: I was still on a terrible pre-paid plan, so I could only type so many SMS messages on my wonderful keyboard before I simply ran out of credit. I spent too much time thinking about how much each message or call was costing me, so I could never actually enjoy using the phone. I found myself cutting people off and sending abrupt messages in an attempt to get a conversation to end quicker. I started to view the phone as a money pit that sucked up disposable income whenever I tried to talk to my friends.

After a period of time I cracked the screen (it was in my pocket and I bumped into something made of steel) and had to go get another phone. At this point I was sick of having to think about how much it was costing me to ring friends and family, so I ditched the pre-paid account and switched to a post-paid plan with Virgin. Seeing as most of my calls were to my partner, I bought two new phones, a Nokia 6230 for myself and a Nokia 7250i for her, and signed up for a plan that gave really cheap calls and messages to phones on the same network so we could ring each other on the cheap.

So I had partially solved the problem of worrying about making a call or sending a message. I was still reluctant to ring anyone not on the Virgin network, as I could eat up my minimum spend amount very quickly, but at least I felt free enough to frequently ring home or send messages to my friends who were also on Virgin.

My new 6230 still played music, had a removable MMC card that could be used to store files, was much faster than the 5510, had a camera (only VGA, but still, this was 2004) and as an added bonus it even supported GPRS. There were just two problems: Virgin didn't (at the time) have an internet capable access point for GPRS (you were limited to accessing their Virgin Mobile site) and my brand new phone was missing a feature that I had dearly loved in my previous phone, the qwerty keyboard. I was horrified, as I'd now have to learn how to send text messages using a numeric keypad.

Ok, I lied. There were three problems. Tack "had to take the battery out to change the MMC card" on to the list. Worst. Design. Decision. Ever. But I digress.

I started off slowly. I didn't use predictive text, because I had somehow convinced myself that it was cheating and I truly deserved RSI. No, the proper way to type a message is to cycle through letters until you get the one you require. That makes much more sense than letting the phone figure out what word you're probably meaning to type. *cough* To be fair to myself I did initially give predictive text a go, but I found myself having to enter every second word into the dictionary anyway. This constant interruption was enough to make me give up on predictive text for about a month. Eventually the pain in my thumbs lead me to tough it out with predictive text until the dictionary had learned enough to make the phone relatively pleasant to use.

One of my co-workers at the time purchased a Nokia 6600, one of the first semi-decent Series-60 phones (Series 60 being the mobile OS developed on top of Symbian OS). The phone had a lot of great features, and it even played N-Gage games (although the battery lasted all of 30 minutes when doing this), but it was as slow as a dog. My Series-40 6230, while not having all the features of the Symbian based OS, seemed like the fastest phone in the world next to the slothful 6600.

The 6600 was the first Series-60 phone I had seen or used, and it didn't make a good first impression for the platform.

While my partner and I were awaiting the birth of our second child, the microphone on my trusty 6230 decided to stop working. I could hear the caller, but couldn't talk back. Considering I was expecting a "take me to the hospital NOW!" phone call at any moment I decided it would be a good idea to replace the phone.

I was in a hurry to get something, anything, and was only half way through the contract for my 6230. I wasn't about to put in weeks of research to find a really decent phone, nor did I want to sign up for another contract and end up paying two off at a time. So I did the only thing that made sense at the time; I bought the cheapest Pre-Paid Nokia I could find on the same network (so no network locking issues) and figured that I'd sort it all out later. The model I ended up with (I was going to say "chose", but that's not exactly the right word) was the Nokia 6030.

I had been spoiled with the 6230. At the time of purchase it was basically Nokia's top of the line business phone, and here I was downgrading to something that didn't even have a camera. I made a  decision to stick it out until my contract for the 6230 ran out, but when that happened I couldn't find a phone that was worth buying. The N70 and N73 were out, but I still had the bad memories of Series-60 from the 6600, and I had heard terrible things about the performance of the N70.

Then something wonderful happened.  Three were giving away the Nokia 6288 on their $29 dollar cap. The 6288 is a fairly decent Series 40 phone with a Mini SD slot on the side of the phone, a 2 Megapixel camera and 3G support. I picked up two of them and transfered both of our numbers from Virgin over to Three. I also signed myself up for the 10 MB capped internet package that Three were offering and downloaded the GMail client.

Now I had mobile email. If you've never had mobile email then you may not understand, but it truly does change the way you work. You become connected and available wherever you may be, and email becomes a first class communication medium just like regular phone calls and SMS.

The capped plan was also a huge change for the way I mentally approached making a phone call. I had free minutes to ring other Three mobiles, which took care of communicating with my partner, but I also had AUD120 worth of cap to use as I saw fit. Now I could ring people on other networks without feeling like I was pouring a cup full of 2 dollar coins down a drain.

Apparently Three were not done being awesome, so they decided to release their X-Series range. For those who haven't heard of it, X-Series is effectively a product that you can subscribe to that gives you between a 100MB and 2GB internet quota to play with every month, with prices ranging from AUD12 to AUD40. You get a bunch of other Three services, but their usefulness pales in comparison to the fact that you can now have a broadband internet connection in your pocket that doesn't cost the earth.

X-Series was important because it changed the face of mobile data access in Australia. It effectively started a price war in the mobile broadband market. As a result, companies such as Virgin now offer obscenely cheap mobile broadband packages, both standalone and bundled with a phone.
Technically Three would only offer X-Series on certain phones that have been "certified for X-Series". Unfortunately my 6288 wasn't one of these phones. It is possible to sign up for X-Series with a non-certified phone, but it is highly dependent on the sales person you talk to. The 4 different customer service representatives from Three that I spoke to wouldn't let me do it, so I decided to see about getting another phone.

While all this was happening, the Nokia N95 was in the process of being certified by Three. Some of the other phone companies had already released it, but there were apparently several major issues with the first versions of the firmware. The N95 seemed like a dream phone. HSDPA, VoiP, 802.11G and a number of other features put the phone firmly on my radar. There was only one slight problem; the N95 is a Series-60 phone.

After spending days on the web I could only find one type of non-firmware related complaint about the N95, and that was the backlash against the battery life. I was willing to resign myself to a life of charging my phone every night, so this wasn't such a big deal. Then I discovered that the N95 has video out. That was pretty much made up my mind. I got one as soon as they were released on Three, and immediately signed up for X-Series Silver (500MB of traffic a month for AUD20).

I've been using the N95 since mid-2007, and I have to say that it, combined with having a proper broadband connection in my pocket, have changed the way I work, think and generally access information. Just think about how having mobile access to Google would change the way you operate. You can read movie reviews while trying to select a DVD to rent, or check out the type of RAM your motherboard can take while waiting in line at a PC store.

I won't go into detail about the feature set of the N95, but here's a quick overview of things that I use every day. I'll include both inbuilt features and things that I've installed:

• VoiP client that I can integrate with iiphone
• A 5 megapixel camera that also doubles as a near DVD-quality video camera
• The Gmail Mobile Client
• A GPS that integrated with Google Maps for Mobiles
• HSDPA network access
• The built in web browser
• Opera Mini
• GooSync (Syncs your Google Calendar with your mobile)
• Using it as a modem for my Eee PC

The key thing about most of these features is that they would be useless without a proper internet connection. If I didn't have a mobile broadband plan then I'd have a chunky phone with a nice camera and GPS that happens to need charged every night. Instead I've got a mobile office in my pocket.

So after 7 years of mobile use I'm totally turned around on the subject. My mobile is no longer an annoying piece of plastic that I carry around as an obligation to other people who complain that they can never contact me. It is an integrated part of my life that I'd quite frankly be lost without.

At least 3 of my close friends now have N95s, and I've seen 4 of them in the office, so I must be on to something. I know quite a few of them are using Three's X-Series or an equivalent mobile broadband plan, too. It costs more than my old phone did, but I think the advantages more than outweigh the cost. The only down side is that people jumping on the bandwagon now get to pick up the N95 8GB, and there's no way I'd ever be able to justify getting one of those. Ah well, only a year and bit left on my contract...