10 Worst Phones Of All Time (part 1)

OK, so the N95 is a lovely piece of engineering, but it's time we celebrated the other side of the coin, the turkeys that wouldn't fly, the phones that should have been codenamed, "but seriously, WTF?"

In order to get in this highly exclusive list a phone needs to have some serious design or conceptual flaw (or simply not work), a flaw that really should have spotted and ironed out. Either that or the phone in question should have been placed in a burlap sack and dropped off a bridge.


In reverse order then:


10. The Nokia 7110

Actually, the 7110 wasn't the worst phone ever. As a phone (for making phone calls) it worked fine, with triband GSM and a really usuable UI. Its reason for getting in the list is that it was the first phone to demonstrate exactly how much WAP was going to underdeliver. "WAP is crap" started with this phone, although that really isn't the phone's fault. The other reason it's here is for the spring-loaded keypad cover which was slick as you like for 1999, but required the owner to hold it at exactly the right angle to work properly. And you had to put up with loads of people telling you it wasn't actually the phone used in the Matrix.




9. The Motorola P7389

This phone came out at the same time as the Nokia 7110 when I was working for a company developing some of the first WAP sites. You could get either the 7110 or the 7389 from O2 and my colleague Ben volunteered to get the 7110. I got the 7389. A week later after missing dozens of calls and still unable to find my texts I swapped it for the 7110.




8. Any phone running Windows PocketPC Phone edition

Just for the genius decision that you couldn't start calls from the missed calls register. If you could find it. Er...but...The new OS is much better (you can let my arm go now, Scott)


7. Nokia N-Gage

Partly for the notion that you could beat Nintendo at mobile gaming, but mostly just for the genius placement of mic and speaker. A whole new internet cult was born: Sidetalkin



6. Motorola V100

It's a pager. Not a phone. You can't fool me, I'm a professional.









...read on tomorrow for 5 to 2 and then I'll do a big countdown in my best David "Kid" Jensen style over CCS's version of Whole Lotta Love (stops, realises that at least half the people in the office won't have the faintest what that is, feels old) before getting to number one!

We love our N95...

...So much we made a video of it !

Not only did we film Mobizines on the N95's beautiful screen - but we utilised the TV-Out port to our best ability too...

Scroll down to the vid and have a look see what I mean...

Featuring:
(in order of appearance)

Richie's N95,
Mobizines - Java Version*,
Mobizines in vertical & horizontal screen format,
MAXIM Mobizine in vertical & horizontal screen format,
Our very own Mobizines Daily...

...and a Mobizines Blogspot exclusive:

The new 'Autoscroll' feature that will be built into our next release...



Enjoy!

*Yes yes - we know the N95 is a Symbian handset - but Richie is our Java fiend and as the vid was his idea we used 'his version' of Mobizines.
We do have a Symbian version of it mind, we just haven't released it yet but;
If you'd like to give it a go - email us (along with your phone number and operator details) at help@mobizines.com and we'll send you the necessary files to install it yourself!

Tube Map you say?

"Whassat den?!"

Well - we've been trying to collate a list of all the apps we like/admire/use daily to share with all of our lovely readers out there (all five of them).

So far Jim and I are yet to receive anything back from the group email we sent out last week along the lines of:

"Oi! Give us something for the blog!"

But to be fair to the guys upstairs - they do work hard - and the next release isn't far away.

SO!

In the interim - one of our 'blogrollers' - the lovely technokitten to be precise - reminded me of a handy little app we found a while back via the wonders of Transport for London.

Basically - on some handsets you can download a lovely interactive Tube Map via their wap site.
Unfortunately you're unable to get to this if you use an N73 or an N95 for example.
Ah-ha!
That's what TFL would have you believe!

We managed to find the source of the downloads and we've decided to share it with all you lovely people.
Got a phone? Gonna be in London Town anytime soon?
Then get this super duper Tube Map!
It's easy peasy... Ready?

Get your Firefox browser + WAP browser plug-in (if needed) and go to here:

http://wap.tfl.gov.uk/kcml/tubemap/downloads/

Once you get there use the following as a guide:

6230 - does 128px screens - Er.. 6230 then.
6600 - does 176px screens - That'll be your N70 etc...
S700 - does 240px screens (QVGA) screens - N73, N95, etc, etc...

Huzzah!
Tube map wonderment for all!

Why do you have to go to the above wap/website to get the map?
Well - you don't.

Go to the official wap site site on a 6230 and you're laughing.
Go there on an N73 however and you will not be shown the link to download the app.

Boo! Hiss!

New Handsets from T-Mobile

T-Mobile UK adds Nokia N95, BlackBerry 8800g to its offering...

Us lucky Brits!

The first one is the Nokia N95 "multimedia computer", whose price starts from £0 and goes up to £289.99 (one of our guys has already done this - expect a video update soon)

The other one is RIM's flagship BlackBerry 8800g, priced in a £0-159.99 range. Of course, in order to get any of these devices, you'll have to sign for an appropriate contract.
Still, it's good to see two of the top devices available on any carrier/operator.

Maybe the others will catch up soon?

We just love testing out new handsets in this office - as you can see we've got Mobizines working on the N95 and we also support some Blackberry handsets - but not all.

Guess we'll have to get the Tech Team working on the 8800g!
Just out of curiosity:

Have any of our readers tried the Blackberry version of the Mobizines client yet?
If so - we'd love your feedback - email us at help@mobizines.com or leave your comments below...

Not all that quickly though

Maths-phobes look away now.

Something about James' post struck me as a little odd. Not anything James said, but the quote from Voda: "Currently, you’re charged £2.35 for each MB. But from June 1st 2007, you’ll only pay £1 for up to 15MB per day. That’s 30 times more pages for the same price."

Huh? How does that work out? If 1Mb equals £2.35 before the change, and 15mb equals £1 now then actually you get 35 times as much data per pound! (35.25 to be precise).

No wonder it's taking the mobile operators so long to figure out that flat, or at least predictable, data tariffs are what we want. They can't even work out the basic maths in their pricing models.

Incidentally, that comparison above is only valid for the 15Mb you get for a pound. Stray over the 15Mb and Voda will charge you £2 a megabyte. For £2.35 you get 15.675 megabytes. Put another way that means you only get 15.675 times as much data for the same price as before not 30 times.

The thirty times statement comes from the proposition that you are paying for the first 0.5Mb of use per day and the other 14.5Mb are free. This is what's know in the trade as a bit of a strange 'un, rather like buying a chassis and getting the rest of the car for free. You can't buy a smaller bundle than the 15Mb offer, so the actual price of the thing is a pound for 15 megs however it's presented.

Slowly but surely...

The operators are coming round to the idea that not all of us want to pay hideous fees for our data! As you can see here, the Mobizines service is FREE(ish). However - with some network operators it can cost you an awful lot of cash for that little thing we like to call Data.
As one of the lass' here at Refresh Towers used to say:

"Mobizines! Getta Bitta Data on ya Dog! Innit?!"

The T-Mobile Web 'n' Walk is clearly leading the way with their 'all you can eat' tariff. That combined with Three's X-Series demonstrates that very soon, draconian data download charges will be a thing of the past.

Good news today (well - ish) - Vodafone have just announced some of their plans for their data strategy...

The link is embedded up there ^ but for those of you who just want the meat - the site says:

"Currently, you’re charged £2.35 for each MB. But from June 1st 2007, you’ll only pay £1 for up to 15MB per day. That’s 30 times more pages for the same price."

It's not exactly the tidal wave of change we were hoping for but it's a step in the right direction (if only a little one).

To be fair to the guys at VF - they do allude to a monthly web browsing package but unfortunately give no details.

So we wait...

Opening up the floor

A small number of us started the business planning process for Q3/Q4 2007 earlier today.

Lots of ideas flying around between the Refresh Mobile elite this morning...
;o)

Our next meeting, with an expanded set of attendees, is Wednesday 11th April.
I'm always happy to have our folk bring along their own ideas into where we should be heading next - but I thought I'd open it out even further:

Do any of our readers/users have any ideas or comments about what they'd like from the Mobizines service?

Leave a comment and let me know - be great to hear from you,

Kevin