The PhoneBoy Blog

Your iPhone 4S Is Never Truly Unlocked

PhoneBoy — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:31:27 +0000

From How U.S. Carriers Fool You Into Thinking Your iPhone 4S Is Unlocked, or from the “There oughta be a law” department:

Last month I purchased an iPhone 4S from Best Buy Mobile for use on my Verizon account. I paid full retail so there would be no restrictions from Verizon with regard to unlocking the handset. My intent was to run tests in Europe and the U.S. to determine if the phone would perform as well as competitive CDMA-GSM phones that I have used (Android and Blackberry). Initially, my focus was on how well Apple handled the different issues required for roaming on foreign carriers and whether the Apple iOS 5 offered the same level of connectivity and data options that Android and Blackberry provide.

Short answer: no iPhone 4S is truly unlocked. Unlocked means: usable on any carrier it is capable of supporting.

Unlike most phones, the iPhone 4S can be used on both US-based CDMA and all GSM carriers worldwide. In the US, there are four variants available: one for AT&T, one for Verizon, one for Sprint, and the one Apple sells unlocked. It’s the same hardware for all variants, the only difference being which operator it is locked to, which is done when the phone “phones home” to Apple’s servers.

Apple’s so-called unlocked device can be used on any GSM carrier but cannot be used on either Sprint or Verizon. Likewise, the Sprint and Verizon versions of the iPhone 4S can be unlocked so any foreign GSM SIM can be used, but not a US SIM card (i.e. one from AT&T, T-Mobile, or one of the smaller regional GSM providers).

This is purely a decision made by the two US-based CDMA carriers: Sprint and Verizon. It’s clearly not a technical restriction, and there’s no reason for it other than to force you to buy a new phone needlessly and lock you into another two-year agreement.

This work originally came from The PhoneBoy Blog and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Fingerprint: e37ac627f3d973694c212ff9430d215a

Comcast Updating Their Usage Caps

PhoneBoy — Thu, 17 May 2012 20:16:01 +0000

From: Comcast to Replace Usage Cap With Improved Data Usage Management Approaches

So as the market and technology have evolved, we’ve decided to change our approach and replace our static 250 GB usage threshold with more flexible data usage management approaches that benefit consumers and support innovation and that will continue to ensure that all of our customers enjoy the best possible Internet experience over our high-speed data service.

In the next few months, therefore, we are going to trial improved data usage management approaches comparable to plans that others in the market are using that will provide customers with more choice and flexibility than our current policy. We’ll be piloting at least two approaches in different markets, and we’ll provide additional details on these trials as they launch. But we can give everyone an overview today.
The first new approach will offer multi-tier usage allowances that incrementally increase usage allotments for each tier of high-speed data service from the current threshold. Thus, we’d start with a 300 GB usage allotment for our Internet Essentials, Economy, and Performance Tiers, and then we would have increasing data allotments for each successive tier of high speed data service (e.g., Blast and Extreme). The very few customers who use more data at each tier can buy additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 for 50 GB).

The second new approach will increase our data usage thresholds for all tiers to 300 GB per month and also offer additional gigabytes in increments/blocks (e.g., $10 per 50 GB).

In both approaches, we’ll be increasing the initial data usage threshold for our customers from today’s 250 GB per month to at least 300 GB per month.

I have to give Comcast some credit for this. Looking at increasing the cap–because, let’s face it, we’re all using the Internet more and more–and making those who actually use more bandwidth pay for it. The “overage” is even somewhat reasonable, unlike the overage you pay on your typical data plan for your mobile phone ($10 gets you one gigabyte instead of fifty).

Of course, I don’t give Comcast any credit for exempting their own traffic from bandwidth caps. Can’t say I’m surprised about that.

Too bad the mobile phone companies won’t offer pricing anywher

Parking Lots and PCI Compliance

PhoneBoy — Tue, 08 May 2012 20:17:37 +0000

Like many things in Computer/Network Security, I’ve learned many things as a result of my job. Not because I necessarily wanted to learn them

PCI Compliance is one of those things I’ve encountered a handful of times during my tour of duty at Check Point. I don’t even pretend to play an expert on PCI on the Internet, which stands for Payment Card Industry (i.e. companies that process credit cards). The goal of the various PCI standards is pretty simple: ensure the credit card data of customers remains protected as it is captured, stored, and transmitted on the various systems that process it.

What does this have to do with Parking Lots? Many parking lots, especially in big cities like Seattle, are self-service. You pre-pay with a credit card, get a ticket from the machine, and put it in your windshield. A minimum wage lackey (hereafter referred to as parking lackey) periodically checks the lot to make sure everyone who has parked there has paid, issuing parking tickets for those who have not.

I parked in one such lot recently in downtown Seattle. They issued me a receipt like this (except both halves were attached and the personally identifiable data was not blacked out):

What was on this stub was the type of card I have and the last four digits of said card. I was asked to place this on my windshield. In plain sight. For anyone to walk by and collect.

To comply with the posted signs, I did leave the ticket in plain view on my dash, but only the right (smaller) half, which had the least personally identifying information on it. Unfortunately, the parking lackey didn’t think I had complied with the rules and issued me a parking violation, which I immediately contested.

PCI-DSS Requirement 7 is to restrict access to cardholder data by business need to know, where “access rights are granted to only the least amount of data and privileges needed to perform a job.” Does the parking lackey need to know what credit card I used to pay my parking fee with? Does he need the last four digits of my credit card? And even if he does (and I’m not sure on what planet that information would be required by a parking lackey), why do I also have to expose this information to the general public?

I realize that, in the grand scheme of things, this is not a huge data exposure. The number of people that likely saw the relatively small amount of data is pretty close to zero. That said, at least how I read the PCI-DSS 2.0 requirements, this is a clear-cut violation of the guidelines.

Clearly, I need to keep a sharpie in my car so I can comply with these parking lot rules yet maintain the confidentiality of my personal data.

Am I right? Is this a violation of PCI guidelines? Do other parking systems do stuff like this?

Comments

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8 May 2012, Lindsay Hill writes: My understanding is that this is fine, as they are only using the last 4 digits. Displaying the whole PAN would be a problem, but you're allowed to display the last 4 like that. It's pretty much standard in this part of the world for every receipt to show those digits. (I live in NZ, where most people pay for _everything_ via debit/credit card. Cash is unusual). A few years ago a handful of systems would display the whole CC number, until someone pointed out just how bad it was.
8 May 2012, PhoneBoy writes: A handful of systems used to do that in the US as well. It's not the fact the last four digits are printed on a receipt. It's that I have to essentially post that receipt in a public location where anyone could (theoretically) walk by and see it. It is information that, at least in the context of validating I paid for parking, is not required. It certainly violates the spirit (if not the letter) of the PCI guidelines.

How to fix Location Services on the iPhone 3GS with iPad Baseband (06.15)

PhoneBoy — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:24:29 +0000

Many moons ago, I installed the dreaded iPad Baseband on my iPhone 3GS. I did this for one simple reason: I wanted to be able to unlock my iPhone with Ultrasn0w. Unfortunately, as I was warned when I did it, this was a one-way street unless Apple releases a baseband for the iPhone 3GS with a version above 06.15 since the iPhone does not allow you to downgrade the baseband.

While the iPad Baseband had worked pretty well for a while, funny things started happening after the iOS 5 upgrade. Namely: my GSM radio and WiFi would crash when Location Services was active.

And, to make matters worse, AT&T finally decided to relent and allow iPhones they sold that are out-of-contract to be unlocked. This means I don’t have to worry about Ultrasn0w anymore, but I still have the problems created by the iPad Baseband I can’t get rid of (and quite frankly, no longer need).

The good news is that I found a “fix” for the issues:

Use Cydia to install SAM, even if you activated with the original SIM
In SAM, Go to Utilities and click on the De-Activate iPhone button (which will deactivate your iPhone)
Download the latest version of Redsn0w (if needed), use the jailbreak option against your phone with no options checked (even Cydia). This will re-apply the “fix” during hactivation.
When phone reboots, deactivate again with SAM
Re-activate your phone with iTunes or, if you don’t have your original SIM, use SAM to activate it again.

The steps appear to work for iOS 5.1. I will have to experiment more and see if I catch it crashing the radios again.

Comments

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19 May 2012, Hamza writes: Hello, Im trying this method im on 5.1.1 3gs 16.15.00 and everytime i turn on location services wifi and mobile data go then after 30 seconds it comes back. would this fix it thanks :)
19 May 2012, PhoneBoy writes: Supposedly jailbreaking a second time is enough, but I am also having the same problems now :(

NAT is Coming to IPv6. Whether We Like It Or Not.

PhoneBoy — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:23:06 +0000

We have dueling viewpoints on this topic. First from Networking Nerd:

NAT on IPv6 is pointless and a bad idea.

There is no reason to implement native IPv6-to-IPv6 NAT (NAT66) in reality. The address space is way too big to require translation in the foreseeable future of my lifetime or even that of my kids. If you are really concerned about hiding your addresses or disguising your MAC address, you can look into the idea of Temporary Addressing. In the middle of writing this post, Paul Regan asked me about using NAT to translate when you move from one provider to another. That might be a good use case, and it happens to be the one that RFC 6296 is lined up to address, but if keeping your IPv6 space is so important when you move, why not sign up for a provider-independent block from your local Regional Internet Registrar (RIR) and run BGP to advertise it yourself? If you switch ISPs often enough to keep switching IP schemes every few months, maybe you need to worry more about stability and less about chasing the lowest ISP price. If your ISP keeps forcing you to switch addressing space that often, it might be time to shop around.

And then we have El Reg:

Right about now, an interjection typically begins “but the Cisco…” and I have to stop everyone right there. If your argument includes the words Cisco or Juniper, we’re not talking about the same market.

The budgets available for the IT space I am talking about differ by an order of magnitude. Despite this, we somehow manage to provide uptimes no worse than the big guys and still manage redundancy. At least we do in an IPv4 world.

This leads into the other major issue with IPv6: the inability to do multihoming. In an IPv4 world this is simple and cheap. The IPv6 solution is “get a carrier-independent address assignment and do proper routing”.

And I’d like to be the King of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat.

Meanwhile on planet Earth

These folks obviously know nothing about life on the frugal edge. Consumer-grade ISP connections simply don’t allow for that sort of thing. Even if you have the cash for your ISP’s so-called business-class package, they’ll still give you the stink eye the instant you start talking about such tomfoolery.

From a purely technical perspective, is the suggestion on the table really that three-person companies seeking ISP redundancy start doing BGP? That is the single craziest thing I have ever heard.

By the way, even the large enterprises want NAT66 to ensure, in a multihomed environment, a given traffic flow utilizes the same link up and down. No asymmetric routing. These are businesses that can clearly afford Cisco over Linksys and have the expertise in-house to manage BGP. And yet they want NAT66.

So NAT66 is coming. Whether the standards God want it or not, whether the people against NAT want it or not, the market is demanding it. Either the standards Gods can come up with a solution to the problem or the market will.

Meanwhile, I hope we can at least leave the HIDE/Masquerade bits of NAT behind in the transition to IPv6 with NAT. At least something like Network Prefix Translation gives you the ability to address a host bi-directionally.

Comments

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2 April 2012, Industry News Summary – Jabber, NAT66 And NanoSIM writes: [...] the amount of IP address isn’t limited in practical terms? Read about the pros and cons at Phoneboy Blog. About the writer: IMTCFiled Under: IMTC News Tagged With: Apple, Cisco Systems, Extensible [...]

MAD Magazine. Now on iPad. No Joke!

PhoneBoy — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 06:59:58 +0000

From IT’S NO JOKE: MAD MAGAZINE iPAD APP TO BE RELEASED ON APRIL FOOL’S DAY (ALFRED E. NEUMAN’S BIRTHDAY) | Mad Magazine:

BURBANK, CA, March 30, 2012 – DC Entertainment today announced plans to release a new MAD Magazine iPad app complete with interactive features and exclusive content. The app will be released on April Fool’s Day, an appropriate date since it’s also the birthday of MAD’s infamous mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. The app will be free to download through the App Store and will include a mixture of free and paid content, including a free preview of the magazine.

Upon hearing of this app (which appears in your newsstand on the iPad), I had to have it! It’s been quite some time since I bought a physical copy of the magazine, but I had a collection growing up that may still be at a box at my mom’s. If she kept all the stuff I told her to throw out.

Anyway, even though “the usual gang of idiots” now has a lot of new faces from when I last read MAD regularly (some of the older folks surely have passed on), the magazine still pokes fun at everyone–and everything. And it’s still funny. The parody of Mike & Molly in the April 2012 issue had me laughing out loud (and for the record, I think I accidentally saw Mike & Molly on TV once).

About the iPad app: it’s similar to the Wired Magazine app. It’s not just digitized versions of the magazine, they actually put some thought into it. For example, the “marginals” by Sergio Aragones (drawings which appear in the margins of panels throughout the magazine) are easy to zoom in on and look at. Other elements are similarly zoomable. Even the classis Fold-In is accounted for! No folding your iPad required!

Perhaps the best part is that, unlike many magazines, you don’t pay a premium to be a digital-only subscriber. A regular print subscription is $20 (which, like a lot of publications, now includes digital). A digital-only subscription is $9.99–actually cheaper than a print subscription! You can also buy back issues for $1.99 or do a bi-monthly subscription for $1.99 as well.

Needless to say, I ponied up for a yearly subscription. I look forward to the June 2012 issue when it becomes available on my iPad.

Comments

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3D Security Analysis Report: Home Edition

PhoneBoy — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 01:04:23 +0000

If you’re a (potential) Check Point customer, you’ve likely heard of our 3D Security Analysis Report. The idea is to take real traffic from your network off a span port, and run it through our Security Gateway to see what is going on in your network. While it is a sales tool, it’s certainly an important one as it will instantly demonstrate the value of Check Point’s solutions based on your own traffic.

Both for fun and to test an upcoming version of our Security Gateway software, I decided to run a 3D Security report against my own network. I took an existing Check Point appliance, loaded up with code, and plugged it into a Mirror Port on my switch. I let it it run for a day or so to collect traffic. In an active business network, you can let it run for as little as an hour or two and see results.

You can see what a full 3D Security report looks like by downloading a sample. I won’t share my report, but I will share bits and pieces of it so you can get a sense for the kinds of things it will show you. Specifically, I used IPS, App Control, and URL Filtering as part of my report, though it is possible to include DLP and (soon) Antibot.

There were a couple of surprises here. I thought I had removed Dropbox and Hamachi from all my computers. Apparently not. This will need to get corrected. LogMeIn is in use in my network, so I’m not worried about that. The eMule thing will have to be investigated since I’m pretty sure I’m not running that in my network (my kids aren’t either).

In case you’re not sure what these apps are, the report provides you with a nice description of all the apps:

Meanwhile, another thing the 3D report tells you is how much bandwidth the various apps are using:

I’ve used quite a bit of bandwidth over the last 24 hours or so! A third of it is SSL traffic, so I can’t see inside it all (though I could if I deployed my gateway inline and added my CA certificate to my family PCs). Note not all of this is Internet-bound traffic, but still 2 GB in 24 hours is quite a lot, especially when you consider Comcast’s 250GB cap!

The report provides a breakdown as well (note this is a partial list):

Finally, while there wasn’t much going on from an IPS point of view, the blade did detect a couple of anomalies, which are provided along with the relevant remediation:

While the customer response to these reports has been generally positive, they are also end up being quite an eye-opener as you see things you never knew were going on. Even I am surprised at what I’m seeing in my own home network! Imagine what you’ll find in your network.

Comments

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What Happens When You Buy a Smart Phone From a Dumb Carrier

PhoneBoy — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:36:04 +0000

One thing that I learned first-hand working for Nokia was just what carriers do to phones. It’s truly awful. Even when it is supposedly in the name of an enhanced experience. It certainly doesn’t seem to be for the user’s benefit. Take the Windows Phone 8107 update, for instance, as described by Paul Thurrott:

The latest AT&T/Windows Phone uproar involves the Windows Phone 8107 update, which wasrolled out by Microsoft in the first week of January. This update includes fixes for several bugs,including a common one where the on-screen keyboard inexplicably disappears while you’retyping. Other fixes include Gmail syncing and location access, among others. It’s exactly the typeof fix that all Windows Phone users should get automatically.

Windows Phone SoftwareUpdates Revisited, there’s been a lot of confusion around how and when wireless carriers canblock software updates from reaching end users. And the answer, it turns out, is that carriers canblock updates whenever they wish to. AT&T, somewhat surprisingly, has been the mostaggressive about doing so. In fact, it’s never immediately delivered a Microsoft software update tocustomers. Not once.

Microsoft’s Eric Hautala wrote at the time, 8107 update is “available to all carriers thatrequest it.” AT&T has obviously not done so. And as of this week, it appears it never will do so.“We are not currently planning to offer the Windows [Phone] 8107 update,” an AT&T communitymanager wrote in the company’s support forums in response to numerous complaints.

AT&T and every other carrier need to stop treating these smart devices like dumb phones. These smartphones are just like desktop computers. They ship with software bugs. And while dumb phones shipped with software bugs as well, unlike dumb phones, smartphones can actually be upgraded. Easily. Over the air.

Apple is the only company that managed to get this whole phone software update thing right. When Apple releases a new iOS update, everyone can get it. Unlike On Windows Phone where individual operators can decide not to take it, or Android, where it can take months, assuming you ever do see one.

Clearly for the best experience, the only way to go is a factory unlocked phone not tied to an operator. At least being on AT&T, I have a choice. People on Sprint or Verizon aren’t so lucky as you can’t buy a phone not tied to their service and expect it to work.

Why do people put up with this? Is it because they don’t know better or because they don’t have a choice, really?

Comments

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2 April 2012, Tsahi Levent-Levi writes: Dameon, I think people just don't care. It might change, now that Apple has changed the whole paradigm but it will take more time for this shift to happen. Carriers can and probably should focus on offering their own "experience" as apps on top of the platform. Look at Google - even they decided to place part of their experience (Gmail, You Tube, Maps) on top of the OS as apps. Tsahi
2 April 2012, PhoneBoy writes: The distinction between OS and Apps is lost on a certain percentage of the population. Google made some of their experience Apps (versus OS) so they could Open Source the OS and still keep the apps proprietary.
2 April 2012, Tsahi Levent-Levi writes: While that may be true, I do believe they hit on a good technique to update "stuff" (=experience) without messing around with a full OTA update of the OS. The way apps are ingrained in the mobile OS paradigm allows for this kind of flexibility. I wish it gets used more.

Consumer Reports: Pay Less on a metered plan? Fat Chance!

PhoneBoy — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 06:06:46 +0000

From Nearly half of AT&T subscribers would pay less by switching to a metered plan:

Are you a longtime AT&T subscriber who accesses the Web only occasionally from your phone, but have kept your unlimited data plan, assuming it will save you money? You might want to check that assumption: Close to half of AT&T customers with unlimited plans could save $10 a month by switching to a metered plan, according to data obtained by Consumer Reports.

The usage data, provided to us by Validas, a company that tracks wireless data coverage, shows that about 48 percent of AT&T unlimited-plan subscribers, who pay $30 a month for their data service, use no more than 300 megabytes of data a month, on average. AT&T’s 300MB-a-month data plan costs $20 a month. So subscribers who use little data could save more than $100 a year by switching to it.

Reality check: how many people actually want to worry about how much data their smartphone is using? How many people actually can control how much data their smartphone apps use, or make any meaningful measure to “use less” in the face of artificially imposed scarcity? And are people’s usage of smartphone data going to go down or go up?

Unlike, say, your electric bill where most people can figure out how to use less, mobile phones provide precious little in the way of showing users what apps are using data and how much. Even bugs in the OS could cause massive amounts of data to be used. Unbeknownst to the end user.

Having an “unlimited plan” eliminates all of that uncertainty. Except, as we all know, AT&T’s unlimited plan really isn’t, but it provides enough headroom for most people. And even on the off chance they do go over, there isn’t a financial penalty for doing so. Unlike on a metered rate plan, where there clearly is.

The reality is: people will pay more on AT&T’s metered plans than they will on their unlimited-but-not-really AT&T plan. Maybe not today, but they will soon. AT&T knows this (but aren’t saying so publicly). Even uneducated consumers know this.

MAXROAM Makes 3G Data Available for iPad at 0.27 EUR/MB!

PhoneBoy — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:21:34 +0000

Pat Phelan announced via his blog today that MAXROAM launches iPad 3G rates in 44 countries for only 27c a MB. (That’s Eurocents, FYI)

To be fair, this isn’t entirely an iPad specific offering. The MicroSIM can be used in any device that supports a MicroSIM, so it will also work in the newer iPhones as well. Also, to get the 0.27 EUR a MB (which, FYI, is billed in 25k increments), you have to buy a 200MB bundle for 55 EUR. That 200MB is good for 30 days and you can get that rate in 44 countries.

That said, it’s a fantastic deal, if you often take your iPad with you when you travel throughout Europe. See the MAXROAM site for more details.

Conservation and Abundance

PhoneBoy — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 13:49:16 +0000

I often think about the rather abysmal battery life in my mobile devices. You know, the Smartphones, the Tablets, the laptops, what have you. There are several ways to look at this, but two are useful:

We need bigger batteries
We need electronics that consume less power

If you think about it, both statements are absolutely true. Bigger batteries mean more absolute power is available for use. On the other hand, more efficient power use allows you to do more with the same absolute quantity of power.

Look at successive generations of Apple’s iPhone. Each handset does more faster than the previous generation handset did with roughly the same overall battery size (and life). This is accomplished by a combination of greater efficiency and marginally larger battery.

This thought has occurred to me again as I read about T-Mobile USA’s plans to use their anemic spectrum holdings differently, which will allow them to deploy an LTE as good as their competition with only a modest increase in spectrum–spectrum they received from AT&T as a consolation prize for the failed AT&T/T-Mobile merger.

It certainly makes me question AT&T’s statements about mobile bandwidth scarcity. Or Comcast. Or any other ISP or Telco for that matter.

Back in the days of dialup Internet access, I listened to streaming audio thanks to technologies like RealAudio and TrueSpeech. They made excellent use of the very limited bandwidth to allow me to hear audio streamed over my dialup modem. Technology allowed me to make the best of our limited bandwidth, turning my scarcity into abundance.

And then I think about areas outside of North America and Europe where traditional desktop and laptop computers are common. I’m talking about places like Nigeria where most the closest thing many people have to a computer is a mobile phone–a phone through its limited interface and even more limited data networks that many people access the digital world.

Which makes me think we are trying to bridge the digital divide in the USA all wrong. Rather than bringing expensive Internet with expensive, complex computers to the poorer masses, why don’t we bring them capable mobile phones backed by a strong wireless network with compelling mobile services? What do you think?

Nokia’s Risky Lumia Strategy

PhoneBoy — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:13:47 +0000

I had some more thoughts on Nokia’s entire strategy with gutting Symbian and Meego and switching everything to Windows Phone and their Lumia handsets. It is related to Tomi Ahonen’s excellent post about how Nokia Lumia handsets are not being sold by operators.

There is clearly a perception that the Lumia 800 is a “flagship” device. Especially for consumers who haven’t heard much from Nokia lately under than about Lumia. That’s not entirely true as Nokia has also been pushing their Asha devices. I find them quite compelling from a form, functionality, and pricing standpoint (especially the Asha 302). I’d buy one if they were sold in the US, which, sadly, they’re not.

Anyway, Tomi’s assertion in his article–which I agree with, by the way–is that people expecting certain features to be present in “flagship” devices will be truly disappointed when they pick up a Lumia device, either immediately or shortly after they take it home. In fact, even in its current iteration (7.5 “Mango”), Windows Phone seems a bit like iPhone 1.0, which also lacked many smartphone features. That didn’t stop people from buying it in bucketloads.

Personally, I think Windows Phone 7 is targeted at people upgrading from featurephones, which don’t have a lot of the features that are missing on Windows Phone. People who aren’t accustomed to “smartphone” features aren’t going to notice those features are missing, thus may not complain and return the device.

This highlights just how risky Nokia’s strategy truly is. They gutted their high-end phones (Symbian, Meego, etc) and opted to replace it with an yet-unproven “smartphone lite.” Meanwhile, the rest of the market is clearly pushing towards smarter phones, not dumber ones.

Comments

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15 March 2012, nic writes: Ios notoriously took some time to implement many features already available in Symbian. It is still a little dumb in some ways. Android manufacturers are taking a long time to push updates to all devices, and keep releasing outdated models. A big part of the consumers are indeed people coming from featurephones. Where is the big risk here? Before WP7, Nokia was already working with THREE different platforms. S40, that people don't like to call "smart" for some reason, Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo/xxx (something based on Linux and Qt). Not to mention totally dumb phones that I'm not even sure are still being manufactured. WP7 is _just another_ platform for Nokia, but one that brings the support of a big partner, Microsoft, that is very much interested in making it happen. So what is the big risk? Of course having less platforms makes management simpler, and they should cut that down. They will, they plan to stop using Symbian, but not just yet. So what big risk? They already have two platforms of their own. They couldn't not license Ios, and there was not advantage in using Android. There was no other external platform they could pick better than that. And they felt they had to, even if development of their own did not really stop completely as people like to think. If WP7 turns out to be a fluke (it may still) they can easily move Linux-based stuff to the title of "flagship". Or even Symbian, back from the grave. Anything is possible. They won't fall into a worse situation than before they start using Windows, they are only in a better situation with the Amazing N9 out there, and with Nokia Belle already well established. And S40 is only getting smarter. If the market wants smarter phones, there is no platform or market segment that is seeing products getting smarter faster than in S40. Nokia's risk was to move too slow in 2007, taking things for granted. They woke up already. Now it's hard to imagine what big revolution can come about thaty they are nto aware of. Apple, for example, has been trying to say they brought some other new great innovation, but it's only gimmicks (video calls, voice commands... Old Symbian phones had all that already.) Right now it's only about having more developers, but the fact we have so many web-based tools out there makes the game quite fair, and reduces the importance of that. And Google with Android, their main concern was not to let Apple take over the mobile landscape. Or Microsoft. They were extremely well-succeeded in that mission. To have a good standing in the mobile market is not as important for Google's survival as it is for Apple or Nokia and even msft. Specially Nokia.

Operators Won’t Sell Nokia Lumias–Even in Finland!

PhoneBoy — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:56:35 +0000

From Communities Dominate Brands: Disappointed Buyer = Returned Lumia = Salespeople Avoid = Growing Nokia Retail Problem:

MTV3 the Finnish TV broadcaster and news service ran a secret test of the Finnish handset retailers in the Helsinki and Tampere regions the two largest cities of Finland. They sampled two stores from each of the three mobile carriers/operators, and two stores from the two largest independent phone resellers. The MTV3 journalists pretended to be normal consumers and visited ten stores and every time asked to see Nokia Lumia smartphones. In six out of ten stores, the sales people showed only rival phones Androids mostly by Samsung when the consumer asked for Nokia Lumia !!! In another two cases the sales person came with several phones rather than just the Lumia and offered immediately a series of handsets to compare. Only in two cases out of ten, did the sales person show a Lumia on first request. Every store had the Lumia on display and in stock and the news story makes the point, that in most stores Lumia had the biggest sales displays at prominent places.

Tomi Ahonen, as usual, is spot on in his analysis of Nokia. This passage is buried pretty deep into his several thousand word posting, but it pretty much summarizes how Nokia is doing in their transition to a Windows Phone device manufacturer–namely, not good.

If they’re having that much trouble getting the operator stores to sell Nokia Lumia phones in Finland, where they’ve historically had over 85% of the the market, imagine how bad it is elsewhere.

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14 March 2012, Facebook writes: [...] you're on the real Facebook web site. Also be sure to only download software from sites you trust.http://phoneboy.com/4262/operators-wont-sell-nokia-lumias-even-in-finland?utm_source=feedburner&...ContinueGo back to [...]
14 March 2012, Teemu Lehtonen writes: http://tinyurl.com/73agtc5 https://mrwpf.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/hat-trick-nokia-lumia-800-windows-phone-is-the-best-selling-phone-in-all-finnish-networks-in-february/
15 March 2012, Ed writes: This is interesting. Im in South Carolina right now, and was at Costco where they had a cellphone stand. I asked the guy about the Nokia, and he did tell me that it was the best selling Windows phone they had, but Android was killing them in volume and sales. With 1% of the smartphone market being Windows, I guess if it's the best selling Windows phone....that is enough said!
15 March 2012, tom writes: sounds to me like the stores may be having trouble getting rid of the non nokias and are therefore pushing the other models so as to not end up with a bunch of dead inventory. my friends i europe are all telling me these nokia lumias are very popular.
15 March 2012, PhoneBoy writes: The Costco guy probably has zero visibility on returns, which is handled elsewhere in the store. That's a huge part of this. The Lumias might be popular for people who never had a smartphone before. For those that have, Windows Phone sounds like a huge step backwards in terms of overall functionality.

An Easy Way for Telecoms to Fight Back Against Free Messaging

PhoneBoy — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 17:26:51 +0000

From Telecoms Groups Fight Back Against Free Messaging – ABC News:

Needless to say, mobile companies are not happy at the flood of free messaging services piggybacking their networks. Telecom Italia SpA chief executive Franco Bernabe told MWC that free messaging services are undercutting the ability of phone companies to invest in their networks. Paid texting, or SMS, has been a cash cow for phone companies that uses minimal network capacity.

The new “players have based their innovation in the mobile domain, without a deep understanding of the complex technical environment of our industry. This is increasingly creating significant problems to the overall service offered to the end user and driving additional investments for mobile operators,” Bernabe said.

After years of study, the big telecommunications operators announced this week that they will try to fight back by introducing software this year embedded in new cell phones that will allow users to do the same sort of Internet-based messaging and voice calls that consumers want without paying separate fees.

Actually, if the telecoms had half a brain, they could easily compete with these so-called free texting services without spending a dime. It’s called lowering the cost of existing SMS services.

See, one of the reasons I personally like SMS is that, for the most part, it just works. Anywhere. On any phone. Even in areas without data networks or where data networks are congested. SMS just works.

Surely the operators can always do more to make sure SMS is reliable and that messages are delivered in a timely manner. That’s a minor incremental cost, plays to the telecoms strengths–running a network–and doesn’t require getting into areas telecoms are notoriously weak, i.e. in building add-on services that people will actually use.

I guarantee you, if SMS were super cheap, like under a $0.01 USD a message, with international SMS no more than $0.02 USD, and no more than $5 USD for unlimited texting, few would bother with these competitive texting offerings. The operators still get revenue, albeit not the kind they currently get off SMS, but it’s better than the zero revenue they get when the alternatives are used.

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Living Mobile and the Post-PC Era

PhoneBoy — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:10:37 +0000

I’m just going to come right out and say it: most of my personal computing is done on a mobile device. A mobile device being a tablet or a phone either with WiFi or some kind of mobile Internet connection. This is despite being surrounded by more conventional laptop and desktop computers. Note this does not count my work-related use of computers, which, unfortunately, is still tied to a more conventional laptop.

It’s hard to know when the tipping point happened for me. Likely when I started getting more capable smartphones from Nokia, whom employed me at the time. Surely I had experienced the various Communicator-style devices (I had a 9210, a 9300, and a 9500). However, the two most pivotal devices for me: The Nokia E70 and the Nokia N95, which is the middle of 2006. I still have (and occasionally even use) the Nokia N95, even though by today’s standards, it’s only marginally more functional than a featurephone.

Of course in those days, Smartphones were not entirely accesible to the masses. Sure, they were obtainable in the sense you could go to any operator and buy one. But then what? Most people had no clue how to use them. Why else do you think the US operators had no problem selling unlimited data packages? Because no one was really using them (except for a few of us).

Then something changed: the iPhone came on the scene. While the first iteration of the iPhone OS (now called iOS) was arguably less functional than smartphones of the day, it quickly became the smartphone that everyone in the developed world wanted. It raised the bar for what the user experience should be on a phone.

Then Google-backed Android came on the scene and, after a few iterations, became a credible alternative to the iPhone. Microsoft, being a bit late to the party, completely redoes their mobile operating system. Nokia’s Symbian, the long-time leader in the smarphone space, could not keep up with the level of innovation Google and Apple were cranking out and, eventually, Nokia announced their plans to sunset the operating system and go with Windows Mobile. RIM, maker of the Blackberry handsets, have also struggled to keep pace and have stagnated.

It’s pretty clear to most industry observers (and even lay-people) that Android and iOS are the dominant phone operating systems. But it’s more than that: it’s now mobile computing. The same popular smartphone operating systems are now available in a different form factor device: tablets. And, as a number of industry analysts are saying, tablets are the new personal computers.

Apple led the way again here by introducing the iPad, using the same OS used on the insanely popular iPhone. A number of other hardware manufacturers have tried (and failed) to duplicate the success that Apple has had with the iPad using Android. The only manufacturer having any success is Amazon, who introduced the Kindle Fire at the end of 2011. Even their numbers are anemic compared to what Apple sells, but they have something the other tablet makers don’t have: a thriving ecosystem on which to use the device. Remember, Amazon sells all kinds of digital goods in much the same way Apple sells them through iTunes and the App Store.

Why do people prefer to use mobile devices rather than traditional computers? For me, it’s always been: because the device is always with me and connects me to what matters most. Even if it’s not a full experience, it’s often good enough.

For other people, it’s that these mobile devices are easier to use than traditional PCs. This is partially due to the easier-to-use touch interfaces on the current generation smartphones and tablets. There is also less for the average person to “screw up” as well, making for a less intimidating experience.

For another class of people, it’s because they can’t afford the PC and everything it takes to make it operate. This is certainly true in less affluent nations, such as Nigeria.

I had an interesting conversation over Twitter with Yomi Adegboye AKA Mister Mobility (he’s well worth following at @Mister_Mobility). It confirmed this hypothesis. Of course, during the 10 years I worked at Nokia, I took every opportunity to read up on everything Nokia was doing, including how they were developing phones for places like India and Africa. My hypothesis was already well informed.

In these less affluent nations, many people don’t even have electricity. Or if they do, it is supplied by a generator of some sort. Wired phone service may or may not exist (if it does, it is surely expensive for voice service, much less data service). The infrastructure needed to operate a PC may be entirely out of reach.

Meanwhile, while even a basic mobile phone is out of reach for some, that, a SIM card, and an occasional source of power is all one needs to compute and stay connected. For these folks, their mobile phone is their only computing device. Not because they prefer it, but because that’s what they are able to obtain.

There is no doubt in my mind that computing is going mobile. Will more traditional computers go away? While I expect my children won’t even need to own a traditional computer when they are young adults, the traditional computer will likely never go away entirely.

There is always going to be a need for bigger screens and more horsepower than you can pack into a device that lives in your pocket. Especially by people who generate large amounts of content. Will that be the norm for the average person, however? No.

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