Small randoms

OS X 10.5.5 appears to have fixed the video problems with Warcrack. I hear it’s also improved performance in other games. Long time coming.

My one substantive complaint about the Nokia E71: the numeric keys aren’t sufficiently distinct. There’s a subtle colour difference and there’s the little nub on ‘5′, but I’d be happier with an arrangement more like the Treo Pro.

The other complaint about the E71 is that Symbian simply isn’t as spiffy as the iPhone interface, but the trade-off is that it’s also a much more featureful device. I don’t think I’d be willing to give up the SIP client for the pretty.

Can’t believe Google have explicitly disallowed VOIP clients on Android. So pleased Nokia/Symbian didn’t bow to that sort of stupid with S60. Wild uneducated guess: the European telcos don’t care about it, so it’s only the American platforms that get crippled like this.

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Tags: Mac, Phone, Tech by matt
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More E71: SIP

Looks like the SIP is better than I have previously claimed. Incoming SIP calls are indeed appearing just like any others.

The problem I’m having seems to be with calls within the same VOIP service, and it’s probably going to turn out to be a firewall config issue.

On a quick call this morning there was a bit of breakup, but that was most likely due to interference on the 802.11g connection the phone is using. That sort of thing may simply be unavoidable, though a newer (better?) wireless AP might help — still using an early-gen Linksys WRT54G.

Now looking for a screen zoom tool that doesn’t come bundled with Mobile Speak and which doesn’t cost a small fortune either. Not that I’ve looked very hard so far.

Am noticing that the keyboard really is vastly superior to entering messages via a regular numeric pad. I can bash out a literate message pretty quickly without needing my glasses on to do it.

The interface does rather lack polish compared to Apple’s efforts, but it does work pretty well. Overall, if you’re looking for something that does OK with text but don’t need Exchange support, I’d say go for this. If you need Exchange support, my understanding is that this is still very much a “first generation” attempt at that, so you’re probably better off with a Blackberry. The Bold looks purty.

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Tags: Phone, Tech by matt
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