AAS P1i Review

AAS has posted part one of their P1i review, great writing as ever- “Although the P1i is the latest in the venerable P series of phones, a family ancestry which stretches back to 2002, it represents something of a departure from its predecessors. Whereas its earlier incarnations all featured optional flips (featuring numeric keypads) and a flip closed software mode which offered a subset of the phone’s software functionality, the P1i presents a form factor more closely related to Sony Ericsson’s M600 communicator. The P1i takes the form factor and styling of the M600 and combines it with the hardware features of the P990i and adds a number of significant improvements of its own.

The obvious result of the form factor change is a significant size reduction, previous P series devices have tended to be on the chunky side. At 106 x 55 x 17 mm the P1i is a comfortable, pocketable size, and compared to the P990 (114 x 57 x 25 mm) is nearly 33% thinner. Managing to squeeze the form to this extent is a considerable achievement and, while the P1i remains relatively heavy at 125g, this is 25g less than the P990i and it retains the pleasing sense of solidity which is sometimes missing in competing devices…”

£20 off a new P1i

Clove (www.clove.co.uk) have kindly offered a £20 discount on any Sony Ericsson P1i purchased from them. Just enter discount code SNY0807P120 at checkout in the notes and the discount will be yours.

The Clove P1i page is here.

Wisepilot

Wisepilot is a GPS solution that is definately compatible with the P1i. 12 months use will cost EUR99 and it is an online service so extra data charges may apply. Speed cameras are included but seemingly no traffic alerts.

Wisepilot is a personal mobile GPS navigation solution. With Wisepilot and a GPS receiver you turn your mobile phone (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola), Blackberry®, PDA (HTC, Qtek, HP) into an all-inclusive navigation system with full-colour 3D maps and clear voice instructions while driving or walking. Use Wisepilot to find convenient parking, hotels, or the nearest restaurant. All maps, points of interests and other information, such as pan-European speed camera locations, are automatically kept up to date in Wisepilot.

With Wisepilot on your mobile device you always carry with you a reliable GPS navigation and map solution. Don’t be late for another business meeting because you don’t know the way. Impress your friends or customers by finding that Italian restaurant without problems. Get to the airport in time to safely check in and return the rental car. Wisepilot can save you time and money. It will make travel by car in both foreign and known places much less stressful.

i-Tech Clip 2 Review

If the Jawbone is a bit rich maybe the i-Tech is a better bet and it ia brilliant value- also works flawlessly with the P1i.

Bluetooth headsets come in all shapes and sizes- some are super sleek and cost a fortune, others make you look like a total noob and some claim to do all sorts of fancy things such as cancel out the environmental noise and display the incoming number (useful when it is on your ear?).

Mine latest one broke the other day and once again due to battery failure so you can imagine that after 5 in a year I was not particularly intent on spending lots of money on a replacement. My local Orange shop was selling the i-Tech Clip 2 which I have always liked, mainly because it is a half breed between a standard Bluetooth headset and a wired unit. All you need to do is clip the main part of the unit to a front pocket or anywhere else on your shirt and stick the other part in your ear. The rest of the set up was extremely easy and pairing was completed in a minute. All in all the set up and go effect of this accessory is excellent.

You do not get much with the headset- simply an a/c charger, 2 white earbuds and that’s your lot. To be fair I don’t really need a fancy box, smart carrying case and a desktop charger so I was not too bothered.

In use the sound quality is very good and much better than my previous headsets and most of that will be down to the fact that the speaker does sit in your ear. People on the other end of my phone calls also said that the quality was pretty good and for once a conference call done in my rather noisy car was not a waste of time. It is too early to tell how good the battery life is but my previous i-Tech headset (a Clip 1) lasted for ages on a charge. The quoted time is 4 hours talk and 160 hours standby. Charging takes 3 hours from empty to full and low battery warnings are given via a beep every minute and the LED flashes red.

Incoming calls are notified by a sound in the headset and a buzzer which is useful and there are only two buttons on the unit- a volume key on the front and an MFB (multifunction button) on the earpiece. You press the MPF to answer and end a call and pressing the volume key once when the headset is ringing will stop the buzzer but leave the normal ring in the earpiece playing. Voice dialling is also catered for- press the MFB button and say the name and away you go. Finally, pressing MFB twice will redial the last number. All in all the feature set is enough for most people and crucially easy to use when in situations that require ‘easy to useness’

In the first few days of use I have not had one problem with the headset and I am impressed with what some would call a basic Bluetooth headset.

It is fairly basic but the sound quality, battery life and build quality are very good. There is one feature that takes this accessory way up my lift of favourite accessories- when I asked the shop assistant how much it was I was surprised to hear ‘GBP12.99′. For the price it must be close to impossible to buy a better value headset than this. Available from Orange shops- availability will vary though.

Jawbone Review (the best P1i headset?)

Here is a two part review I wrote recently about the Jawbone headset. Could be the best headset on the market at the moment and works fine with the P1i of course…

The Jawbone has attracted much attention over the past few months for its looks, the fact it is the de facto choice to sit alongside the iPhone but mostly for its much touted noise reduction technology.

You can purchase the Jawbone in the UK for approx. Ј76 including postage or direct from the US for US$119.99. The postage will be higher but at current rates the UK price is over US$150 so choose between ease and price when you make your purchase.

I decided to take a look at the silver one and I would like to say it’s because the red did not match my skin colour or because the black was too shiny but it was solely down to the fact no other colours were available at the time.

First impressions are good with the Jawbone looking quite cool and the inclusion of multiple ear buds and hooks adds to the feeling of an accessory built with care. The box is very plain and is in stark contrast to the built quality of the unit itself. Apparently this is not the only box that has been produced (Neil says that his is superb) so maybe this is the cut down one for the UK market. It’s not a huge issue because it only ends up in recycling anyway and I would rather throw away a poor box than a nice looking one. In the box you get-

Jawbone headset
5 ear buds
5 ear hooks
AC adaptor (US version)
US to UK adaptor
Instruction manual

This is the UK one so I presume that everything is included in the US one apart from the adaptor for UK use. The Jawbone can be charged direct from the wall or, handily, via a USB powered laptop or desktop. All in all the impression built by the set is positive and led me to expect a lot from this headset.

After experimenting for quite a long time with the various ear buds and hooks I have found a fairly good fit but it is far from ideal. Maybe it is just my ears but I have struggled to find a fit as good as my previous headsets. To date no one have commented that my ears are a weird shape so I will blame the Jawbone at this time

If you take a wander over to www.jawbone.com and look at the demo video it is impressive and this is what made me purchase it in the first place. I travel quite a bit for work and often have conference calls while driving and my 3.5 year old daughter has not yet learnt to be quiet when Daddy is working from home so you can imagine my ‘need’ for a headset like this one.

So far my Jawbone experience has been quite positive and I eagerly awaited my first call using the noise reduction technology. I phone my wife on the way home from work and had the window open to test it out properly. I was only driving at about 30 miles an hour when I phoned my wife and she said that the sound quality was quite poor- she could not hear any background noise and strangely she found that it sounded clearer when the noise reduction was turned off. The strangeness continued because I found that she sounded a lot clearer with the noise reduction on and this was not something I expected.

It seems that the Jawbone works best when you do have a lot of background noise- driving at speed and with my daughter shouting in the background was helped a good deal with the noise reduction feature switched on but at no point has it come close to the quality shown in the demo video. In that video the voice quality is crystal clear under extreme conditions and no matter how hard I try I have not been able to reproduce this effect.

I am not saying that the video is an inaccurate representation of the Jawbone in the real world but I am saying that it has not come anywhere close to the video performance when on my ear. Having said all of that I have been quite impressed by the overall performance of this headset and it is a good unit for day to day use- it is not the ‘Jesus’ headset that some people think it is though.

My other gripe regarding the Jawbone is its size. It is of course fashionable but the design sticks out of the ear somewhat and is a bit bulbous for my liking. Few Bluetooth headsets (actually all of them) look silly in my opinion but this one brings a new level to the silliness of them.

Despite the criticisms above this is a very good quality unit and maybe there will be a part three to this review once I have gotten used to it more. It ‘is’ worth the money and I have to recommend it because it offers something that no others can and that is the assurance that you can make calls almost anywhere- just don’t expect it to produce miracle results. It is very good but not great.

UPDATE: It would appear that wind affects the Jawbone more than other headsets. I had two calls in the car yesterday in which the recipients could not hear what I was saying, even with noise reduction on. I happened to turn the air conditioning off in the car (which was on a low setting anyway) and they were mightily impressed with the sound quality. It seems that it can work very well indeed provided you are in a vacuum

Interview with Andrey Scherbakov from EpocWare

This interview was done in September ‘06 and is largely S60 referenced but EpocWare are producing some of the best software for the P1i (see here) and Handy Tools in particular is a must purchase product!

Today we have an interview with Andrey Scherbakov from EpocWare. I remember this company well from my early Psion days and it’s good to know that they are still pumping out quality products to this day.

1) Andrey, tell us a bit about EpocWare.

We (Epocware) do end-user productivity software for all Symbian based phones from old Psion’s days until now. We have no plans to change this.2) How many products do you currently sell and which has been the most successful in terms of sales?

Never count them. I think about 20 active. The most successful ones are at the top list on Handango.com. They are Handy Safe, Handy Weather, Handy Clock.3) What product are you the most proud of and why?

The one we just stared to develop, but I cannot tell you what it is Seriously, it is Handy Safe. It is the app that people really need on their phones and it really does what they are expecting from it.4) What mobile device do you use daily and how many have you owned?

We have about 30 phones in our department. I personally use Nokia E70 now, but am thinking about switching to the E61. I have owned almost all of the significant Symbian-based phones: 9200, 7650, SE P800/900/910, 6630, N70.5) What’s the best book you have ever read?

I cannot answer. But I can say what I am reading now. It’s Hemingway’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls”.6) EpocWare produced Symbian S60 3rd Edition software before most of the other developers. Why was that?

For many reasons. First, we were looking for a new market after UIQ 2 market has died with the last SE P910 phone. Secondly, we had an early access to S60 3rd Ed SDK as Forum Nokia PRO member.7) Are you able to give us a hint of any of your future plans?

Just a hint. We are very committed to the S60 platform. What is the most anticipated app for E-series? I think there the answer is evident. Where do you think the mobile industry will be in 2 years time?

I cannot see the whole picture. Just some parts: S60 will become touch screen and more PDA like. So there won’t be market sharing like now: S60 – low,mid-range and UIQ – hi-end. I also expect a big wave of Linux smartphones from Motorola side.9) What’s your opinion of the mobile web community? Are there any sites that you feel stand out?

Until recently there were only a couple of Symbian-related English-speaking sites (My-Symbian and AllAboutSymbian). But now there are lots of new sites, especially blogs. Your’s is my favorite. 10) Anything you wish to add?

I just want to wish to everyone that the market of software for Symbian phones will reach the levels of Palm and Pocket PC software markets. We will try to help with this from our side.

K-Rally Review (works great on the P1i by the way:))

Whether it was in the arcade at my local bowling alley at the age of 14 or sitting in front of my TV with the Atari STE at the age of 19 it was the same game that captured my imagination for all of those years- Badlands. The idea was simple- race around a track collecting weapons, money and spanners to add new features and repair your car and it worked perfectly. Most importantly the AI was spot on with each level getting harder and harder until you were racing around quicker than you thought possible.

F1 Sprint then appeared for Palm OS devices- it was a clone of the very basic arcade classic and worked very well indeed. There was little depth in it though, which was a feature of the original, so this kind of top down racing had yet to be brought to mobile devices in an immersive and frantic way.

K-Rally is the latest attempt at top down racing on mobile devices and is currently compatible with Symbian S60, Symbian S60 3rd Edition, Symbian S80, Symbian S90, Symbian UIQ 3.0, Pocket PC and Smartphone. In the works (hopefully) are Palm OS, Symbian UIQ and Desktop PC. As you can see this game will run on a LOT of devices and I have played it on a Nokia E65 and T-Mobile MDA Mail and both worked without issue. Considering these two devices are far from the most powerful it was good to see that the level of detail could be turned up to maximum with no effect on the speed of play.

So what do you get for your US$15? This is not a lot for any game but there are some immediate highlights that spring to mind that are unusual-

Downloadable content including new cars and tracks (awaiting availability I believe)
Online high scores
Two career modes and ghost mode
Random track generator
Betting in career mode
A variety of weapons, characters and cars
Multichannel audio system- original soundtrack

The above gives a taste of what is included and as you may be able to guess longevity is built in right from the off. You are forced to start the game in training mode and this is a good idea because it enables you to customise the controls so that you can find the ones that work best on your device. Automatic acceleration and turbo can be chosen if you only want to steer but that would be a bit lazy now wouldn’t it…

When I started playing the very first thing that struck me was how difficult it was- in my first few races I was last by a distance but as time went on and I repeated the courses I gradually improved and eventually started to get good results at easy level. The control system is excellent with some nice sliding and naturally corrective steering and this gave a more responsive feel to the game. It can feel slow at first but again things speed up with progress and use of your collected weapons and turbos at the correct moment will reap rewards. There is an option to play without weapons if you are a fan of pure racing. The ability to steer your car via touch screen or buttons is a good more compatibility wise as well- in my experience steering with buttons gave a much more realistic feel and I wasn’t convinced of the stylus steering approach- maybe more testing time with a stylus would have made a difference because the theory sounds natural: car turns in the direction pointed by pen and moving stylus away from car increases acceleration and offers the use of your turbos.

The various modes are cleverly though out as well-

Quick Race- simply racing against other cars but is required so that you can collect experience points which allows you to start a Championship.

Championship- You are given a car by a sponsor and you have to race three other cars through various rounds until you race the Boss. If you fail to beat him in three attempts you have to start all over again! If you beat the Boss you can then compete at a higher level and could even be offered a bet at the start of a race… As you can tell there are no easy wins with this game.

Career- this mode never ends. You pay for everything here- upgrades and race entry fees will come out of your coffers. So far I have only just started this mode but there is a genuine feeling of wanting to progress further and to see what happens next. The variety built in is fantastic and every race genuinely feels different to the previous one.

Ghost mode- this is purely for you to take on the track. You can play as often as you like to get the quickest time and once a lap is completed a code is offered which you can add to the Infinite Dreams online high score list.

Random track- now this is a bit of a side show but a clever one. You enter an 8 digit code and that is used to generate your track. In theory the chances of getting the same track twice are zero unless you deliberately enter the same code.

There is little else I can say about this game at the moment because I have not had time to explore much of it at all. It has the Gran Turismo feeling in that respect- you can play for hours and still only chip the surface.

Conclusion

As a fan of top down racing games I am obviously going to be biased about a game such as K-Rally but because it has wonderful graphics, natural game play and a longevity rarely seen in mobile games I have to give it top marks. I am not going to recommend you try it, I am going to demand that you try it! Truly one of the best PDA games I have ever played…

Available for Pocket PC, Smartphone and Symbian devices for US$14.95.

ScrapBook 0.9.1

ScrapBook 0.9.1 is new and more importantly free- “ScrapBook (Java-midlet) allows its users to write multimedia scraps over the gprs\edge channels, with costs less than the normal mms charges. The scraps are saved in the mobile for offline viewing. The application enables quick and efficient voice, image and text messaging through an easy to use interface.”

P1i- truly sh*t reception

Excuse the launguage in the title but this is a sentence from an email just received- “I’m going off the P1 already….truly sh*t reception…even with 3G turned off. Back to the Vox for me unless things improve.”

I have had a few dropped call this week as well and indoors it is not impressive. Are we the only ones or are you struggling as well? Let us know via the email address printed here.

Windscreen holders

A decent windscreen holder for your smartphone is a must and I cannot recommend the selection from PDA Hut enough. I have used the Banana Tower System for over a year and it has never let me down (only £12.95 as well + a bit extra for a universal attachment to hold the P1i).

“This sturdy, vibration free “Banana Global 1” Tower mount system utilises Herbert Richter’s 4 prong ratcheting system to instantly attach to custom made sleeves for Smartphone, Mobile phones and PDA devices, or universal holders for conveniences.”