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9 years old Nokia Communicator 9000 features VNC for 4 years. SSH is available only for 2 years old Nokia 9210 but I am using telnet of Nokia 9000i to my own GSM gate and therefore I am trusting just my GSM operator while using CHAP-protected cleartext PPP.

Nothing new in the world of Communicator-aware people. :-)

Would nokias 6800 have proper keyboard? I admit that it lacks 80x25 display... and is only dualband.

... on the Nokia 9210 (or 9290 for those in the US) for some time... both VNC and SSH ports have been available for (as far as I remember) over a year... ssh.com used to do a client too, but I can't see it on their site any more... I've found the ssh client very useful, e.g. it means I can set a task (e.g. a long compile) going, leave, then check up on it later from wherever I happen to be...

Nokia already has such contraptions... you can plug in any POTS compatible device into them.

MMAPI includes support for a camera, with a special locator capture://video used to create its Player. An application can use the VideoControl to display a viewfinder on the screen, then take a picture using VideoControl.getSnapshot(String imageType). The default image format is PNG. You can use the imageType parameter to select any other supported format, and query the system property video.snapshot.encodings to find out what formats are supported.

MMAPI includes support for a camera, with a special locator capture://video used to create its Player. An application can use the VideoControl to display a viewfinder on the screen, then take a picture using VideoControl.getSnapshot(String imageType). The default image format is PNG. You can use the imageType parameter to select any other supported format, and query the system property video.snapshot.encodings to find out what formats are supported.

It's also worth mentioning that supporting this not-so-great game platform/phone is some of the worst, bordering on insulting, advertising ever.

Of course the first rumors and reviews were all but encouraging, maybe the N-Gage is just slightly better than the GBA possibly even worse...

finally it doesn't matter because if I'll get a new cell phone in the next 12 onths, as I did yearly during the last three years (my cell phones are quite likeli to have tragic crashes), I will give a very close look to N-Gage.

Look at the businness model, there's no "give the razor sell the blades" things there, Nokia isn't after the hardcore gamers but the regular cell phone users who don't dislike to "insert a coin" once in a while.

if this can sell even N-Gage stand a chance.

My nokia 3650 has a nice quality camera, and removable multimedia card (up to 256 mb), not only that it runs symbian and J2ME so hypothetically one could write a program to automate the process of book scanning. BTW, I am a poor college student (AT&T has boingo discounts for Penn State students) and I could afford the technology to do this.

How about a device that allows you to take the pictures and then upload them from anywhere? The Nokia 3650 is a GSM 900/1800/1900 phone with a built in digital camera. The image resolution is only 640x480 but that is more than enough for a webpage. I beleive you can upload your images to a website on nokia.com where you friends and family can view them. Another nice feature about the phone is it has bluetooh. A bluetooth pda with a compact flash socket would be great for getting those high resolution images from your digital camera and you could just leave the phone in your pack and use it to connect to the internet to upload the photos. You can also upgrade the memory on the phone with a 64MB memory card.

I don't know about you, but my Nokia 6310i does pretty much all that. All in all, I'm quite pleased with it. Plus the fact that its got some other nice goodies on there such as bluetooth and J2ME (well, MIDP 1... which isn't good for much) are just icing on the cake.

I wonder if the "I want a phone that's just a phone" argument crowd around here are just getting their kicks out of complaining about how much they don't need features like this are just complaining for the heck of it. Sure there aren't articles about solid phone-cellphones, but that's just because they're not worth writing home about. Been there, done that.

As an aside, I can think of how this might be a neat feature to have. Using Presence and Availibility Management (PAM), the phone company can tell where I am pretty accurately at any time. It would be neat if my phone automatically bought me a coffee on the way to work every morning as I walk up to the nearby coffee shop or paid for my bus fare home.

I do like the idea of a threaded SMS client (IM style).

Nokia has had that since the 3310.

From the features page: Mobile chat: The Nokia 3310 phone supports chat based on standard SMS, all previous written messages from both persons are visible on screen however chat messages are not saved on SIM-card.

This should be a good news to the Slashdot community.

Nokia provide free development kits for their mobile phones (have a look at developer.nokia.com). OK, it may be just java (not C++), but for people programming for fun, this is more than you will ever get from Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft/Xbox, who require you to go through a certification process (impossible for an individual).

From their web page:

Nokia N-Gageâ game deck supports two different game styles: downloadable titles and rich games distributed on MMC cards. Downloadable titles for Nokia N-Gage game deck are developed in Javaâ MIDP in the same way and with the same tools used to develop downloadable games for any other Series 60 Platform device. Our Step by Step Guide to mobile game development will get you started. You do not require authorization to develop downloadable games for any Series 60 Platform device.

This should be a good news to the Slashdot community.

Nokia provide free development kits for their mobile phones (have a look at developer.nokia.com). OK, it may be just java (not C++), but for people programming for fun, this is more than you will ever get from Nintendo, Sony or Microsoft/Xbox, who require you to go through a certification process (impossible for an individual).

From their web page:

Nokia N-Gageâ game deck supports two different game styles: downloadable titles and rich games distributed on MMC cards. Downloadable titles for Nokia N-Gage game deck are developed in Javaâ MIDP in the same way and with the same tools used to develop downloadable games for any other Series 60 Platform device. Our Step by Step Guide to mobile game development will get you started. You do not require authorization to develop downloadable games for any Series 60 Platform device.

If you're 20 or 25 years old, it's probably not a good idea to draw a GameBoy out of your pocket on a Friday night in a public place.
They obviously haven't hung out with anyone at Slashdot on a Friday night.

And if their target market is 20-25, I doubt their ad-campaign is going to be very productive.

"Dude! I need to get an NGage so I can be bitchin!!"

On top of that, I want PDA functions in a phone with bluetooth. That doesn't exist either.

There are the SONY Ericsson P800, and the Nokia 7650. They both run Symbian, have Bluetooth, and loads of PDA features. P800 also got handwriting (sort of) recognition.

Uh, GPRS is a link protocol; it just gets the data in & out of the phone. You don't use it directly. Also, GPRS speeds will vary dramatically per phone, depending on how many 13.4 Kb/s download channels the phone uses (between 1 & 7, typically 2-4, or 26-53 Kb/s).

WAP is a browsing protocol for fetching stripped-down websites. It can use GRPS, or it can operate over a standard 9.6 Kb/s GSM data connection (or equivalent). It's a very different thing to GPRS - comparing them makes no sense.

yeah... my 5 year old nokia phone... a 5110 had a temperature sensor in it. you just had to have an m2bus/fbus cable thing and something like wintesla to enable netmonitor so you could see it.
and nokia phones have had the ability to run java apps for a while now, so adding those other features, like the sound monitor might not be too dificult if all the neccesary hardware is already there...
and as an aside... this phone has been thrown at a wall... and kicked down the stairs... and i once walked into a tree while i was holding it and threw it accross the road as my arms flew forwards... and it's not even scratched. i've had my new nokia 6310i for about 8 months and it's falling apart....

yeah... my 5 year old nokia phone... a 5110 had a temperature sensor in it. you just had to have an m2bus/fbus cable thing and something like wintesla to enable netmonitor so you could see it.
and nokia phones have had the ability to run java apps for a while now, so adding those other features, like the sound monitor might not be too dificult if all the neccesary hardware is already there...
and as an aside... this phone has been thrown at a wall... and kicked down the stairs... and i once walked into a tree while i was holding it and threw it accross the road as my arms flew forwards... and it's not even scratched. i've had my new nokia 6310i for about 8 months and it's falling apart....

The thermometer, calorie counter and sound meter in the Nokia 5100 phone give approximate values only and they should not be used for professional purposes.

You're right.

It's also missing audio multimedia messaging. I.e., you can't record a voice message and send it as a clip. It only has MIDI MMS for ring tones (bleh.)

If you search at most of the mobile network manufacturers you can find actual real hard info about this system. For example this PDF white paper at Nokia.

Well these may be excellent, but I refuse to buy a PDA with qwerty keyboard if the keyboard layout can not be changed to accomodate my language. And from the pictures, I doubt it since there is no room for extra keys to the right of 'L'. I wonder how many customers PDA manufacturers lose worldwide because their keyboards can not be localized according to local markets.

One manufacturer that gets it (the first one?) is Nokia. If you take a look a their 6800 phone you will see that the keyboard layout leaves room for scandinavian characters, and I am sure many others too.

So it took, what, 6 posts for one of the "I want a phone that makes a phone call" -people to emerge.

At least Nokia has made a "basic" phone, the 2100.

Sorry, it also has stuff like a stopwatch, a full-screen clock, and changeable covers, but it is a new phone and about as basic as you can get nowdays. You are in the minority, though. Most people want the bells and whistles. They want their phone to be "cool", even if they never really use all those features.

I hate to tell you this, but The Matrix was a ridiculous, dum-minded farce filled with product placement. The only difference is that it was targeted at you, for a change.

Observation camera

Features include:

- Image can be sent to any MMS-capable, user-defined mobile phone or email address

- Programmable to take images automatically at a designated time interval

- Captures and sends images when triggered by a motion sensor

- Thermometer feature lets you know if the temperature goes out of a set range

- One way audio. By initiating a voice call the Observation Camera's authorized users can hear voices and other sounds in the vicinity of the Nokia Observation Camera.

This has many uses. For example you could put one in your workplace closet and see & hear what your boss is doing with his secretary after work :)

Observation camera

Features include:

- Image can be sent to any MMS-capable, user-defined mobile phone or email address

- Programmable to take images automatically at a designated time interval

- Captures and sends images when triggered by a motion sensor

- Thermometer feature lets you know if the temperature goes out of a set range

- One way audio. By initiating a voice call the Observation Camera's authorized users can hear voices and other sounds in the vicinity of the Nokia Observation Camera.

This has many uses. For example you could put one in your workplace closet and see & hear what your boss is doing with his secretary after work :)

Okay, I'm getting redundant, but here is a new, very basic Nokia model.

Nokia has a phone for you. That is, when (or if?) they release it...

At least it has retro-appeal.

You want ugly? Take a look at their 7210 model.

While I'm as gadgetfixated as anyone, I need my phone for one thing; to make calls. And maybe the occosinal SMS. I don't need a PDA (thats what my Palm is about), and I don't need to spend a shitload of cash for WAPing (I'm not that rich, and I can survive without checking my e-mail a few hours). So, since this phone don't offer me any significant increce on the things I deam inportant (batterylife mostly), I'll stick to me 5110 a few more years.

Note that Nokia is a very diverse company and they don't just do cell phones. Most of their other products (that don't involve cell phones) are found mostly in Europe and include two-way radios, "mesh" networking nodes (a la the now defunct AT&T Broadband).

Check it out at http://www.nokia.com/networks/product_catalog

GPS-enabled phones are nothing new. See these:

Nokia Communicator GPS module

Benefon Esc!

NokiaGame, an annual game run by Nokia has proven wildly successful in entertaining people across europe. They've combined printed media, phonecalls, email and SMS to give out clues and assignments. Hint-sites have popped up all over, and people are in fact doing as their slogan says, connecting. The previous game sported 1 million players in total.

Yeah.. nokia's 7210 is kinda like what you're looking for. My friend owns one; battery life is great and the camera quality is surprisingly good too.

(I don't work for Nokia :p)

It's easy to get started. You need the official devkits, which are mostly free. Nokia's developer support is great. Others include Motorola, Sony and of course, Microsoft.

You can use things like Handango to distribute, too.

Whoever it is out there that keeps saying "Could Nokia phones get any uglier?", PLEASE STOP! You see what happens? We get monstrosities like the 5100, the 3650, and now the 7250! Please, stop speculating about how bad it can get! Won't someone please think of the children?!

Whoever it is out there that keeps saying "Could Nokia phones get any uglier?", PLEASE STOP! You see what happens? We get monstrosities like the 5100, the 3650, and now the 7250! Please, stop speculating about how bad it can get! Won't someone please think of the children?!

Whoever it is out there that keeps saying "Could Nokia phones get any uglier?", PLEASE STOP! You see what happens? We get monstrosities like the 5100, the 3650, and now the 7250! Please, stop speculating about how bad it can get! Won't someone please think of the children?!

Or that little place in England... what's it called. Cambridge. I heard there's a guy there, name's Stephen Hawking? Oh, and we can't forget David Deutsch, he's also there... created quantum computing and all.

Biotech? Dolly the sheep, first successfully cloned animal. That was in Europe. And then there's the Oxford AIDS vaccine. And with the current attitude towards stem cell research, a lot of the American resarch is moving towards Europe and other areas of the world more friendly to it.

Computer Science? Tim Berners-Lee creating the web while working at CERN? Opera is a company in Norway. I suppose that's all pretty unimportant. And I don't think there's any good wireless stuff coming out of Europe either. I mean, there's that little Nokia company, but what do they do?

I heard this guy, called Linus Torvalds, was a Fin (okay, he's moved to the US now). And there's Alan Cox, in the UK.

And what about the brand spanking new American Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to replace the aging DES, well, that's also known as Rijndael, and was developed in Belgium, I believe.

Or how about major engineering projects? How about the Channel Tunnel?

You know, I can go on like this for ages.

That's what this is for!

"But a standalone PDA is going to be better than the built-in PDA, if for no other reason than it has more memory."

Both the Nokia 3650 and Sony Ericsson P800 have removable memorycards, easily expanding memory to 128MB+, so even though that argument is valid conserning the phone mentioned in this article, it's not valid for all smartphones.

"A standalone digital camera will be better because it'll have more memory and a better lens. A standalone phone will be no worse, and from the looks of it, it'll be easier to talk on and handle because it's smaller."

Regarding memmory, read what I wrote above. Regarding the lens and resolution, I agree, but regarding the size-issue; What takes the most space, a dedicated camera AND a cellphone, or a cellphone with a buildt in camera?

"Are people that anxious to free up some space that they'll use a somewhat inferior all-around package instead of 3 high quality individual pieces? Do geeks really not want to carry a bag around?"

Well, it's not allways convenient to carry a bag around, f.eks. when out clubbing, a bag poses a higher risk of having something stolen, unless you don't dance at all, and only sit watching it all the time. And, an all-in-one package is not neccecarly automatically inferior to deticated devices. Series 60 Smartphones and the SE P800 do f.eks. both use an OS that is technically superior to PalmOS, and I have heard from more than one ex-palmOS user who recently bought the P800, that it is nicer to work with than Palm.

"Maybe I'm missing everything about this phone except the 'cool' factor of owning a high-tech cutting edge phone."

For most geeks, that is more than enough. ;)

• sensible, comfy buttons. unlike the ones on the hideous Nokia 7210.
  
• lots of space for contact details
  
• lots of space for text messages
  
• a few MB of onboard RAM and a USB cable that let's me plug it into a computer and store or retrieve files from it.
  
• The simple ability to synch names and addresses with common PIMs
  
• Bluetooth
  

• a really shit camera
  
• MMS messages. Don't they realise that the reason that sms has been so successful is because it's *cheap* and easy.
  
• polyphonic ringtones
  
• screen savers on a fucking telephone!
  
• cases that are designed to look "funky", "urban", "modern", or any other shit that makes it less ergonomical in the name of fashion.
  
• A fucking FM radio. It's a phone for god's sake! If I wanted a radio, I'd buy a radio.
  
• mobile internet
  
• computer games. buy a gameboy if you want games.
  

No, that's the Nokia 5100: It has every phone feature you can think of save Bluetooth, but in addition it's a flashlight, thermometer, stopwatch and calorie counter!

Those guys are insane. Well, at least it's tons more useful than the slightly older and weirder 5510.

No, that's the Nokia 5100: It has every phone feature you can think of save Bluetooth, but in addition it's a flashlight, thermometer, stopwatch and calorie counter!

Those guys are insane. Well, at least it's tons more useful than the slightly older and weirder 5510.

No problem: WirelessIRC for nokia 7650 (and 3650?) Symbian programs are out there, today, despise the fact that programming tools and API docs suck. Kudos for the coders!

the new Nokia 3650 (came on sale here two days ago). I just bought one and I must say it's the nicest phone I've used. It comes with all features of the T610 (minus DRM) and then some. The most important features in my opinion of the 3650 that T610 lacks are: more memory (3.4MB internal memory + memory card, mine came with 16MB card, vs. 2MB of T610), bigger screen (176x208 vs. T610's 128x160) and video capture. Also the 3650 looks nicer than the T610 IMHO. On the other hand T610 is smaller and lighter at least on paper, although I have to say that the 3650 is by no means "heavy".

Other than that there are many similarities between the phones. Both are tri-band, run the Symbian OS, both have a camera, bluetooth, infrared, Java, e-mail etc.etc.

Of course these are just my opinions, but you should at least check out the 3650 if you're considering the T610.

CANNES, France -- 3GSM Congress -- There's a big problem with connecting public wireless LAN access points to GSM/GPRS cellular networks, according to SIM card vendor SchulmbergerSema. 802.11b hotspots provide hackers with an easy way to grab user information from the wide-area network itself, the company tells Unstrung.

The heart of the problem is that when the GSM standard was being defined back in the late 80s, no one imagined that a hacker could set up his own wireless network to gain access to an operator's network and the user data therein. Therefore, GSM networks only authenticate the details held on the SIM card in a user's device before starting a session on the network. The user's device doesn't check the credentials of the network it is attempting to access.

This was fine before the advent of wireless LAN. But now for a minimal outlay anyone can own a wireless network.

At the same time, vendors and operators are starting to use SIM card-based authentication front-end systems for public wireless LAN networks, which allow them to link the user back to the home location register (HLR) database on the GSM network and thus manage and bill a subscriber on the WLAN network in the same way as they would on the wide-area network.

This all adds up to networks that could be vulnerable to hacker attacks, according to Schlumberger.

Hackers can set up "rogue" hotspots that users will access in the belief they are on the genuine public wireless LAN network. Once users are on the fake network, it is easy for the hacker to access data held on the device via the 802.11 connection (see WLAN: The Four S's and this paper for more on the insecurity of wireless LAN). Hackers can then break into the SIM software on the user's device and get the codes held there. They can then use that information to fool the GSM authentication system and thus gain access to the network.

Schlumberger say that this won't be a problem once UMTS networks are available, because the 3G standard ensures what's known as "mutual authentication" -- the network authenticates a user device, and the device confirms that it is actually on a valid network before the session can proceed.

However, for public wireless LAN implementations that will connect to backend systems on GSM and GPRS networks, Schlumberger has developed a SIM card-based system (surprise!) that enables mutual authentication between the device and networks that are accessed via the gateway of public wireless LAN hotspots. The mutual authentication takes place via algorithms on the card itself rather than in SIM card software on the device.

Schlumberger is showing a system at the 3GSM congress that uses a separate smartcard and reader plugged into a WLAN-enabled laptop. However, the firm says that the smartcard and radio could be integrated into one PCMCIA card, much in the way that Nokia Corp. (NYSE: NOK - message board) has done.

Orange France is currently testing Schlumberger's security system. Schlumberger expects that operators will start to roll it out before the end of this year.

-- Dan Jones, Senior Editor, Unstrung
http://www.unstrung.com

Seems like you're way behind the curve. Six years ago the company I worked for teamed up with a company that had been doing this for years. That company was acquired by Nokia in 1999.

Nokia makes development kits for their phones. One of them runs on linux. I think you can't generalize, but I do know to my cost that although Siemens claims that their development kit is freely downloadable, it was too difficult for me to figure out how to do it. I stupidly bought a cheap Siemens phone with the intention of trying out development on it, but couldn't fight my way through their registration process - even though I've tried using Windows! I've learned my lesson. My next phone will be a Nokia.