Inside View from Ireland: Nokia Communicator 9500

February 23, 2004

Nokia Communicator 9500

UPDATE -- Included impressions gained after the first two weeks of use: good battery but a step down with the keyboard for those with fat fingers. However, my students have no problems using it to moblog. I can crash the phone when asking it to perform mode-switching operations concurrently with voice or data operations. For example, I've crashed it when changing its profile from General to Silent while a text message was transmitting.

NOKIA -- The new Nokia 9500 Communicator launched today, along with tips for integrating it to IBM's WebSphere platform. It answers Dave Winer's question: "I want the total wireless experience, a tool I can hook up to my weblog from anywhere in the US, maybe Europe, what would you recommend?"

I am running mobile a whole lot more efficiently because of the Nokia Communicator. If I could tag into an enterprise platform over WebSphere, I would be able to take all nominated parts of my work space in my pocket. That spells productivity for me by giving me instant messaging and internal folders through secure protocols.

IBM and Nokia have targeted sales and field force automation in the pharmaceutical, insurance and government industries. Early implementers include Pfizer, Ricoh and Daimler Chrysler. The solutions are powered by a mix of IBM software products optimised for the Nokia Communicator platform running on the Symbian Operating System. These include WebSphere Everyplace Access Client, WebSphere Everyplace Connection Manager Client, WebSphere Micro Environment, IBM Tivoliand Lotus Sametime Instant Messaging Client for the Nokia Communicator.

Together, Nokia and IBM have developed J2ME MIDP 2.0 and CDC Personal Profile 1.0 and several other mobile and wireless Java APIs. IBM WebSphere Micro Environment for the Symbian OS will provide a J2ME Personal Profile runtime environment in the new Nokia 9500 Communicator. This is all part of IBM's pervasive computing and wireless strategy--extending e-business applications to a new class of client devices.

The new 222-gram phone is a tri-band with GPRS/EGPRS (EDGE). Plus it has Wi-Fi capability and if its protocol-handling is more efficient than the Nokia D211 card I use in my laptop. I have cut my mobile communications costs by at least 30% because of the phone's Wi-Fi capability. I can't see myself using the built-in VGA camera because I need megapixels in every snap. However, I may use MMS to send messages to other people in the O2 network. This Communicator supports MMS and Bluetooth plus has 80 MB of free user memory out of the box. Those feature are very welcome.

The Symbian operating system has proven to be very stable during my 39 months of using a Nokia Communicator. The 9500's operating system appears to take longer to initialise between different modes.

The Nokia 9500 Communicator supports a broad range of standards-based security solutions. Data traffic can be effectively secured by a variety of standard VPNs. But I need to be convinced that Symantec's anti-virus solutions will work as advertised. Their over-the-air updates can help IT service desks but those hidden megs of downloads will ratchet up operating costs.

The most compelling reason leading to me replacing my faithful 9210i with the Nokia 9500 is the keyboard. Its keys are large enough for two-fingered typing even when walking. However, the 9500's keys have less travel and for me that means I have to type slower. I'm looking forward to using this phone while underway in Ireland as well as when traveling to the States.

As an aside, one thing I never expected when describing the Nokia 9500 is that mentioning the phone and its capabilities attracts at least one Nigerian scammer to this blog every week. I get more than a dozen direct emails every week about this phone but once I mention how to pay via electronic bank transfer, the mail channel goes silent. I know what that means.

In the meantime, the phone rocks--more than a year after I put it into hard daily use.

Nokia -- Nokia 9500 Communicator
IBM --WebSphere does wireless deep into the enterprise
Russell Beattie -- "3GSM is here"
Dave Winer -- "Time for a new cell phone"
Images of Nokia 9500 and images shot by Nokia 9500.
tags: moblog nokia 9500

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Posted by Bernie Goldbach at 06:43:00 PM in Wireless

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