After a failed attempt to fix Penny’s car speakers — taking apart the interior of a Ford is way harder than it should be, and of course we came out of the quest with the obligatory screw which wouldn’t fit anywhere — I bought a pair of portable speakers. The Logitech PureFi Anywhere convinced in terms of sound quality, and we greatly enjoyed them on our roadtrip.

Having bought them in New Zealand, the speakers of course came with a type I power plug, while most of Europe uses a type-C-compatible plug. The design is modular, allowing for the actual plug to be swapped, so I bought it anyway:

Back home, I contacted Logitech and asked them how to get the adapter swapped.

Their response? “It is not possible to obtain the modular plug separate from the speakers.”

Logitech uses a modular approach to optimise their product lines and ultimately, their profit, but they don’t deem it necessary to leverage the power from this approach to serve their clients.

Guess who won’t be buying Logitech products again! If you are considering their stuff, please think twice.

If anyone knows of a way to get at such an adapter, or has one to trade, or can help otherwise, please get in touch with me. Thanks!

NP: The Pineapple Thief: 137

With my new VoIP infrastructure in place, I’d like to get rid of the softphones and replace them with hardware.

An obvious solution, given how I might need to replace my cellphone sometime soon, would be to check out the Nokia E65, which can do VoIP over wireless. I’ve previously dismissed the Nokia E-series phones for good reasons, but Nokia had time to improve them, and I know a few people who like the E65. Waiting for the OpenMoko Freerunner is nother option. If you know of other VoIP+Wifi GSM cellphones you can advocate, please let me know.

On the other hand, I might just want to get a separate VoIP phone, ideally wireless, to use at home exclusively. The problem is that there seem to be none. I checked out at least two dozens, and they all fall short for one of the following reasons:

• they are Skype-optimised, or don’t even support proper VoIP. I see no need to support this.
• they combine VoIP with regular analog telephony, which I don’t need. I’d rather pay less.
• they are made by big players, who charge more for their brand than the product is worth.
• they come bundled with some VoIP service out there, which smells like lock-in or extra charges.

Thus, I am reaching out to the lazyweb. Does anyone know of a wireless (short-range) phone that can do VoIP at a reasonable price, either based on Wifi, or using an ethernet-connected base station (DECT). I’d appreciate a note.

NP: Age Pryor: City Chorus

Update: thanks to all the people who have replied, and sorry for the long delay. I ended up buying a used Siemens C450IP (DECT) for little money, and it suits my needs for home. Thanks to Diego ‘Flameeyes’ Pettenò for the suggestion.

Wayne Lee wrote in with some pointers to Wifi VoIP phones by Zyxel and Hitachi, but says that they only support WEP. They’re just not an option for me.

Diego Iastrubni, Marc Fargas, and Paul Tötterman all reported that the Nokia phones work fine over Wifi and UMTS. Apparently, the N-series phones use the same software as the E-series, but sport better hardware. They’re also larger.

I am still eying the Nokia E51 and will probably buy it as part of my contract renewal in July. You can expect a new blog post then.

My Nokia 6230 and I decided to split ways, or rather someone decided it was time for us to break up. Given that I have all my contacts on the computer anyway, and the 6230 was nearing its end of life anyway, I skipped the part about being annoyed and hopped into the store yesterday to pick up a new subsidised phone in exchange for a contract extension that was due anyway.

Remembering the chat with Scott James Remnant at last year’s Debian Barbeque, I went for the Sony Ericsson W810i. I initially wanted to stick with Nokia because I own many power adapters already, but Nokia recently switched the plugs, so that was no longer a motivation. I did have a brief look at the brand new E65 (the first Nokia phone to look decent, says Hanspeter), but I seriously doubt that Nokia actually fixed the problems with the E60, considering that the from the 6230 via the 6230i to the 6233, Nokia did not fix any single one of the problems I’ve had with the 6230.

So now I have this shiny W810i (with a white case) and I am struggling to use it, having grown accustomed to Nokia over the past years. The worst is that it won’t play nice with my Jabra BT250 headset, which has treated me very well and which I’d much rather keep than replace. However, while I can speak over it, I cannot use any of the buttons on the headset, meaning I cannot receive calls without touching the phone. The phone thus thinks that I would much rather talk through the phone than the headset and I have to transfer the sound manually.

So I am wondering: does anyone of you have a newer Jabra BT headset, such as the BT250v or the BT500v and can confirm that it works with Sony Ericsson phones? If so, please let me know!

NP: Rage Against The Machine / Rage Against The Machine

I am on the look for a new cell phone, and now that the Nokia E60 and E70 are out, I went to the shop to had a close look at them, and one thing I can say up front is that they’re both quite okay for people who like Series 60 (v3) phones and all the colourful navigation stuff you (have to) do with them. I personally don’t really care as long as I can quickly learn to find my way, and as long as the physical aspects of navigation are okay and responsive (which rules out Sony Ericsson for me).

With that I can start at one difference between the two E series phones: the navigation nipple on the E60 seems a lot easier to use than on the E70. That said, the two phones are otherwise very similar under the hood (see this link for details, in the following are only the points I consider important):

• both are triple-band with WCDMA support.
• both come with bluetooth, infrared, GPRS, EDGE, WCDMA, and WLAN (incl. WPA/WPA2 and EAP support).
• both have a VoIP client, though the store manager didn’t know for sure whether I could connect to a SER (SIP express router) on the ‘Net over a WLAN connection. They say that you can connect to a local gatekeeper [0]_, so I’d assume it’s possible, but that’s something to try out; read on…
• both can assign ring tones per contact. Nokia heard my cries…
• both can reuse my 6230’s battery and charger. This is really a major selling point of Nokia — all of their phones have the same charger, and batteries are compatible across many!
• both run Series 60 v3, Symbian OS 9.1, which is somewhat outdates (9.2) is current, but it does give you “improvements in the OS [which] mean that applications and content, and therefore a developers investment, are better protected than ever.” (Wikipedia). Boy am I glad!
• both can run ScummVM, meaning I can play all of the best games ever released! If this is not a selling point for a business phone, what is?

Obvious differences include:

• the E60 has no camera, while the E70 comes with a 2 megapixel one. I am actually not sure whether this is a plus or a minus, given that it is nice to have a camera handy when your life isn’t all cubicles and security-conscious companies.
• the E70 sports a keyboard that you can fold out (as does the 6822). Unfortunately, here in Switzerland, all they offer is a QWERTZ version, which I’ll avoid if at all possible. I don’t think I’ll be using the phone for “working” (as in word processing or spreadsheet editing; who does?), and I avoid SMS when I can, so even though the keyboard is certainly cool qand usable, I won’t draw too much benefit.
• the E70 seems to have better battery life (according to the specs), but that’s something that can be addressed with a more powerful battery, I’d say (plus, I can use my 6230 battery with both).
• the E60 is 3 cm³ smaller and weighs 10 grammes less than the E70. That said, it’s still a lot bigger than the 6230 I now have.

You can compare the specs of the two phones as well as the 6822 (which is like the E70 in some ways, but without WLAN and VoIP) at this link.

Oh, and then there’s the Motorola A910, which runs Linux, comes in a little heavier and at about the same volume as the E60, doesn’t include infrared support, and doesn’t seem to provide a VoIP client, which I’d say is less of a problem given the Linux basis. Unfortunately, it does not seem to available in Switzerland.

Together with a contract extension, I can get either of the E series phones at about half the street price. In addition, the shop manager told me he’d allow me to return the phone within three days if it didn’t meet my expectations. All of this, and the above combined makes me want to sleep for another night, and then try out the E60 over the weekend.

I have to make a decision whether to prolong my contract by 24 months, or only 12 months and pay CHF 100 more for the phone. That comes down to around 5€/month, which is around 10% of my monthly bill. Given that I was always happy with Sunrise as provider, it would seem natural to bind myself for 24 months. However, prices are expected to drop substantially over the next year, and I am not sure whether a provider could lock you in to an existing contract, even if the government ordered a price decrease. So in the light of the expected availability of more and enhanced WLAN phones, such as the Motorola A910, I think a 12 month contract will be the better choice.

.. [0] “gatekeeper” is an H.323 term and I brought it up in the conversation : because I am new to SIP and, well… He said it would be able to connect to a company-internal “thing, like a Cisco router,” so this leads me to assume it will be able to connect to any SER out there. Thanks to Mark Brown for bringing this to my attention.

I went back to the shop today to return the Nokia E60 I had previously sought out. There were just too many gripes with the phone, and even though I could have possibly worked around (some of) them, I was looking for a phone that works, not one that I could tweak to work.

Among the most prominent problems were:

• Lack of STUN support, which means that you cannot do VoIP behind a NAT router without configuring a port-forward (which is often not possible). Nokia is also unlikely to add STUN support because the phone’s target audience is clearly large businesses equipping their employees with phones that will work with VoIP locally, and “fall back” to GSM when on the road.

• Broken WPA2 implementation. I could not get my phone to associate with my WPA2 router. Reasons may be the AES implementation, which seems broken (see below), or just a faulty WPA2 implementation. I can get other devices, including my Palm, to talk to the router over WPA2 just fine.

• Broken AES (or VPN) implementation, meaning I could not get a VPN connection to either of a Cisco router, a Check Point VPN-1 gateway, a Linux host running FreeS/WAN, or OpenVPN when AES was used. I could connect to all but the OpenVPN client using 3DES.

• No WLAN reconnects. If your WLAN connection drops while you’re using it, you have to exit the programme (or reassociate with the VoIP gateway) to get it back up. This sucks when browsing the web!

• Sucky battery lifetime. I was playing around with the device, using a fully-charged but two year old battery. After about 2.5 hours, it displayed the first low battery warning. Obviously, WLAN consumes a lot of power, but that’s just too much and too fast.

Other than that, the phone seems to have the usual features you expect from an advanced phone that tries to also be a PIM. Believe it or not, I could make phone calls, but there was weird crackling noises to be heard; I am not sure whether the phone’s at fault, I do have crazy power lines around my place.

One thing that did drive me up the walls was the configuration. To set up VoIP, I had to first configure a WLAN connection (which you cannot do in the “Connection Manager” — that one seems to be only used to kill connections and associate with unencrypted WLANs) in the system settings (which are to be found under Menu/Tools), then set up a SIP profile, then set up a VoIP connection, and then make sure it’s active. If you change WLANs, you have to modify the VoIP connection, it cannot use an existing WLAN connection, or the current best default. I want a VoIP/GSM combo not because I want to spend two minutes to configure VoIP in a foreign network.

Also, while we’re on a topic related to WLAN: the device does not allow you to connect to a WLAN without starting an application that uses it. Sure, it’s power-optimised, but still. Also, neither ESSID nor encryption status are shown anywhere when you’re connected, and I did not find out a way to display the phone’s IP address.

Another beef was with the general device speed. There’s a quick access button to write SMS. If you press that, it takes 5-6 seconds until you can type the SMS. I don’t need to say more…

The display of the E60 (and E70), however, do warrant their own paragraphs: it’s gorgeous! Simply gorgeous. Unfortunately, that’s not a selling factor for me.

So I decided to wait for the next generation of WLAN/VoIP/GSM combos (or at least firmware updates to the E60), and especially the Motorola A910, which runs Linux. I am grateful to the shop manager for being so patient, making sure that I am satisfied rather than trying to make money, and generally just giving me a pleasant shopping experience the way it really should be these days — given that there are shops out there that won’t let you try electronic devices before you buy them. So, if you’re ever in Zurich and in need of mobile communication devices or paraphernalia, visit the mobilezone shop in Oerlikon (Einkaufszentrum Neumarkt) and ask for Andreas Iseli! Apart from being next door to my flat, I’m definitely going to go back there next time I need something.

PS: to all those who have been toying with the idea of buying (or otherwise drooling over) the E70, do note that the two run the same software, so most of these issues will apply to the E70 as well. However, it’s always best to make up your own mind, so find a shop as professional and fair as mine and get your hands on it.