I use a Nokia E71 U.S. version that I got unlocked off amazon a couple of years ago. Its a great phone, but being in the smartphone business for eternity, one would expect Nokia to have figured out the importance of frequent software updates. Whats worse, while the rest of the World gets some updates when Nokia feels generous, the U.S. version seems to have been abandoned (a search for 0569371 shows the mess).

Recently, I hit a serious issue with the phone. My phone now crashes and reboots continuously when I’m at home. Well, it eventually shuts off. The interesting bit is that I see this issue only at home. Turning 3G off does solve the problem. But where’s the fun in that? It turns out that AT&T is upgrading its network and is deploying a third WCDMA channel in certain markets. The e71 and other symbian s60 3G phones have a software bug that makes them reboot continuously in such areas.

Thats still okay, it seems to be a rarely used configuration and Nokia should probably be able to fix it soon enough right? Not so soon! I’ve found instances of people from other regions complaining about this issue since August 2009 and Nokia still does not have a software update with the fix. Here comes the kicker, the last available update for the U.S. e71 version is 200.21.118 (built 27th November 2008). Some versions seem to blessed with a more recent firmware upate though.

I do not think Nokia gets it! The days of releasing a new phone every couple of weeks is gone. Its all in the software now. A great phone like the e71 would have been far more successful with a company who understood the new realities.

PS: AT&T apparently stopped selling the e71x and other s60 in some regions.

Update – 5th May 2010

Nokia finally responded to all the 0569371 complaints and released firmware version 410.21.010 for this e71 product code yesterday. This update seems to have fixed the issue with the 3rd WCDMA channel.

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I don’t understand what the deal is with not having a simple, non-javascript, non-flash, plain HTML login form on the front page of websites where most (all) content require authentication. Twitter, linkedin, flickr, (to name a few) are all guilty of this. I do not like staying signed-in to any of these services and have my browser clear their cookies after every session.

Its not lack of real estate, most of them find space for elaborate sign-up forms. All I ask for is a simple one line login form which shouldn’t take more than 24×240 pixels. While we’re at it can we all agree to set tabindex=1 on the username field so that I don’t have to tab over a gazillion times?

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Give a boy a fancy toy and the first thing he does is break it open to see whats underneath. So when I started using Google Voice, I had to break it.

Now, the most important feature of Google voice is call forwarding where it can ring multiple registered phones when your Google voice number is called. Here’s a bit of fun with this feature –

• From a registered phone, dial your Google voice number
• Key in your PIN, press 2 and dial your registered phone number (the same one you’re calling from)
• Say “hello” and enjoy the infinite loop, its more fun if you love hearing your own voice

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While certain companies are always viewed with a suspicious eye, certain others are considered a joke. Google, on the other hand is considered the son of God despite its evils.

With the explosion of Web 2.0 services, I find it a pain to sign on to Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, and the million other sites that have mushroomed. (I’m paranoid about staying signed on to sites with everyone and their brothers abusing beacons). So, on this day, the 13th of November 2008, I nominate our friendly neighbourhood do-no-evil company to implement a single sign on that I can indiscriminately blindly trust.

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I was glancing through the BGP Instability Report which is a measure of the number of updates from various ASes over the past month. For a stable network, the number of updates must be relatively low.

I don’t understand why five of the top twenty most active ASes must be Indian ISPs. For a country with 3.6% of the World’s internet users and 0.5174% of the World’s IP addresses, it does seem more than a bit unusual.

It does point to very incompetent ISPs.

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