27 posts tagged “n73”

Bulging batteries Batman!

Apparently the BP-6M battery, as used in the N73, is prone to bulging.  Quite a lot of bulging if one were to take El Reg's article at face value: Nokia coughing to ballooning batteries

Found via: Engadget

My sister is halfway through a business trip to China, Hong Kong and Vietnam.  Right now she's in HK and I'm kicking myself that I didn't loan her a Skypephone.  That's the second time I've forgotten since getting my hands on a pair of 3's Skypephones last year.

After her recent trip to New York, where she carried three handsets that didn't work, I don't think I could've persuaded her anyway.  Why did she bring three handsets to the Big Apple?  Let me explain with bullet points:

• her jailbroken iPhone on Vodafone couldn't receive texts for some bizarre reason
• her replacement iPhone 3G on O2 wasn't enabled for roaming (no one in the O2 store warned her of this)
• the Motorola on AT&T's prepaid service that I loaned her was cut off because it hadn't been used in a couple of months

I believe the current trend for one word summaries could sum it up best as: FAIL

In theory, I could've lent her my N73 (for the Far East, not NY) and we could've had 25 mins of video-telephony for free (or thereabouts - I have those included each month and never use 'em!)

Sorry folks, this offer is well and truly over now!  There is nothing even remotely comparable available right now (Feb 2009)

6120 on 6 month contract for £15 per month - have they gone nuts?!?

The Nokia 6120 (aka known as the 6120 Classic or 6120c) is an excellent phone IMHO.  It's not that far off of Nokia's once kinda-flagship model N73.  Does mostly the same things but mostly better!  The build quality is a lot better too and it's a nice smallish handset.  I recommended it to my sister a while back (unfortunately on T-Mobile as that's who she's with) and shockingly she only uses it as a phone (and, occasionally, a camera)!

'Three' are offering this fine phone free on 6 month contracts (oh how I wish I was on 6 months!) for just £15 per month.  That's a whopping total cost of £90!  The phone also has HSDPA connectivity (aka 3.5G, aka er, fast mobile internet!) so it makes an excellent alternative to a USB broadband dongle.  Okay, it's nearly twice the price of the cheapest mobile broadband modems but they can't double up as a spare phone and offer you inclusive calls and texts.  Nor can they be used as a SatNav!

This is yet another half-finished post as I've gotta be outta here.  I found out about this care of gerrymoth's NokiAAdict blog. Here's his post: The Wife’s New White 6120 Classic

Chill Kid fresh out of hospital. Go check out his blog for games and frames!

3 comments

Over the past few weeks I've become increasingly annoyed by my phone's problem with streaming audio.  Whilst my N95 8GB is connected to WiFi it can play internet radio streams fine, on 3G it's a very different situation.  Buffer, buffer, bu... f... f... e.. .. ..

I used to be able to listen with barely a problem.  Occasionally I got the odd second or two of buffering - but often listened for over an hour without even one blip.  My trusty old N73 even managed fine and that didn't have super fast 3.5G.

It's got really annoying now though and I've had enough!  I want to find out what the root of the problem is and fix it.  I've got great reception where I use my phone most, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.  I have a phone which is supposedly cutting edge, has lots of memory and supports HSDPA - so that shouldn't be the problem.  It's gotta be the network right?  They must be the ones that are throttling my connection, it has to be...

...that's what I thought anyway but I've just discovered it can't be.  Why?  I've just had my phone hooked up to my Eee PC and have been streaming the same stations, same streams that I attempted earlier on my phone and had completely different results.  Listening on my phone I suffered buffering problems every couple of mins on average.  Listening on my laptop to the same stations, using the same connection, I had no problems at all (well that's not entirely true but one station I tried is useless on anything other than my home broadband).

So it looks like there's something wrong with my Nokia and I need to suss it out.  Why does the phone need to buffer a stream on the handset but dosn't need to when it passes the connection on to the laptop?  It makes no sense!

Nokia Internet Radio seems to suffer worse than S60 Internet Radio.  Anyone got any ideas why?  Anyone else having similar problems?

The above is a web-only clip from British channel Five's 'The Gadget Show'.  It features presenter Jon Bentley testing out and musing over VOIP* application Fring.  The demonstration doesn't go too smoothly, which is a shame as Fring is pretty good IMHO and if I were to criticise it it wouldn't be for anything seen in the clip.

I noticed that the two handsets used were on Three and that one of them was an N73** (X-Series by the looks of it).  Hardly cutting edge, is it Five? ;-)  I'm just about to give mine to an eleven year old (and I imagine they'll be less than impressed!)  As they're using Three I think they needn't worry about the data plan.   VOIP isn't barred in Three's T&Cs (unlike with some other operators) and the price of the plan (presumably they'll be on £5 per month) would ensure a lot of very, very cheap calls and IMs!

Five, Three?  What is it with company branding these days!?! ;-)
*VOIP = Voice Over IP (voice calls routed over the internet)
**the other one being a 6120 classic I do believe...

Back to using my N73!  It's been tough, especially since I discovered the Flirtomatic service (well I am single and it's mobile tech, I consider it research!)  Typing on the N73 is way more difficult than on the N95 8GB.  The keys are too small to begin with and the silly joystick on the N73 ...well I'd gotten so used to it I'd forgotten how truly awful it was!  It's very easy to hit send/OK when you don't want to.

So despite what may have appeared as a generally unimpressed take on the N95 8GB, it's only when it's gone that you appreciate it.  I guess things like Maps, Sports Tracker and Podcasting would impress me more if I hadn't already been aware of them.

And the N95 8GB's WiFi was a lifesaver (not literally mind!) when my laptop went M.I.A.

I now have in my possession the rather nice N95 8GB (cheers to the also rather nice Siobhan at WOM World for said phone device).

I'm now nearly 24 hours into my two week trial and it's been er, interesting.  The phone is great, the screen is big and bright, nice and clear.  Navigating the menus is lightening quick (at least compared to my N73) and it's a pleasure being able to have so many applications running at the same time without the phone slowing to a halt or shutting down a bunch of them.  I could go on, and will, later.

There are some bad points though and these include the frustrating and confusing variety of download sources on the device.  Having everything available from one place might be a bit easier.  Getting Nokia Internet Radio was unbelievably difficult and will be the subject of a future post.  And, Nokia Sports Tracker kept crashing yesterday for no apparent reason.

For those not versed in Cockney rhyming slang: Dog and bone = phone

The old dog and bone I'm talking about?  My geriatric Nokia N73 of course!  So, what new tricks has it got up it's sleeve?  Well, now running on mine: an amazing Resident Evil-style 3D game and a sound synthesizer/music composer.

The Resident Evil-style game is called 7 Days Salvation and when I say amazing, I mean it looks amazing, controls are responsive and there's no lag.  The gameplay may well be amazing too, but I haven't delved much into it thus far.

The synthesizer/music creation app is called Syntrax and does stuff that shouldn't even be possible on a phone!

There's still life in the old dog and bone yet!  The links have screenshots and I'll up some video ASAP

Brief note: I wrote this up on Firefox on my Eee and for some reason it didn't format right.  Trying to clean it up a bit on my PC and it's acting strangely.  For some reason what-you-see-is-what-you-get has turned into what-you-see-is-a-little-bit-like-what-you-get-but-not-really.

Three bill

From next Tuesday I'll be spending a week in New York.  As I'm going to be using my phone for GPS, listening to music, taking pictures etc, I thought it might be a good time to see if I could get an early upgrade on my mobile contract.  My current phone, the N73 was great but after 15 months of use and abuse it can behave erratically (to say the least).  Trying to take pictures, especially, has become such a difficult proposition that I often don't bother any more (it's to do with that silly shutter and how the phone sometimes thinks it's closed when it's actually open).

It's not just that my phone is acting up in it's old age - I want, no NEED, WiFi in my phone!  I'm sure it's something that will be immensely useful in a country that isn't included in 3's generous 3 Like Home offering.

So, after a bit of homework, I decided to try my luck with 3's upgrades team.  I was told I could upgrade now but that I really should wait until the 11th April (the official start of my early upgrade period).  I asked the nice lady how much a Nokia N95 8GB would cost today and she told me it would be £350.  That would be the price of the handset itself.  That would be on top of what I'm paying a month (which is quite a hefty amount I should add).  What would the price be if today was the 11th April?  She told me it would be free!

So I'm going to have to wait five more weeks and put up with my current dilapidated phone in the meantime.  On a positive note it appears that 12 month contracts are still an option when dealing with them direct - I know I'm not going to get another 18 month contract if I can help it.