Fansite of Nokia professional training

The Nokia Trade-up Program: Fail.

So Nokia recently sent out its holiday newsletter, filled with phone deals (free $75 Visa Prepaid card when you spend more than $300), new phone announcements (Nokia 6650), good causes (send a UNICEF e-card and Nokia will make a donation), and other holiday cheer. But there was also something more sinister: the Nokia Trade-Up program.

If you’ve ever seen the phone/device-for-cash programs at Best Buy, Circuit City, or other fine retailers, then you’ll already understand what this is about. Basically, you fill out a form that asks you some simple questions like the condition of your phone, included accessories, etc, and you get an instant trade-in price quote. If you’re satisfied, you can then print out a label and send back your old phone.

Here’s the sales pitch:

Get cash back for your old phone when you buy a new Nokia device. Just buy a new Nokia mobile device, send in any old phone, and receive money back. Go online and discover how much your device is worth!

Sounds pretty good, right?

Unfortunately, Nokia decided to add another small requirement: you have to buy a new Nokia mobile device from a Nokia authorized dealer or retailer. That’s on top of the fairly ludicrous price quote:

Apple iPhone 8 GB (original), good condition: $118.00
Nokia E66, good condition: $161.00
Nokia N85, factory new condition: $214.00
Nokia N95 NAM, good condition: $118.00
“Nokia N98″ - $77.00 ???

So it’s pretty safe to say that this is a pretty nice waste of time. Of course, if your phone isn’t worth anything, you can still have it recycled.

One last thing to note: the Trade-up program is handled by DealTree, a third-party dealer.

Please do yourself a favor this year and eBay your old cell phone instead of getting ripped off.

Nokia Trade-up Program

PC Suite: Install mobile applications for fun and for profit!

Head over to Nokia Europe for the latest version of the Nokia PC Suite.

New additions include device notifications (battery/call/SMS), calendar management through Nokia Communication Centre, and the ability to create or modify caller groups.

- Manage your device calendar in the Calendar view of Nokia Communication Centre
- Create and delete contact groups on your device, and add and remove group members
- Start calls and pick up incoming calls with Nokia Communication Centre
- Get a notification on your PC about a low device battery level
- Save device battery by setting off call, SMS and battery level notifications

Nokia 7.1 PC Suite

You may also want to check out the Nokia PC Suite Cleaner to remove every last trace of the PC Suite application from your computer.

Nokia’s quasi-budget Supernova series received a color facelift on Friday, with graphite (darkish blue) and passionate purple being thrown into the mix. And while there was nothing new to report in terms of features, Nokia did have the good sense to add some services: Share on Ovi, Nokia Maps, and the always-handy (heh) Windows Live messenger.

The Supernova line includes the Nokia 7210, 7310, 7510, and 7610 phones. Even though they’re budget, they’re not that bad - all the devices come equipped with cameras (2 megapixel being the lowest), for example. And where the 7210 and 7310 fall short on features, the phones make up in sheer thinness. The 7610 is a pretty sweet looking slider with a massive 8.4 hours of battery life, and the 7510 features the “push-to-open” made famous by the Nokia 6133, among others.

Press Release

A sad day for Nokia’s Comes With Music service.

Here’s three fun facts for today:

-Nokia’s Comes with Music service uses Microsoft’s DRM.
-An application called Tunebite can strip Microsoft’s DRM from Comes with Music files.
-Comes With Music comes with unlimited music downloads.

Yep, the fate of Nokia’s highly-trumpeted music downloading service is (potentially) in the hands of a little application called Tunebite. The software silently “plays back” a DRM’ed music file, re-records it, and spits it back out in whatever format you choose, DRM-free. According to the product page, it’s done at 54x speed so waiting doesn’t seem like an issue. What might be an issue, however, is the price: the software actually costs $26.90 USD.

In case you haven’t been following Nokia’s developments in the music industry, Comes with Music is an unlimited music service that comes with the purchase of certain Nokia cell phones (right now only the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic). Of course, there’s some caveats, such as the service being free/unlimited only for the first year (and no one seems to know what happens after that). But either way, it’s a radical new change from traditional music sales, and especially on mobile devices.

The big question now seems to be - how much will this really affect the Comes With Music bottom line? An article on Yahoo! Finance raises an interesting point: a typical user probably won’t know or care enough to purchase the software and run through the necessary hoops (ie re-encoding songs) to get the DRM-free music. And the smarter “superusers” probably wouldn’t even bother getting the service, since they’d be able to get their music for free through easier methods.

Nokia Extra Power DC-11.

Following in the footsteps of the Extra Power DC-8 and the Power Pack DC-1 is the Extra Power DC-11. Larger than the previous incarnations, the DC-11 still allows you to charge 2 devices simultaneously for twice the fun, and uses a rechargeable battery vs. the AA battery found in the DC-8. There’s also support for micro-USB and standard Nokia 2mm power plugs.

The original DC-1 had a capacity of 960 mAh, and according to the official product page, the DC-11 has a capacity of “up to one charge for your mobile phone.” I’d guess somewhere in the vicinity of 1200 mAh.

Pricing and availability are, unfortunately, still up in the air. Nokia really needs to get on the ball with these press releases.

Nokia Extra Power DC-11: Nokia Europe

The Nokia N85 - priced and now shipping.

Symbian-Guru reports that the Nokia N85 NAM, the newest S60 dual-slider equipped with a sweet OLED display, is now shipping for US customers. Grab the phone from Amazon, NokiaUSA.com (shows in-stock once you add to cart, ignore the “Pre-Order” bits), and Nokia Flagship Stores in Chicago and New York City. Pricing is pretty standard across the board, with $549.99 at Amazon and $552.99 at the Nokia stores.

Since it’s the North American version, you can expect 850/1900/2100 3G and a full warranty, which is a heck of a lot better than what you’d get from shady sellers on eBay.

Nokia N85 at Amazon
Nokia N85 at NokiaUSA.com

Symbian-Guru

Nokia Home Music: It’s a radio.

With all the hoopla surrounding recent phone announcements (aka the N97), some new Nokia accessory announcements fell through the cracks. First up is Nokia Home Music, a giant speaker stuffed with a radio. Yum!

Of course, the radio isn’t Home Music’s only function. The device is meant for streaming audio (over your UPnP enabled network, for example) from various sources and through different connections. You could also take the audio and send it over to a home theater system via the optical output or RCA line-out.

Nokia Home Music includes ports for Ethernet, USB, SPDIF optical output, RCA line-out, and 3.5mm headphones, and supports 802.11 b/g + UPnP AV 1.0 and Media Renderer. There’s also a color display that lets you control various functions, and a remote control.

And according to the official specs, the giant speaker is actually a mere 10 watts.

Nokia Home Music

Nokia 2608: Cheapest CDMA phone around.

Continuing Nokia’s time-honored tradition of releasing dumbphones aimed at the CDMA market, the Nokia 2608, at first glance, actually looks like a slick phone. It’s very similar to the 3555, complete with the seamless back, although the keypad more closely resembles a Nokia N90 than anything. And it looks extremely thick.

In terms of features, however, the 2608 is pretty lacking. There is the standard integrated loudspeaker, “quick-press” flashlight, FM radio, some LED indicators for missed calls (something I wish was on every phone), and voice recorder. Nothing really out of the ordinary, except “quick touch access to one’s PC”, which I’m still trying to puzzle out. Is it VNC? Or simply a USB cable connection?

The Nokia 2608 hasn’t been priced yet, but the official bulletin board press release states that it’s the cheapest CDMA phone around. Expect the phone to hit select markets (not including the USA) some time in the first quarter of 2009, when it’ll be overshadowed by the release of the N97.

On November 14, Nokia reported that estimates for both the fourth-quarter of 2008 and the whole of 2009 would be lower than expected, and got burned. Today, Nokia added more fuel to the flames with its latest announcement that industry sales for 2009 would drop by a least 5 percent, and fourth-quarter sales would be lower than the previous 330 million unit estimate. At Nokia’s Capital Markets Day, there was also the standard spiel about reducing costs and the company being well-positioned, etc but the bottom line was that the mobile phone industry is hurting, and will be hurting next year too.

That’s not all, however. Apparently, Nokia’s forecasters seem to be having a little trouble figuring out just what the company’s market share might be next year:

“Nokia believes there is insufficient visibility in the marketplace to confirm its prior estimate for its fourth quarter 2008 mobile device market share, which was expected to be at the same level or slightly up from an estimated 38% in the third quarter 2008.”

Other major points (not necessarily bad):

• In 2009, Nokia expects its market share to improve, and notably in the smartphone category (thanks to the Nokia N97 maybe?)
• Sales in emerging markets seem to be taking the biggest hit globally
• The mobile infrastructure (Nokia Siemens Networks) will stay flat in 2008, and fall 5% in 2009
• Under Nokia’s priorities for 2009: “To mobilize consumer email and consumer instant messaging for millions of Nokia device users, and; To further integrate and simplify Nokia’s web services user interface and device user interface.”

Show the Damage Part 2

Nokia Maps 3.0 gets some giant 3D landmarks, and some other stuff.

Hot off the press from Nokia Beta Labs, the Nokia Maps 3.0 application has a couple flashy new improvements over the old version: 3D landmarks, Ovi integration, higher-res maps, walk navigation alerts, and what looks like even more paid real-time options (camera alerts?, traffic, movies/events). Ah, if only navigation was free…

Grab it at the Beta Labs.