Nokia E71 – Road to the Holy Grail (Push Email)

I was somewhat surprised at The Nokia E71′s native email capabilities.

Being a previous owner of Nokia s60 devices like the N95 & N80, I purchased the E71 with the ‘wild’ idea that it would have REAL email client experience, something more advanced than what you’d find on the N Series phones.

What a dissapointment.

The only difference, aesthetically, I can find between the Nokia E Series and N Series as far as the email exprience goes is that the E Series is able to display 1 line per message (whoop de doo) and can read your messages to you, which sounds more like a crippleware adjustment than a new feature.

Being marketed as an email/communicator centric device to go up against the likes of Blackberry, I was really expecting something out of the ordinary, a slick email client experience, but that was not to be. If you’ve used the email client on N Series phones, you’ll already know how limited it is. It’s an email client suited for occasional use, but if you’re after something a little more serious and want that desktop email client experience, you will have to look elsewhere.

And that’s what I did….

So first up I headed over to Nokia (email.nokia.com) and downloaded their next generation email client. Now this looked a LOT better! It was like going from DOS to Windows, the UI is more GUI than UI which is great, and with PUSH email functionality, fantastic! Using the application for a few hours it wasn’t long until I started encountering it’s limitations.

1) PUSH email sometimes doesn’t arrive instantaneously

2) Only the last x days of email messages are stored

3) No IMAP functionality

Now I understand this program is still in beta so these issues can be excused, but on face value, kudos to Nokia for upgrading what is an ageing email messaging system.

BUT I WANT SOMETHING NOW!!

I’ve tried Seven’s PUSH email offering, but that still uses Nokia’s arcade messaging system.

FINALLY IT HAS ARRIVED!

Profimail

This has got to be the BEST email client I have used on a Nokia s60 device so far. The features are comparable to a thick client experience:

• Various signatures (though plain-text only at this stage)
• Upto 30 mailboxes
• Filters!! On a mobile device?? What the?!
• HTML emails can be viewed
• and the list goes on….

You really have to download it and test it for yourself to truly appreciate this program. The interface is also customisable by adjusting the font sizes and colour schemes.

THIS is what the E-Series email client SHOULD have been!

Okay so the email client experience has been taken care of, well done LCG! But what about Push Email?

There are various ways to get the push experience on a mobile device, but one method that I have recently discovered to be the most easiest to implement and also seems to be widely supported is IMAP IDLE.

“In e-mail technology, IDLE is an IMAP feature described in RFC 2177 that allows a client to indicate to the server that it is ready to accept real-time notifications.” — quoted from Wikipedia

IMAP IDLE (as I understand) is where the client can be configured to send ‘keep alive’ packets to the IMAP mail server so that the mail server does not close the connection to the client. The keep alive packet intervals can be set at x minute intervals so that you always remain connected to the IMAP mailserver and are able to receive real-time email notifications.

Nokia’s default email client for the E71 does not support IMAP IDLE, I believe the E6x does though and there is an option to set this in the menu, but not the E71.

When setting up an IMAP email box in the E71, there is an option to set how often to poll for email, the minimum time being 5 minutes. In my case however, my mobile network operator disconnects every 3 minutes when no net activity has occured, this leaves a gap of around 2 minutes when you are left in the dark and the phone reconnects to update the mailbox.

With Profimail you can not only specify whether your mail server is IMAP IDLE compliant, but also set the keep alive intervals, in my case every 3 minutes.

Note that you will also have to confirm whether your IMAP server actually supports the IMAP IDLE function because I found  out my previous server didn’t, so I migrated my mail to gmail which does support IMAP IDLE.

Now with the combination of LCG Profimail and Gmail, I now have a thick client, push email experience on my mobile device!

Whooo hooooO!

Canon 70-200 F2.8 (non IS) lens – some brief thoughts

Initially, the largest most noticeable difference between this lens and the Canon 70-200 F4 L (non IS) which I upgraded from is an “Uuurgh”.

“Uuurgh” is now the sound I make when I pickup this F2.8L lens, it is noticeably heavier… So THIS is what they were on about… I see now, uh huh.

I think I now understand why the tripod ring is NOT included as standard on the 70-200 F4 version(s), by comparison they are featherweight.

The front lens surface area is quite large (77cm lens diameter as opposed to 67cm  lens diameter on the F4 version). Looking down the barrel of the 70-200 F2.8L is synonymous with tunnel vision, you can see the viewfinder & AF points quite clearly on the other side, and it’s large!

This unit is not as well-sealed as the F4 version, on the rear of the lens there is some gap in the 4 corners where the lens meets the velvet. This was completely sealed on the F4 version.

Will update this entry shortly with pictures.

Canon 40D – sRAW & ISO 1600

Had my first ‘official’ run with the Canon 40D at the L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival and I’ve been VERY impressed by it’s high-speed shooting & very low noise at ISO 1600.

I remember with my Canon 400D, even after I’d resized images for web (between 640 ~ 1024) I’d still have to run noise ninja to remove some noticeable artefacts. The Canon 40D has saved me this extra step!

I will say at this point I was shooting sRAW for most of the festival, I have read around the traps that sRAW does appear to keep noise at bay better than RAW (all equations being equal) though I’d like to prove this myself. The beauty of sRAW is that I could fit more onto my CF Card, smaller file sizes and quicker downloads.

Unless i’m shooting for something that’s eventually going to be blown up to a large poster, I think i’ll be shooting sRAW from now on – a good advancement from Canon!

Interestingly, the photographers from Getty Images were shooting JPEGs at the event. Their circumstances were different however as they had to upload the shots immediately after the show – they simply don’t have the time to sift through all the RAW files, tweak, convert, save & send. It amazed me how much faith they put into the camera and essentially themselves to get the settings right from the get-go (esp. where white balance is concerned) and from what I saw… RESPECT!!

For the runway shows I used a 70-200 F4L lens. I shot manual @ F4 (which is why I had to bump upto ISO1600) and between 400 ~ 640 shutter depending on the whiteness of the garments. Most of the photographers with Canons I spoke to at the event were running around ISO800, but then again they had 70-200 F2.8L IS lenses. I’m thinking this ought to be my next upgrade to give me more ISO/shutter speed headroom – though I am happy with these pictures and think it can wait.

I’m loving this camera the more I use it and at this stage (compared to the Digital Rebel series) feel as though I’ll be happy enough to keep it until there is something evolutionary from Canon.

Canon 40D – Live View Roadtest

Currently on a project doing before & after shots of eyelash extensions for a beauty studio, the Canon Live View really came into bat here, and it was at this point I then realised how incredibly worthwhile having this feature is on a D-SLR for certain studio shots.

I had never done before & after shots before. The front & side shots were easy but the angled shots are the tricky ones to reproduce a second time.

So here’s what I did;

I brought up the original shot on my laptop. Using the EOS Utility I started remote shooting. This is like live view, but the live view is now on your PC/Laptop screen instead.

I then positioned the camera more/less at the same points as I had marked out previously with the before shots, but now I was able to ask the model to look at the laptop screen and basically match her current position with the position that was previously taken. This was VERY quick, and accurate. Without Live View I would’ve had to direct the model myself which can get tedious and frustrating for both. The models actually found this a little more interactive and fun, which allowed them to be more cooperative.

After finalising the pose on camera, I get them to ‘lock it in’. I then switch off live view on the laptop, go back to my camera and check the focus. If the focusing point landed on the specific portion of the eye I wanted to capture, great! If not, I would’ve had to readjust the camera so that one of the AF points is trained on the specific part I wanted to focus on, which would then throw off the alignment of the after shot a little.

With Live View however, all I did was enable Live View on the camera, zoom into the area I wanted to focus on the camera itself, then using manual focusing. Being a 10mpx camera, the zoomed in live image was crystal clear and I was simply amazed how much better I could focus using manual focus on a zoomed up image and what subtle differences it made instead of using auto focus, or even manual focus through the viewfinder!

Just amazing! Tv & Av was constant so that was not a problem, fired a pre-flash exposure lock, took the shot and done!

I’m no professional and there are probably better ways to do this but for me, this workflow worked a treat and was very quick, all because of the added benefit of Live View!

I have to say though, toward the end of the session I placed the back of my hand on the LCD screen and I could feel the surface was noticeably warmer. Now this could either be the actual CMOS warming up during extensive use of LiveView, or it could be the actual LCD warming up during extensive use of LiveView, i’d be more inclined (and hope) that it’s the latter… ?

It didn’t help the fact that I was shooting in a very small room with 3 warm studio ceiling mounted lamps, maybe that also contributed? Dont’ know.

One thing is certain, I am now a convinced ‘Live View’ shooter for certain photographic applications.

UPDATE: 14-Mar-2008  

Was doing some LIVE View studio shooting on the weekend and a niffty little trick I forgot to mention is when you have the camera connected to your laptop via USB and the LIVE view is switched on both the camera & the laptop, and you zoom into the LIVE view image on the camera, this automatically gets zoomed in on the laptop too. It’s quite responsive, no lag – 30fps. It’s a great feature!

Canon EOS 40D SLR – The first few hours…

Just recieved my Canon EOS 40D SLR today, my initial thoughts on noise in the midtones & shadows in the high ISO’s (800+) is FAR less grainy than my Canon EOS 400D (Xti). On my Canon 400D noise was visible on the LCD at 400 ISO+, whereas noise was hardly noticeable on the 40D, almost upto 1600. Had a quick look on Photoshop after I took a few shots and was impressed by the noiseless (compared to the 400D) pictures coming out at 800 & 1600. This was never a problem to me using the 400D but now it just means it’s a little less post-processing i’ll have to do in Photoshop.

The camera is also noticeably heavier, almost feels twice as heavy and I guess it doesn’t help that i’m also using the external battery grip with the 40D (I used an external battery grip with the 400D as well).

The viewfinder is noticeably larger, you almost have to ‘glue’ your eye to the viewfinder to see the entire frame whereas with the 400D you could probably get away with having your eye some distance from the viewfinder to see the entire frame. One thing I like about the 40D is that I find I don’t have to close my right eye when viewing through the finder with my left eye because there is more ‘camera’ to block my right eye so there is no discernable distraction if you have both eyes open. With my 400D I had to close my right eye constantly, otherwise i’d see whatever lay in front and this was getting tiresome after long days of shooting.

There are SO MANY menu configurations, i’ll have to play with them and explore each one in detail to see what they all mean.

Anyway these are just a brief few noticeable differences i’ve picked up on so far in comparison to my 400D. I’ll post a more detailed ‘roadtest’ later, but so far based on image quality alone I think it was worth the upgrade.

UPDATE 21-Feb-2008  

I’ve shot my first commercial work with this camera and I can most DEFINITELY tell there is a difference between the 40D and my previous 400D. The highlight tone priority worked a treat and in an outdoor evening enviornment it not only exposed the foreground (people) correctly but the cloudy skies hiding a setting sun was also brought into detail. From experience, this would normally blow out on my 400D and i’d end up with a high contrast shot, these photos were mostly evenly exposed. I shot indoors using high ISO’s (640 ~ 1250) and the grainless pictures are great, I think I need a better lens though (Tamron 17-50).

Hopefully will get some time this weekend to have some side-by-side comparison shots done and post them up.

Optus $39 Wireless Broadband

I’ve had the Optus Wireless Broadband product (OWB) for just over a week now and the speeds I’ve been experiencing are somewhere in the 1.5 ~ 2mbps range, even at night time. Sometimes when it does fall around 1mbps or slightly lower, it still out performs Vodafone which used to slow down to dial-up speeds. To Voda’s credit they have made efforts to fix thier network in recent days, but the throughput on Optus still appears to be far quicker. However, just when I thought i’ve achieved nirvana, there’s an obligatory brick wall to hit…

Pros

• Appears quite quick & stable even at night
• Online usage meter
• VERY cheap exit fee ($75)

Cons

• You have to bundle to take advantage of the $39 offer
• Potential monthly hardware rental charges
• Wierd Internet browsing caching issues??
• Optus regains the crown for poor Customer support (Voda now comes 2nd)

Appears quite quick & stable even at night

As mentioned, I’m quite happy with the speed of the service. From 6-12pm weekdays where the Vodafone service would slow down to a crawl, OWB has consistently performed around the 1.4 ~ 2mbs range as testing on the 3MB Optus mirror using ozspeedtest.com. When downloading files, the speed jumps even further, i’ve been able to get speeds consistently upto 250k download while downloading drivers from Nvidia and streaming has been perfect.

Online usage meter

Usually this is a ‘feature’ which shouldn’t need to be noted, kind of like mentioning that a car comes with wheels but due to the absence of an online usage meter by Vodafone I feel it has to get a mention. I’m happy with the information the meter provides;

And yes… I noticed the 7GB allownace too! Optus assured me this was a mistake that will soon be rectified… damn!!

VERY cheap exit fee ($75)

The most you’ll ever pay to exit the OWB contract is $75. I said MOST, because the fee actually gets cheaper on a sliding scale, the longer you are into your contract, this makes it VERY cheap to exit the contract should something better come along.

Optus also advertises a 30 day coverage garauntee, which basically means if you’re not happy with the speed of the service, you can cancel the service within 30 days… nice!

You have to bundle to take advantage of the $39 offer

Come on… $39 did sound too good to be true coming from Optus didn’t it?? So yes, you have to bundle the OWB service with another Optus mobile post-paid service to take advantage of the $39 offer, good if you are already an Optus customer I guess, sucks if you’re loyal to another network.

Potential monthly hardware rental charges

Unlike Vodafone that provides either the USB modem or Express Data card for free, with Optus depending on the length of your contract and which device you choose, you could be slapped with an additional $5 or so a month. To get the USB modem for free, I had to go on a 24 month contract with a bundled service (which I already had). The rental then increases from there if you want to make your contract shorter or if you don’t bundle. I even understand that you actually continue to pay rental for the device AFTER your contract ends? Vodafone wins here.

Wierd Internet browsing caching issues??

For some odd reason, when browsing the internet, the browser looks at the initial version of the web page that was loaded, and does not reflect any subsequent changes that may have been made if you revisit the page in the same session or even after a few hours, it could be as long as a few days but I haven’t tested this yet. The only way for the browser to serve an updated version of the page is to delete temporary internet files. I have narrowed the problem down to either being the E220 Huawei modem, the software/drivers needed to operate the modem, or possibly Optus’ APN in this case being ‘Connect’ as opposed to ‘internet’ which is used on mobiles. Ultimately, this problem is definitely related to Optus one way or another because this never used to happen when using my previous ISP’s (Aanet & Vodafone wireless broadband). I will provide an update on this problem in due time…

Optus regains the crown for poor Customer support (Voda now comes 2nd)

I think i’ll have to revisit what I mentioned about Voda’s support because if ALL my dealings with Optus is anything to go by, it makes Vodafone support in hindsight worthy of receiving the Choice magazine Customer Service award (if there is such an award??). To Voda’s credit, they seemed to dwelve deep into technical issues whereas Optus tech support either don’t really seem to have a clue or are not willing to persist further as Voda did after ranting.

4th Feb 2008 UPDATE

Still no closer to solving the internet browsing/caching issue. I’m quite certain that it is something to do with the APN ‘Connect’ and NOT the software. I’ll give Optus support another go when I have the time & patience to deal with getting transfered 8 times before talking to someone technically apt.

During the time when I was trying to solve this issue, someone from Optus tech support pointed me to a site within optuszoo where it gave me access to download the updated drivers & connect software for the Huawei E220 modem.

This modem actually contains two pieces of software that can be updated. The first being the actual modem driver itself, or firmware. The second being the mobile connect software which is initially seen by the PC when you plug in the modem.

After updating both pieces of software it still didn’t resolve the caching issue. I then went straight to Huawei’s website and downloaded the E220 modem driver & connect software from there. The version of the modem driver was later than the one from Optus. I also installed the latest mobile connect software, which actually ended up, in a sense, ‘debranding’ the Optus mobile connect software.

The new mobile connect software was simply called ‘mobile connect’ and had installed a different set of icons than the Optus Broadband one. When you first start it, you have to import the settings from a list of network operators (Optus was in the list).

This got me thinking, I remember with my Vodafone data card, it was ‘locked’ to the Voda network, unfortunately I had already returned my Vodafone gear by this time but I now wonder if I ‘debranded’ my Vodafone card in this similar way, would it have worked with other carriers? Hmmm…

25th Feb 2008 UPDATE

I reloaded my PC from scratch on the weekend (Windows Vista), installed the modem and still giving the same ‘caching’ issue. Also tried installing the modem on my laptop and the issue exists there also. At least I have narrowed out the possibility of this issue being my PC or lappy… but then again i’ve always known the the problem must exist with the Optus service. When installing the modem on the PC, I installed it without the modem software and installed the drivers ONLY, when installed on the laptop I installed with the software, so this also narrows out the problem being modem software/driver related.

My next test is to try using the simcard from my cell phone in the modem, the simcard in my phone uses the APN ‘internet’ to connect to the net.

Vodafone $39 5GB Wireless Broadband

After having this service for just under a month, I thought i’d post my thoughts on this service incase anyone else was considering taking up this offer;

Pros:
* Wireless Broadband

Cons:
* Frequent drop-outs or crawling speed during peak times
* No ‘genuine’ or decent usage meter
* Salesman’s lack of knowledge in the product
* Worst data support i’ve encountered with ANY company
* Mobile ‘optimisation’ software

Well there’s simply no need to elaborate on the great fact that this is a wireless broadband product, so i’ll go into the cons.

Frequent drop-outs or crawling speed during peak times

When I first signed up for this product around late December, I was ecstatic! The connection speeds I was getting was in the vicinity of 1 to 2mbs, which was a LOT quicker than my 512/128 ADSL. The upload speed was sometimes, as equally as fast as downloads, brilliant!! But then came the end of our glorious summer holidays, we returned to our homes with knee high grass and re-joined the rat-race – thus causing a lot of network congestion, and slowing speeds down during peak times (around 6-12pm at nights) to around dial-up or slower speeds. Pages took approximately 5 mins to load – if they ever did – and timeouts aplenty. I’m guessing Vodafone didn’t anticipate the quick take-up in thier product and therefore didn’t have the bandwidth to keep up, so I can understand the nature of the situation.

No ‘genuine’ or decent usage meter

This was quite surprising, as even the most teeny-weeny’iest ISP I know has some way or form of telling you what your download/upload usage is.
The software provided with the modem has a ‘dumb’ usage data counter, by dumb I mean that it litterally is a bit of software that sits between your internet connection and your PC and counts beans. It doesnt somehow connect to some central server in a land of far far away and get usage from a centralised, online point (like aanet does with thier vista usage gadget). Furthermore, expect to see the usage reset to 0, or not even count data at all if; a) you reload your OS b) you share your internet connection via a wireless 3G router. So failing this you could always hop online to get usage right? Vodafone’s online billing access provides the most impressive UP-TO-DATE usage…. by the number of times you’ve made a connection & duration. Oh… you wanted data? Well you’d have to contact Vodafone Customer Support for that… just as well it’s a free call number for the people perky about thier usage. This is one area ANY ISP really ought to have pat down.

Salesman’s lack of knowledge in the product

I was advised at the time of sale, uploads weren’t counted. “Are you sure?”, I asked. The salesman scanned the contract, PDS, even jumped online and said there was nothing in any literature to actually say that uploads were counted toward the quota, so “you should be right”. Wrong. It wasn’t after a couple of days when I contacted customer support that I found out uploads were actually counted. Salesperson probably should’ve played defence rather than offence here…

Worst data support i’ve encountered with ANY company

I had a problem trying to get Vista EPG data for my HTPC. Previously, this has never been an issue, even when using my Optus mobile connection. At first, the data support team didn’t want to provide support, giving some fairly vague stock-standard responses. It took a little ranting to finally get them to be somewhat helpful, 1hr 30 mins and 8 transfers later I finally got the public ip address I required and a different APN. Disconnecting my service today took another 7 transfers, 1hr 43 mins, interestingly the disconnection department was the shortest time spent and the most pleasant?

Mobile ‘optimisation’ software

And finally the clincher. The vodafone software that acts not only as the driver (I and many others have been unable to connect WITHOUT using the Vodafone VMC software) but also does a little trick what Vodafone calls ‘mobile optimisation’. What this does is basically compress images at a user-determined rate so that web pages load quicker, albeit with pixelated images. This caused all sorts of issues, with the EPG and especially when trying to share with other PC’s. The PC’s being shared with were receiving web pages in what looked like 256 colours whilst the host PC was in full colour, even though the optimisation software was disabled. It took some googling & whirlpooling to find a way to actually delete specific .exe files to completely clobber the optimisation process, the beast suffered it’s last gasp of memory space and soon at least one part of my EPG started to initiate, and the shared connections were receving web pages in full colour.

It has definitely been a learning experience and I now understand there are different factors to consider, different questions to ask when signing upto a cellular internet service as opposed to copper/cable. At the end of the day i’m glad Vodafone allowed me to walk the plank instead of towing me behind her for the next 24 months.

So what now? I had already disconnected from my ADSL service (Aanet) which I now regret because it was a great relationship, chocolates and all.

For a soon-to-be renter like me, I like the idea of the hassle free connection of a wireless broadband offering. I signed up with Optus wireless broadband today, will post my thoughts soon.
4th Feb 2008 UPDATE

A few weeks before I cancelled my subscription, Vodafone sent a series of text messages announcing they were aware of the problem. They even had a represenative appearing on the Whirlpool forums, good on them for listening! I have to say that toward the last week or so, the speeds in my area definitely improved, there were still times during peak where it would grind to a halt but it wasn’t as severe as what it was, so GOOD on them for listening to the growing number of complaints and fixing the issue. According to some Whirlpool users they still seemed to have problems in certain areas but the majority of the users reported an improvement in the service.

I’m no longer suscribed to the Vodafone topic on Whirlpool so i’m not sure what the latest news is on the service so you might want to go check out the forum yourself.

From my point of view, it’s good to see that the telco was (made) aware of the growing number of irate users and responded.

Finally, some tips for people who have or want to get the Vodafone wireless service which I forgot to mention in my original post;

VMC Software

There is an updated version of the Vodafone Mobile Connect software floating around on Vodafone’s UK site (i think?). The updated version has some extra functionality over the standard CD that comes in the box. I can’t remember what the improvements were though.

Public IP Address

Get a public IP address if you have a HTPC and want to be able to receive EPG’s via Vista/XP Media Centre. When you are issued with a public IP address, you should be using a different APN also, which is ‘internet‘ as opposed to ‘vfinternet‘.