OVI

All the OVI stuff is horrifically bloated and makes me cry when I use it.

Also there's no excuse really for not charging through usb (in this day and age!).

Missing that point

Kallen: "You own the highway."

Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."

...

Kallen: "But you still own the highway."

Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."

Kallen: "But that's not addressing the point I just made."

Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."

Kallen: "Why do you keep saying that?"

Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."

Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."

Drummond: "You can go and buy another car."

Finally

This is the first sensible strategic move i've seen from Nokia in a long time.

Nearly there

IMO, the Pre was very, very close to being a really good phone. I don't think this slight improvement will be enough to see it compete UNLESS they price it attractively (ie < iphone).

Also, why the bleeding hell don't they just stick a micro sd slot in this thing (I would have been tempted by the original pre, but 8gb was just too small)?

@Gary F 1

"Nerdcore"?

Wow.

Fair Play

Fair play to you for referring (and linking) to the article with your horrifically wrong prediction about the iphone!

Hard to forge?

"Arriva tells us that the combination of a clock ticking away, along with animated Arriva symbols, would make the ticket hard to forge, and that drivers would be advised of that day's colour (orange in the example, top right) to make things harder for the would-be forger."

Java apps are trival to reverse engineer, so your ticking clock and and animated arriva symbols are absolutely not hard to forge. In fact, you wouldn't even have to forge them, just modify their app.

As for the colour... well, that just sound impossible to work around!

I mean, good god, a simple, low-tech solution doesn't mean it has to be full of gaping security holes.

They might as well just use a lie detector and ask the passenger if they've bought a ticket.

@pedrodude

@pedrodude

How about you break it down for us into those categories. Use the review to score each category (all the information should be there) and then come up with an overrall mark.

Be sure to post back.

Strong software?

"We were unable to continue to release strong software."

Sorry what? Strong software? It hasn't had strong software since it was released, and even then it was only one or two games.

I wonder how many people who bought the Wii now use it as a dust collector.

@AC 16.04

Are you serious? The news is turn by turn directions.

Did you read the article? Or even the title of the article?

@TeeCee

@TeeCee

Whether they bundle it or not, it will still be free.

So i'd say the big boys (Garmin et al) will have a hard time keeping up either way.

@Anonymous Coward 09:52

I wouldn't base too much on your assumptions

@Joe Ragosta

@Joe Ragosta

""This is especially galling for me as I won't (on religious grounds), ever buy an apple product."

It's funny that the anit-Apple crowd accuses Apple of being a cult and Mac users to be mindless fanatics -- yet it is the anti-Apple crowd who seems to base their diatribes on irrational concepts"

Naughty boy. I have many reasons for not buying certain apple products and none of them are irrational.

@ Simon D

@Simon D

"Saying that the iPhone is the only real competitor is demeaning"

Where does the review say this?

Great review

Thanks for the review. I so wanted the Pre to be good and for it to kick the iphone's a$$, but I can't argue with your conclusions.

Not only is no other phone company beating iphone's current offering, they aren't even beating what the iphone brought to the table two and a half years ago (in terms of hardware, and to a lesser extent, software).

This is especially galling for me as I won't (on religious grounds), ever buy an apple product.

If they want to compete and have an inferior device, for god sake at least make it cheaper than the iphone!

DUDE!

Dude, her eybrows are bigger than her pelvis!

Too late

They should have stuck a microSD slot in that thing. 8gb isn't really enough.

This is too late and much too expensive to excited about.

*FacePalm*

Surely Palm can't be happy about this?

The only way to compete with the iPhone at this stage is to undercut its price. For most intents and purposes, the iphone at least matches the Pre (well for about 80% of people anyway), that's even discounting the iphone "cool" factor that makes it a draw for many.

How can they expect to get any sort of foothold on the market?

When the Pre first came out, I really wanted one as I am looking for any excuse not to get an iPhone (can't stand them, or Apple). Then I discovered it didn't have expandable memory and that made me think twice. And now the price. Seriously guys? Seriously?

@AC

Is the whole idea not that it is silent?

@Chris

"The phone is slow to switch between landscape and portrait and sometimes needs a joggle to make it change.

You loose the wifi signal if you hold it in your left hand in landscape."

I definitely don't have either of these problems. I think your handset might be defective.

"A simple example is that there is no simple way that I can see of setting a reminder a week in advance in Calender"

As for the calendar, there is a view where you can all the days of the entire month. Just click on the date and create a meeting with alarm or a to-do note with alarm.

Update to gripe above

As an update to one of my gripes above. The latest version of ovi suite enabled me to get maps on to my phone. Fantastic.

Not bad at all

Got this as a replacement for my mp3 player (stolen) and my mobile phone (very old). For the price, I'd say it's hard to get better value.

Delivers very nice sound, nice screen (tho as the review mentions, it doesn't perform well outside), and a fairly good interface. I'd say there will be firmware updates too, which improve things even further.

Regarding the battery life - I definitely get more than 6 hours music out of it, so I wouldn't let that part of the review put you off.

Small gripes - micro usb port but no micro usb charging. W.T.F nokia!

Ovi maps - can't seem to put any maps on the 5530 to make ovi maps work in offline mode.

Hold on a sec...

The may be a touch naive, but is android not free for the manufacturers to stick on their phones? Even if it isn't, it has to be relatively cheap, no? Why the hell then, is this so expensive?

O2 have lost their marbles.

I was actually waiting for this, as all I basically want is a phone which takes microsd cards and has a 3.5mm jack to replace my mp3 player. There actually aren't that many out there that fit the bill.

Got tired of waiting for this, and had heard in advance about the horrific tariffs. In the end, I went for a nokia 5530 to keep me going for a while until more Android phones come out that don't cost the earth.

Nokia 5530 is a very nice little phone btw. No GPS or 3g, but I can just about live with that. And it's cheap - £130.

Tagline

"Orange repeals..."

Awesome work Reg.

Tagline

C'mon Reg, surely "The Unforeseeable Fire" would have made a better tagline.

More coffee needed!

Zune

I think the HD is also because it outputs video to HD (to a HD screen).

I saw a demo of this zune and I have to say, apart from the app market, ipod touch has absolutely nothing on this.

Too.... "chinny"

The chin alone completely sways it for me. I put my phone in my trouser pocket and there is no way that chin will look normal.

I'm hoping that the samsung i7500 Galaxy (due to be released this week) is a more pocketable way to get an android phone.

AC4

@AC 4

Did you only read about this case in the 5 seconds before you posted that comment? And did you absorb more than 6 words?

The case was about where he would face justice, not if.

RTFA (or ask someone to explain it to you).

Got to agree with AC@01:23

The fact that firefox is open source means as little to about 99% of its end users as the fact that opera is closed does to 99% of its users.

Firefox == open source == hardly anyone cares

Application store

@OrsonX

Android already has an application store.

@The BigYin

@The BigYin

Most jokes are myths.

The article didn't state or suggest that the joke was actually based on a true story.

@David Wilson.

@David Wilson.

"Yet you suggest that the extreme difficulty of ripping a CD, (probably taking almost as much time and effort with a mouse as it does to get the CD and stick it in the drive)."

It's much quicker and much less hassle to download ten albums (they all download simultaneously) than it is rip ten albums from ten CDs (which must be done synchronously)

@ Doug Glass

@Doug Glass

"Just block the transmission of all file types that are music related or seem to be music related. Simple."

Doug's got the solution! Doug, I really, really hope IRMA give you a job.

Have I missed something?

This might have been mentioned before, but why is so much money being pumped into digital radio via DAB?

We already have millions and millions of devices (phones, pcs) that can listen to digital radio via the internet. And these devices can pick up stations from anywhere on the globe (unlike DAB). It can't be long until we have cars that are 'net enabled too so we can listen to digital radio on the move.

So why not just let FM/AM keep going until 'net coverage is ubiquotous?

Have I missed something (not a rhetorical question, looking for an honest answer)?

I should say that I have two (reciva) internet radios in my house and they are absolutely fantastic devices. I can't think of anything that DAB can do that they can't.

Good article

I am generally an apple hater and would have loved for the Pre to come out on top, but I can't argue with the conclusions of this article or its reasoning behind them.

Very nice article.

@joe K 1: what the hell is a 15 degree curve?

@joe K 1:

It's where the tangent at the end of the curve is at 15 degrees to the tangent at the start of the curve.

@BungleBear

@BungleBear

The middle picture in the article isn't a white handset.

Headphone socket

Got to admit I am a bit bewildered by the comment on the superfluous headphone socket.

Why on earth should you have to carry round an adapter in order to plug your headphones in?

Reg, you said so yourself, loads of times in your reviews.

That's why this has a 3.5mm socket.

@ Will 22

@ Will 22

Quit with the "this is ghost written", "no radio", "no internet", "no ability to administrate using a PC" etc etc bitching.

O2 are pitching this at a fairly broad audience, not to people who want to use it to reboot their webserver from their living room. They're trying to keep things simple.

Its main function, calendar consolidation for families, is the thing that they've marketed most heavily and works very well.

Other functions may be added in time, this is only the first iteration.

And as for "O2's famous build quality (I said stop the laughing)" - you haven't even touched the device so how do you know what its build quality is like?

This device is not targeted at you. Buy a Nokia 810 instead.

lutin

This is utter tripe.

I am absolutely positive that I am the only person in the world with my first name and last name and yet when I put in these details along with my town it tells me that they've found more than one person with those details.

Nonsense. I've also only ever had one phone number.

I'm not going to put in more detailed search criteria, for fear that the are actually harvesting that data through the form.

/tinfoil hat off now

Spotted in Belfast

Google street view car spotted in Belfast on the 15th July. The car was travelling the other way so I didn't get a pic.