Some say he has a pet polar bear. Some say his beard glows gently on the darkest night. All we know is, he's called Ewan Spence. Part 1 of a series of short videos from Ewan is embedded below, along with some of his 'diary' commentary, as part of his gaming and blogging spring trip to San Francisco (GDC) and Austin (SXSW). Rafe set him a series of challenges, Top Gear style. There's even a cameo by The Stig.
Ewan writes:
"A month or two before the Nokia 9500 was launched, with the help of Nokia, I took it on the road for a trip around America while I visited a number of conferences and cities. That annual tradition, of taking new hardware into the real world to review has continued, and this year is no different. Read on for this year's assignment and a video intro.
I'll be taking in both the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, California, and the triple header of South by Southwest (Music, Film and Interactive) in Austin, Texas for the next two weeks.
Last year many of you enjoyed the video diaries of my journey, which coincided with my first use of the Nokia 5800 – and as you commented, watched as I slowly fell in love with Nokia's first mainstream touch based smartphone. While the video diaries are set for a return, there's less new hardware on show right now.
Rafe and Steve have cooked up something to keep me on my toes (and out of trouble); I was expecting something like a Vivaz Pro, but what arrived in the mail was... a bit more surprising.
As we've said many times here on All About Symbian, while the high end devices get the press and column inches, it's the lower end of themarket, with high volume sales at low unit prices, that will provide the lion's share of a company's income. With the recent announcement of lower priced Symbian units, that reality is here. Hence the challenge for March 2010 in taking a very restrictive budget and seeing just how far it can go. To recap, I needed to buy myself a new Symbian smartphone for use in March. As well as the phone itself, the budget must also cover the purchase of a SIM card; airtime and data bandwidth; any peripherals required; third party software; and anything else that you would reasonably be expected to buy. And the final cost must be less than $250, with no outstanding debt, contract or commitments at the end of the month.
The handset I chose is the Nokia 5230, a S60 5th Edition handset aimed directly at the low end of the market. Buying an unlocked handset comes in at $180 (see the recently announced (USA) T-Mobile badged version of the 5230 called the Nuron), and the only concession we've made in the challenge is that this was purchased online beforehand, rather than on the streets of San Francisco, on account of my busy schedule.
What happens now is that I make my way from Edinburgh to the Bay, via London Heathrow and Los Angeles International. The first order of business will be finding a SIM card, loading up the 5230 with some applications, and hoping that the challenges from Rafe and Steve, to be delivered by The Stig, won't get me arrested."
AHHH no wifi and bugger all money! now that's a real world challenge
hisyamhalim
Bad news, T-Mobile doesn't offer data on a Prepaid Plan, so you're stuck with AT&T. Chose their GoPhone® Pick Your Plan prepaid option since it has a 100MB data package for $19.99. The cheapest Pick Your Plan option is $29.99 per month, so you should be set for data for $50. The balance $20 you can use to buy 200 messages package for $4.99 and/or the World Connect package for $3.99.
International MMS is $0.50 to send and $0.25 to receive, Rafe may set challenges on sending MMS back to the UK. You can read more below
One thing I notice though when using the AT&T prepaid plan is that the quality of the line seems to be very bad, compared to using a contract plan. They may still be stuck in the primitive telco mindset of discriminating the prepaid users.
Good luck!
jamoiholland
Very interesting challenge!
I picked up a 5230 for £89 about 3 weeks ago, and I'm starting to get annoyed by the WiFi now, despite thinking I wouldn't mind being without. Battery only just lasts a day with Gravity running in the background, even less when you start using the camera and playing back music or podcasts. Maybe battery would last longer if I was using WiFi all day not 3G all day...
The resistive touch screen keyboard doesn't seem to be able to keep up with me, in either T9 or landscape mode. Google contacts/calendar sync with Mail for Exchange refused to fly, had to call in Nuevasync, although IMAP for Google mail is good. Shame you can't have upcoming calendar events AND emails on home screen, either or depending on which home screen style you choose. Oh, and Nokia Sports Tracker fails to run having installed ok, big shame there.
Ovi Maps 3.3 works a treat though, just don't get ahead of yourself trying 3.4 beta, as with mine is crashes the whole phone when it starts to do the navigation piece!
Good luck Ewan!
limestone
$70 for two weeks with internet access??
Ok, take it from someone that actually lives on this side of the pond.... That isn't going to happen.
I'm willing to bet that Ewan can't even make it a week for $70 if he has to purchase a data plan or even get a pay as you go data plan from any of the US carriers that support the Moron 5800, sorry I mean the Nuron 5230.
This is an interesting challenge, however I think there will be a great deal of communication for 36 hours and then silence.
Then Ewan has to dig into his Scottish pockets for some lose change to buy another pre-paid card. If this challenge were limited to simple phone services, I can believe that can be done, but data at 3G as well?
Also, I don't know anywhere you can buy a Nokia 5230 in the USA for $180. I would love to see a link to an online store where I could purchase one for that price. (Seriously).
Best of luck with that.
Rafe
limestone - that's why its called a challenge.!
The 5230 = the Nokia Nuron (effectively)... and the T-Mobile price for handset only is $180. I actually bought the phone for £100 - i.e. around $150, but put the extra on to account for US pricing. So it is a 5230 rather than a Nuron.
Part of the challenge will be limiting the amount of data used. I suspect things like the pre-loading of Ovi Maps will help here.
fakefur
@ewan... i think you need to look into the t-mobile flexpay accounts ... prepaid in advance but all the features of contract ... you *might* just be able to squeeze in at $70 or so for a month
Ewan
Thansk for all the thoughts, guts. Already had clocekded the AT&T plan as the only potential one. Now to see if they'll let me buy it. One point to note, while I still have my laptop here for things like video uploading and submitting articles to AAS, I am allowed wifi on the laptop. Essentially the phone is the out and about device, just like it would be for anyone in the real world.
There ain't no way I could upload the video diary through 100Mb :-)
The challenge is to stay conencted through the mobile on a sensible budget - that word sensible will be used a lot!
Unregistered
Oooh tough challenge! In the UK I got an "unlimited" data plan on pre-paid for £7.99/mo. In the US it was a lot more difficult. AT&T wanted $50 just for the activation, and T-Mobile doesn't offer data for prepaid at all. I ended up going T-Mo and relying on wi-fi.
Really looking forward to how this goes!
-Nico
germcevoy
Excellent. Really looking forward to this.. It was Ewan's musings on the 5800 last year that spurred me to buy one and I still have it. I'll be watching this one closely. Good luck Ewan. Top notch job AAS
walmark
Just remember to give credit where credit is due ;)
Btw, how do you feel as a star with a "reasonably priced" phone? :cool:
hisyamhalim
@Ewan
They'll let you buy the prepaid plan no problem (I got mine from a stall in a mall near SF airport) but they just don't get it why you wanna buy a prepaid. Beware also that in the US they charge for calls & SMS received.
legionnaire
You can get free wi-fi at Starbucks through one of three means as documented here. Panera Breads (look for locations with the icon for free wi-fi hotspots) and most public libraries also have free wi-fi.
Unregistered
Ewan, with the 5230 T-mobile is only going to be charging 9.99 a month for the data...soo you could get the cheapest flexpay plan w/unlimited data. unlimited talk is 49.99, and then just add the 9.99 data and you'll be set. at $60 total.
hary536
@Limestone,
NokiaUSA website itself is selling Nokia 5230 for $179.99 unlocked for pre-order.
With this said, Dell,Amazon and others will easily sell it for $150 or less.