Symbian in Motion

I just got off the phone with my sister and I have a great story that had to be shared. I think you’ll appreciate it…

So my sister goes to an AT&T store in Manhattan around 1:30 pm and waits in line to buy an iPhone 3G. As it turns out (and as has been reported), by the time she got inside they were no longer selling iPhones. They have plenty left but they cannot sell them due to activation issues. Whoops! So she gives her info to a rep and has them order one to be picked up in a few days.

During the course of this process, the AT&T rep happens to notice my sister’s current phone; an N95 that I gave her a while back. “Is that an N95,” the rep queries. “You know that phone is much better than the iPhone, right?”

Too funny. Here this guy is working for AT&T and he is supposed to be pushing AT&T inventory, obviously. The iPhone 3G is the hottest phone that AT&T will offer this year and he tells a potential customer that her N95 is ‘better’ than the phone she is trying to purchase! Of course he is allowed to have his opinion and in the grand scheme of things neither phone is ‘better’, but it’s still kind of funny.

My sister agreed with him and explained that she wanted the iPhone anyway. So what was his next question? “Umm, you want to sell me that N95?”

Here my sister is trying to buy a phone that AT&T can’t even sell to her due to technical difficulties, and instead she has an AT&T store rep trying to buy her N95 from her! After some preliminary negotiation they both agreed to think about it and discuss things further in a few days when her iPhone comes in.

Who knew AT&T was in the barter game? :)

How amazingly disappointing. The AT&T roadmap for the second half of this year was leaked today and the N95 NAM is nowhere to be found. Rumors have made the rounds several times with regards to AT&T picking up the N95 NAM but if it isn’t happening in 2008 then my guess: It isn’t happening.

To be honest, I’m upset. I had heard from several AT&T employees of varying rank that the N95 was in the process of being added to AT&T’s lineup this year. Maybe they were all lying or maybe they were all coincidentally mistaken. Assuming the leaked roadmap was complete, odds are something went wrong with the deal. I was really gunning for Nokia on this one - making a flagship S60 handset available through the biggest carrier in the US would be a huge accomplishment for our Finnish friends. In a nutshell, it would give Nokia’s high end more exposure in the US than it has ever had before.

There have also been rumors that the E71 would be making its way to AT&T. While it was absent from the roadmap as well, if this rumor does have any substance 1H 2009 would be the likely target. We shall see…

Last week Charlie Schick, a blogger I’ve followed for quite a while, wrote a post entitled Product leaks just lead to trouble & headaches for all on the Nokia Conversations blog. It’s a great post and well worth a read if you haven’t caught it already.

While this topic related to a large number of historical events, it was prompted specifically by the E71 video walkthrough posted on Boy Genius Report. For obvious reasons, I felt the need to respond to Charlie’s post with a post of my own. The result is a somewhat lengthy post entitled The Business of Leaks which can be read on The Outsidr.

It wasn’t linked in Charlie’s follow up post - and I didn’t think it would be as The Outsidr is relatively new and hardly has much exposure at this point. If I was Charlie I wouldn’t have linked it either. I do hope Charlie read it though; I know someone from Nokia Conversations read it because I saw it pop up in the blog’s del.icio.us widget. I would love to see some of the points raised by my post discussed on the Nokia Conversations blog, specifically some comments relating to the US market. What do you guys think?

Something is brewing people, and I’m not quite sure what it is but consider my interest piqued. The peculiar image shown above found its way to my inbox this morning under the heading “Have you seen this man?”

So it would appear that Anssi is on the loose and while most would say that he isn’t dangerous, you can never be too careful. Don’t let the smile fool you. He was last seen (curiously) waiting in line at a phone booth - seemingly showing off his N96 to someone else in queue. I’m not positive but it looks like he’s either trying to impress her and possibly get her number… Or he’s distracting her so that he can cut ahead of her in line. Either way, he must be stopped.

According to the WANTED poster, there is a reward for capturing this man. We don’t know yet what the reward might be or even how we should go about capturing him (please don’t attack Anssi if you see him on the street ;) ), but I would expect more details to come along quite soon. A tie in with Share on Ovi perhaps? Nokia Sports Tracker? Widsets? What do you guys think?

People please - put your thinking caps on for just a moment. Today’s Apple event has taken the internet by storm as we all knew it would. The new iPhone 3G that will be made available on July 11th looks like a fantastic device and while I’m not overly excited about seeing by HSDPA speeds cut in half once the new iPhone floods the market in my area, I am looking forward to picking one up to play with.

If we can all take a step back for a moment however, I’m not happy with all of the praise Apple and AT&T are receiving for the “price drop”. Yes, a shiny new iPhone 3G can be yours for $200 (8GB model) with a two-year contract. Apple has also been very straightforward with the fact that AT&T will require a $30/month data plan with the new iPhone 3G. So how exactly is the new iPhone “half the price”?

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