SWITCHING PHONES

April 23rd, 2008 · No Comments

Back in the old days, switching your mobile phone was easier: you just popped your SIM card out of the old one and threw it into the new one. That only works if your telephone numbers are actually stored on the SIM card. Since these cards still have ridiculously little storage space (250 numbers of max 16 characters) , you’re tempted to just use the phone instead for storing your data. My Samsung phone had a function ‘copy SIM to phone’ so that’s what I did. Unfortunately it did not have a ‘copy phone memory to SIM’. It took me a couple of hours, spread over 2-3 days, to figure out a way to get the numbers on the SIM so they turn up on my Nokia N91. The Bluetooth connectivity on the Samsung never worked great for synchronisation, but eventually I figured out a way to export and re-import my numbers.The Nokia, on the other hand, does not have a ‘copy the whole SIM to memory’ function so I have to do it one by one. Oh well…

WELL CONNECTED

A first look at the connectivity of the N91 gives a very complete impression:

serial connectivity with a standard mini-USB cable - brilliant: now I can use the same cable for this phone and my Canon digital camera. One less cable to carry.
Bluetooth - the evident close-range wireless option
802.11g Wifi connection: only for browsing (not for synchronisation) but still impressive. More on that later.

But the first thing I looked at, was the power supply. Nokia was always the brand that never changed its power supply adaptor from one model to the next. I always admired them for that, since every other phone manufacturer seems to suffer from the YAPS (Yet Another Power Supply) syndrome. (How hard can that be? Just tell the designers: we only make phones with this power plug. It’s a concentric 5V adaptor. Deal with it, already!) The bad news is: this time they changed it. The good news is: it’s backwards compatible (they’ve put an adaptor cable in the package). Why they had to make it smaller, I have no idea. Maybe the think they might make devices that are thinner than 3mm.

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