Smartphone market share, 2008

Gartner released their statistics about worldwide smartphone sales, which contains useful information not only the previous quarter (Q4 2008), but the whole past year. I'd like to share the following two figures with you:

Comments:

• Nokia is still #1, but it's market position is seriously challenged by RIM, Apple and HTC.
• Even Apple is suffering from decreased sales in Q4, but that didn't prevent them from being ranked as the third vendor by sales.

Comments:

• Symbian had lived better days a year ago, but it's still a bit more than 50% of smartphones that runs this operating system.
• RIM and Mac OS X performed exceptionally well even during the tough economical situation.
• Although the share of Windows Mobile shrank a bit, it still maintains its third position. Only blinds can't see that not for long.

Finally, some words on regional sales:

• Dramatic increase (69%) is experienced in sales of smartphone in North-America, which now accounts for 20% of mobile phones in this region. Carriers are agressively pushing data plans that is beneficial for vendors, too, offering vertical mobile solutions from hardware manufacturing to providing developer SDKs to cloud services.
• While overall device sales dropped, Asia/Pacific recorded a 2.3% growth in smartphone sales.
• EMEA region were up by only 2%, Western-Europe sales increased by 9.6%. Samsung drove sales in 2008 with Omnia as its most successful product.

Tote

Random thoughts on recent news

Hi,

So many things have happened in mobile world recently that I can hardly cope with their sheer volume. This time I would just add my quick thoughts to some of them, one-line comments that I would like you to comment, too.

Let's start with VirusGuard Coming to Android Market in 2009: yeah, a clear disadvantage of full openness coupled with user-controlled security policy is that such a software is necessary. Remember that famous anti-virus software vendors also tried to gain a foothold on mobile phones based on Symbian OS, too? Unfortunately, Symbian's security mechanism works so well that there is no real demand for such software on these phones. Note: since Android Market is  only for free software (yet), this commercial software can be purchased from Handango.

I've read two interesting reviews on the user experience of T-Mobile G1 and Nokia S60. In fact, these two were compared to each other. It was funny to read how two people with different needs could come up with contradictory results. Whilst Matthew from Darla Mack's blog found Contacts, Syncing, E-mail support and a "lot of other things" being superior on G1 he confirmed it too that there are many things that need improvement in upcoming Android-powered devices as well. Chris Walters from TheNokiaBlog, on the other hand, found just the opposite: he thought he could at last forget about S60 and can enjoy all the things Android can provide, but realized that S60 is still superior to Android in many aspects: build quality of device, camera, not being locked to any carriers, etc. There are two immediate conclusions I drew from these (and other) reviews:

• Don't believe to any reviews, but make your own decision based on your own needs. For example, how would you decide based on these two reviews cited above when they both claimed that G1/S60 was superior to the other platform in Syncing?
• Nokia had been the king of user experience on mobile phones until iPhone and G1 appeared on the horizon. The structure of menus, applications, settings, etc. were logical, consistent and compatible across a wide range of devices. It was engineering-driven so it couldn't be in any other way. Following an engineering-driven approach, however, is not enough anymore. In my opinion these companies could learn a lot from each other. It's not a sin (well, generally) to copy one's idea if that has proven whereas ours has not stood the test of time. The point is better user experience, which is better both for users and vendors.

The third thing I found worth being mentioned is Nokia Friend View. This beta software is similar to IYOUIT (for example) that I've already given a try to and liked much. I can see this kind of software being useful from another point of view (than what they advertise), too: I'm a family man and although my kids are small I know that the time will come quickly when I will let them hang around but still would like to know where they are. The wide-spread of such a software (and hardware!) will hopefully keep me relaxed in those times.

Finally, Nokia has made a very important announcement in the past week: they introduced Nokia Life Tools along with 7 new models under €100 price range. According to the press release, Nokia Life Tools is a range of innovative agriculture information and education services designed especially for rural and small town communities in emerging markets. Knowing that the opportunity at the bottom of the pyramid is huge, and handset manufacturers and network providers alike are working hard to fill it with phones (this time cited from PCWorld) it's no wonder why these new models can be purchased at never-seen prices. Nokia has finally entered the war fought for phone owners with thin wallets with the introduction of Ultra Cheap Phones.

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Brief status report about smartphone market, mid-2008

Having followed the news of mobile industry in the past week, I thought it would be worth collecting some articles in a single post to see things from a bird's view, thus having a better overview on what's been going on lately on smartphone market.

RIM has been getting stronger in US market and Palm is unhappy with that. Although Palm's popularity had started to fall even before Apple entered mobile phone market, the new iPhone has just "helped" to boost the process. As to Apple, new countries have confirmed August launch enabling iPhone (3G) to gain bigger popularity and increasing its market share in other countries than US. In addition, the name of iPhone Nano has appeared again whispering words about the introduction of this device still this year. Apple is on its way to become stronger and stronger, but they're still in the "Other" segment of mobile devices according to ABI Research. And if Apple is making tsunami "from the bottom", Nokia is doing the same from the top with their price cut - I wouldn't like to be the stuffing in this sandwich.

It seems that we're living the time of foundations: this time it's LiMo that has picked up 11 new members to become stronger in the fight against Google OHA and Symbian Foundation. With the first LiMo handsets out, I wonder how they can catch up with industry leader Symbian, the also very powerful Windows Mobile and the likes. I did not mention Android deliberately, because to me it still exists only on "paper".

As to the creator of Windows Mobile, it's already well-known that Microsoft's Silverlight will come to S60. What is rumoured now, though, that Zune would also be available on Nokia devices. Zune clearly a competitor to Nokia's Ovi - will M$ and Nokia ever join their forces to fight against their newest pretender? I bet Apple will never open MobileMe to non-Mac device owners.

A new feature has been introduced on Ovi.com, namely file sharing, a fee-based storage option. Files on Ovi is a similar service to MobileMe's iDisk. As to MobileMe, the transition from .Mac to MobileMe was not as smooth as Apple had hoped. As Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, said "It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store". Well, although lots of people already think that Apple can only teach things to other players in mobile arena, I stronly believe that the opposite is also true.

Finally, let me recommend an article that well-deserved the title of post of the week at Carnival of Mobilists. The great post written by Andreas Constantinou from Vision Mobile was definitely a very useful foundation of this article.

Interesting times we're living,

Tote

Symbian and Windows on the same device - what the hell?

I've just finished knitting the brows after reading it in the news that IBM launches an initiative that has something to do with the mobile world. "It seems", I thought, "that there's so much money in mobile business that even the Big Blue could not resist".

But now I'm totally down on the floor with the idea of having more than one, potentially completely different, operating systems on the same device. I've just read that Motorola invests in VirtualLogix, Inc. whose "VirtualLogix VLX enables multiple operating system environments to run concurrently on shared hardware and provides a range of performance, fault tolerance and security options to address specific market requirements".

In my opinion, the whole solution abounds with challenges. Technically, from usability/business point of view, whatever. The thing is that each member of the value chain must learn/tackle something new. For example,

• Device manufacturers must be prepared for having to integrate such hardware elements in the same device that enable multiple operating systems to run in parallel also considering the cost of virtualization (in terms of time, but money-wise, too). These pieces of hardware must give the best performance so that the user experience is constantly good on all platforms. For example, whilst a ~500MHz CPU performs well on a Windows Mobile-powered device, it's a dual 330MHz CPU that gives the same performance on an Nokia N95 8GB. Of course, this applies not only to the CPU, but to memory, persistent storage, etc., too. Thus, hardware costs will definitely be higher than for regular phones.
• Of course, there will be a constant fight for giving the same performance as on a normal device and also keep the price of the device as low as possible. As to software vendors,
• Writers of guest operating systems (each operating system will be guest, by the way) must prepare for a new challenge, namely that scarce system resources will become even busier and harder to get access to.
• Some weird situations could also occur, for example, when a resident background application would be waiting for an incoming call, which would eventually be "stolen" by another virtual device with a higher priority.
• In addition, it would result in a much better user experience if commonly used resources, such as persistent storage, were shared. For example, the file system:
• One use case would be to allow the user to seamlessly move files between OSes.
• Another to allow browser applications of the same type running on different platforms (e.g. based on WebKit on Android and S60) to share cookies, forms data, etc.
• On the other hand, mobile OS vendors should be careful about what they would give access to: a secure platform cannot afford making a security hole by letting other platforms access sensitive shared files (such as DRM-protected content) unless a satisfactory level of protection is applied.
  
• I'm not sure as to how network operators could be affected by the introduction of a multi-OS mobile device other than having to adjust something in their administration system. Oh yeah, a seamingly not so important question: branding should apply to ALL operating systems running on the same device. Anyway, I think these issues would be less important and easier to solve than the challenges described above.
• Not necessarily a content provider issue, but it rather concerns the content consumer who would not like to pay for the same content twice in order to be able to use it on the same device, but on a different platform. For example, I wouldn't like to pay again for an MP3 music that I've already downloaded to my Windows Mobile device, but would like to listen to it now on my S60 phone (remember, we're talking about the same phone!).
  
• Finally, the user: I think the experience, as such, would be new to the user. The feeling that she can choose which device she'd like to work with today. However, it's uncertain at what price this feeling would come: in terms of user experience, reliability, price of the device, etc.
  

Personally, I think it's not the right time to introduce such an advanced technology, not as if it was a question now. When smartphones are still often considered as a toy used by mobile geeks, when most people still want to use them only for voice calls and text messages, when enterprise infrastructures rely on/users committed to either Windows Mobile or Symbian, but not both - there is simply no business demand and serious reason to hurry. It must be a long-term plan, though I still wonder if/how/when it will work out.

My two cents,

Tote

Touch(less) UI + Accelerometer

We all know iPhone. Even though it's not available in Hungary as of yet, I've already had the chance to hold it in my hands and play with it. It's simply great. People say that it's because of the touch UI, but I don't believe that. It's not that simple. Lots of other manufacturers have already made phones with touch support, but for some reason the success of their products is not even comparable with iPhone's. I think it's because of Apple's approach to user interface, more importantly to user experience. They made it as simple as possible and it will be very hard for phone vendors to compete with it.

Motorola announced their ROKR E8 phone at CES 2008. It's a touch-driven phone, needless to say. The coolest feature that I found is that it doesn't have a physical keyboard, but it dynamically shows always the relevant keys based on what feature/program is being used at the moment. I remember of a patent that I have read about over at IntoMobile: Nokia had patented their invention of a dual-screen phone with touch support. My first reaction to seeing the drawing from the patent that the keyboard layout could be displayed on one of the screens and it could be dynamic: sometimes QWERTY, sometimes ITU-T, sometimes something else, something relevant. I'm very happy to see it to come true.

You might have already heard about that Nokia was planning to add tactile feedback support to their future phones, which means a little buzz when user presses one area of the (touch)screen. Very interestingly very similar to what Motorola has just come up with. You know, one of the biggest constraints of using a mobile phone instead of e.g. a laptop is screen size. And the size of the screen has so far been limited 1: by the device size (it must fit into one's pocket), 2: it had to have a keyboard. It seems that the trend for 2008 is that there will be no keyboard on smartphones at all. Ehm, I mean no real, physical keyboard - as opposed to virtual.

Have you heard that Nokia recently submitted another patent application for touchless UI? See Unwired View for more details. The basic idea described in the patent is that there would be sensors arrayed around the perimeter of the device capable of sensing finger movements in 3-D space. The user could use her fingers similarly to a touch phone, but actually without having to touch the screen. That's cool, isn't it? I think the idea is not only great, because user input will not be limited to 2-D anymore, but that I can use my thick, dirty, bandaged, etc. fingers as well (as opposed to "plain" touch UI). I'm a bit sceptic, though, how accurate it can be, whether the software will have AI or the user will have to learn how to move her fingers. We'll see hopefully very soon!

Finally, there is one more thing I'd like to mention here. It's the built-in accelerometer. I'm pretty sure that most readers have already heard of that the newest Nokia smartphones have built-in accelerometer. It's sort of a motion sensor that actually hasn't got so much publicity so far. I was always wondering why Nokia has not announced, advertised, etc. this piece of gadget. I mean at all. I can't remember if I have ever read any articles, blogs, etc. from Nokia about that they have put this extra hardware in their phone. You know, an accelerometer in a mobile phone is unusal. Not only to me, but to other people as well.

Why did Nokia not advertise this? If it's expensive, it doesn't make any sense not to advertise it. If it's cheap (I bet it is), then it doesn't have to be advertised, but then why add it to the phone at all? Just to see what the (developer) community thinks about it? What kind of applications can they make out of it? Although it's a good idea, I don't think it's a valid business reason. And you know, it was also unusual that Nokia published an API for developers to use this feature - but it was an R&D API! Knowing Nokia and using their SDKs for ages, I would say it's, again, very unusual. It's like "Let's publish this API so that we can see what others can find out with it, but doing it so that we don't have to announce it".

I wouldn't be suprised if the accelerometer eventually had something to do with the touchless UI. I have the feeling, since I'm a programmer, that even with the array of transducers (see the patent) it's not trivial to figure out what the user has done with her fingers. For example, it might be very important to know in what angle the user's hand is to the device ... and this is the point where the accelerometer comes in handy. It helps to know how the user's one hand holds the phone while making gestures with the other. And this altogether is the new thing.

Can't wait to read your comments,

Tote

Predictions for smartphone industry in 2008

I've read the recent blog of my fellow Forum Nokia Champion, Paul Coulton, with great interest. Similarly to Paul, I'm not an experienced fortuneteller, but after reading his article I thought I would give it a try, too. You know, what can I lose other than being not right? :)

Let me comment some of his findings, first. Although I can't foretell how ad-driven content will work out in mobile space (since it's simply not trivial how to advertise on mobile devices), I can say the biggest supporter of this model (their name starts with G if somebody didn't know) largely depends on operators' support. If operators (aka carriers) do not make it cheaper for customers to download data from the Internet than it is today, then the success of this model is very questionable. And actually this mostly applies to widgets as well: although they can work with local data, too, the most popular use case of widgets will still involve transferring data over the net.

As to NFC (short for Near Field Communication), although I strongly believe in the future of this technology, it's still in its infancy and I don't think 2008 would bring the break-through in this area. NFC-enabled mobile devices might appear in people's hands in 2008, however, it would only be one part of a larger ecosystem: the wide-spread use of RFID tags in various places (movie posters, business cards, etc.) + the introduction of accompanying services (such as a bus ticketing service) will still be the question of later years. I think.

Paul's list could be completed by the following things in my opinion:

• Touch UI: it's a MUST HAVE feature for every serious phone manufacturer in 2008. We have seen lots of patents from various manufacturers that had something to do with screens, how they will look like and we can guess how they will work. There's already lots of effort put into working out the ultimate touch-based user interface and the success of iPhone has already shown us that it's not something in vain.
• Java: the language and its development environment will be more and more popular again thanks to the introduction of Google-phones. As we all know, the programming language and libraries used in Google's public SDK is not Java (neither ME, nor SE), but something else that allows Java developer to re-use their existing knowledge in a slightly different environment. Anyway, I believe Java will only profit from this thing.
• Awakening of (North-)America to the world of smartphones thanks to iPhone + gPhone. It seems that American companies can convince American people more easily that they need smartphones. And you know the reason why Nokia is happy seeing the huge success of iPhone? That's why.
• Most innovative players in mobile phone industry (Nokia, Apple, Google, others?) will introduce their internet services designed for (their) mobile phones. Google is an internet company and just about to enter the mobile market (700 MHz frequency auction, gPhone, etc.). Apple has had very popular internet services (e.g. iTunes) for years by now and they now feel the taste of success on mobile area as well. Nokia has always been a mobile company, but they've decided to open to internet services and have already introduced a few popular services (MOSH, Ovi, etc.). Why do they do this? Because pulling money out of customers' pocket once (i.e. when they purchase mobile phones) is not enough - why not getting more money from them? Who will suck from this? Of course, the operators. I would even call it "double-suck", since not only will they suck thanks to people using e.g. VoIP over WiFi (in other words, not using operators' network), but they will suck because people will turn to internet services provided by others (e.g. Nokia, Apple), not their operators.
  

I'm sure that I've missed a few things that could have been added to the list. Could you help me?

Tote

Tilt-O-Mania, also known as Nokmote

Have you ever felt that your idea is stolen and "Damn, I wish I had been faster in doing it"? Now I feel exactly that way.

The first time I heard that another Nokia phone, N95, has a built-in accelerometer I started wondering why on Earth? Why on Earth is it worth for Nokia to put such a device in their phone? Has Nokia 5500 Sport (first Nokia device with built-in accelerometer) proven that it's worth making further experiments with? I haven't seen any analysis telling so, although I admit that it doesn't mean anything. Why on Earth has Nokia kept it secret that there was such a gadget in their hottest device? Is it a secret? Isn't it something that makes the device even cooler?

Then I started to think about what we could do with it? First, I thought RotateMe was a great software, I really liked the idea. But I felt something was missing. Then I found it: why not simulate joystick key presses (i.e. left, right, up, down + press) by tilting the device to the right direction? Since it's fairly easy to simulate key events in Symbian C++ just as if they had really occured, I thought it was easy to implement. The good thing in this idea that it works with existing software, no need to re-write or adapt anything: applications will not notice the difference between real keystroke and simulated.

Tilt-O-Mania

That would have been the name of my software. R.I.P. Now it's called Nokmote and it's not mine at all. :( Sorry guys behind the "sad smiley", I'm happy that you'll come out with an implementation, but I must tell you that I'm unhappy that you'll come out with it. :)

To be honest, I was always wondering why nobody had ever discovered the opportunity in writing such a software. As more and more S60 devices will come out with built-in accelerometer this feature could become such an integral part of user experience that even Nokia might want to use it. I dare to claim that even the joystick could be replaced by the accelerometer + this solution in the future. Not only could Nokia save some money by removing some existing hardware (i.e. the joystick), but they might even be able to use the new spare space for other purposes. Isn't it so cool?

And you know what? The solution is not Nokia/Symbian specific: any (mobile) device having a motion sensor could do on-screen navigation like this. Another Symbian phone, iPhone, gPhone even a laptop, though it would be funny to see a businessman tilting his computer at the airport just for the sake of navigation. :)

On the other hand, I was shocked to find that my(?) idea was not original at all. I mean not that now somebody has come out with an implementation for S60, but this idea was implemented years(!) ago on another mobile phone. You know, some of my colleagues have worked with a MyOrigo device and when I told them my idea they enlightened me that it had already been implemented. Check out this article from The Register and you'll see that such a device is already on the market. Okay, it is a not-really-famous mobile phone and perhaps it doesn't even make use of accelerometer data, but still the idea is theirs: user tilts software navigates.

Never mind, although I'm sorry to see that I can't be THE pioneer in this area, I'm happy to see that it'll be available to us soon. Good luck for writing the software!

Tote

Treading on shaky ground

If I were Dumbledore, then I could put my thoughts, memories in my pensive to keep my mind clear and fresh. But I'm not him at all and my mind now feels overburdened with news that I can't keep in - so I let them out.

You know, it's a great thing to tag blog articles. It keeps them categorized, easy to look for, easy to oversee, etc. What I'm now about to write, though, fits in a new category (well, at least to me): treading on shaky ground. What is it? You'll see, just read on!

Everybody paid immediate attention to one of Nokia's recent acquisitions, the agreement for Nokia to acquire NAVTEQ. You know, two things couldn't escape most people's attention: first, the huge amount of money Nokia is willing to pay ($8.1 billion!), second, that it is such an area (GPS and location-based services) that hasn't been fully explored yet. They must foresee something (and of course play an active role in it) that others haven't been thinking of yet!

And it's not the only acquisition Nokia was recently involved in: for example, they also merged with Enpocket. This deal is to give a boost to advertisement after the public announcement that Nokia is opening to the Internet. Not as if we didn't know that NSeries is open to anything, we now know that to the Internet, too. In addition, and I'm sure most of you already know, Nokia has launched new services for content download & consumption lately, check out Ovi and MOSH to see what I mean.

So good, so nice. But you know what? There are some parties who are not happy with Nokia opening to Internet and offering content online. It's said to be the operators (carriers in US) who will lose the most money if Nokia happens to be successful in this area. Although their online offering (mostly ringtones and themes) can usually be described with one word, pathetic, they're still the biggest revenue generator for Nokia. What happens, for example, if some UK operators refuse to sell new Nokia models? What happens if others follow them? Although, as I've already pointed out, Nokia might not be really affected by such a sudden(?) move in the US, it'd still be an unpleasant thing to happen to Nokia. I sort of have a feeling that what we see happening around is a total war between Nokia and others (operators, mobile manufacturers, OS vendors, etc.). That's the way how it goes.

As to mobile operating systems, the competition is also getting more and more tough. Although it's nicely put by Atmasphere that iPhone is a feature phone, in contrast with N95, the über-smartphone, Apple definitely has influence on newer phones not only from Nokia, but other handset makers, too. It's also worth noting what he found about the afore-mentioned two phones:

The iPhone is for consuming content, while the N95 is for creating it.

So from that point of view, Apple might not pose a considerable risk to Nokia's position yet. But how about Google? Even though it's a bit of an old news that Google is working on a mobile OS, I'm wondering how it will threaten Symbian's future. It's said to be a Linux variant (a new distribution to make the market even more fragmented?) and of course will be ad-supported (== cheap). Looking forward to it!

Thanks for being my pensive so far, I feel really relaxed now. And also eager to know what you think about all these things I've mentioned!

Cheers,

Tote

Nokia's new strategy in US market

I, and other much wiser bloggers, have already written about how unsuccessful Nokia had been in selling phones on the US market. It seems that American people are resistant to smart phones, they're simply satisfied with text messaging and using their phones mainly for voice calls. Unfortunately, the carriers didn't make it easy for Nokia to be the #1 in North-America, either.

But that might change over time. As Nokia reported in their press release, they are trying to find new ways to sell their phones, but this time without involving the carriers. I hope that Ewan's prediction will come true and users are now ready to buy and use such advanced mobile gadgets. Especially if they are from the business segment: first, it's more likely that those users can afford cell phones for hundreds of $s, second, they might even use more than 10% of the provided functionality. :-\

Let's see, I really wish all the best to Nokia! You know, my future might depend on it. :)

Tote

My new N95 - comments

I have received my new Nokia N95 device as a reward from Nokia for contributing to the launch of their new service, Forum Nokia Wiki. I was among the top 10 Forum Nokia Champion contributors, you know. We have received something else, too, but it's still too early to talk about it. I'm planning to get back about it in a month or so.

Well, I was very excited about this device, because I must admit it was my dream device. THE smartphone that I've always dreamed of. I have read couple of reviews on it by now (e.g. on AllAboutSymbian or Symbian Freak) and I was very convinced that the only issue that these reviews had found in common was the battery. The fact that it gets exhausted very easily, very fast. That's okay, I thought, I believe that's an issue that I can easily handle. I'm sure that Nokia is aware of this problem, too, and they're on it to fix it. Not necessarily with this phone, but with future phones.

However, I think I can tell you/them a few other hints they might want to pay attention to. Or maybe not, but at least I did not keep my comments secret on this great device. :-)

• Lack of memory card in the package. This is the third device from the N-series that I have got without any multimedia cards. First, an N90, second an N73, now it's an N95. Hey, it's a multimedia phone and I can hardly believe that the built-in storage is sufficient for multimedia purposes. And I can't believe it, either, that Nokia is to save some money on NOT including a memory card in their sales package, because the price of such a piece of hardware is so low. Then why is it not included?
• Battery. The topic that I have already mentioned. It's just right my second day, but it has already proved to be true that I need to charge the battery once a day. I was already recommended to get used to it, now I'm on that path. :-|
• GPS. This is the first GPS device of mine, so I don't know too much what to expect from it. I can see, though, that the built-in program is data-hungry and tries to get that data from the internet (without a network connection it doesn't really work, i.e. is not really useful). It's not a good sign for me, because I have decided not to spend too much money on using GPS, but try to keep my spending as low as possible. Perhaps the installation of additional maps will solve the problem, I don't know, I'm just hoping that.
• Connected to TV. There is an RCA jack included in the package with which we can attach the phone to the television so that you can see it real-time on your telly what you're doing on your phone. It's a pretty nice feature that can be used, among others, for demoing, showing your pictures/video/etc. to your family, browse the web in full screen on your tv, etc. However, for some reason, voice was not audible when I was e.g. playing a game. I'm unsure as to where the problem is - on my phone or with my TV, in any case, it's waiting to be fixed. Just tell me if you have experienced this and managed to get over with it.
• Localisation. You know, I'm from Hungary, Europe and although I'm pretty much happy with using English I've already got used to using T9 on my phone. It's such a brilliant feature that now I can hardly live without (at least in terms of short messaging:). The problem is that as I have forgotten to indicate my wish to have Hungarian language included on my phone I can't make use of (Hungarian) T9, either. Unless somebody smarter than me enlightens me how to fix this problem with the least pain.
  

That's it for now! By the way, before I forget: thanks, Ron and Forum Nokia, for this great device. It was really worth the effort of contributing to the Wiki. I wonder if others know that they can win an N95, too. :)

Cheers,

Tote