Category: wireless | 無線 |무선 네트워크 | 無線

This blog came out of the crater of the dot com bust and wireless growth. Wi-Fi was transforming the way we used the internet at home. I used to have my Mac next to my router on top of a cupboard that contained the house fuse panel and the telephone line. Many people had an internet room and used a desktop computer like a Mac Mini or an all-in-one computer like an iMac. Often this would be in the ‘den’ or the ‘man cave’. Going on the internet to email, send instant messages or surf the internet was something you did with intent.

Wi-Fi arrived alongside broadband connections and the dot com boom. Wi-Fi capable computers came in at a relatively low price point with the first Apple iBook. I had the second generation design at the end of 2001 and using the internet changed. Free Wi-Fi became a way to attract people to use a coffee shop, as a freelancer it affected where I did meetings and how I worked.

I was travelling more for work at the time. While I preferred the reliability of an ethernet connection, Wi-Fi would meet my needs just as well. UMTS or 3G wireless data plans were still relatively expensive and slow. I would eventually send low resolution pictures to Flickr and even write a blog post or two. But most of the time I used it to clear my email box, or use Google Maps if I was desperate.

4G wireless services, started to make mobile data a bit more useful, even if the telephony wasn’t great

Nokia N950
Nokia N950 origins

The Nokia N950 was designed at a weird time. Nokia’s position as the premier smartphone maker was under siege from Android and iPhone after seeing off the Palm OS and numerous iterations of Windows Phone. Nokia had missed the boat on devices with capacitive touch displays. It was using a smartphone operating system that was starting to show its age, a bit like PalmOS did previously. Like Palm, Nokia wasted far too much time coming up with its next generation OS, which gave Google and Apple the opportunity gap that they needed.

Part of the problem was that Nokia was wrong for the right reasons:
- Different consumers do need different types of phones, which is why HMD have managed to resurrect modern versions of classic Nokia feature phone designs
- Phones are better if they can be operated one-handed. Whereas Google and Apple busied themselves designing computers that happened to be phones
- Phones needed to be made down to a cost. So the handsets were different on the outside but had common ‘guts’, which meant that premium products could be underpowered
Nokia had their own answer to Android and iOS in MeeGo which grew out of work that Intel and Nokia had separately done on mobile Linux. Nokia was partnering with Intel partly because it believed that Intel was the future of mobile.

The Nokia N950 was a development handset showcasing this operating system in action. It was similar and related to the N9.

The N9 was released in a limited amount of markets were it was successful. However the N9 success story was overshadowed by the larger business problems Nokia faced in its transition from Symbian and feature phones to Windows Phone.

There were an estimated 5,000 Nokia N950 handsets made in total, which went to the Nokia global developer community. Technically there are loaned devices rather than given to developers. They occasionally appear on eBay going for 1,000GBP+

Up close with the Nokia N950

At first glance the Nokia N950 looked like a chimera of the N9 and the N8 with a slide out keyboard riffing on the Communicator form factor that Nokia pioneered.

It makes sense to list the differences with the N9 first of all:
- The Nokia N950 had a TFT LCD screen roughly the same size as a Nokia E90 Communicator, but with a higher resolution. The N9 had an AMOLED screen which is slightly smaller and has a slightly higher resolution
- The N9 was made from the same machined polycarbonate body that then made its appearance on Nokia Lumia models. The Nokia N950 has a case made from a mix of machined and stamped aluminium parts and came only in black (though I have seen pictures of un-anodised devices as well. These were probably pre-production prototypes)
- They had different camera modules that performed broadly the same
- The Nokia N950 had a pop under keyboard similar to the N8 and E7. More on that a bit later on
- The Nokia N950 had 8.5GB of usable storage compared to up to 64GB of memory in the N9
- The N9 has a slightly larger battery than the N950, but the difference wouldn’t have been noticeable due to the difference in screen technology
What you end up with is a phone that still looks modern (partly due to its anodised black case making the screen edge harder to spot.

The device is slow compared to modern devices but is speedy for its time. The device flipped from landscape to portrait mode, but this wasn’t perfectly implemented.

It had a pop under keyboard which allows the device to have a really shallow design in comparison to Communicator devices. However it does leave the screen exposed to damage. The past decade of Gorilla Glass™ screens on iPhones and Android handsets proves that the Corning wonder material is not invulnerable.

The problem with the design means that you end up with a shallow area for the keyboard. The Nokia N950 like the E7 and N8 don’t have as full a featured keyboard as the Communicator devices.

Here’s a keyboard from the E90 by comparison. When you were using the Nokia N950 you end up with a virtual keyboard on the screen providing the tab, ctrl, esc and alt keys, as well as very commonly used symbols. Which begs the question of how useful the keyboard would really be for developers?

Compared to the modern iPhone, the N950 meets the goal of a mobile computing device much better. You can write longer emails and documents on the keyboard than the iPhone. The camera is adequate for most people’s needs and it shows in some respects how little the smartphone concept has moved on over the past seven years.

Could the Nokia N950 been the future?

Historically Nokia’s Symbian phones had been built on TI’s OMAP processors; but these didn’t have a roadmap for 4G wireless. Nokia had two choices bet on Qualcomm or Intel. Qualcomm had come out on top in IP related disputes, which probably made Intel seem more attractive. Intel was also championing WiMax as a 4G standard.

WiMax had limited adoption at best, Nokia was on the wrong side of networking standards and eventually was forced to use Qualcomm processors in Windows Phone reference designs.

`Nokia could have gone to Snapdragon processors but its joint relationship with Intel on the software side of things would have been tainted. There is also no guarantee that Qualcomm would have been a helpful partner given the history between the two companies and that both Android and iOS devices used Qualcomm products.

Secondly, Nokia bet all the marketing budget on the Lumia device launch which left nothing for the MeeGo devices.

Finally, Nokia would not have been able to get out of the legal contract that they had with Microsoft. The only way MeeGo would have stood a chance is if the Nokia board had not approved Stephen Elop’s proposal to go with Windows, rival schemes to go with Android and bet on the home team.
- At the time the internal Nokia option would have looked high risk. Board members would have been familiar with historic project problems on Meamo and then MeeGo
- Secondly Nokia had a history of buying in new generation operating systems. It licensed GEOS for the Nokia Communicator 9000 and 9110. It licensed and then bought into Psion’s OS business unit, which became Symbian
- Nokia’s feature phones ran on homegrown technology built on Intelligent System Architecture (ISA), also called the Nokia Operating System (NOS)
More information

TIMELINE: Qualcomm vs Nokia patents battle | Reuters
Qualcomm loses GSM patent fight with Nokia in German court | Ars Technica
Why Qualcomm Folded to Nokia | Bloomberg BusinessWeek (paywall)
The ‘I Wish I Had Known This’ List about 101 Things Wrong With Windows Phone Smartphones Like Nokia Lumia | Communities Dominate Brands
How Many Lumia Sales? As Nokia (and Microsoft) ashamed to reveal number, lets count – and compare to N9 MeeGo sales | Communities Dominate Brands
Nokia N8 review | GSMArena
November 29, 2018
Eco vehicles + more things

Korea to Fight Smog with Eco Vehicles – The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition) – interesting dual electric / hydrogen strategy in their eco vehicles. Hydrogen makes sense because of its compact nature as a form of energy, that helps with range anxiety and the amount of time taken to ‘fill up’. As a use case hydrogen makes more sense than modern electric batteries, the key challenge to overcome is the current price differential.

Japanese Mobile Phone Users Distrustful of Profit-Hungry Operators | Nippon.com – a few interesting aspects of this research. Japanese aren’t as convinced about the utility of mobile services as one would have expected and smartphone mastery is really low

Why are millennial-obsessed marketers ignoring women over 50 – when they spend the money? – Mumbrella Asia – gen X is a smaller demographic – so their ‘control of 95% of consumer spending decisions” power of spending might be counterintuitive, youth is aspirational – which is why old age is being redefined by boomers. There is also an argument that focusing on young people is focusing on consumer lifetime spend. The last reason is hard to gel with the overall short terms approach to marketing currently employed

Coty partners with the Cybersmile Foundation to tackle cyberbullying with Rimmel | coty.com – interesting tension between Instagram culture setting the beauty bar and cyberbullying, so I guess this is why Rimmel stepped into the fray

TIC Brings Affordable Cell Service to Indigenous Mexico | New York magazine – interesting read and reference data on the Mexican wireless market

Palm Is Back With a Tiny Phone That’ll Keep You Off Your Phone | Makeuseof – not convinced its the right form factor or price point, but I think that it’s an interesting attempt at innovation in the smartphone sector. More innovation related content here

Instagram’s next cash cow: instant Promote ads for Stories | TechCrunch – stories were a massive lift for Facebook, so its stories with everything

BBC and Sky call for EU crackdown on Saudi pirate TV service | Business | The Guardian – this story gets stranger by the day. BeoutQ started off as a way to break Qatar’s pay TV business throughout the Gulf, but has morphed into something even more difficult for Saudi Arabia and western countries

November 6, 2018
iPhone Xs launch
Random notes as I watched the iPhone Xs, iPhone XR and Apple Watch Series 4 launch.

Watching the introductory clip, this felt like an event designed mostly for an internal audience. The events have become a parody of themselves with very well worn tropes.

Company and eco-system update
- Apple stores: 500,000,000 visitors per year. The stores have free wi-fi and classes, so this isn’t just about purchasing or building loyalty with customers. It has become public private space.
- 2 billion iOS devices – many users will have replaced at least three devices so the community of likely iOS users is probably closer to 600 million. iPad tend to end up being communal devices in family homes and so have a longer life.
- Apple Watch is the number one watch – I found this clip suprising. I find that hard to believe given the ubiquity of the Casio G-Shock range, or the F-91W family of basic digital watches
Apple Watch series 4

It is clever in some of the engineering: mass producing a ceramic back. the way Apple has managed to squeeze an ECG function in there. But there is a lot not to like about the watch
The case design preportions seem off in the video, it may look better in real life. I am guessing that part of the move is about the cellular aerial, but then you have the ceramic back
- They still haven’t sorted the crown positioning and protection – it will still fire up Siri for no apparent reason
- The device is only minimally waterproof
- The awful information design in the face used on Apple Watch hero images
Which got me rooting through old copies of Wired magazine. They used to have a ‘Future of’ section on the back inside cover. And lone behold

iPhone Xs

I was really unimpressed by the iPhone Xs. Don’t get me wrong it looks ‘nice’ and takes a lot of engineering. There isn’t an upgrade reason for X users. I find the AR applications are gimmicks rather than necessarily being regularly used apps. The notable exception would be the measuring tape app included in iOS 12

Screen pixel counts are now getting ridiculous – you won’t be able to see the difference in terms of pixel refinement. Contrast may improve in HDR.

The sound on the device doesn’t recognise that consumers use headphones. It was all about louder speakers.

For iPhone 6/7/8 users the battery life descriptions for the new iPhone Xs devices were weasel language that would make me be wary of upgrading on this cycle.

Facial recognition but no in screen biometric touch sensor means that you still have a notch. It also means that there is a dissonance in experience between the touch sensors on the latest MacBook Pro models and iPad models. How will Apple be handling websites that have integrated Apple Pay validation?

As a MacBook Pro user, this told me to hang on to my current device. Wait and see if Apple changes the authentication again on the next round.

A12 Bionic chip. 20 years ago five trillion instructions per second would have been impressive as this would have been a super computer. Now it is pretty much in line with what one would expect in Moore’s Law. Intel are squeezing double the rate fo computing power out of FPGAs. You’ve got all that power and you get animojis…

How the software handles the paralellism of the chip is key. That is something that Sony found in the Cell architecture of the Playstation 2. Don’t expect that power to be obvious in 3rd party applications. The addressable memory claim surprised me. Its a 64 bit processor, so of course it could address 512GB of memory.
- How much of the A12 chip is required to get FaceID to work?
- How will the software get the most out of the cores?
- There isn’t modem integration which helps rivals with their circuit board designs.
iPhone camera ‘breakthroughs’ seem to come from intellectual property that Lytro developed?

Dual SIMs – it is definitely a minority interest. It is likely to annoy carriers in mature markets with the exception of challengers like T-Mobile US.

The SIMs are all non-standard formats which is a pain in the backside. eSIMs are only supported by EE and Vodafone in the UK. The nano-SIM is yet another smaller format of SIM which will be hard to sell to carriers. The most attractive model is the China market one with two physical SIMs.

This could be:
- Because China Mobile, China Unicom or China Telecom wouldn’t get on board with eSIMs
- To screw with the Chinese grey market for iPhones (which is on the decline anyway
- An unfortunate side effect is that it makes the China models more desirable for a (minority) consumer like me. So the grey market is likely to go the other way
iPhones are coming with a USB rather than USB C cable in the box, which raises questions about the longer term commitment to Thunderbolt 3…

iPhone Xr

Why did Apple create so many colour versions. It has too many colour variations. One of Apple’s historic strengths has been keeping a tight leash on the product portfolio.

More Apple related content here.
September 14, 2018
Knee surgery + more things

What Does Knee Surgery Cost? Few Know, and That’s a Problem – WSJ – no idea of costs and processes – why things are done. The thing that concerns me more is that knee surgery (and other medical processes) need more sensitive work than what business transformation consultants brought to industry. Otherwise it will be kneecapping Belfast-style rather than knee surgery going on

Struggling Chinese firms offloading assets means property bargains galore for foreign investors | South China Morning Post – Under Chinese law, overseas investors cannot directly buy assets in China. They either have to buy a stake in a company involved in a project, or acquire debt portfolios, mostly from one of the four main managers of distressed assets – a quick change in Chinese law could leave these investors screwed, this looks like a trap to me

The psychology of popular media culture Twenge, Martin & Spitzberg – American Psychological Association – PDF white paper on trends in media use covering a 40 year period. More media related content here

China is clear leader in the 5G race – Deloitte | Telecoms.com – interesting, but what about Korea, Singapore etc? I suspect that this is very China vs. US focus

Botched CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents – Foreign Policy – how the CIA will be able to build trust with agents in the future is going to be a challenge

Adversaries Could Have Fiddled With US Satellites: DoD IG « Breaking Defense – Defense industry news, analysis and commentary – If Chinese and Russian spies have been doing their jobs well, they might well have been able to compromise some of America’s most important satellites, including the missile launch detection birds known as SBIRS. A report out today from the Pentagon’s Inspector General says that Air Force Space Command’s failure to safeguard its supply chain means that “an adversary has opportunity to infiltrate the Air Force Space Command supply chain and sabotage, maliciously introduce an unwanted function, or otherwise compromise the design or integrity of the critical hardware, software, and firmware.”

Macau: the incredible poverty at the heart of world’s richest place | South China Morning Post – the Gini coefficient must be higher than Hong Kong or the US surely?

Exclusive: U.S. government seeks Facebook help to wiretap Messenger – sources | Reuters – The U.S. government is trying to force Facebook Inc to break the encryption in its popular Messenger app so law enforcement may listen to a suspect’s voice conversations in a criminal probe, three people briefed on the case said, resurrecting the issue of whether companies can be compelled to alter their products to enable surveillance – not terribly surprising. If they manage to achieve this could the method be applied to Signal? Also would there be a precedent to break Apple’s resolve?

How Björk robots influenced the way we think about the future. | Slate – continues a long patterN – Star Trek communicator and the cellphone, Minority Report and touch interfaces, Neuromancer’s influence on VR – there is a continual feedback loop. It is interesting how much recent sci-fi feels very much rooted in the present

There’s one thing that some virtual assistants can’t do – understand an Irish accent – Independent.ie – or a regional British accent for that matter

Robot to star in new Tony Kaye movie 2nd Born – CNET – looking forward to a new Tony Kaye film

Y Combinator to Set Up China Arm With Ex-Baidu Exec as CEO – Bloomberg – interesting move, I met Yu back at Yahoo! where I found him to be highly strung

August 23, 2018
Samsung 5G + more things

Internesting focus: Samsung 5G, machine learning and other emerging technology – Samsung pledges to invest $22B in AI, 5G and other emerging technologies – SiliconANGLE – plan to invest $22 billion in emerging fields such as artificial intelligence over the next three years. The effort will be driven primarily by the conglomerate’s Samsung Electronics Co Ltd arm, which makes its popular mobile devices. Last quarter, the handset maker saw profits decline for the first time in nearly two years due to stagnating smartphone sales. Investing more in emerging technologies could help Samsung generate new growth on the long term – the Samsung 5G and machine learning problem is the Chinese government and the limitless resources it will put behind Huawei and their peers. More Samsung content here.

Save Sarah Jeong! And Kevin Williamson, Quinn Norton, and Joy Reid Too | WIRED – my comment: I agree that Ms Jeong has a right to an opinion. She has a right to a bad day. However when she weighed into the Naomi Wu / Vice Media dispute; her contribution damaged some of the feminist and progressive viewpoints that she herself supports. As an international Wired subscriber I find it difficult to support her particularly aggressive form of American privilege. Ms Jeong used her skill in rhetoric to hide her lack of expertise in the legal and online social environment of China.

‘Hipster kryptonite’: will CDs ever have a resurgence? | Music | The Guardian – interesting read. I have listened to CDs and have them, but preferred to DJ with vinyl for tactile reasons. The article fails to ask whats next. We’ve got a generation coming through with Spotify with a more passive, casual relationship to music that we haven’t seen before. There has always been people who liked music but bought few if any recordings. We haven’t seen it on the scale that we see with the Spotify generation. Music becomes a utility like water, electricity or mobile data. Since music tends to be about playlists now the artist’s brand becomes less important. Festivals provide the buzz of live music for generation Spotify but they can dip in and out moving from one tent to another. They won’t support live acts in local concert halls, go to local clubs to support local DJs or have eclectic musical libraries

The UK Top 40 will never be the same | British GQ – For a stream to qualify as a sale, it has to play for at least 30 seconds. Most listeners will abandon anything too jarringly different before then, so there’s an incentive for artists to draw on a small pool of bankable writers, producers and styles. “I call it the shit-click factor,” says Masterton. “If a record is too challenging, then people will say, ‘What’s this? It’s shit,’ and click onto the next one. There used to be room on the charts for something dynamic and exciting such as the Arctic Monkeys. I can’t see the circumstances right now where that could happen.”

Rock is the new jazz and vinyl’s misleading revival: 5 things I’ve learned as Guardian music editor | The Guardian – Technology has vastly increased what record companies know about listeners and their listening habits, just as it has increased what newspapers know about their readers and their reading habits. And the results of this – on both parts – can be pernicious. At our end, it’s the reason why we get complaints about endless stories about Adele and Beyoncé and Kanye West. Why do we run them? Because people read them. Whereas very few people read stories about the latest underground band we want to rave about. And in music, that knowledge has resulted in commercial music, more than ever before, being made to a formula

Tymbals – #edge @growth – interesting online tool

ITV joins Hollywood giants to back video streaming service for mobiles | The Guardian – ok what am I missing here, streaming services are already on mobile and also offer side loading to deal with network quality issues

Say Hello to the New Editor | The new Gutenberg editing experience – interesting changes that will make themes less rigid

August 9, 2018