I need your help big time (and I think my question will also help other people who will encounter the same situation). I am betwixt and between the Nokia E71 and the N78. Since I don’t need to bang out a lot of text messages or emails, the N78 ought to be great (I love the look and functionality of this little phone not only 3G but I LOVE that it has WiFi too!). Hence, N78 lacking a QWERTY keyboard is fine for me.

But (and this is the big but!) after doing hours of research, I finally discovered something very disturbing with the N78 (and also to affect the forthcoming N96) which is that Nokia has very quietly and seemingly sneakily redacted their built-in VoIP / SIP implementation in all phones that come with Symbian Series 60 3rd generation Feature Pack 2 (otherwise abbreviated as S60 3.2). Check it out, its true:

http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showthread.php?p=456510

> If you look at the VoIP supported devices > http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/voice_over_IP/voip_support_in_nokia_devices.html > the N78 is not listed. > > I think you need to return it and exchange it for a different device > that is supported. > > Ron

…

> I’ve gone back to my E65 for now – maybe I’ll buy an N78 when they > release a full version of Symbian on this platform. > > It’s an interesting point about Android – will Symbian end up going down > the same path as Amiga and other technologies that have disappeared? If > they persist in deliberately crippling their OS (e.g. disabling VoIP) > and frustrating the end user, they can’t hope to do much better.

Om, this is a travesty. Its akin to bait and switch because clearly from the table at the URL pointing to the Nokia Forum page about which devices are supported with Noia’s VoIP built-in software, N series devices such as N80 Internet Edition, N95, N95 8G, N81 8G and N82 all have VoIP implementation. So what is up? Nokia says to the world for quite some time, “hey guys forget the iPhone look at us, we will provide a VoIP client for most of our N Series” and now that the N Series becomes popular and they sell millions, they turn around and say “ha ha ha, now we are going to take away that VoIP software because the wireless telecos told us to, so screw you customer who wants VoIP”!

What this means? It means that Gizmo5 and Truphone won’t work on the N78 and forthcoming N96 even though you can buy the N78 (and soon N96) unlocked and unbranded at the Nokia Flagship stores in the U.S. in Chicago and New York. Yesterday I called the Chicago Nokia Flagship store and a very well informed employee said that the Truphone guys were visiting the Chicago flagship store not long ago and Truphone duly pointed out that N78 breaks Truphone because the Nokia VoIP support has been redacted!

So what is up with this? Obviously the E71 is also a very new phone, just about as new as the N98, and if you look at that table, the E71 includes VoIP support (VoIP Release 2.3 “100.07.76″). I think the E71 is a nice machine but I really want the N78 and with all these bells and whistles of 3G, WiFi, etc. why on earth can’t the N78 also have Nokia’s VoIP release?

Finally, I will pose this very important question: does this move by Nokia really appear to be the type of move that is indicative of a culture shift towards open source per the Symbian Foundation? Google is already culturally rooted in open source (its entire infrastructure runs on Linux clusters). I am not so confident about Nokia’s ability to shift to open source (just like Sun has had such a hard time — Sun has had cultural headwinds from the beginning thus look at the immense difficulty Java has had in becoming truly open and unwrested from the controls of Sun dating back to the McNealy / Baratz era)! I haven’t looked yet to see if Android will include a SIP / VoIP implementation but I sure hope it does as it would be in the true spirit of the Internet even though everyone and her sister knows that the mobile teleco oligarchies don’t like VoIP (but who cares what people do with their WiFi connections Nokia come on!).

Please Om, can you do anything to help? Can you ask some of the higher ups at Nokia what is up with this? After all, I want to drop several HUNDRED dollars on the beautiful N78 instead of an iPhone so doesn’t Nokia want a customer like me (who also wants to use Gizmo and Fring and Truphone when I want to over WiFi)?

Thank you for anything you check into on this topic!

I am such a user – I frequently access the 3G network from my laptop and have been doing so since the 3G network was introduced.

My experience: prior to July 2008, I was quite happy with download speeds. Since early July, however, I’ve experienced frequent service slowdowns, especially during weekday working hours (M-F, approx 10-6). During such slowdowns, which last for a few minutes to several hours, I experience frequent network timeouts and very slow download speeds (much slower than 2G).

I am based in Silicon Valley; it seems like these network performance issues are much more likely to occur when I’m in Cupertino (near Apple HQ!) than in other locations I’ve been recently (downtown San Jose or Sacramento).

I’ve placed service calls with AT&T.. I eventually got them to admit that they’ve been having problems with the 3G network. I asked for and received a two-month credit on my bill.