Hi Andrew,

Would you like to join Nokia for a two week trip across the US next month demonstrating some of the capabilities of the Nokia N97?

And thus, in the summer of 2009 this humble blogger of some eight years got his fifteen minutes of fame. I don’t think I was WOM World’s first choice for this gig, but that didn’t matter; I wasn’t the first choice to tour Asia with The Second City either way back when, but I still got to go. How could I pass up an opportunity to visit four cities on someone else’s dime, with a worldwide audience watching our every move?

Two amazing weeks that July were spent in the lovely company of three fellow bloggers — Matthew Bennett, Jon Bruha and George Kelly. Dan Silvers was our chaperone in Los Angeles and San Francisco, then rejoined us in New York City after we had a few days in Chicago on our own. Fond memories of “N97 24/7” are many; a few of my favourites:

• The unabashed geeky joy of some high-level phone talk on the hundred dollar-plus cab ride from LAX to our boutique Hollywood hotel.
• Our meet-up in San Francisco, where I met Dennis Bournique of WAP Review, Myriam Joire from Engadget and Ewan Macleod, a mobile entrepreneur from the UK.
• A failed “challenge” in Chicago, which turned into a rather awesome bender in a bar at the base of the Willis Tower.
• A decidedly over the top wrap-up party in Manhattan, full of “beautiful people” who mostly had no idea who we were, or even what the event was about.

Oh yes, the phone… I viewed the N97 as an iPhone with a secret weapon — the pop-out qwerty keypad underneath. An over-simplification perhaps, but that seemed to me to be the best way to pitch the device to non-Nokians. Unfortunately, it was a pretty hard sell. Where the iPhone was elegant the N97 was clunky, if ultimately more powerful. I had never before tested a mobile device to its limits like I did during those two weeks, and all too often the N97 came up short. Battery power was a constant issue, despite each of us having two devices. The built-in GPS radio took forever to lock on to a signal. Worst of all, we simply spent too much time hunting through menus to get to what we were looking for.

I think its a testament to the character of our blogging quartet that we took the perceived failure of this tour so personally. We had three scheduled meet-ups, one in every city but New York. The turnout was pretty good for the first, fantastic for the second and something on the order of two people for the third. I’ll never forget looking at an entire wall of catered food and then across an almost-empty room at the University of Chicago.  In retrospect we probably could have had a lot more fun with the challenges that WOM World handed down to us. But at the time we took our role as Nokia ambassadors very seriously, perhaps too much so.

I didn’t get to keep a souvenir N97 from the tour, but I did end up winning one in a contest the following Christmas. I used it as a test subject for some theme hacks, but never as my full-time phone.

Nokia smartphones of the day were powered by the Symbian operating system. The combination of the two was, for me, a culmination of every device I had owned prior. Like other Eseries devices the E61i was made for enterprise, with email support and a qwerty keypad worthy of a BlackBerry. But it also had a camera, and a not bad one at that. Like my Ericssons and Sony Ericssons the E61i supported Bluetooth and SyncML. Around this time I discovered a hosted SyncML service, so instead of shuttling my personal data back and forth to a single computer I could sync over the Internet and access it on the web, as I did with my hiptop — better, in fact, because now I could export my data at any time to standard file formats. Finally, like my TyTN the E61i had both 3G and WiFi radios — though 3G only worked in Europe and Asia. Did I mention that this device was never meant to be sold in the Americas, and was only available to Canada through an online retailer?  The lack of Canada-tuned 3G turned out to be a blessing, as I was paying my carrier far too much money for not enough data. If $25/month for a paltry 3 MB seems ludicrous believe me, it was.

Because Symbian — also confusingly referred to as “S60” — was so popular in Europe, I was able to sample mobile apps for the first time. There wasn’t yet an on-device app store; you would instead visit the developer’s website and purchase the app directly from them — imagine that! The available third-party software was generally excellent. There were task managers, giving the user control over the running processes on their phone. There was the free Opera Mini web browser, critical to browsing web pages on my ridiculous data plan. There was even software that could emulate old game consoles, like Nintendo’s Gameboy Color and NES. To play my favourite childhood arcade games on my phone was, well… it was just awesome.

My E61i travelled with me far and wide. Its first test was a trip to New Zealand, where I was able to peruse the morning news over breakfast via the WiFi in my hotel. Next up was a journey to the Great Pyramids of Egypt, where I used GPS for the first time with a Bluetooth accessory. To save on roaming charges I was able to store map data directly on my phone before I left. Accessing GPS satellites was free, and as I later found out, quite illegal in Egypt when I was there. Nonetheless, I’ve a particularly fond memory of being on an overnight train to Luxor, my eyes glued to the E61i’s screen as the train pushed forth into parts unknown.

Perhaps the biggest testament to the E61i’s world-phone abilities was that it actually worked in Japan. It might not have been as svelte as the keitai there, nor could it access Japan’s i-mode services. But as a camera phone and Internet-connected device it could hold its own. You’ll remember that early on I wrote about wanting only two things from a smartphone. In 2000 my VisorPhone had granted me my first wish, an address book that could be synchronized from computer to mobile device. Now I had a handset that I could use anywhere on the planet. Checklist complete.

And then the iPhone came along and changed everything…

Here’s my S60-powered Nokia E61i, resplendent in its cheap and cheerful crystal case.

As you can see from this photo opp in front of a Fido van (for some long-since forgotten campaign) I was pretty happy with this Eseries device. In many ways it was a culmination of every smartphone I had owned prior. It was sturdy, like any other Nokia. It had a qwerty keypad worthy of a BlackBerry or hiptop. And like my TyTN it supported 3G and WiFi.

The 3G only worked in Europe and Asia, though — good thing, because Fido’s data service at the time was laughable. $10 CAD/month sounds entirely reasonable, but in 2007 it was good for a mere 12 MB of data. If that sounds bad, I was previously paying $25/month for 3 MB!

It works in Japan! Here’s a photo of the famous Shibuya Crossing, taken with the E61i’s 2 megapixel camera — not bad for a night shot with a 2007-vintage camera phone.

The E61i proved its mettle as a travel companion almost immediately on a trip to New Zealand. In addition to Tokyo it also accompanied me to such faraway places as Buenos Aires and Egypt. For the longest time I couldn’t figure out why my blog posts about the latter were getting so many hits — until I finally learned that the Bluetooth GPS accessory I had brought to Cairo with me was, in fact, illegal. Oops.

Still stinging from the thousand bucks I dropped on my HTC TyTN I turned to eBay for a deal, and managed to find a local seller with an 8700g. It had branding from a carrier in the UK but the radio had been unlocked for use in Canada. I was unsure if the second lock on the device — the BlackBerry PIN — had been cleared, but all fears were allayed when I got the device, powered it up and successfully registered it for BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS).

In many ways, BlackBerries are win-win for carrier and user alike. Just like Danger’s hiptop, BlackBerry data passes through a central server before arriving on your handset. For carriers, this means less congestion on their networks; for users it means faster data — at least it did back in the dark days before the widespread availability of 3G. The BlackBerry operating system had a particularly helpful feature wherein the user could send “service books” to their device. If your email wasn’t working or some other ailment had besieged your handset a binary blob would be sent down the pipe to save the day. I’ve never seen this feature on any other mobile OS.

Though made almost entirely of plastic my CrackBerry was tough as nails; it shrugged off a brutal drop from about chest-high to an unforgiving sidewalk. Chalk this up to its roots as a text-only pager, I guess… And for text-related activities the BlackBerry did very well. Despite the fairly hideous on-screen fonts, dealing with email from multiple accounts was a breeze. Another BlackBerry innovation was the global inbox, a central dumping ground for incoming email, text messages, even missed calls. RIM has since removed SMS from the global inbox by default, which has been a challenge for my older siblings who still don’t entirely get what a text message is, let alone how to send one.

Sadly, any hopes of a CrackBerry addiction for yours truly were vanquished in short order by an absolutely reprehensible app called PocketMac, which RIM licensed as the official syncing software for Apple desktop computers. It routinely ate appointments, contacts and/or to-do items on every sync, and it was a constant game of cat and mouse to suss out what had gone missing. Thankfully OS X now has a proper Desktop Manager, but I’m a proper Linux user now. And to be brutally honest, I don’t think BlackBerry’s proxied Internet is of much use in a world where 3G data is cheap and plentiful. Well, plentiful anyway.

I did use a borrowed BlackBerry Curve many years later on vacation in Bermuda. It was the only way I could get an unlimited data package from the local carrier there. The BlackBerry experience in 2011 wasn’t enough to win me back, but the on-screen fonts were better, at least.

Okay, my GSM-based Treo wasn’t compatible with Japan’s mobile networks, but I could use it pretty much everywhere else. And in 2002-2003 it seemed like I did just that.

By this time I had racked up enough Air Canada points for a free trip to Australia, via Hawaii. I remember being on a bus in Honolulu and firing up the mobile version of MapQuest to verify the location of the Ala Moana Center, where I would enjoy my first-ever serving of Hawaiian poi. Choosing a food court vendor over a touristy hotel restaurant saved me about fifty bucks. Later that trip I would surprise a friend back in Canada with my reply to her innocuous text: “What am I up to? Oh, not much… just having breakfast in Sydney, Australia is all…”

Later that year I was back in Singapore with the The Second City theatre, and amazed our stage manager by pulling up almost-live hockey scores from back home on Yahoo’s mobile sports site. On that same trip I somehow managed to find a cute Singaporean pen pal to flirt with via SMS when I got back home — once we both figured out the country codes, of course. It didn’t last long but while it did it was an amazing thing, sharing random moments from lives on the run from opposite sides of the world. This was all in the days before Twitter, of course.

My Treo was also there for me during tougher times. It allowed me to take diligent notes from doctors as my father lay dying in hospital. During the SARS epidemic, no less. And when a sudden, North America-wide power outage silenced my desktop computer and cordless phones, my Treo persevered. That I could still make calls on it made me quite popular with my neighbours, at least for the duration of the blackout.

The last time my Treo would travel with me was, fittingly, on my last jaunt as an overseas comedian, performing for Canadian troops stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. We were already halfway through our two-week USO-style tour — sorry, deployment — when I learned that mobile phones were not allowed on base. Apparently local crime rings had the technology to intercept mobile transmissions, including SMS. But about the only sensitive information I remember sending was that the food was fantastic. Seriously, an army really does travel on its stomach.

My Treo and I had some great times together and it rarely, if ever, let me down. I miss it to this very day.

When Fido introduced their packet-based GPRS data service they yanked the CSD option at the same time. While the minutes from my calling plan would no longer take a hit from data there was now a data transmission charge, 5¢ per kilobit sent or received. Even on small WAP pages that could add up, and exponentially so if you were roaming abroad and needed valuable information at your fingertips. It should be noted that by this point in my life I didn’t just have a travel bug; a parasitic host had set up a permanent residence, relentlessly steering my career and cash flow towards the next overseas flight and hotel booking. My actor friends couldn’t afford to go or weren’t interested, but the mobile Internet proved to be a dependable and compliant travel companion.

Thus this new pay-per-use mobile Internet simply would not do. I called Fido and threatened to cancel my account — an obvious bluff, since there was no other GSM carrier in Canada at the time. I got to speak to someone in their retentions department, who offered me a $400 handset for $50 if I would stay on with them through the summer. Being the device whore that I am I could hardly say no, and the $400 phone I got was the Nokia 8390.

Like the 3390 before it, the 8390 had Xpress-On covers and could dance. But this newer, smaller Nokia also had a GPRS radio and onboard WAP browser. And yet I was entirely underwhelmed by it, never even gave it a chance, really. Maybe it was the small monochrome screen, maybe it was the constant, painful reminder that the mobile Internet would never again be as cheap as it once was. Whatever the reason… meh.  I seem to remember taking it to a bar that was open all night to broadcast a World Cup game from South Korea, but that’s about it. The phone would go up for auction on eBay the very next month.

What replaced it, however, would prove to be quite epic…

I gather that it was a very different story in Europe, but for the Americas the 7190 was way ahead of its time. As such, three things kept it from greatness:

First, the web browser… Where desktop browsers used HTML mobile browsers required a different protocol called WAP. Fido did have a WAP portal where you see the weather and read a few news headlines, but it all felt very limited. The 7110 (the 7190’s Eurasian cousin) had much more available content — in fact, a really good book was written about a WAP startup in Finland, by a young entrepreneur who went on to be a founding member of the Leningrad Cowboys. It’s called The Wapit Story, and is available as a free download from this site. Well worth reading if you’re interested.

The second issue had to do with the technology of the day. Broadband Internet was still in its infancy; dial-up modems were still the norm. And mobile data connections worked just like dial-up. It was called circuit switched data; this old school tech had you waiting for your phone to make a manual connection every time you wanted to use the mobile web — and once “online” you couldn’t do anything else with your phone until you were done. Not a great solution if you were expecting a call or text.

The third problem was that there was already a much better solution for non-connected PDAs. It was called AvantGo and was quite ingenious. Since you had to sync your PDA to a computer every so often, and since that computer would most likely have an Internet connection you could use AvantGo to pull content from the web, format it and suck it down to your device during sync. That way you’d have all manner of the day’s news, weather, movie listings, etc. loaded up on your handheld when you walked out the door. Because my Palm OS device had a bigger screen and more memory than my 7190 it was no contest; AvantGo trumped WAP on all counts.

And so, despite my high regard for it the 7190 went back to Fido. Later that year I bought another unlocked one on eBay for my older brother. He didn’t want it, informing me that he had no need for a cell phone since he was chained to a desk for most of the day. A few years later his new employer gave him a BlackBerry, which he became addicted to in short order.

Here’s Nokia’s first WAP-surfing phone for the Americas, the 7190. You can read Steve Punter’s review of the Fido-branded one I used here.

Inspired by The Matrix’s banana phone, the 7190 was much more useful thanks to its Navi-Roller (that scroll wheel just below the screen) and (more importantly) mobile web browser. Too bad there wasn’t really anywhere to visit beyond Fido’s online portal in early 2001.

Things would change soon enough…