February 19, 2006

New Mobile Phone and New Old Phone Company

I have returned to my Cingular Wireless roots after 6 years of good service from Verizon Wireless.

The reason for the change is my new fascination with the Nokia 770. I was searching for a Wireless telecom company that would have a robust GSM network and good partnership with Nokia.

In the end, I bought a Nokia 6682 mobile phone. As it turns out, Cingular has a rate plan that gives you unlimited Internet access for only $19.95 a month.

In other Nokia 770 related news, Paolo Molaro has created a mono Debian package for the Nokia 770. This new package has updated mono components and even does a deployment of the mono directory structure that resembles other mono platforms. It even has GAC support now.

I hope to honor him and the rest of the community with a little tutorial on how to create Mono Application Debian packages for the 770. I am only waiting on his review and the final touches on the mono-nokia package to make the URL public.

Posted by martinf at February 19, 2006 06:57 PM
Comments

Oh buddy!. I'm chomping at the bit to get Mono installed on my 770. You know it just hit me, I was contemplating why Nokia didn't make it a phone as well. I mean everyone that sees it, that is there first question. So you have to believe that it is purposefully NOT a phone. I wonder where Nokia is headed with this device? Computing platforms, the margins are so slim there it wouldn't make sense. I bet it is a stepping stone. Get developers hooked on maemo, then launch a 77x with phone capability. What do you think?

Posted by: Kevin at February 19, 2006 08:35 PM

That's interesting that you are getting unlimited internet cheaply via Cingular. What kind of download rates do you get through that?

Posted by: Jess Sightler at February 19, 2006 10:32 PM

Out of solidarity with Kevin, I am going to boo and hiss at you for choosing Cingular.

Boo! Hiss! :-)

I have been getting unlimited Internet with Sprint PCS for years for only $15 a month. I use an LG PM-325, the simplest Bluetooth phone Sprint has. I've had no issues with it as per the N770.

Sprint's reception is not so good out here in the boondocks, only 15 miles out from San Juan. But I can still connect and browse using it, but it's dial-up modem slow. In the middle of San Juan, I get 128-170 Kbps, though. That's not bad.

If I ever switch providers, I'm probably going with T-Mobile. But I'll move out of PR first, cuz PR is a roaming coverage area for T-Mobile.

Keep an eye out for SNAP Platform for Nokia 770, bud! :-) Work on SNAP Platform for Windows continues (Kaffe, GCJ, and Classpath build with your MSYS installer, and they run, but SableVM doesn't build yet.)

Posted by: PJ Cabrera at February 23, 2006 02:11 AM