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Time to clean out the inbox once again…

Truphone Bonanza: I have a fair number of items related to Truphone in my inbox. A while ago, they launched an Android calling app for WiFi, making it possible to use their …

The beginning of 2009 had a rocky start for me. My employment situation was up in the air thanks to my long-time employer Nokia selling off the Security Appliance Business I worked in to …

When I think about my iPhone and compare it to what I gave up on my Nokia phones, I realize that, in many ways, I had tried to make my Nokia phones behave in ways that they were not really …

While i’ve complained about Nokia’s Ovi Store a couple of times on my blog, I figure I should come back and tell everyone that while the road was long, the story …

On the continuing saga of my issues with Nokia’s Ovi Store, I got this email today in regards to the ticket I had opened on this issue more than two months ago:
Thank you for e-mailing the Nokia Care Contact …

The folks at Sony sent me a Sony Ericsson W995A to review. This is the first time I have actually used a Sony Ericsson product, so this is as much a review of the specific handset as it is the experience of using Sony Ericsson products in general.

The phone came in a FedEx box and was clearly used in other reviews. It came with a USB cable, a power charger, an inactive T-Mobile SIM card, and a CD with their version of PC Suite and other documentation.

The phone did not come charged, so it would not power up out of the box. I figured the USB cable would work for charging the phone, but not so. Instead, if you want the phone to be charging AND hooked up to the computer at the same time, you have to daisy-chain the USB cable into the power cable, which has a convenient port on the back of the plug for this purpose. This is worse than having a separate plug for charging the phone!

The phone also did not come with any memory installed. Worse, it uses a proprietary Sony-only memory format. Not having any Sony Ericsson phones around, this means either suffering without a memory card or spending money on a 8GB Memory Stick Micro so I can review a phone I will be sending back in less than two weeks.

One other thing about the phone I received–it was a prototype unit. Why am I getting prototype units when the phone is supposedly shipping? Am I looking at production software? How much does the build quality differ from this prototype with the real production?

So we haven’t gotten into actually using the device yet, and there are already three strikes against the device–strikes Sony PR could have easily corrected by ensuring I got a production model, the phone was charged when I got it AND included some sort of memory card with the device. It really makes me appreciate the work that Andy Abramson’s team at Comunicano does with the Nokia blogger relations program, who truly sets the standard for how these kinds of programs should be run.

Meanwhile, I only tested a few specific areas of the phone: the camera, the media player, and the web browser. I go into some detail after the jump.

Here is some feedback I have sent to Apple regarding the latest issues related to Apple killing “Google Voice” type applications in the App Store and Apple’s statements that jailbreaking your …

I spent the afternoon in Starbucks going through my work inbox. It’s still got too many items in it, but it now has less than my personal Gmail. Now it’s time to turn my attention to …

Despite my previous objections with the way Apple controls the App Store, not to mention my general preference for buttons over a completely touch interface, I am throwing in the towel, putting down my credit card, and buying an …

It’s that time again where I sift through the debris in my inbox and pick five or so things to write briefly about. It’s kind of like Stefan Constantinescu’s series called Trimming in Public except I only write about …