The need for safer in-car communications is increasing proportionally with the number of accidents (and stupid laws!), and it’s always a good idea to use some kind of handsfree system to answer calls while driving. There are many alternatives for this including wired headsets, Bluetooth headsets, or car stereo systems, but their practicality is hampered by one limitation or the other. Wired headsets are limited by the cable running from the phone to your ear, and no one likes to wear the earphone for a long time. Bluetooth headsets too cause inconvenience after using for a long period. Car stereo systems fail on delivering the much needed privacy.

In order to overcome few of these issues, the Finnish communications company Iqua developed the Snake 2 Bluetooth Headrest Handsfree system. The Snake 2 attaches to the headrest in your car and improves on its predecessor, terms of design and aesthetics. Before we go any further with the review, here’s a little history to boot.

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Thought I would join the solidarity in support of Engadget Mobile by painting the town site magenta.

Here is the letter that started it all.

This blog isn’t as popular as Engadget or else I would have had to go through the trouble of dealing with these stupid lawyers for using magenta on the site. Thank God!

Care Center: Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Well all I can say is that my new N73 died in a NSU update. This was almost three weeks ago. It was a new phone, I bought it and immediately plugged it in for an update. Well, I went to a local NSC here in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

They said the phone has to be sent to the main NSC in Bucharest. I said to myself no problem. Then I found out that my phone was to return in maximum two weeks. I was a little sad, but I accepted of course. If this period was to be longer, I was informed I was to recieve a phone while my N73 is still not back. This happened one week ago. They gave me a Nokia 6610i. The local NSC had no idea where my phone was. The Internet check on their official website said that the phone was repaired after just one week and was to return to the local NSC. This is supposed to happen in aproximately 2-3 days.

Last Friday, I called the central HQ of the service company and they said everything seemed to be OK, but they noticed that the phone should have arrived by then, that they would check the situation and call me Monday.

Which they did. With many sorry words, yesterday I found out that they’ve lost my phone, actually the transport company lost my phone, and that I will get a new one by the end of the week. Should I feel happy or sad?

It seems I won’t be recieving all the accesories all again. It’s a bit odd what’s happening. The local NSC says I’ll be recieving just the phone.

But the problem is that I do not know how to see if the phone they will give me is brand new. I would have liked to recieve the whole package because that way I would’ve been sure that the phone was going to be brand new. I asked them about this, and they said they have no idea how the phone is to be sent.

I know all about the lifetimer, it’s physical use what I am afraid of. Also the battery is another concern of mine. How will I know it’s also brand new?

-geojoking

Care Center: Panjagutta, Hyderabad (India)

I’ve been a Nokia user right from the days of the mighty 5110, and since then I’ve used most of Nokia’s successful models. In the early days these phones are so simple and reliably built, so they rarely had any major complaints. As phones began to include new functionalities and started becoming computers, they grew complicated and very susceptible to both hardware and software damage. This is where the Nokia Care Centers come into the scene. I’ve heard more bad than good about these places in the past and I want to share my personal experience today.

I never had to visit one of these centers until last month when my brand new N95 8GB was bricked while updating the firmware using Nokia Software Updater. After the update, the display kept on blinking and the phone wouldn’t switch on. I took the phone to the Nokia Care Center on the 23rd of November, waited for twenty minutes to talk to a customer service rep, and told him I bricked my phone to which his response was like “Bricked? What?!”
The rep tried to switch on the phone and seeing the display, he entered the reported fault as “Power: Switches off, Display: Blank Display” in the service job sheet. I tried to explain him that the problem lies in the firmware and the phones needs a reflash, and he reacted “Reflash? What?!”

Finally, after a long discussion with this dumb rep and the manager (who seemed to be less dumb!), I understood that they don’t have a firmware copy in the Care Center! They’ve been selling the phone since late October, and they still didn’t have the software needed for repair. Wonderful! The manager promised me that he’ll get a copy and get the phone fixed in four days. I left the place with my own doubts.
Since then, I’ve been calling them every four days, and their answer every time is that it will take four more days. Freshly today, they promised me to deliver the phone by Friday evening. They don’t even let me talk to the technician or their manager.

On a side note, I want to write about another customer’s experience at this Nokia Care Center. He was arguing with one the manager about the replacement phone offered to him. He was offered a replacement for his faulty N72, but he soon figured out that the phone was not new and had been used for 325 hours! Apparently, Nokia just put a new casing on a used phone and offered it as a new phone.

-S V

I’ve been a Nokia user right from the days of the mighty 5110, and since then I’ve used most of Nokia’s successful models. In the early days these phones are so simple and reliably built, so they rarely had any major complaints. As phones began to include new functionalities and started becoming computers, they grew complicated and very susceptible to both hardware and software damage. This is where the Nokia Care Centers come into the scene. I’ve heard more bad than good about these places in the past and I after my recent experience, I decided to write about it.

I also felt may be other users might be interested to share their experiences, so am planning to run this series with your submissions. Mail your nightmares to sv@s6ty.com or use this form to submit your story. Do include the location of the care center you are talking about. Let’s hope Nokia will respond after reading few of our stories!

Check out the next article for my story.

A patent application on the USPTO site dug by Unwired View reveals a 8 Megapixel (possibly) NSeries slider phone which looks like a cross between the N93 and the N95.

The rotateable camera module on this weird phone looks exactly like the one on the N93 and the slider design is identical to the N95. A zoomed in look at the image reveals what looks like 8 Megapixel written on the lens housing (could be 6 too!).

In my opinion, this is the weirdest looking phone ever from Nokia. The camera on the top of the slider just doesn’t look good. Also, the display doesn’t look like touch enabled to me. I still strongly believe the next high-end S60 phone will come with a touch screen!

(Souce: USPTO via Engadget)

Flash Lite 3 Developer version has been available for download for about 48 hours now but it lacked the much rumored flv support. But the guys at CNPDA took up the task of creating a FLV player for S60 phones and have released the first version.

However, the player is far from perfect and has several limitations due to the FL3 implementation. You have to place your videos in a specific folder and rename them to make them work in the player.

I played two flv files in the FLVplayer and the playback is smooth for viewing on the phone screen. However there is a little lag sometimes.

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