What phone reviews don’t tell me

As regular readers here will know, I use a Nokia E72 as my main phone; it has a reliable, robust operating system in Symbian S60, and does pretty much all the things that I need of it. What it doesn’t do so well is browse the web.

For that, I sometimes use an iPod touch, which while effective for some things, drives me to distraction at times; iOS5 has made it a little better, but I’m still not convinced that it would suit me as a way to operate a telephone.

So what do I want from a phone, and which platform is going to give it to me? The first part is easy to answer, and that’s what most of this post is about.

The second is trickier, and I’d love to hear from people with experience of different platforms about how they handle some of these things, or if they’re actually possible. I very much like the design of the new Nokia Lumia, but can Windows Phone do all the things I want? Can Meego on the N9? Or Android? Or should I just carry on as I am until one of the platforms has matured enough?

I’ve read plenty of reviews of the latest phones, like the N9, or the Lumia 800, and various Android devices, and I’m none the wiser.

Here’s what’s important to me on a phone:

Good call handling

In my view, S60 is excellent at this. My address book is divided into groups, and every person is on a group like ‘VIP’, ‘Family’, ‘Friends’, ‘Work’ and so on. Each group has its own ring tone, so I know when the phone starts making a noise what sort of call it is likely to be.

And Nokia’s ‘Profiles’ allows me to handle things intelligently; the phone simply won’t make a noise unless the caller is in one of the groups, so I don’t get pestered by wrong numbers. The ‘Private’ profile additionally alerts me only to calls from ‘Family’ and ‘VIP’, and makes no noise for texts.

So, I can give my number to anyone; and a weirdo I met in a bar can call whenever he likes, or my bank can text a statement at some ungodly hour, and it won’t wake me up. But the phone can stay on, and the people for whom I’d be prepared to get out of bed in the middle of the night can always reach me. That’s standard Nokia functionality for S60; it’s augmented by an app called ‘Handy Profiles’ which automatically switches the phone to the ‘Private’ profile at around 11pm, and back again at 9.30am.

This is functionality I really don’t want to lose if I switch to a different platform.

Good VoIP support

My phone system at home uses VoIP, with standards-based SIP. That’s long been built into Symbian too, and it means that when I’m working in someone’s office, my E72 connects back to the phone system over the net; people just have to ring my usual number, and I’ll get their call; and I can call out from the phone via the home number too. It also saves a fortune in roaming fees.

Best of all, it’s properly integrated with the main phone book, not a bodged add-on. I can select a number and just press ‘Net call’ to call that way if I want. The voicemail button asks me if I want the mobile voicemail or my home voicemail. It’s about as seamless as it can get. Perhaps not quite a deal breaker, but a standards-based SIP client that uses the main phonebook is very important to me.

Excellent email

For email, I don’t use the standard Nokia app, but instead use the wonderful Profimail from LonelyCatGames. This is a brilliant IMAP email client, which lets me have all three of my main email accounts on the phone; it lets me hide IMAP folders that I don’t often use, but still access them when I need to. I can have different signatures for every account, and filter rules too, if I need them.

The IMAP support in iOS doesn’t even come close, in my view; it’s particularly annoying having to scroll through a list of hundreds of folders to get to the one I want. And I don’t want to have to switch email away from my self-hosted IMAP server.

[XHEAD]Compromises

Needless to say, better browsing than I get on the E72 is probably the main reason for wanting to change phone; a larger screen will help, and so would touch – though having a real keyboard is also something I appreciate at the moment, for the speed and accuracy of composing messages. I’d like to know how well other platforms trade these things off.

I do have some apps like the Zipcar and Ocado app on my iPod touch, and they’re kinda nice to have – but given how often I use them, I’m not actually convinced that it’s essential. I have absolutely sod all interest in playing games, except maybe a bit of Mah Jong from time to time.

It’s nice to have apps like PuTTY, so that I can do emergency server tweaks from the phone, but I imagine pretty much any platform will let me do that sort of things.

It’s those three main things I mentioned above that are the most important to me – proper call handling and filtering, voip support, and great email. Those are how my E72 helps me keep in touch, and on top of things. And they’re also the elements that are all too often glossed over in reviews of phones, in favour of information about what media formats can be played, or how many apps there are to download, and so on.

So, if any readers can tell me if their favourite phone platforms can do the things my E72 does, please let me know.

Nokia E72 step by step VoIP and VPN setup for 3CX

I’ve just had a clear out of unnecessary crud from my mobile phone, and took the opportunity to set everything up from scratch, so you can see exactly how easy it is to get something like a Nokia E72 (or pretty much anything with S60 v3 Feature Pack 2) working as an extension for an IP phone system.

Don't be put off by the 'advanced' tag - setting up VoIP on Symbian is easy

First, you’ll need Nokia’s SIP VoIP Settings app. Download and install this onto the phone, then from the menu choose ‘Ctrl. Panel’ and ‘Net Settings’. You’ll see a new ‘Advanced VoIP settings’ option here. Select that, and on the next screen pick ‘Create new service’ and when the pop-up appears, choose ‘Create new SIP profile.’

All you need to enter is your SIP ID and password

Now, you’re asked for the username – if this is extension 107 and the 3CX (or other VoIP) server is sip.mycompany.com, you type in 107@sip.mycompany.com. You’ll then be asked for the password, and then if you want to search for wireless networks.

It’s a good idea if you’ve saved the wireless network in your phone before starting VoIP setup, so you won’t have to enter the password here. Once the connection to the network has been established, you’ll see a screen with the message ‘Activate service’, and selecting that may connect you to the VoIP service.

In the case of 3CX, it probably won’t – there’s one more setting you need to change. So, go back to the Net Settings tool, select Advanced VoIP settings again, SIP settings, and then the name of your sip server, eg sip.mycompany.com. Scroll down to ‘Proxy server’, select it, and on the next screen, enter the name of the 3CX server in the ‘Proxy server address’ box.

Set up your wifi connections first - it's easier

Now you’re done. You can sign on to the phone system in two ways; first, open Contacts, press left on the nav pad to get to the menu at the top of the screen, and select your SIP server there, then select ‘Activate service.’ You can sign out in a similar way.

Activate VoIP accounts via the Contacts app, or just by dialling

Alternatively, just enter a number on the phone, and the right hand soft key will be labelled ‘Net call.’ Press that, and you’ll be asked if you want to connect to the internet telephony service; choose Yes to sign on and make the call.

Out and about

So far, so good, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, connecting through firewalls can be tricky where VoIP is concerned, and using a VPN can make life simpler.

I’m using Telexy’s SymNC (which is a bundle of tools that includes SymVPN, which I mentioned the last time I talked about this). On the 3CX system, create a network connection for incoming connections, and specify a user name and password for it – you use the New Connection wizard in the Windoows Network Connections control panel, chose the advanced option, and ‘Accept incoming connections.’ I reserved a pair of IP addresses for the connection, one for each end. If you have lots of remote users, you’ll need more.

SymNC includes Telexy's SymVPN app

Now, start SymNC on the phone, scroll down to ‘Settings’ and click OK. On the next screen, select ‘PPTP VPN’ – if you’ve just got SymVPN rather than the whole suite, this is the same as launching SymVPN.

The screen that appears is blank except for an ‘up’ folder. Press Options and choose Add new, then enter a name. This will be a Symbian network destination, like the access points for your mobile phone network; a name like HomeLan probably won’t clash.

After the name, select the access point to use, which will be your phone company’s mobile data service, and for ‘Host’ enter the name of the 3CX system (or the other system you set up to listen for incoming connections).

Select your phone company's access point, then enter your VPN host name

Below Host is the account option; this takes you to a new screen, where you choose ‘Add new’ once again, and enter the user name and password you created on the Windows server. Click Done to return to the previous screen, and Done again to return to the main VPN screen.

Now, select the entry you just created, click OK and select Verify. After a short pause, you should see a confirmation screen telling you the assigned IP address, DNS server and other information for your network. If this is fine, then VPN should work.

There’s one last thing to do. Go to the ‘Ctrl. Panel’ on the phone, select Settings, Connection, then Destinations. There will be an ‘Uncategorised’ option at the bottom of the list. Open this, and you’ll see the ‘HomeLan’ access point you created for the VPN. Use the Organise option to move it into the Destination for your VoIP service, which will be called sip.mycompany.com. It will be added to the bottom of the list there, and automatically used when the wireless network is unavailable.

Move the new access point to the one named for your sip server, and you're done

Try this out by either switching off the wireless network, or going outside the range, and dialling a number, then pressing ‘Net call.’ The first time, you may be asked if you want to allow the access point ‘HomeLan’ to be used automatically in future. Choose Yes, and after a short pause while the VPN is setup, you should be connected to your phone system.

If you have issues with caller ID, I covered some of those earlier.