Are WAP phones any good?

Karla

I'm thinking about upgrading my phone to the Nokia 7110. Just want to know what the WAP services are like. As far as I can tell it's pretty much the same stuff you can get on a regular phone if you use e-merge. What I really want to know is, if I made a WAP site and put it on The Internet somewhere would I be able to see it on my 7110?

Thanks

========================
Oh and can you connect to any POP3 server with it? You'd love to see the looks I got from the salesmen when I asked that one

[This message has been edited by Karla (edited 25-08-2000).]

Yossarian

The Nokia 7110 is a piece of ****. Very unreliable and awkward to use. Wap in itself isnt much better, basically its all hype with no content.

Not all wap phones use the same version of wap and some are downright incompatible.
Stephen.

Pretence

WAP is a load of sh1te and totally useless. Phone companies are only using it as a way to maintain high phone sales and encourage people to invest in a newer phone.

Bard

I'm thinking about upgrading my phone to the Nokia 7110.

Don't do it!... Get a newer, more reliable (tri-band) phone like the new Motorolas.

Just want to know what the WAP services are like.

They're ALRIGHT... nothing really to shout about... i-Mode and other technologies in use in Japan will blow WAP away when they come over here though, simply for speed, usability and ... hey... colour

As far as I can tell it's pretty much the same stuff you can get on a regular phone if you use e-merge. What I really want to know is, if I made a WAP site and put it on The Internet somewhere would I be able to see it on my 7110?

Yes. You would. WML as a language is quite simple to write, but is less forgiving, rules-wise.

Oh and can you connect to any POP3 server with it? You'd love to see the looks I got from the salesmen when I asked that one

No. The phone itself doesnt have any specific email capabilities whatsoever. It's possible that you can check your mail, etc. through a WAP site after connecting to the net with digifone or whoever.

LegacyUser

WAP is a premature expansion on the phone market, its gonna fail miserably, unless it can be made more versatile.
It only shows specially designed webbies written in XML format ( I think ), this means that unless www.boards.ie is written in XML for WAP users, then you cant view it. So far only a small number of sites have it up and going, and even then , it's limited.
And the charges are outrageous, 10p a minute and the speed is 9Kbps or there abouts.

---

It's about a society in freefall....

elexes

wap is crap i have it on my phone but dont use it for reasons that i have allready stated in this message .

PhilipMarlowe

My bro and my nephew both got 7110s...both of them were sent back...neither of them bothered with the wap aspect but you couldnt hear them when on a call...which is pretty lame for a phone...guy in a shop strongly advised me against one, saying he was getting loads of them returned...and now I see why...

...and the degree of verisimilitude is not the same as the probability of truth...

m1ke

what I really want to be able to do is check my email over a phone ... don't care if it's WAP or whatever. Is this actually possible, checking email and that ? and If so how expensive or any other factors for / against phones with suck capabilites.

Bard

Originally posted by m1ke:
what I really want to be able to do is check my email over a phone ... don't care if it's WAP or whatever. Is this actually possible, checking email and that ?

like I said above... "No. The phone itself doesnt have any specific email capabilities whatsoever. It's possible that you can check your mail, etc. through a WAP site after connecting to the net with digifone or whoever."

and If so how expensive or any other factors for / against phones with suck capabilites.

the price of the call, basically. for example- on digifone, being connected to the net (which you HAVE to be to use email through a WAP interface) means dialing an 086 number and staying connected to it for the duration.

---

Bard
|home page

m1ke

that sounds ****. You can't like download it and read it at a later stage ... Does it not come down like text messages.

Bard

Originally posted by m1ke:
that sounds ****. You can't like download it and read it at a later stage ... Does it not come down like text messages.

It IS sh|te ... the 7110 for example only has a cache of about 40K and it seems to be almost totally random as regards what pages it will cache. WAP is a fad-... but there *is* seriously cool portable technology on the way...

---

Bard
|home page

Karla

Actually you can check your mail with a mobile now. If you're using an 087 phone go to www.e-merge.ie and sign up there. You'll get alerts when you get emails and then you can dial 1747 and get them read out to you by Stephen Hawking

Excelsior

and that nokia may look cool but it has the buggiest code in it. it collapses so often.

remember, in often the "t" is silent.

---

It is so lonely here in my indecipherable tower of speech impedimency

topgold

Golly guys. I've been using a Nokia 7110 with several others since Nov99. It survived Y2K, a bounce on the H'Penny Bridge, a drop under a bus and one splash of Guinness. It still works. When it goes wonky, I just peel the innards out with a small hex driver and it keeps tickin over. If it can't digest a page, I often have to reboot it by popping out its battery. No worries it's just teething pains just our of betaland.

I don't know if anyone else here ever tries to make WAP work on the 7110, but here's what I do every weekday:

(1) pull down mail from e-merge or www.dol.ie from dedicated accounts.

(2) retrieve mail headers from gpo.iol.ie and then get the mail if I want to wait for it.

(3) read my mail and browse the regular web by IrDA from the 7110 to my Palm V.

(4) read news as it breaks from ElectricNews.net

(5) read meal ingredients while buying messages.

I'm paying £285 each month for heavy wireless use. That's gouging me. Normal web browsing is too slow over the phone, but I get 28.8k when I use an Eircell HSCSD SIM in my Nokia Cardphone on my notebook. That device lets me see the complete web at 1997 landline access speeds.

This technology is new and emerging. The connectivity will get better by the end of 2000 when urban users will start to see around 40k over a WAP phone.

If you want 40k speed with colour, there are devices that can accommodate you--but you'll have to get HSCSD from Eircell or a GPRS provider.

i-mode? Not in Ireland. You won't need i-mode when you have the web the way you want it over GPRS or 3G. It's a matter of waiting for the speed to come to you and that's someting Eircell and Digifone are making happen.

regards
Bernie Goldbach http://www.topgold.com

[This message has been edited by topgold (edited 29-08-2000).]

TinCool

Stay away from WAP, it sucks. Besides them upgrading to a new version of WAP in the next few months which will pretty much make the current WAP phones defunct as they won't be able to utilise the new technology introduced in the next version of WAP. Besides that its something sad like 80p a minute, **** that.

Get a phone that's reliable, has a vibrate option etc etc. Can't go wrong with Motorla or Panasonics.

topgold

If you're in the market for a mobile phone, you're really going to limit yourself if you don't get WAP functionality on your new phone. BTW, anyone who uses WAP regularly knows it costs 10p a minute for WAP access, not 80p a minute.

If you use wireless access to the Internet, you can get online for 10p a minute too. It used to be 1p a minute until Eircom stopc o c ked 1891 from mobile phones. That's been discussed on boards.ie already.

Like HTML, WAP will improve in functionality with each version. Old WAP phones will show new WML code, but not always all the features. Good developers can plan around that, just like they plan web pages to degrade gracefully in HTML with each new browser.

It's easy to confuse yourself with things that lie just over the horizon. Faster wireless bandwidth likes over the horizon. The first wave of speed is here now--it's Eircell HSCSD and with it you can get 28.8k on your mobile. The next wave is GPRS and although that will scale to 115kbps or more, most techs using it now can't push it above 40kbps in centre city Dublin. You'll probably need a new phone that can handle GPRS. Most of the newer GPRS phones, including the Motorola and Ericsson mobiles commonly used in Dublin tests, also do WAP.

All new phones above the £100 price point normally include vibracall features. I have that on my Nokia 7110 and on my Motorola P7389.



[This message has been edited by topgold (edited 27-08-2000).]

Gaddo

Originally posted by Bard:
the price of the call, basically. for example- on digifone, being connected to the net (which you HAVE to be to use email through a WAP interface) means dialing an 086 number and staying connected to it for the duration.

No, you can (when typing your email) disconnect and type away offline. As the session is URL encoded, it remains in the 'send' link, timing out after 30 minutes. That should give you plenty of time to write your email and send it (you'll reconnect when you do).

Bard

Originally posted by ****:
No, you can (when typing your email) disconnect and type away offline. As the session is URL encoded, it remains in the 'send' link, timing out after 30 minutes. That should give you plenty of time to write your email and send it (you'll reconnect when you do).

Good point- hadn't thought of that... obviously

Anyway - the only time I'd find WAP useful is when I'm going home on the train, checking if there's any good shows (concerts, plays, movies, etc.) on tonight... but naturally the reception on the train is bloody awful and disconnections are bountiful... but that's to be expected I guess. I should really just check these things on http://entertainment.ie/ before I leave the office but I never seem to think of it... hence - ah! there's me WAP phone... let's try that (... the convenience, y'see)...

still ... roll on G3 ...

---

Lump

Well, I have WAP on my phone, its the slowest crappiest piece of poo ever


I havent really gone into it much. as its so slow.

John

MiCr0

don't bother with wap on gsm, wait until gprs/edge/(wb)cdma/utms

then it will be useful

ecksor

Originally posted by Lump:
Well, I have WAP on my phone, its the slowest crappiest piece of poo ever

I have the same phone as Lump (don't think that affects speed tho), and it can be pretty slow alright, but if you're looking for cinema listings, or curious about what's on TV that night or something similar, it's very handy. I'd advise people to try it, but don't expect it to be the web, and you might find it coming in handy. If not, you don't have to use it.

bugler

So we're agreed, WAP is great!

TinCool

If you want a Nokia, get the 8210, they rock

---