The E71 is back as the king of phones

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..well it is in my view. Having had an E71 from WOM ages ago, I was seduced by the keyboard and the screen, but the camera was a little flaky. I purchased one back in September of last year and enjoyed using it, but the poor camera ruined the experience for me. Having two kids, the camera is an important element of the phone for me, so the E71 found itself on the shelf, replaced by an N95 8GB.

@Ratkat not a great difference, lighting different, you can see an improvement http://bit.ly/NSmvO was old this is new http://bit.ly/UFGg

However, as you may have read there’s been a new firmware release and it’s fixed the camera. Check out the photo’s in the above tweet and you’ll see the difference. The E71 has pretty much everything as a device, granted the keyboard on the E63 is better, but fixing the camera and losing the purple tint has made the device much more complete.

So for me the E71 is back as the king of phones, the N95 8GB has found itself confined to my gadget basket along with the N70, SVP C600 and so on.

Google’s Latitude

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been testing the new Google Latitude application, and have found it to be a useful tool. It allows users to locate “friends” – other contacts- and display these locations on their mobile phone via Google Maps. Latitude also allows the user to quickly get directions, and to search for nearby services.

Google has invested heavily in maps and location services, and in my view is trying to become the go-to place to find (and get directions to) just about anything. Moving this functionality to mobile devices will allow Google to generate revenue by providing “sponsored links”, or paid-for adverts, in response to your location search. For example if I’m wandering around Covent Garden, London and I fancy a pizza, entering “pizza” into the Google maps application on my mobile will generate a list of nearby pizzerias. The ones at the top of the list will be sponsored links, as they are on the standard Google results page.

Providing search results and subsequently directions to shops and restaurants has to be a marketer’s dream. Most adverts are passive- you see the advert on your PC and you probably aren’t close to the shop or in this case pizzeria, or even thinking of pizza. However, when you’re mobile and hungry that advert is much more likely to make you turn up and buy the product, especially if you’re also given directions.

Location based services also work the other way round. By knowing your location, advertisers can target specific products towards you- for example, if you’re walking down the high street at approximately lunch time, marketers could post an advert for a local restaurant on the webpage you’re viewing, even if you’re not directly searching for food outlets.

A recent application for Google’s Android platform of mobile devices (e.g. Google G1) allows users to scan a barcode of a product- for instance an LCD TV -and the application will provide the price of the same LCD TV at the major on-line retailers. That’s great, but it becomes much more powerful when you add location into the mix- not only could the application tell you where to buy the TV and its price, it can then direct you to nearby stores.

As location-based applications become more commonplace, services can be adapted to utilise them. One example could be to arrange taxi pick-ups- I could call for a taxi and then just carrying on walking or shopping. Using a location service, the taxi driver could find me and let me know when he (or she) is ready to collect me- I’d no longer need to wait in one place for the taxi to arrive.

Google Latitude isn’t the first location aware service, others include FireEagle (Yahoo), Brightkite and Plazes (owned by Nokia). As the Market wakes up to LBS I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Also posted on Orange Business Live