Antony’s Mobile Blog

What is Zlango?

Zlango is a revolutionary, simple and practical language. It’s made up of over 200 icons divided into intuitive and memorable categories. Words, concepts or feelings can be expressed by the different icons.

The idea is create message on your mobile using icon-based language. It is really cool! Here is an example of a message that I wrote using Zlango language.

Zlango is a Java application that runs on your phone. The service is currently available in a few countries only, such as Israel and Poland. I would expect more and more countries will be supported very soon. They have just received $12 million funding from Benchmark Capital and Accel.

Although Zlango is not available for most of us yet, you can try to send email using Zlango language already. Just visit their web site and experience it yourself.

@Zlango team: Keep the good work! I would be very happy to be a beta tester Zlango mobile.

As you may notice that I am normally discussing about Symbian OS phones. This time, I am writing something different, i.e. Sony Ericsson Walkman series. Why? To be honest, Sony Ericsson’s marketing team has kindly sent me a brand new Sony Ericsson W810i.

Let’s start…. I am sure that all of you are familiar with Walkman brand. Walkman is a portable audio players manufactured by Sony. It has a very long history, started in 1979 with cassette-based player. A few years later, Sony released several other product lines, such as CD Walkman and MP3 player.

I don’t have the latest figure of Walkman sales. I believe more than 350 million Walkman devices have been sold since 1979. Sony had been very success with their Walkman products until Apple came to the market with iPod. In the past years, they have lost much of the audio player market share to Apple and other companies, such as Creative.

Sony has tried gaining back their market share by expanding Walkman brand to mobile phones with Sony Ericsson Walkman. As you know, mobile phone market is very hot these days (almost 1 billion mobile phones are sold last year). How is Sony doing with their Walkman phones? They claim more than 20 million Walkman phones have been sold so far.

Anyway, let’s go the most interesting part: Sony Ericsson Walkman product lines. For your information, every Walkman phones have “W” prefix at the beginning of model number, such as W810i. There are currently 14 models of Walkman phones. Two of them were announced three days ago, i.e. W880/W888 and W610. Here is the list of Walkman phones.

Low-end phones

• Sony Ericsson W200i, W200a, W200c
• Sony Ericsson W300i, W300c

Middle-class phones

• Sony Ericsson W550i, W550c
• Sony Ericsson W600i, W600c
• Sony Ericsson W610i, W618c
• Sony Ericsson W700i, W700c
• Sony Ericsson W800i, W800c
• Sony Ericsson W810i, W810c

High-end phones

• Sony Ericsson W830i, W830c
• Sony Ericsson W850i
• Sony Ericsson W880i, W888c
• Sony Ericsson W900i, W900c
• Sony Ericsson W950i, W950c

Before yesterday, I didn’t believe that voice call via VoIP using mobile phones will be usable (at least) until next year. The reason is because data plan for 3G is still too expensive. Worse, I even don’t have 3G account because my operator does not support it yet…. Another reason is because not so many mobile phones support WiFi yet.However, yesterday I changed my mind. There is a new application from Richmond, British Columbia (the place where I live), called EQO. It allows us to make voice call via VoIP but with a very cheap price. You don’t need 3G network or GPRS network. You even don’t need WiFi phone. What do we need then?

• Mobile phone with GPRS connection (all S60 phones should be okay). Don’t be afraid about GPRS, we will NOT use it to make call via VoIP (I know GPRS is still too expensive for some people). GPRS will be used for something else…
• Skype application on your PC with SkypeOut account. SkypeOut account allows you to make voice call from your PC to any phone numbers. SkypeOut is not free, but the price is quite reasonable.
• EQO agent on your PC and EQO application on your mobile phone. Download both of them from EQO web site. They are free (at least still free until I write this blog).

So, how can we make a voice call using EQO?

• Run Skype and EQO agent on your PC.
• Run EQO application on your phone.
• Dial your friend’s number using EQO from your phone.
• Wait for a couple of seconds…. and viola…. you get a phone call.
• If you pick up the call, you should be connected to your friend (note that your friend has to pick up your call too).

What is the trick here? EQO basically uses conference call feature of Skype. It makes a conference call between you and your friend via SkypeOut. Got it? I will explain in more detail. When you initiate a phone call from your phone, EQO agent on your PC will initiate conference call via Skype. Skype will then call your number and your friend’s number. If both of you pick up the calls, you can start talking to your friend. As simple as that. It looks like you talk directly to your friend via phone line, but in fact you have Skype in the middle.

It’s a smart idea, isn’t it? Enjoy your cheap VoIP call….

Update (26-Mar-06): Afer using EQO for more than 1 week, I feel that the product is still buggy. My Nokia 6680 sometimes reboots when running EQO. I also notice that the GPRS connection sometimes is still alive although I have exit EQO. Well, this is still a beta product anyway. Hope they will fix it in the final version.