Nokia 6230 and IrMC
Recently I got the Nokia 6230 and boy did I make the wrong choice. I had my shortlist down to two GSM phones: the Nokia 6230 and the Sony Ericsson K700i. The reason I chose the Nokia was that I appreciated the MMC (MultiMedia Card) capability that came with it. Or better, the 1GB card that I will be sticking in it soon so I can listen to some MP3’s on the tropical beach I will be visiting in a month or two. I have an “old” Siemens SL45 which came with a 32MB MMC card and I used it a lot.
For my business purposes the MMC capability of the Nokia definitely scored over the SE K700i. But when you talk about a business phone there is another thing that is very important: Connectivity. And here the trouble starts….
If you compare the “Connectivity” specifications of both phones on their respective websites then you will see that they are basically on par.
The Nokia 6230 Connectivity:
- Pop-Portâ„¢ interface
- Connect wirelessly to a compatible phone or to a compatible PC
- Connect to a compatible PC with Nokia Connectivity Cable DKU-2
Infrared - Bluetooth wireless technology
- Send and receive images, video clips, audio files, and graphics
- Install applications with Nokia PC Suite for the Nokia 6230 phone
- Browsing XHTML (WAP 2.0) over TCP/IP stack
- JPEG/PNG support in browser
- Full OMA DRM for content protection
- SyncML
The Sony Ericsson K700i Connectivity:
- Sync ML
- Infrared port
- GPRS
- High Speed Data
- USB support
- RS232 cable support
- Synchronization Apple®
- Synchronization PC
- Bluetoothâ„¢ wireless technology
But what is not obvious about the Nokia specs is that the 6230 does not support IrMC. IrMC stands for Infrared Mobile Communications (check out the Infrared Data Association website for more info). What it does is allow you to sync your phone with other phones, applications on various Operating Systems, PDA’s etc. using the IrDA MC protocol even though you might be using a Bluetooth link to the other device.
You may ask yourself what the big deal is since Nokia makes their Nokia Suite available at no charge and you can use that to sync your Outlook with your phone. And you have a perfectly valid point unless you are not using Microsoft Windows and Outlook. And the Nokia Suite only runs on Microsoft Windows.
I am one of those few people who have not been hacked, infected with virii and spammed to death simply because I have not used any Microsoft product on my PC since 1995. My PC has been humming fine with Slackware and Red Hat Linux in the early days and Fedora Core later on. So I do not have Windows but use Fedora Core with X. I do not have Outlook but use Evolution and I do not have Office but use OpenOffice.org.
How did I find out the Nokia 6230 lacked IrMC? If you use Linux and want to sync your phone details with an application like the popular Evolution Groupware client you use MultiSync. And MultiSync reported that it could not sync my Nokia 6230 with Evolution because my phone does not support IrMC.
When I asked a Red Hat guy if he could sync his SE K700i with Evolution using MultiSync his answer was unequivocally yes. Off course the next thing he did was perform the “told you so” song because he had suggested I get the SE K700i. I wish I had listened to him.
So now I am stuck with this Nokia 6230 that is a perfectly fine business phone except for this major fact. I even emailed Nokia via the Club Nokia contact form asking them about it and off course never heard anything back from them. Guess they already made their money on me…
If anyone from Nokia is reading this: your 6230 business phone lacks IrMC, a serious piece of functionality that will prevent users on non-Microsoft platforms from syncing your 6230 to Groupware clients such as Evolution. How about fixing this? I’ll be happy to test new firmware with IrMC support.