Just looking for real answers, service, help,

[stickershock]

Hi,
every month or so, I fiund myself digging throught the forums for something I could find an answer by RTFM. I'm been in networking and on the net since '91 it was a much different place.

I've invested about 1.5 years and a good portion of my staff on developing mobile oriented software and hardware. I've placed all my bets on nokia. I've really just had to put off development of the client side applications for much of what I am doing and I have some real issues that I never got answers for.

http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/fo...duser&u=141947

check out my first posts here, sms based interaction for users. One of the things I do is use the users mobile as a registration confirmation tool by sending access codes to the systems I build via SMS.

I asked a year ago, how does one dial replicate a number that is like *111#

I mean if someone would have documented that somewhere, i'd not be asking a year later.


I hate to sit here and question the logic of nokia, how benificial could it be to allow people to ask relatively simple (or so it would seem) questions go unanswered, then spend millions (or so it would seem) trying to attract developers. I have been extremely reluctant, up to the last minute dedicating anyone and have essentially done almost everything outside the Nokia framework (right down to using the cell phone for a remote control to a multimedia center) .. In fact, if it wasn't gsm standard or Java, i'm not using it.

Most likely because I got this big hole in my logic that keeps me from knowing the balance of any given account or prevents me from automatically crediting a phone account.

I do not want to seem like a complainer. I am a genuine Nokia enthusiast. I have every communicator ever made. My entire company uses nokia, I buy every camera phone that has come out, personally I've spent probably 15,000 on phones just for myself in the last 10 years. All nokia.

So, the only reason I am writing this is to explain if there is no documentation, and a big part of your business and development ( I have been in development for 19 year now, work in 20 countries, multimillion turnover aun) you just don't feel right if the logic of it all isn't there.

Where is the logic of a forum, if the bulk of questions never get answered. The type of resources are about sharing answers, not sharing questions.

I begin to wonder about the logic of a company (even when I have always been impressed with that company) when the little details get ignored or the stop a few yards short of a goal.

just another example, How does a company sell a phone that costs $1000 or more, ( I have bought all of the $1000 phones) that is a form factor that has never exited before (All the camera phones, all the communicators) and not include a $10 carrying case.

I have 2 dead nokia communicators (a 9210 and the 9500) due to falls for the absence of a proper carrying case. And try to get parts, a $1000 phone that has chronic hinge problems that I can not get fixed, even in the capital of a country of 50,000,000 people at the nokia auth repair center.

I guess what I am suggesting is if you do it, do enough to not leave a bad impression.

I had the N93 for an entire year, carrying it around in my shirt pocket for the lack of a case, that I only found yesterday. Not to mention that every couple of months, I go to the nokia store to see if they can fix my communicator.

When a brand new 3 mpixel phones gets wet because it's in your coat pocket instead of one your belt, you got nothng nice to day about nokia.

When I do something, it's to the best and I cut all the irish penants and polish the paint before I send it out the door. I have a project that comes out after 1.5 years of development in a few days. It's 2:50 am and I am looking for answers myself...

I hope I never get so successful that I spoil my best customers impressions of me with my lack of attention to detail

I hope I never reach a level where my staff will need to be prodded to care about the guy out in the field.

I hope my salespeople will never take years of works and turn away clients for the lack of answering a few questions before they sink the big money on my works.

I'm going to do it, I am putting an a person full time on Carbide, that's 100% nokia. I think if I see him not able to be productive, I'll have to pull him. I can continue to focus on Java and not be limited to purely nokia devices. Do I want the added benefits?, I do, Have I done my homework?, I have., am I willing to bang my head against the wall to get results? probably not, If I feel a company has lost touch with it's user / customer / developer base will I throw hundreds of thousands of dollars in it equipment and in salaries that lock me into years of suffering? no way.

BTW, Anyway I can order a case for my nokia 9500? or will that question go unanswered. I'm not buying the new communicator, even if I like the red color. I want my old one back online.. shame to let a phone like that gather dust, don't you agree..

[cdavies]

Compared to other companies, I tend to view Nokia as remarkably enlightened when it comes to developer support. I just love Nokia's API partnering and support requests, sold through their e-store. I also really want an excuse to try RDA. What other company has a service like that, for free even? None of them, that's who. Rather than charging people a lot of money for these things as other companies do, you can get access to unpublished APIs and support for a couple of hundred euros. If your company has a multimillion dollar turnover, and you need a difficult question answered promptly, why not dig in to petty cash and raise a support query? Then when you get an answer, share it with everyone else on the wiki. It's no good just being a consumer of help.

The fact is, these forums are for third party developers to help each other. I suspect there isn't anyone inside Nokia whose job description includes answering forum posts. Even if there were, you'd be surprised at how little it would help. I'm ex-symbian myself, and now a company owner. I do answer some questions, but the questions I answer tend to be in my own limited field of expertise. Big software companies don't employ jacks of all trade. I also tend to filter the questions I answer on criteria like "Has this poster bothered to search google first?" and "Is this post full of annoying txt speak like 'plz'?"

Your most recent question fell victim to my filter. It was in my field of expertise, but it contained such laughable assertions that I decided not to answer on the principle "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything." Have you done your homework? Well no, not on that issue anyway.

[Nokia Ron]

I have no idea on if you can buy a case for your old 9500 but I imagine if you go on e-bay you can find something. (you can seem to find anything there) but it seems to me you are comparing apples and oranges here. Forum Nokia and developer suport is a different organization than that which produces the hardware.

We are here to help and we will with carbide and symbian development issues.

Ron

[symbianyucca]

Also about the question, if they are techically challenging, other developers might not be able to answer, and those that can might not be allowed (because their company has business application on that domain), also some of your questions appears to fall into the category that might not be supported by public SDK.

yucca

[stickershock]

Compared to other companies, I tend to view Nokia as remarkably enlightened when it comes to developer support. I just love Nokia's API partnering and support requests, sold through their e-store.

Well the APIs and the like are part of the reason I choose nokia as a platform.

I didn't see any kind of support requests anywhere. I'll chekc the Estore

I also really want an excuse to try RDA. What other company has a service like that, for free even? None of them, that's who. Rather than charging people a lot of money for these things as other companies do, you can get access to unpublished APIs and support for a couple of hundred euros. If your company has a multimillion dollar turnover, and you need a difficult question answered promptly, why not dig in to petty cash and raise a support query? Then when you get an answer, share it with everyone else on the wiki. It's no good just being a consumer of help.

I'll look for that, I am hardly a Consumer of Help, and have no issue paying for proper information, unfortunately I haven't seen it. I'm not one to ignore the manuals either.

The fact is, these forums are for third party developers to help each other. I suspect there isn't anyone inside Nokia whose job description includes answering forum posts.

When in fact, that may be a very good idea. It would seem that they do, as one of them answered this thread.

"Has this poster bothered to search google first?" and "Is this post full of annoying txt speak like 'plz'?"

Your most recent question fell victim to my filter. It was in my field of expertise, but it contained such laughable assertions that I decided not to answer on the principle "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything." Have you done your homework? Well no, not on that issue anyway.

That's rediculous, I am verbose in my expression, and to say I am failing to do my homework. I research day in and day out. the post that I refferred to *111# (dial) I looked for for weeks. probably 30 40 hours total.

If you can't say anything nice? If I didn't care for nokia, I wouldn't have posted what I consider to be key to any company. And I feel victim to the plz filter :-) !! Look, I've read your posts and yes you are out there answering the biting questions, all that stuff is pretty documented and require programming experience. My post wasn't about how nokia sucks, it was about not going the entire way doesn't count. make a forum have experts on it, but they don't really answer the stuff nobody does, sell a phone for a 1000 don't put a $10 case with it, set up a million dollar repair facility and don't stock it with a piece of extruded plastic that cost $3 to make.

Anyway, I'd thank you for all the posts you have made to help others. sorry I was such a wanker that you had to write soo much about untechnical things to silly old me. Thanks for the estore lead, If I can buy real answers from nokia I'll do that. no prob.

[stickershock]

I have no idea on if you can buy a case for your old 9500 but I imagine if you go on e-bay you can find something. (you can seem to find anything there) but it seems to me you are comparing apples and oranges here. Forum Nokia and developer suport is a different organization than that which produces the hardware.

We are here to help and we will with carbide and symbian development issues.

Ron

So, there is actually someone from nokia that does answer questions from the company.

The phone case, and most of the other things I post were examples, funny that the only time I got an answer regarding anything from the nokia forum expert it was about replacing my case and he tells me to go to Ebay. ..

Yeah, i don't really want to buy another phone and yeah, ebay is great. Sold grandma's teeth there, thanks for the hard answers.

Say, can't tell me how one dials via modem *111# now that would really help.. thanks , good luck.

[stickershock]

Also about the question, if they are techically challenging, other developers might not be able to answer, and those that can might not be allowed (because their company has business application on that domain), also some of your questions appears to fall into the category that might not be supported by public SDK.

yucca

good points, I wonder is people here consider only the API's I've done a lot of development for cell phones (1.5 year on this last project) and been simply a user of the OS and far as the soft and hardware we work on goes. from that stand point, my oldest question is really just a user's question.

My problem is probably that I look for a published answer for something that seems should be simple when I should just turn it over to my Russian and let them hammer and sickle it :-)

[stickershock]

Your most recent question fell victim to my filter. It was in my field of expertise, but it contained such laughable assertions that I decided not to answer on the principle "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything." Have you done your homework? Well no, not on that issue anyway.

Hi Again,
the link to the Nokia Eshop did help., gave me some answers that didn't come up in google searchs or the forum.

Thanks,

we are going to open source a project, you can check it here:

https://blogs.forum.nokia.com/author.html?id=107609

Good luck,
David