I was having a browse around the excellent Nerd Vittles site tonight, and stumbled onto a disturbing conversation about the removal of the Nokia SIP client from S60 Third Edition Feature Pack 2 (as used on recent phones like the N78 and N96).
Nerd Vittles linked to this blog, which alludes to the possibility of mobile carriers putting pressure on Nokia to remove “free” calling capability (i.e. VoIP) from their phones. Within the comments on that blog post comes a link to a post on Nokia Conversations (I’ve never seen that site before, but it seems to simply be a bit of a PR site…).
“Charlie” from Nokia Conversations tries to spin the changes to Nokia’s SIP support. Firstly, in what seems to be almost believable at first he says “no, the SIP stack is still there, in fact it is actually better in FP2 than previous versions”. Apparently, the improvements meant that the integrated VoIP client had to be dropped because it wasn’t ready. This explanation loses credibility, however, when you see that Charlie’s blog post was made on 27 August 2008: nearly one year ago! And folks are still commenting on that thread, saying “where’s my VoIP client?”. I cannot believe that it would take Nokia a full year to update the VoIP client and package a firmware update for these phones–especially given that two other S60 3rd-ed FP2 phones released after the N78 and N96, namely the N79 and N85, apparently do have the VoIP client!
On 8 December 2008, Charlie posts a follow-up on Nokia Conversations. In it he says “well we made some folks unhappy, but we’ve made a fix”. He points to something called the “SIP VoIP Settings” application that was supposed to bring back what people were asking for. Problem is, it’s not a VoIP client at all: it’s simply a configuration tool allowing more detailed control over the configuration of a SIP profile.
In the final insult it appears that the new N97, Nokia’s current flagship also has no VoIP client. The N97 is based on S60 5th edition and not 3rd edition, but 5th is supposedly just 3rd updated for touch-screen anyway (not a significant change in technology).
Looking more closely at the specifications pages for these N-series phones, the tiny-tiny text that says “VoIP” is missing. It’s probably arguable therefore that Nokia never advertised the phones as having VoIP capability[1], so anyone who bought one without checking has created their own situation. However, Nokia, why is the “upgrade” to the N95 missing one of that phone’s most popular features?
At one point Nokia’s story changes… it seems that VoIP is a function that doesn’t fit the product direction of N-series and belongs in the E-series phones (indeed both the E75 and the soon-to-be-released E72, reportedly S60 3rd-ed FP2 phones, list VoIP capability). Why, then, do other S60 3rd-ed FP2 phones like the N79 and N85 have VoIP?
This whole “affair” seems to have been handled really poorly by Nokia. Firstly, claim a technical limitation. When that fails (because you discover that your users actually know something about tech), claim that your third-party providers have developed a solution. When it turns out that the third-party products are steamers that don’t even use the infrastructure your OS provides (something you didn’t know before either), claim that the product has been “realigned” and doesn’t service that market any more–while simultaneously marketing a product in the same series with the same technology that still has the disputed feature.
I must admit to being a lot less angry about this after researching this post than when I started it. I’m more angry about the survey I completed earlier today when I visited the Nokia website–I was very complimentary about . My shopping-slash-wish list just lost an item–not that I was seriously contemplating buying the N97, but it’s nice to have a technical reason not to buy it rather than the boring can’t-really-justify-it line. 🙂
[1] Of course it’s easy to make this statement based on what the product pages look like now…
Crossed Wires 
I was wondering if you were positive about the E52/55 and 72 having a SIP client ? I own an E60 which does include a SIP client and I remember from 4 years back long discussions of N95 owners who could see the VOIP protocol in their N95 but were just discovering that no client were there to use it (later versions, the N95 8gb I think, did include the client). I have been making long research through the internet hoping to make sure which phone does or does not have a SIP client, no manufacturer is clear about that. I was almost ready to buy a Samsung Omnia HD, … well it seems in fact that no, that's missing ! One free solution seems to be the fring client, but if you want to use an asterisk server or some sip account … and I saw numerous report of people having great difficulties to have fring really operational, whereas the integrated Nokia SIP client is really functional, allowing you to choose between gsm or sip call at any time.In any case, it seems that the combination of touch screen and sip client is a no go at this time … the most surprising thing is the fact that there are no sip client on Blackberries, I saw tenth of thread of people with large fleet of BB's screaming for being able to access their corporate PBX's … with no luck apparently !
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Pierre… I'm not sure about the E52 or E55 as I haven't looked closely at them — nor the E72. I have an N95 (not 8GB) that has the SIP client, but it may be that the client was added in a post-release software update.If you believe the Nokia “spin”, they removed the SIP client to allow third-party vendors the freedom to implement their own UI on the phone's SIP stack. Cisco's client is used as an example of this, but the Cisco client is using SCCP and not SIP so it's a pretty poor example!The trouble with Fring as a SIP client is that it “concentrates” all the network traffic through their servers. So when you have your own SIP server at home, the connection from your Fring will appear to be coming from outside your network therefore introducing problems with NAT and so on. Not to mention, possibly a lot of additional latency: I'm in AU and their servers are somewhere in the EU, so my voice takes a worldwide round-trip just to get from my phone to my Asterisk box! :-(It's becoming very difficult to know what handset is the way to go for integrated SIP support — Nokia had the lead, but it looks like they've blown it. I am waiting to see what function the N900 has when it finally arrives: my N810 has integrated SIP, but as we have seen with their Symbian phones there's no guarantee that Nokia will keep equivalent functionality in model replacements. Maemo, being Open Source, should allow a free SIP client to be ported if there's not one in the Nokia software, so it will be interesting to see how that develops…Vic
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Thanks for taking the time to answer. Well I guess that Nokia is removing that because of carrier's pressure: they don't like people not spending money on their network and instead using wifi and sip … and if Nokia want their handsets to be distributed by carriers … same for each and every other manufacturer out there :-(Anyway, I asked a few people to check about that, I hope to know soon if the SIP client is in the E72 or not, I'll let you know ! The one thing I am pretty sure about is the fact that symbian FP2 does include the SIP stack v3, hopefully there will be a client to use it !P.
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it has the voip client but to use it u need to download one add on application to do the settings and to use it………. just visit the nokia site and search sip voip settings its the name of the application you will find the add on application on the page just download it to your phone and start using and enjoying the internet calls
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it has the voip client but to use it u need to download one add on application to do the settings and to use it………. just visit the nokia site and search sip voip settings its the name of the application you will find the add on application on the page just download it to your phone and start using and enjoying the internet calls
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Hi there! I have seen reports of the “SIP VoIP Settings” app that say that it only provides a configuration capability for the SIP stack. Apparently it doesn't provide a way to actually use the SIP stack to make or receive calls. I did look at the information on Nokia's site and it didn't seem to say anything about being a call frontend, and I don't have one of the phones that's affected by this issue so I can't try it out…If you've used the SIP VoIP Settings app and it does provide the full VoIP call integration that I'm used to with the N95/E71/etc, that's a good thing!
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