While Nokia has typically included VoIP functions in many of its smart phones—much to the chagrin of carriers—it looks like the top handset maker may be changing its stance, and removing VoIP on some of its new N-series handsets.
Gigaom reported that the N78 is not VoIP compatible and when they asked Nokia why, the company replied:
“Nokia Nseries is committed VoIP services as part of its offering. That is why we have included SIP stack and improved the developer VoIP offering in S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2 by enhancing the VoIP APIs to improve the call quality…A Nokia VoIP client is not included with the Nokia N78 and the Nokia N96 and VoIP solutions based on this particular client such as Gizmo will not work. However, Forum Nokia will cooperate with third-party developers to support them in porting their applications from S60 3.0/3.1 releases to S60 3.2. One example is Fring, whose popular application will be offered via Nokia’s Download! service for the Nokia N96.”
The removal of VoIP brings into question Nokia’s new ‘openness’ platform, especially at a time when carriers are starting to explore the possibilities of fixed/mobile convergence, in services like T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home offering.
But before we condemn, we’ll wait and see how Nokia’s ‘commitment’ to VoIP services shakes out.
If this rumour is true then it’s incredibly surprising and disappointing - and will prevent my planned upgrade from a Nokia N95 8GB (with VoIP client, which I use a lot) to the Nokia N96.
Nokia’s commitment to openness and strength against the operators is also bought into question - does this mean that they are also going to close down all their other services (eg. music and video) and leave the operators to it?
This is possible. I think giving VoIP client in Nokia phones conflicts with its customers who have made 3rd party voip clients. They dont want to be competitors to their customers.
Willie Neale, that rationale holds little water. There are default browsers, mail clients, chatting apps, image galleries, navigation and mapping tools, task managers, music players, wifi scanners, etc. None of these is being removed.