Cingular Crippled the 6682 to Boost ARPU

I’ve been exploring and playing with my new Nokia 6682 for the past few days but just today got around to setting it up to talk to my IMAP mail server. After setting up the mailbox I went to do something that has become second nature to me: snap a photo and send it via email. I was shocked to find that email is missing as an option under the save menu:

Crippled 6682

Say what now? Where did it go? I checked with Jim and his 6680 can send via multimedia, email, and Bluetooth. My only options are multimedia, Postcard, and Bluetooth.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that Cingular has crippled the 6682 in order to increase its ARPU (average revenue per user) by forcing users to use the ever lucrative MMS. I should qualify this with the fact that yes indeed, I am able to send pictures via email, but it is about the opposite of easy:

  1. Snap picture.
  2. Hit application button.
  3. Navigate to Messaging.
  4. Click on Messaging.
  5. Click on New Message.
  6. Scroll down, select E-mail.
  7. Select Option softkey.
  8. Scroll down, select Insert -> Image.
  9. Find image.
  10. Select image.
  11. Continue as if you had just snapped a picture and selected via e-mail.

Russ doesn’t think that I should call the above scenario crippled. I think I’m fully justified. While yes, the phone retains the ability to send an image via e-mail. However Cingular have made it unneccesarily hard to do so. They’ve made MMS the only convenient method to send pictures, and MMSes bring in much more money than standard data.

This crippling of picture to e-mail reminds me a lot of Verizon’s castration of Bluetooth on the V710. Cingular had to go out of their way to remove the e-mail option and I can’t think of any reason for them to do so except to increase revenue.

If I wasn’t so mad at this point I’d be pretty exceited about the Postcard option on that mail. I’m not sure how much it costs (I’ll investigate once I’ve calmed down a bit) but it appears that this option allows you to send a snail mail postcard of your picture with a personalized message. That’s really really cool, but it doesn’t make me any less angry at Cingular.

28 Responses to “Cingular Crippled the 6682 to Boost ARPU”


  1. 1 Niels Sep 29th, 2005 at 8:44 pm

    can you click send via email from the image manager? If you’re really sick of it, you can always have it flashed at iUnlock.com….

  2. 2 Matt Croydon Sep 29th, 2005 at 8:51 pm

    Niels,

    I can’t email from the thumbnail view of Gallery or from Image Manager. I need to poke around the Imaging folder a bit more though, it looks like there are some goodies in there.

  3. 3 Niels Sep 29th, 2005 at 9:49 pm

    that stinks.. I’m glad I’ve got a ‘clean’ 6630..

  4. 4 MikeCrutchfield Sep 30th, 2005 at 5:40 am

    Are you REALLY surprised by this? The company didn’t earn the nick-name Jugular for being nice to its customers. Unfortunately, US cell-phone companies like to pimp slap you when you finally think you are getting something good.

  5. 5 Joshua Dickens Sep 30th, 2005 at 8:41 am

    The 6620 had the same limitation. One work around, which might be there on the 6682, is to hit the Green ‘Send’ button instead of the options soft key. This gives you all four options (MMS, email, bluetooth or infrared).

    I hope that works, cuz it would suck otherwise.

  6. 6 Matt Croydon Sep 30th, 2005 at 8:45 am

    Joshua:

    I didn’t know about the send button but it makes perfect sense. Unfortunately I still get the same three options. I’m almost done with a python-driven workaround which should do the trick.

  7. 7 Jeff Sep 30th, 2005 at 11:53 am

    SIM-free 6681* from Images only shows “Via multimedia” and “Via bluetooth” as options, either from the softkey, or from the “green” key when viewing an image. So it may be a “feature” of the 6681/6682 rather than Cingular’s actions.

    * Phone appears to be an Aisan model, supporting English, Indonesia, and Malaysia for languages.

  8. 8 Jeff Oct 1st, 2005 at 12:50 pm

    I was “fooled” as I use ProfiMail and never set up the native email client.

    My 6681 does, in fact, allow for “Options > Send > Via e-mail” from Images once an email account is configured.

  9. 9 Matt Croydon Oct 1st, 2005 at 1:46 pm

    Jeff,

    Thanks for the info. So far I think the easiest workaround is to snap the picture, head over to LifeBlog, find the photo, and send from there, which does include “e-mail” as an option.

    It’s not as quick as snap -> email, but it’s a lot better than than composing a new message.

  10. 10 Jonathan Oct 3rd, 2005 at 12:26 am

    Something you might find interesting. I also received my 6682 recently and started poking around about how to unlock it. While not finding a way to do it myself, I did call a local mobile company that I knew unlocked phones. They told me they just received the software to unlock this phone. They also told be they’d need the phone for two days since mine would be the first that they’d done. I think I’ll wait until they figure it out on someone else’s phone.

  11. 11 Jim Oct 3rd, 2005 at 12:47 pm

    My Cingular 6620 is the same way. I cannot send via email after taking a picture. However, through the Gallery I can send via email. Quite silly if you ask me.

  12. 12 Oynk Oct 20th, 2005 at 9:10 pm

    I ordered my 6682 unlocked from let’s talk hoping that I would not get the Cingular crippled model. Well, my phone showed up unbranded (nokia box, white phone, no Cingular logo), I was shocked to see the feature was crippled on this phone as well. I post multiple photos all the time from the gallery on my 6620 and now I have to add them one by one from the email app. It sucks! I have been posting this on the 6682 thread at howard forums.

    Just got mine yesterday. Still excited. I will do a full review this weekend.

  13. 13 Roman Oct 25th, 2005 at 3:21 pm

    Regarding the postcard feature, it is very cool. Just be careful when you go to test it out. It will send it wihtout ever telling you how much it’s going to cost ($1.99 USD).

  14. 14 hans Oct 27th, 2005 at 11:03 am

    so it appears you can send> email from image gallery on the 6680 once you set up an email account on the native email app.

    however i just tested it and this is not the case for the 6682.

  15. 15 KDFS Oct 31st, 2005 at 10:36 am

    Nokia are getting really MAD! Are they making phones for PEOPLE or for what… ?!

    These bastards have implemented very STUPID DRM protection scheme in Nokia 6681 smart phone(absolutely free from sim locks).It is f…ngly simple.As it is hard to detect what you will do, it is just easier to assume you’re criminal and pirate “by default”.When you trying to send .sis .jar .mid files … via bluetooth or email it says “unable to send protected objects”.Well.Maybe piracy sucks.BUT WHAT IF I’M TRYING TO SEND FREE AND EVEN GPL’ED PROGRAMS AND JAVA APPLETS?!?I will be denied too!!!While program’s license explicitly allows and welcomes distribution %E.So such unfair DRM uimplementation means anything but not YOUR rights(to be exact it looks like “you cannot have any rights, only corporation XXX can because they have lots moneys but you’re not”).

    I’m dunno know if Nokia heard about “guilty unless proven innocent” principle but if we’ll allow to these guys create laws they’ll definitely eliminate all crime stuff at once.Just by jailing everyone after he\she borned, “because he\she could kill someone in future, or at least, has possibilities to kill someone, at least in theory”.

  16. 16 Matt Dec 15th, 2005 at 6:04 pm

    Can’t blame Cingular on this one as the unbranded version has the same problem. Hopefully this will be resolved with the next FW update.

  17. 17 Casey Feb 1st, 2006 at 1:15 pm

    I’ve had my 6682 for 10 days and I’ve encountered a problem. I can’t receive MMS messages. When someone tries to send a pic to me, I simply get a link: www.cingular.com/inbox then an access code to view the pic. How do I get the phone setup to where the pic comes up automatically??

  18. 18 vega Mar 25th, 2006 at 3:50 pm

    aaaa

  19. 19 syleyeon Jun 5th, 2006 at 3:17 am

    No Rogers logo on nokia 6682. ROGERS My mail application pulls youre pop3 email from youre internet provider and you also nead a data plan with you cellular provider . snap SEND e-mail (mess,settings,other,e-mail) ,Also check youre settings with service provider for voice mail txt mms wap internet settings and support ,call cx servise *611.IF you have unlimited data plans you can use (agile messenger.sis) application witch you have icq,msn,aol,yahoo,.I can send pictures ,videos, music!/,it has push to talk send as message over msn yahoo iol icq ,to computers and other devices .I use opera browser a zip.sis,pdf.sis,spodradio.sis,googlemaps.jar,smartmovie.sis ,Skype is comming soon for symbian do not tell youre service provider:)hehe hem !but symbian phones do not have prossesors as powerfull as a pocket pc s .

  20. 20 J.W. Koebel Jul 25th, 2006 at 9:57 pm

    Postcard costs $1.99 direct-billed to your Cingular account. Unfortunately, there is no mention of this until the confirmation text message after you’ve placed the order.

    They arrive with your photo printed out in okay quality on the front (it is a cameraphone pic, after all) with 2/3 of the back taken up by the address information and an ad for cingular wireless, and 1/3 of the back for the message you attach to the picture.

    I don’t see myself using it very often, but it’s a really neat service, and I’m glad they included it just for novelty.

  21. 21 scarpe Apr 12th, 2007 at 5:30 am

    Ich besichtige deinen Aufstellungsort wieder bald fur sicheres!

  22. 22 Cengrikefrork Jan 21st, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    Hello!
    Nice site ;)
    Bye

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