Notices

Hey there!

I'm a volunteer firefighter here in Helsinki, Finland.
And I have a huge problem with the phone (actually with every phone)
I get our Fige dept's alarms by SMS, so it's really important to notice possible SMS from the Dispatcher from the alarmcentral.
Problem is that if I have a very loud and sharp SMS-tone it is very annoying when a text for example with my friends.

So is it any possibilities that I could get a special tone for special people?

Not possible with the N900. At least not now. You work with the Fire department and you don't have a pager?

We don't use those anymore here in Finland.
Their kind of old...
SMS is the best way to inform eveybody.

Hi Kakke, you might be interested in this bug report:

https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5356

It has been MOVED to Brainstorm, here:

http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...ne_experience/

All things aside, SMS is probably the worst possible way to inform anyone in any case of emergency. SMSes are hitchhiking on the back of the carrier signal and have absolutely the lowest priority of any form of cellular communication (yes, staying on 3G and connected to a non-relayed IM is actually better than the SMS), and they are relayed routinely on high network loads. They even don't have guaranteed delivery.

Pagers (in their original form) are actually way better than the SMS for a quick message delivery.

That's frightening. I often see SMS delayed by an hour or more. When it's not a long delay, 5 minutes still happens often. I wouldn't want the Fire Services to be delayed so long

IMs have much more reliable delivery time - provided you're connected. But on the other hand, signal is routinely lost every time I go inside a shop or café. Neither IM or SMS provides reliable and timely delivery, unfortunately.

I agree that different tones would be very useful though.

You do get a different tone for IMs than for SMSs. While nice, I find that kind of annoying at the moment, because I choose between IM and SMS according to the person's connectivity, and use both channels for the same kind of conversations, so it's a bit mismatched that it uses a much subtler tone for IMs.

They've judged wrongly that IM == more casual. It depends how it's being used. For business conversations I use IM exclusively because with SMS the delay is too variable, and it might cost the other person.

Anyway, possible solution to your question: Use IM with all your friends, and SMS only from the fire dept + mother-in-law. Then you'll have a different tone for them. Or do it the other way around.

SMS is pretty reliable in Finland. My messages have not been dropped on the way... There has been only a few times when delivery has been delayed, like the tsunami in thailand back in -04. Though I agree some other ways could be used.

How can you be sure for such a critical issue that N900 (or any other phone) will not be out of battery?

How come every simple feature request thread ends with people explaining why you don't really want this feature?

Considering the N900 does not even have different ring tones for different contacts (despite being on Nokia phones for over 10 years) it may be asking alot for different sms tones for different contacts.