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Nokia's New All-In-One Phone

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Apr 25, 2006 08:30 PM
from the new-toys dept.
Handhelds Communications Hardware
conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on Nokia's new phone, introduced today and hitting the shelves in July. The N93, costing $660, will supposedly fill all of your needs for electronic equipment on the go. From the article: 'Should anyone miss the point, Nokia's press extravaganza in a spiffed-up Berlin warehouse ended with a video in which the camera slowly panned across a tableau of dusty, discarded electronic equipment -- including digital cameras and a cobweb-covered iPod. The message: Nokia plans to make these products obsolete.'"
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  • Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:5, Funny)

    by AuMatar (183847) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:32PM (#15201790)
    As the greatest stupidity in consumer electronics.

    • Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wonderful. Another phone I can't use because every freaking version of it comes with a camera. Why are these companies not at least attempting to court the market of professionals who can't bring cameras into their place of business? Samsung does a decent job, as they at least offer flip-phones without cameras, but Nokias are uniformly awful with this.

      • Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You want the Nokia E60
        http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,81338,00.html [nokia.com]

        Has most of the features of the N-series phones, but no camera, and much smaller and lighter to boot.
        • Yep. I find it rather strange that people stare at specs of some multimedia-phones, and then complain that it has (shock and horror!) multimedia-features. Nokia has plenty of phones for business, like the e-series (which are meant specificly for business) or Communicators.

      • Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:5, Funny)

        by flyingsquid (813711) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @01:20AM (#15202779)
        Why are these companies not at least attempting to court the market of professionals who can't bring cameras into their place of business?

        How's stuff treating you at Abu Ghraib these days, anyhow?

        • Seriously though... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by spectrokid (660550) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @06:34AM (#15203585) Homepage
          I know Nokia's R&D gets paid by 16 year olds doing overtime at the local McDonnalds, but it keeps on amazing me how nobady develops the business marked. My phone can synch with Bluetooth and IR. Guess what? The average corporate desktop has neither. How about a intelligent USB craddle? When I put the phone in it, it not only recharges, but automatically forwards all calls to the desktop phone standing just beside it, and all text messages to my email inbox? How many mobile phone owners sit 8 hours a day at the same desk? Why does nobady cater for them?
        • He makes a valid point. If you'd ever tried to get a decent phone with no camera you'd know.

          I used to work in defense contracting and camera phones weren't permitted in a lot of the buildings. So I went shopping for a camera-less phone. The best phone I could find for a carrier with good service in my area was the LG VX3200.

          There's a bigger market for camera-less phones than you think, but phone makers today aren't releasing many phones without cameras.

          Your analogy of the VW bug doesn't fit either. He's

    • Target market:: Corporate droids (Score:5, Funny)

      by EmbeddedJanitor (597831) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @09:56PM (#15202121)
      The press release has enough buzzwords to give a corporate climber a bigger stiffy than Viagra. "Digital life", "global convergence"... Geez I better buy one so I'm corporately compliant!
    • The stupid part is that these phones can't interface with computers well. All I want is one of these fancy phones that will interface well with my Linux PC.

      These are the things I expect from a phone:
      - Appears as a USB mass storage device.
      - Data like contacts, messages, and so on should be stored as CSV files or some similar sort of text files. I want them editable in a text editor.
      - Photos and videos stored in /photos and /videos, respectively.
      - Photos and videos in common (and preferably patent-free) forma

  • Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crazyjeremy (857410) * on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:35PM (#15201800) Homepage Journal
    This is essentially a computer.

    It may or may not be as much of a computer as a Treo or a Pocket PC, but it has many trademarks of a computer. Pictures, music, videos, wifi and even voip services are possible. This in particular make phones in direct competition with their carriers. Why pay $150 a month for cell phone service when you can get a "Multimedia Enabled" voip capable phone with a $50 dataplan and talk all you want through Skype or other similar services?

    Bottom line? If we let carriers like Verizon continue to cripple these awesome phones, we lose money, ease of use and a significant portion of usability. But if we keep taking them to court and winning, we will have the ability to use all of the features the manufacturers intended and save money in the process.

    • There is no way to fix this in the US without pro-consumer laws. The market would sort it out, but the locks in place (including crippled phones, 2 year commitments, locked phones, etc.) prevent the market from being as effective as it should be.

      I'm not normally pro-reguilation, but we need a few simple laws to fix this. Let's start with this:

      1. You must publish phone prices just as large as the prices after discounts
      2. You may not charge more for service to a customer who didn't buy their phone with you
      3. Users must be able to take their phones to/from competitors with the same kind of network (from Sprint to Verizon, both CDMA)
      4. You may not disable features of a phone or cripple them (no file uploads, no locking bluetooth down, no 'you must e-mail your photos, can't download them from your phone bypassing our extra charge')
      5. You must clearly list which features of the phone would require extra service (i.e. most camera phone functionality on Sprint) and what it would cost. None of that "Extra charges may apply" bull at the end of a list of 40 features.

      I'd like to just outlaw contracts longer than 6 months and bundling phones with service, but the above will do as a start. Hell, a government mandated network standard (instead of GSM/CDMA/EDGE) could be an improvement, even if in the form of a mandate for the industry to pick their own standard with some regulatory backing to the mandate ($1,000,000 per day per company per metropolitan area if they go over the deadline to decide or the deadline to implement sounds good to me).

      • Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by plover (150551) * on Tuesday April 25 2006, @09:44PM (#15202071) Homepage Journal
        As much as I loathe the business of cell phones, and feel as if I have been "trapped" in one contract or another for several iterations of phones now, I think regulation is completely the wrong answer to fix the "problems" you mention.

        First, you enter any of these contracts completely by choice. If you don't want to sign up for a two-year commitment, buy your phone on the open market -- without their discount. It's an incentive, not an imperative.

        You are already allowed to bring your own phone to their network. You don't pay more for a non-provider-provided phone.

        If you want a phone that's portable between carriers, again, you're free to buy one on the open market. (AFAIK, not counting locked phones, GSM phones are more portable between carriers than CDMA phones. Analog is a few months from death, and I have no idea whatever became of TDMA or PCM.)

        If you want a phone that's not crippled by Verizon (the worst) or another carrier, buy one on the open market.

        Basically, the reason contracts are as bad as they are is that people are very attracted to the "free" phones, or the steeply discounted phones available from the cellular providers. That's the idea. But the free market is still out there. Quit whining about locked-down phones and insane contracts and spend the $200 extra for an unlocked phone. Or take their discount and STFU about it.

        What I'd rather see is sanity brought to the plans. Having to "guess" at how many minutes you'll use in a month is a pretty lame way to force us to make a purchase. But all of the "pay as you go" plans cost far more for anyone but a mime.

        • The only phone company where I live with GSM service requires a two-year contract, regardless of where you get your phone. Also they don't subsidize phones, except to give away the bottom-end model that they're trying to get rid of. Since they're the only GSM game in town, nobody else sells GSM phones, so you're pretty much SOL unless you want to order one online. Which I will do.. to replace the freebie I got. At least I can swap out the SIM card and there's nothing they can do about it.

        • If you don't want to sign up for a two-year commitment, buy your phone on the open market

          Where is this "open market" you speak of? Does it have a store in Fort Wayne, Indiana? If you mean online, what close substitute is there for inspecting a phone in person before I purchase it?

          You are already allowed to bring your own phone to their network.

          The carriers make it seem like the opposite. I know little about GSM; can you show me that this is true despite what the carriers say? How do I determine wh

        • TDMA is quite common (Score:4, Informative)

          by Reality Master 201 (578873) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @12:05AM (#15202602) Journal
          Both GSM and iDEN (the Nextel system) are actually TDMA systems.

          Time Division Multiple Access is a strategy for multiplexing radio access rather than a specific standard, though in the US the term TDMA is often used to refer to IS-136/D-AMPS. D-AMPS service is still provided in many parts of the country, by Cingular among others (my dad still has a D-AMPS phone).

          Code Division Multiple Access is sort of a standard, except that it's not. Originally, there was IS-95 which everyone (i.e., Sprint and Verizon) supports. Unfortunately, they've put incompatible protocols on top of that such that they're unable to use one another's networks anymore - you cannot roam between networks with CDMA. I used to work at a place that sold cellular data modules, and provisioning CDMA customers always required a flash of the module firmware to support the network (as well as to set the ESN for the module). Of course, all the data functionality is not part of the IS-95 spec, so maybe you could get away with an unflashed handset if you were only interested in making calls. You'd probably lose most of the bells and whistles, though.

          GSM is nice because it's made for easy portability of devices - you change SIMs and that's that. CDMA may be "better" from a technical perspective (it seems to attract fanboy zealots), but it suffers from real world implementation issues. Plus, you gotta pay the Qualcomm tax.

          • Re:TDMA is quite common (Score:4, Informative)

            by Magnus Pym (237274) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @07:26AM (#15203722)
            Lots of mistakes mixed in with some bits of truth in the parent.

            > Code Division Multiple Access is sort of a standard, except that it's not.

            What does this mean? All CDMA protocols are standardized by the 3gpp2/TIA bodies, and are ratified by the international standards bodies. CDMA is every bit a standard as GSM.

            > Unfortunately, they've put incompatible protocols on top of that such that they're unable to use one another's networks anymore

            Incorrect. A VZW user may be unable to use a Sprint network, but that is due to the lack of roaming agreements between VzW and Sprint. There is nothing about CDMA that makes it network specific. I have used my VzW CDMA phone in Australia and India, where the CDMA carriers have roaming agreements with Verizon.

            > Of course, all the data functionality is not part of the IS-95 spec,

            Completely wrong. All CDMA functionality is covered by standards. Otherwise, no carrier would be dumb enough to deploy it.

            > GSM is nice because it's made for easy portability of devices - you change SIMs and that's that.

            This is true. Not a limitation of CDMA, but a deliberate choice made by the CDMA operators. There is nothing inherent about CDMA that prevents the use of SIM cards, I believe Qualcomm is developing a SIM-type phone for the Chinese market.

            > CDMA may be "better" from a technical perspective (it seems to attract fanboy zealots), but it suffers from real world implementation issues.

            This is like saying that a Honda accord may be "better" than a Yugo. The only reason why CDMA exists is because it is so overwhelmingly superior to GSM that it won against the combined opposition of the biggest vendors/carriers in the world. In Europe, they actually passed laws to prevent local carriers from deploying CDMA, to protect their GSM-only vendors like Nokia, Ericcson, Siemens and Alcatel.

            > Plus, you gotta pay the Qualcomm tax.

            This is another half-truth that appears to have been accepted because it is repeated so often. It is certainly true that you have to pay Qualcomm royalties for using CDMA. What is also true that if you are building GSM phones/networks, you have to pay royalties to about a dozen different companies. The only difference is that a lot of the GSM patents have expired, and so the royalties are less than the CDMA royalties at present. But a lot of the CDMA patents are set to expire next year, so that might level the playing field a little.

            Magnus.
        • First, you enter any of these contracts completely by choice. If you don't want to sign up for a two-year commitment, buy your phone on the open market -- without their discount. It's an incentive, not an imperative.

          Actually, that's not necessarily true. Some markets simply don't offer no-commitment contracts.

          But the free market is still out there.

          You're making a common mistake: you assume that if there is more than one source and if people have a choice whether and which contract to enter, the market is a
      • Jeezz, you live in America, `the land of the free?' I live in Holland, and except for point one we have everything you list here. Amazing.
    • This device still doesn't match the HP Ipaq 6515. No built-in GPS, no MS Office, and it will probably be bigger than the Ipaq.
    • Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it.
       
      How did mobile phones in the USA become so messed up in the first place? The idea of not being able to buy any handset to slip my existing SIM card into is strange to me.

      I know that GSM networks haven't been big in the USA but surely they are an option by now?

  • iPod obsolete? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Microlith (54737) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:38PM (#15201809)
    So this thing will have 2-60GB of storage in it?

    And high resolution, non-shitty CCD+Lenses in the camera?

    And last as long or longer than both devices, on the same battery?

    Somehow I doubt it, and this is Nokia sticking their collective foot in their mouth again, just like they did with the ngage.

    • Re:iPod obsolete? (Score:5, Informative)

      by plover (150551) * on Tuesday April 25 2006, @10:09PM (#15202175) Homepage Journal
      Somehow, you should probably just go read the specs [nseries.com] for the phone rather than make uninformed generalizations.

      To answer your specific questions:

      50MB internal memory. The mini-SD memory card reader accepts cards up to 2GB.

      3.2 megapixel (2048 x 1536 pixels) camera, Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, 3x optical zoom, MPEG-4 VGA video capture of up to 30 fps.

      Power Management

      • Battery: Lithium Polymer battery BP-6M 1100mAh
      • Talk time: up to 3.7hrs (WCDMA)/up to 5.1hrs (GSM)*
      • Stand-by time: up to 10days (WCDMA)/up to 10days (GSM)*
      * Operation times may vary depending on radio access technology used, operator network configuration and usage.

  • Durability? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NoTheory (580275) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:43PM (#15201829)
    So has there been any serious discussion about the fact that the screen is held to the body of the phone by a single strut? My inclination is to say that it looks flimsy, and while i'd be interested in the functions of the phone, i'd be afraid to do things like cradle the phone.

  • Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Filiks (578065) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:45PM (#15201840)
    The problem with browsing songs on a cell phone is the lack of an iPod-like wheel to navigate with. Well you know how the iPod has tactile buttons under the scroll wheel? The cell phone solution to add twelve buttons instead of five like the ipod has. Put the buttons in a standard dial-pad orientation. Then replace the wheel shape with a rectangular touchpad. Print the image of the wheel and the numbers on top, and put a protective clear coating as the final layer. End result: A touchpad with cursor functionality if desired, standard dialing with the numbers in the right locations and tactile feedback, and iPod wheel navigation!

    For naysayers out there who might complain the touchpad can't be made accurately enough for a cursor, fine. Forget that part. But the iPod wheel and dial-pad could be created today. It's just taking Apple's tech to the next step.

  • try not to laugh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:45PM (#15201841)

    image of phone [engadget.com]

    one thing is for sure, Nokia are pretty consistant in making phones asthetically ugly as they can, still looks like a Motorall flip phone from the early 90's, its as if a good display, touchscreen , hi-res etc isnt important to them, unlike the massive surge of smart phones with hi-res screens, touchscreens to replace aging remote controls, handwriting recognition, etc etc

  • OK, get it over with (Score:5, Funny)

    by randyest (589159) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:52PM (#15201868) Homepage
    Cue the asshat that appears in every convergence thread to cry "I just want a phone to make calls and nothing else" in 5, 4, 3, . . .

    • Right here (Score:4, Insightful)

      by caitsith01 (606117) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @09:03PM (#15201922) Homepage Journal
      Seriously, have you tried finding a phone that is stylish, small, has good battery life, and yet doesn't cost an arm and a leg because all it does is voice/text?

      Yes, there are plenty of small-ish, plastic phones that do this. But they lack the elegance of, say, a Motorola V3 or a high end Nokia or Sony.

      I think there is certainly an untapped market for the following phone:
      - metal body
      - slimline and actually fashionable design (may I suggest sleek, matte-silver or black, no clear plastic or flourescent colours?)
      - integrated aerial
      - 4-6 day battery life
      - medium sized colour screen
      - adequate sized buttons for SMS
      - speakerphone feature
      - compatible with ordinary (wired) handsfree
      - robust and preferably semi-hardened against water and dust
      - FAST and bug free software
      - price reflecting the functionality and manufacture cost, not the desirability of the device

      Leave out bluetooth, photos, videos, IR, memory card functionality, internal hard disk or flash drive, huge colour screen and any other crap you might consider adding 'because it's cool' that would drive up the price.

      I and many others will buy this phone.
      • Yes, I have and I got a Motorola V3C. I guess you live somewhere very different from me (New England) or you haven't looked hard. The V3C is free after rebate at Verizon. Cingular too, I believe. It also plays music and video and has a 1.3MP camera and Bluetooth. Great phone. Nothing wrong with having all those features -- they don't seem to take up much space and you can save battery by disabling or not using them.

        Thanks to you and the other two of you for fulfilling my prophecy :)

      • Re:Right here (Score:3, Informative)

        by pnot (96038)
        Seriously, have you tried finding a phone that is stylish, small, has good battery life, and yet doesn't cost an arm and a leg because all it does is voice/text?

        Yes. It's called the Nokia 1100. OK, it doesn't *quite* meet all your specifications---the case is plastic, and the screen is monochrome. But it's robust and splash/dust/sand-proof, the buttons are big, the aerial is integrated, and the battery life is huge. Dirt cheap, and very reliable from what I've seen. If my ancient Nokia 3310 ever dies, this

  • I understand that in Europe coverage is better, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ScrewMaster (602015) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:52PM (#15201872)
    but here in U.S. I'd be happy to have a cellular telephone that can actually place an occasional PHONE CALL! Keep your camera/MP3player/PDA/whatever technology and just give me a trustworthy cellular network. Then we'll talk about extras.
      • I didn't say I didn't want other features, dimbulb. You made an assumption but that only makes an ass out of you. I said I'd like good service, because no matter what nifty features you add on to that cell phone it's primary function is still making calls because that's the part that costs money. Yes, I like gadgets as much as the next bytehead, but I can't justify an extra fifty or sixty bucks a month in juice money to the likes of Verizon for a PDA-wannabe cell phone that can't serve it's prime function w

  • Oooooo! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by quadra23 (786171) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:56PM (#15201888) Journal
    Purchasers will also get a free copy of Adobe (ADBE) Premier Elements 2.0 video editing software.

    If you buy this multimedia computer (AKA not a phone) will it be able to run this software (as you would assume since its bundled)? Alas, apparently this does not replace your other computer [adobe.com] that requires at least 4 GB of disk space. I suppose if someone figured out how to run DirectX 9 on this multimedia computer...

  • Obsoleting everything? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25 2006, @08:57PM (#15201893)
    ...ended with a video in which the camera slowly panned across a tableau...

    If they shot this with the actual phone, then maybe it will make all that other stuff obsolete.

  • N80 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by somethinghollow (530478) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @09:01PM (#15201912) Homepage Journal
    I've been waiting my ass off for the Nokia N80 [nseries.com], out of the same series of phones. It shares many of the same features. While lacking the Carl Zeiss lens, it gains wireless LAN (802.11g). Combine that with a keyboard accessory, the N80 could be very handy for remote on-the-go system administration (via whatever Series 60 SSH client exists) or blogging while on-the-go with the built-in 3MP camera. For the geeks, the N80 seems a bit cooler and isn't quite as crazy of a form factor as the N90 (though sliders might still be a little off-beat).

  • Its all about battery life (Score:5, Insightful)

    by owlman17 (871857) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @09:02PM (#15201921)
    Unless they somehow make a new battery that's dramatically better than the ones we have, people aren't really going to take these all-in-wonders seriously. I wanted to get a new phone last Christmas, that had an mp3 player and could play good games. Didn't want to have to carry so many gadgets in my pockets everytime I went out. So I got myself an SE Walkman phone. I won't do a review on that here, but to sum things up, the sound was ok, I could play games, make calls, etc. (Also had a camera and and FM radio btw.)

    In the end, I had to make up my mind each day what I was going to use it for since I had to recharge every so often. (Much more often than what I would have liked.) A phone? A camera? Or a player? Maybe a little of each?

    I ended up buying a small Creative flash player. A single battery lasted about 18 hours, could hold much more songs, etc. In practice, since I use it about 2 hours a day, I could go on a single charge for a week. (And no more calls or text messages interrupting my music or games.)

    Instead of shelling out more than half a grand for an ultra-phone, I think money's better spent buying a regular phone, plus a dedicated gadget. (Player, camera, etc.)

    (And on a slightly unrelated note, a lot of people still prefer regular calculators over the ones in their PCs.)
  • I don't see a photo of the new phone anywhere on the page.
  • ... Does it run Linux? </cliche>
  • My initial thought was "Oh great, another Japanese-style bloat-o-phone" -- but after looking at the specs, I see the N93 is actually even more bloated and heavy than that (a typical Japanese bloat-phone is around 115g, and already seems kind of clunky and awkard; the N93 is 180g!).

    I understand some people like all-in-phone phones because they only have to carry around one device ... but it seems rather silly when it reaches the point where you don't want to carry it around at all because your pockets aren't

  • Nice collection of images (Score:5, Funny)

    by mo (2873) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @09:47PM (#15202087)
    Here's some images of this thing.

    http://www.dexigner.com.nyud.net:8080/forum/index. php?showtopic=5892 [nyud.net]
    http://www.dexigner.com/forum/index.php?showtopic= 5892 [dexigner.com]

    Seems like they could have thrown in a keyboard for such a big phone. Seems more like a camcorder-phone than an all-in-one device.

  • My needs are simple (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rssrss (686344) on Tuesday April 25 2006, @11:22PM (#15202473)
    "The N93, costing $660, will supposedly fill all of your needs for electronic equipment on the go."

    Let's see:

    simple -- no
    cheap -- no
    long battery life -- no

    Sorry. Looks like it will fufill none of my needs.

  • How predictable. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vjouppi (621333) on Wednesday April 26 2006, @01:20AM (#15202782)
    I like the way the people on Slashdot always complain about new multitalented phones. Don't buy them if they don't suit your needs or work properly in your networks!

    Nokia and all other manufacturers have plenty of entry level, sub $100, "calls only" style phones in the product portfolio for you critical consumers to purchase.

    I like my 9500, soon to be replaced with an E70 (I want more CPU power and 3G). Yes, I use the camera daily (sending MMSes to friends/moblog).. I listen to MP3s and C-64 SIDs often from my 1GB MMC card. I use it for GPS navigation with TomTom mobile when I'm driving in an unknown town. I use PuTTY over GPRS or WLAN for remote terminals every day on it.

    They wouldn't make these if there weren't people willing to buy them.. And usually the will to buy comes from a need for some certain features.
    • The N93 has a second hinge for clamshell orientation instead of flip phone. Want to watch the video you just took, read e-mail or browse the internet on a landscape-oriented screen? You can with the N93. Want to take a picture or video with the camera up high above the crowd and be able to tilt the screen down and see what it sees? The N93 can. Want to use it as a camera and hold it in the more stable thin-edge-towards-you orientation while still seeing the screen? The N93 [nokia.com] can. Yeah I sound like Noki

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