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Handhelds Hardware

Nokia 6650, Super 3G Phone 184

Posted by Hemos from the post-away dept.
Ch_Omega writes "Nokia has announced the 6650, which in short, is the first phone ever to meet the 3G-standard! It combines GSM and WCDMA into a single handset, then throws in a VGA still camera and video camera with sound. More info on Infosync and and Nokia forums!"
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Nokia 6650, Super 3G Phone More

Nokia 6650, Super 3G Phone

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  • will it take off? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Boone^ ( 151057 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:05PM (#4367950)
    3G has been hit the hardest when the economy went south... how will 3G gain a foothold in the land of disposable cell phones?
    • 3G isnt only phones, its mobile devices. Just think of some people using it. Police, fire departments, stores, warehouses, schools, business (vpn), construction, entertainment, etc..

      People are not supporting old 2G technology, the future is 3G, there is no turning back for the phone companies. In fact most are finished rolling out thier base 3G network, only upgrades are next.

      Try to buy a 2G phone/modem, not alot of choices are there...
      • Hmm spend $60/month for spotty access to slow, unreliable data networks? No thanks [wired.com].
        • A dirty little secret about 802.11b is that it can cover more than 20 kilometers with suitably directional antennas.

          Good for stationary needs, and telcos are already starting WIFI in some locations. But 3G is better suited for mobile needs. (Plus its also VOICE)

          WIFI is more like DSL, as 3G is more GPRS/PDA/Voice/mobile/911 related.
        • Not all of us live in the USA, you know. Some of us live in the rest of the world and do know how to build out reliable, scalable, interoperable wireless networks.
      • What do you mean people aren't supporting 2G technology? Walk into any cellular phone store today and tell me what technologies the phones they are selling are using. The answer? CDMA, TDMA, and GSM. These are the "2G" digital technologies, and these are what is in use today. Add in a few extras like GPRS and call it "2.5G", but we aren't using 3G phones yet.

        As far as there being "not a lot of choices", I disagree. Pretty much every phone you see on a web site that you can purchase today would qualify as a 2G or 2.5G phone product.

        With regards to 3G infrastructure support... Not a whole heck of a lot of WCDMA / UMTS infrastructure support in the world, although I hear UMTS is up and running on the Isle of Mann. Service providers are still trying to figure out if users are willing to pay more for higher bandwidth and for new types of services. If people just want to use voice, 3G is a waste of time. But if folks are willing to pay by the byte for (relatively) high speed data access, then the technology may have some payback after several years.
      • Sorry. Stupid konq scroll wheel bug. Posting to remove the flamebait mod I just erroneously gave you

    • While Telco's aren't super stocks anymore, they are still moving on, most of the rest of the planet has suffered less in the last year because they didn't have as big a bubble that burst and haven't faced enough corruption.

      GSM and 2G exploded in Europe and Asia well before it took off in the US.

      This won't fail because the US doesn't do it.

  • Great! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SexyKellyOsbourne ( 606860 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:05PM (#4367951) Journal
    Finally, the beginning of the end for IPV4!

    • Re:Great! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Angry White Guy ( 521337 ) <CaptainBurly[AT]goodbadmovies.com> on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:07PM (#4367971)
      Then we can work on running out of ipV6 space. Each one of my socks can have an ip address! Where's my blue shirt? I'll just ping it!

      • Re:Great! (Score:3, Informative)

        by joib ( 70841 )
        I'd say you have to get an awful lots of socks to exhaust the 128-bit address space in IPv6 :)
        It works out to something like 5e28 addresses per human being.
        • Yeah, but Walmart sells socks for $1.00 per pair. At that price it's cheaper for me to buy new ones every week rather than launder them.
          so that's 25e27 pairs of socks before I run out, and that doesn't take skivvies into account!
          • I don't know where you do your laundry, but at the laundromat I go to I pay only $.75 for a washer-load of socks (I would say a minimum of 40 pairs of socks would fit in there) and another $.75 to dry them all.

            If you're paying $40 (plus tax) to have a load of socks done, you have some serious expendable income...not to mention an incredible talent for finding over-priced laundering facilities.
        • Considering how many socks are lost each year, we may need more IP space then.

      • Re:Great! (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Then we can work on running out of ipV6 space. Each one of my socks can have an ip address! Where's my blue shirt? I'll just ping it!

        That will only tell you whether your sock has been destroyed. What you need to do is traceroute your sock.

        Then, nmap it, and find an exploit to get root@sock. Then install a sniffer to pick up nasty sock smell.

      • Re:Great! (Score:3, Funny)

        by SirSlud ( 67381 )
        > Where's my blue shirt? I'll just ping it!

        ping: cannot ping blueshirt.myhouse.pvt: destination shirt unbleachable
      • Then we can work on running out of ipV6 space. Each one of my socks can have an ip address! Where's my blue shirt? I'll just ping it!

        You won't be able to find your way to it though unless you do traceroute...


        Mechanik
    • Finally, the beginning of the end for IPV4!

      Nope, Most use NAT'ed Ips.

  • Awesome! Finally, a 3G phone...wait a second... (Score:5, Funny)

    by omarKhayyam ( 544074 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:07PM (#4367969)
    I live in the US. Crap.

    • Re:Awesome! Finally, a 3G phone...wait a second... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Cyn ( 50070 ) <cyn AT cyn DOT org> on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:21PM (#4368074) Homepage
      It's okay, if you look at
      this [nokia.com]
      you'll notice you really don't want to be anywhere near this phone. Apparently it's "connect anywhere / to anything" ability has rather a microwave-oven effect on the people beyond the lens of its camera.

    • Don't sweat it. (Score:4, Funny)

      by theonomist ( 442009 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:26PM (#4368112) Homepage

      All the 3G in the world won't change the fact that 99.9% of cell-phone conversations are moronic anyway:

      A: Where are you?

      B: I'm on th' terlet, huh huh! Where're you?

      A: HOLY CRAP I'M ON THE TERLET TOO! What'cha doin', "number one"?

      B: Nope, "number two"! Plop, plop!

      A: HUH HUH HUH!

      B: I'm wipin' my ass now! I'm wipin', I'm wipin'! What'cha doin' now, huh? Huh?

      A: I'M WIPIN' TOO!

      Brief pause...

      A: You still wipin'?

      B: Nope, ain't wipin.

      A: So, uh, what'cha doin'? Where are ya'?

      Later, rinse, repeat...

      What we need, for example, is technology that will summarily strangle anybody who actually uses a cell phone. That, I think we'll all agree, will improve quality of life for everybody, just like Jesus meant for technology to do.

      Until then, I'll just go on tripping morons who walk down the street yapping into their fists and bumping into each other.

  • They're going to be soooo expensive.

    Reminds me of an old Spitting Image [museum.tv] sketch featuring a puppet of Alexander Graham Bell [virginia.edu] and his mum. Went something like this..

    *Phone Rings*
    Mum: Hello, '2'. (quoting her phone number)
    AGB: (disguising voice) Hello lady, what colour knickers you got on?
    Mum: Alexander, I know that's you!

    Made me laugh anyway.

  • CDMA2000 (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those that posted about living in the US or that 3G's problems are the economy....

    CDMA2000 is a 3G standard. Qualcomm sells it, US, Korean and even Japan providers us it.

    UMTS is a mess for technical and political reasons.

  • What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hamsterboy ( 218246 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:16PM (#4368035)
    I'm sure all these 3G gadgets will be cool and all, but what are they good for? What pointful activities can you do with a 3G phone that you can't do with a regular cell phone and a palmtop? Do you need your stock quotes in color while you're riding the train?

    I think that 3G's time won't come until PANs become the norm. I'd love to have my cellphone talk to my PDA for its phonebook, and for my PDA to use my cellphone's transmitter to access the web, and for both of them to use my pager-sized solid-state drive for storage. I'm just not sure I need to watch movies on a 1" screen.

    -- Hamsterboy

    • Might be handy to store digital photos directly on a network connection instead of a dinky memory card
      • And why would I want my phone to take pictures in the first place?

        What ever happened to having a simple tool for a simple job? Want pictures? Get a camera. Want voice communication on the go? Get a cell phone. Want network access? Ah, that's not a simple job - gotta get a laptop or palmtop for that one.

        -- Hamster

        • I completely understand your question, but for some people one unit makes sense. When I wander around right now, I carry with me: A sharp zaurus handheld, a cell phone, and a digital camera. I like to have all this stuff on me at all times. But, it's kind of a lot to walk around with everywhere. Hence a 3G phone might make sense for me. Though I'm probably in the minority in the US right now...
          • A sharp zaurus handheld, a cell phone, and a digital camera. I like to have all this stuff on me at all times. But, it's kind of a lot to walk around with everywhere.

            I can understand that, but how much of it would really be as useful as the existing devices if they were combined? Usually you sacrifice something for combining the devices, even moreso than with things like PC hardware or stereo equipment.

            Hence a 3G phone might make sense for me.

            3G is just the networking side of things, and doesn't really have anything to do with combining the different types of devices.
    • That 128kbps downlink on the move sounds pretty sweet. But of course there's the extortionate mobile phone charges which could make the whole experience quite painful. The main reason I don't use the WAP features on my phone at the moment is I just can't afford it.
    • Whats the Point?

      Color, Speed, ease of access.

      Phones are just now getting basic functionality that people want. Nobody wants to hold a phone the size of a brick, 2 color black on green display that only gets 9600 baud transfers.

      With the new phones you have both IR/BlueTooth, for ease access. High speed (not cable modems or t1s, yet...). Cameras are just an App to show off the color features. You do realize, these are VIDEO PHONES that are out NOW.

      3G is coming here, you cant stop it. The world standard is 3G, and people are buying these new phones all around the world. When the USA is fully 3G deployed, those phones that everyone buys in the UK/Japan will be in the US.

      BTW, the new PDA/Phone combos are hot. Even crackberry (Umm, Blackberry) is a cool device.
    • this phone has it.

      with it, it can do all the cool stuff that you mentioned you'd "love" up top.

    • Re:What's the point? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Observer ( 91365 )
      Well, finding ways to justify the networks' investment in 3G mobile licences, perhaps?

      Demonstrating that you're still up there in the leading group of equipment manufacturers, certainly. Nokia have produced some very speculative pieces of equipment to try things out (eg last year's 5510, full alphabetic keyboard for text messaging plus a digital music player) then later integrated some of the useful results in later more mainstream models.

      I'm not particularly disagreeing with Hamsterboy's comments - I get to try out quite a range of the new phones where I work and haven't yet seen a reason yet to upgrade from the 6210, but some of the newer kit is very nice even for basic voice + messaging. I still haven't yet seen a true "killer app" for 2G or 3G classes of devices: getting your stock quotes on the train can be done easily enough with text messaging, and these days, the red color can be assumed. But with enough on-demand bandwidth, maybe the suppliers can grow a market for a device that provides visual proof of the archtypical irritating Mobile phone user's message "Hello honey, I'm on the train".

      --
      The question of whether the egg or the chicken came first depends on which of the two gets to write the history.

    • I'm sure all these 3G gadgets will be cool and all, but what are they good for? What pointful activities can you do with a 3G phone that you can't do with a regular cell phone and a palmtop? Do you need your stock quotes in color while you're riding the train?

      Is it just me, or are cell phones quickly becoming "The only electronic device you'll ever need"? Who needs a PDA? Before long, cell phones will be as functional as PDAs, with built-in wireless internet access to boot (not to mention that they'll still work as cell phones!)

      But why stop there? Cell phones already have digital camera features. Media (e.g. mp3) playing functions can replace those devices. When they come up with a cell phone which can play CDs somehow, they'll have a replacement for just about every portable electronic device out there. Then you just need a portable screen and keyboard, and your cell phone can replace your laptop too :)

      All that, and yet the general public will buy them just to call their friends and maybe play a few games. Cell phones will become portable computing for the masses!

      At least it could happen that way.
  • Is a phone that lets me phone people and lets people phone me. I don't want to surf the web, I don't want to take pictures, and I don't want to play games. I just want to phone people. Because it's a phone. That's what you do with it.

    I guess that's why I have the most basic digital phone you could get two years ago, an LG 330. It lets you make and receive calls and store numbers, and that's it.
  • Wha? Is that how much this things gonna cost?

  • Video vs. Communication (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jeffersonebell ( 248978 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:20PM (#4368067)
    It's interesting that Nokia is positioning this phone, seemingly, as a "multimedia" phone vs. a communication tool. Their website seems to emphasize "movie making" and picture taking, but not better communication or interactivity with your office. However, I'm wondering who'd actually buy it for those features rather than just take a digital camera with them. I know that I'm a big fan of having a phone that communicates really well and a camera that takes pictures really well, not a convergence device. I'll probably sing a different tune in a couple of years when some magic device takes care of all of my pocket garbage, but until then give me a phone which handles one thing and handles it really, really well.

    • Re:Video vs. Communication (Score:4, Insightful)

      by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @01:06PM (#4368396) Journal
      However, I'm wondering who'd actually buy it for those features rather than just take a digital camera with them.

      Its not buy a camera, its get video features added in at no extra cost. Video camera phone attachments are selling quite well. People like having the option of sending pictures/movies of friends/family. Take a feature upgrade people are buying, make it a standard on the phone. This will reduce the cost and make it normal feature on phones.

      Look at how people will buy new cell phones just for the ringtones. Features sell.

  • Frankly, this is plain old blah. I want my cell phone small and simple and cheap, but capable of interacting with PDAs. Then, if I want all that multi-media crap, I'll use my PDA - which happens to be a much better platform for that functionality.

    So - gimme a Bluetooth-enabled Tungsten and a small 3G-device, and I might think about it. For now, I'll stick to my regular GSM that I can upgrade to GPRS if I (want|need) to.
  • Why does every new device come with a built in camera now?

    Is it because people actually want them? Or just because it is now a really cheap feature to throw in so that you don't appear to be technologically behind your competition?

    The cheapo cameras that make their way into these gadgets are treated like "hot items" at Christmas... once you show your friends that you have it, you never bother to use it again.

    • Re:What's with all the cameras? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      because transferring images uses up minutes. or kilobytes, if you're metered that way.
      • Q: Whats with all the cameras?
        A: transferring images uses up minutes. or kilobytes, if you're metered that way.

        This AC is right on the money.

        SMS, if you remember recent history, was never intended by the networks to be a killer app. However it had such overwhelming grassroots support (albeit mostly outside the USA) that the networks have climbed on the bandwagon and now produced this: a way to charge you for as much bandwidth as possible without much meaningful communication occuring.
    • I recently got a discontinued Eyemodule for my old discontinued Handspring Visor ($30, why not?)

      I'm having a lot of fun because of the simple fact that people don't know it's a camera. My friends are used to me using a PDA, and now I can get cool candid shots.

      I feel like the fuzzy, low-res pictures I'm collecting are a better catalog of my life than the "say cheese" pictures from my film camera.

      I could see a phone on a camera being used in much the same way. Yes, it's a toy. But it's a fun toy. Of course, I didn't rush out an buy this eyemodule 2 years ago when it was $200.
  • Sad to see that pop3 is not support by this phone :/ This is one of my most wanted features!
    • I fail to see what is so funny about this, but I did't get it.

      About pop3, I have a sony ericsson t68i and it has a pop3 email client. I tried to configure it but I have some problems in the wireless data configuration. For some reason it wants use pop3 over wap, when I just want a regular dial-up connection (in operator (vodafone portugal) wap is about 10x as expensive as a regular data call, go figure that)

      But it supports email download (full or just the header), smtp sending and lots more I haven't got the time to explore fully.

      Plus it is very small, with a reasonable color screen, and the digital camera that plugs in it is ok for 640x480 daylight photos. I can send pictures as MMSs, but these are expensive and more important, I don't know anyone with a MMS capable phone to send them. And as MMS the photos are sent as 140x80 or something like that.

      GSM 900/1800/1900, IR, bluetooth, and a a calendar that at first sight is not that much different from my palm m100 calendar.

      Great little phone. If only I could get specs and program for it, I would make a Goo clone taking input from the digital camera.

    • I have IRC running on mine. Now with a color display, maybe I can use BitchX. :)
  • The first phone to meet the 3G standard? What about all the phones NTT DoCoMo have been using on their 3G service. Or am I greatly mistaken?

  • MHz (Score:1)

    by genka ( 148122 )
    Phone works on 900 and 1800 MHz, USA uses 1900. Most of you, guys, will see it only on pictures!

  • It's a pity! (Score:3, Funny)

    by SonOfSengaya ( 582624 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:24PM (#4368098) Homepage
    camera, sound, ten frames per second, 4096-color display, up to 128 kbps and you can even make a phone call! ...but they forgot the coffee machine!
  • Anyone can tell me exactly what the differents are between these two phones ? How much mem ? Features ? If I take a look at the pictures I can see that the 6610 has no camera.. What else is missing ?
    • With Nokia, xx10 is the 900,1800 freq. so basically Everywhere else but U.S. xx50 means the U.S. version. I learned this the hard way when I was in the Philippines a few years ago I had the 8210 which has an infrared port -- when I came back to the U.S. I got an 8250, but it didn't have the infrared port. They dumb things down for the U.S. market, and then they jack the prices...Good strategy if you ask me.
      • "With Nokia, xx10 is the 900,1800 freq. so basically Everywhere else but U.S. xx50 means the U.S. version. I learned this the hard way when I was in the Philippines a few years ago I had the 8210 which has an infrared port -- when I came back to the U.S. I got an 8250, but it didn't have the infrared port. They dumb things down for the U.S. market, and then they jack the prices...Good strategy if you ask me."

        You are correct that xx50 used to mean that it was an US verison, but only on earlier phones that had the xx10 designation in Europe. This way of defining versions of different Nokia models, cannot be transfered to the phones with x650 modelnumbers(7650, 3650, etc), or any of Nokias triband phones. The 3650 [nokia.com], is f.eks. a triband GSM phone targeted towards both the European and Asian markets, as well as the US one. 6610 [nokia.com] does also have triband, and nothing should prevent it from being used/sold in the US, as oposed to the older dualband-phones(900MHz/1800MHz) such as the 8210 and 5110, where they needed to make an own version for the US 1900MHz networks

        The x650 model designation, simply means that it uses the Series 60, symbian-based OS, and have imaging(vga camera) capabillities.
    • In short, 6610 is a 2.5G phone, which uses Nokias Series 40 OS, has no camera, and is GSM TRIBAND. 6650 is a 3G [nokia.com] phone, which uses Nokias Series 60(Based on SymbianOS 6.1), has a built in camera, more memory, and has wideband connectivity.

      Nokia has extensive information on all their phones at their website, links below.
      6610: http://www.nokia.com/phones/6610/specifications.ht ml [nokia.com]
      6650: http://www.nokia.com/phones/6650/specifications.ht ml [nokia.com]

  • Can I pay off my phone with p0rn? (Score:3, Funny)

    by ngoy ( 551435 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:27PM (#4368120)
    Everything invented now seems to be for the sake of p0rn or entertainment. Just think, these phone probably could be setup to send pics directly to webserver. And you thought you didn't have enough upskirt photos already. You could probably remote control these from a computer and set them up all over the place and take pictures every minute or so.

    Seriously though, there are two sides to this. You could be being watched at any point in time and not know it (well, we are right now but I mean up close), or this could be the start of a turning point in moving more countries in the world towards democracy. When you can't hide what you are doing to your people you tend to be a little more scared of doing something bad. What are they going to do, ban cell phones?

    Shango
    • Yeah, banning cell phones sounds pretty easy to me. A lot of theaters and eateries ban them already. New York City has some ordinance or something banning in them in a lot of public places. It's not that hard to do. And if you're a country, just don't allow cell phone companies to build towers or operate in your country, it's that simple.

      And I don't see how "You could be being watched at any point in time and not know it" is going to move countries to democracy, you'll have to explain your logic a little further...
    • i think this will have a positive effect on democracy, anyone that can afford the phone has their own cctv , it is a chance to record events as they happen in conflict situations eg. this bbc news story [bbc.co.uk] about a home video capturing a police officer hitting an apparently defenceless man. if everyone has a phone with a camera how many more such events could be captured
  • Nokia have (here in Belgium) a very good reputation.
    IMHO they deserve it. Good phones, well designed.
    But Europe's mobile phone market is very sick.
    The operators paid heavily for near-useless licences.
    They cannot get WCDMA to work (first pilot in Finland was cancelled).
    They cannot change to CDMA2000 (against their license terms).
    They cannot sell or trade their licenses.
    Basically, Europe's telecom regulators have screwed it and lost their world lead with GSM.
    For Nokia, this is very serious: Europe is their main market.
    Look at Japan: CDMA2000 got 2m subscribers, WCDMA got 150,000. In the same time period.
    Qualcomm is looking like a very interesting company. They will find themselves in a monopoly position.
    Not because they have twisted anyone's arms. Simply because their technology is better.

    • Re:WCDMA is doomed (Score:2, Informative)

      by rocannon ( 605760 )

      I'm glad you are impatient, but I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a bit longer. After all, this posting is about the cosmetic launch of one of the first commercial WCDMA phones (excl. FOMA). Cosmetic, since the phone itself won't be in stores until somewhere in the 1st half of 2003. But at least we get to see the slideware already.

      Before WCDMA will be launched massively, some things need to be sorted out. There need to be phones of course, or any network launch is useless. And some mandatory features like roaming (shown last year [3gnewsroom.com] between Vodafone Spain and J-Phone Japan) and WCDMA to GSM handover (hand off) are a must. Last week we saw reports of the first demonstrations [cellular-news.com] of such a handover in the Telia/Hi3G network in Sweden, with a Sony Ericsson handset. And we saw a network launched (Mobilkom Austria [cellular-news.com]). But what is such a launch worth when there are no handsets. That said, it's excellent news that Nokia already shows us the slides.

      CDMA2000 has been launched earlier, yes, since it's a relatively small upgrade from IS-95. On the other hand, upgrading from GSM to WCDMA is a revolution in the radio access network. If EU operators are looking at any alternatives to WCDMA, it would be EDGE [3gamericas.org], a natural upgrade from GSM, delivering throughput in excess of 384 kbps and therefore labeled "3G", and somewhat behind WCDMA in network development. No phones announced either. Will probably fly high in the growing American GSM markets.

      The situation in Japan is particularly curious, since they're looking at 3 operators each deploying a not-interoperable wireless access technology. There KDDI's CDMA2000 1x (offering 144 kbps), NTT DoCoMo's proprietary FOMA system (a WCDMA dialect), and J-Phone's true WCDMA. KDDI appears to be winning, which is not because CDMA2000 is technologically superior, but because there's variety and choice in phones.

      Let's see where WCDMA is going, there's a big test [yahoo.com] for one of the keenest WCDMA investors coming up soon.

  • 128kbps for a data link ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Macka ( 9388 ) on Tuesday October 01, 2002 @12:28PM (#4368137)
    ... if it were at the right price enough would be fast enough for most laptop users to have as their dedicated connection to the internet.

    Unfortunately, I'll bet it won't be cheap at all. I have GPRS on my phone, and bluetooth connect from my PowerBook when I'm mobile. But I have to use it sparingly because my phone service provider charges by the MB, and it can get very expensive.

    If 3G can be charged by the minute, or even better at a fixed rate like Cable and ADSL, then it stands a chance at being widely used and accepted. If not, then they will just price themselves out of a market.
  • 3G promises 2Mb/s , this phone does 128kbps. as in this article, this is a hoax, this is 2.5G phone. Once 2Mb/s is here, then put 3G sticker on it.

    Register reports on dubious branding uptaken by wireless providers:
    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27250.html [theregister.co.uk]
    • The 2Mb/s is marketing bullshit of the purest form. It's the theoretical maximum speed (NEVER going to happen in the real world). 1 Mb/s (a realistic real world max) is possible if you are smack next to the antenna (speed decreases with range) and the only active 3G phone within that cell (airwaves are a shared resource remember). There is little chance that any of us will ever be in that fortunate situation.
  • it doesn't even support 1900Mhz GSM.... when will the quad-band model come out, eh?
  • OK, maybe I haven't been paying attention, but as far as I know, Verizon is using CDMA2000 (1xRTT, right?) and Sprint PCS is using CDMA2000 (I'm sure about that one), AT&T has a TDMA network (and some small bit of a GSM network) - so who's planning on deploying WCDMA? I've heard bad reports on wCDMA in Europe & Japan, compared to CDMA2000, so what's the scoop here? GSM compatibility is nice, but the Sony Ericcson phones seem pretty suave to me (T68i, anyone?)

    Am I missing something here?

  • Video? (Score:1)

    by khuber ( 5664 )
    It has a 128x60 pixel display. Video must rock on that.

    3G doesn't seem useful on a tiny cell display like that. Browse the web? The most text you could fit is 32 columns by 7 rows or so. My Palm Vx is 160x160 and I don't like reading text on that. This is even smaller.

    -Kevin

    • "It has a 128x60 pixel display."

      Actually, according to Nokia's Device specifications page [nokia.com], it's 128 x 160. Still quite small, though. :)
    • "3G doesn't seem useful on a tiny cell display like that. Browse the web? The most text you could fit is 32 columns by 7 rows or so. My Palm Vx is 160x160 and I don't like reading text on that. This is even smaller."

      That's a bad thing? I have an Ericsson T68i, and I've played on the web a bit with it. That tiny screen means that the sites you go to have to get do to bidness. (At least the ones supported by it...)

      Go to a news page? You get a logo, and a one-line summaries of the interesting news stories. Click one, and you get the story.

      Go to a news page on the web? You get a 'portal' like site where you have to hunt around to find what you're looking for, banner ads, popups, and if you don't have Flash installed you're likely to be pestered by it.

      I'm not saying I'd prefer to read the news on my cell phone, but if I could get to the point that fast on my computer those dudes'd save me a lot of time.

      Oh, and as for video, it'd work fine. You can watch video just fine at 160 by 120. Just to give you an example: I once took an episode of Quantum Leap, captured it, compressed it down to 160 by 120 @ 7fps and a really low bitrate so that it'd fit on a 64-meg flash card. I then played it on my PocketPC while on a flight to LA. Guess what? Not only did the episode translate just fine, but the guy next to me wouldn't stop looking over my shoulder.

      It's not the type of thing you throw on your big-screen, but on a portable device it works just dandy at that resolution.

  • Why the hell do mobile phone companies keep harping on about their integrated cameras. Come on, think about it can you honestly imagine even a contrived situation when a mobile phone camera can do something that a disposable or digital camera can't do just as well if not better. I get tired of it. My current mobile phone is a Nokia 7110. I plan to continue using this thing until it falls apart: predictive text messaging, vibration function and even WAP is in there, and I got it dirt cheap too because it was already discontinued when I got mine. And I don't even use the WAP.

    This isn't really ideal I suppose, though the manufacturers really need to just focus on more useful things. Broadband-speed, permanent near flat rate wireless access would rock: some other poster in a different story mentioned that his student brother/friend/acquaintance was working in Japan and could stream MP3's off his home machine and off his mobile phone on the way to work (and this guy was a student so he's hardly loaded). I want to be able to do that. Then there's all this fuss about personal area networks: you've got a mobile phone in your shirt pocket, connected to the internet and you can check your email and the like on your PDA. Or if you're in the car you can have a headset which uses a wireless bluetooth link to let you talk to people behind the wheel or initiate calls by voice: I want that too. All of these things would seriously rock.

    But for crying out loud, as for these worthless gimmicks take your damn FM radios and digital cameras and integrated mobile phone/PDA jobs and shove them.
    • I presume that it's all about the youth market where such a useless feature might get a good response for a short while. Personally I wouldn't buy a phone with a digital camera, or other unnecessary featuers, even if the premium was $0, as it makes the phone larger, consume more power, more things to break, etc. Waste of space.

      Now an integrated PDA&Cell phone I can see being useful, and I do look forward to that. If the Toshiba e740 has cell phone functionality, that would be fantastic as I always carry both a cell and a PDA around.
    • Why the hell do mobile phone companies keep harping on about their integrated cameras. Come on, think about it can you honestly imagine even a contrived situation when a mobile phone camera can do something that a disposable or digital camera can't do just as well if not better

      Hmm...well they're pretty popular in Japan right now, but maybe it's because they're a spur-of-the-moment photographic bunch to begin with...I mean, walk around in Tokyo and you see PURIKURA (a photo booth thing, that prints on little stickers you can affix to your phone) all over the place. I get pictures in the mail all the time from my Japanese friends, because it's as easy as point-click-send.

      Other reasons:
      1. The cameras aren't particularly obvious, so it can also be used to take pictures of people without them being aware of it.
      2. It's also easy to use one-handed, and is accessible when pulling out a regular camera might be difficult in that environment (like on a train).
      3. Less crap to carry. These integrate cell phone, wireless web access, PDA, and cameras into a single handheld appliance that fits in your front shirt pocket. When I travel now, I have to take all that stuff PLUS the damn power adaptors, extra batteries, etc. I've been waiting for a few years (and still waiting, here in the US) for something to come along and allow me to integrate all those functions into a single device, because I hate carrying lots of crap when I travel.

    • GPRS is quite nice (browse at your own pace, no paying by the minute, and the amount of data in a WAP page isn't going to go over the basic 0.5GB a month unless you really hammer it).

      My next phone will have polyphonic ringtones & Java... Not to bothered with colour/camera but if everyone else gets one then I might have to just to receive their messages! By next year the 'with camera' phones will be given away free anyway (like WAP/GPRS is today).

      Hopefully when polyphonic ringtones (just MIDI files really) become widespread those ripoff merchants charging £2.50 per ringtone will all go bust...

  • Funny how everybody's forgetting the Motorola A820, which was announced in... January? WCDMA, GSM, GPRS, and a bag of chips. here's a review [expansys.com] and another. [gsmbox.com]
  • While all manufactures now offer 900/1800/1900
    phones now, Nokia does just 2-band leaving
    out north american customers.

    • 3G is loosely based of GSM and those other european standards that aren't in America anyways (except with T-Mobile and Cingular and AT&T's recent breaks into it). The kind of phone you want (tri-band) that would work on GSM networks, AFIAK, theres only ONE Seimens phone that does both. Just wait for GSM to take over America and we're set.
    • "While all manufactures now offer 900/1800/1900 phones now, Nokia does just 2-band leaving out north american customers."

      Alot of the other, newer Nokia phones, like the 3650 [nokia.com], the 7210 [nokia.com], and the 6610 [nokia.com] are triband. The reason this phone isn't, does probably have something to do with WCDMA [infosync.no] really not being used in the US. :)
  • Forget X-10 cameras, if you could get this thing to automatically snap pictures and send them back every few seconds or minutes, YOU'D HAVE THE ULTIMATE SUPER-SLICK 007 SPY TOOL!!!!

    Hide it in an office or whatever, monitor the suspects via the Internet, and just pick up the camera at the end of the day

    You could even send it commands via SMS - I don't know what for, but if it's got some zoom features you could control those remotely!!

    AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Just remember to turn off the ringer ;)

  • Nokia is certainly not the first phone to operate on 3G. It isn't even the first phone to work on WCDMA 3G.

    For those who don't know, the ITU defined a set of 3 CDMA-based standards for 3G; WCDMA, CDMA2000, and TD-SCDMA.

    CDMA2000 services have been rolling out for quite some time. There are currently over 16 million subscribers (Korea alone accounts for 12 million and Japan with 2.14 million.) This is the standard rolling out in the US with SprintPCS and Verizon.

    WCDMA on the other hand has very few users, on the order of 0.13 million.

    Panasonic WCDMA device launched in September 2001 [3gtoday.com] by NTT DoCoMo obviously beat this Nokia. NEC [3gtoday.com] has a couple models launched in October 2001 for WCDMA as well.

    Now, most CDMA2000 devices are 1x (low bandwidth first iteration.) Full blown 1xEV-DO (2 Mbps) devices were launched a while ago for the Korea market. These include LG LG-KH5000 [3gtoday.com] in May 2002 and most recently the Samsung SCH-V300 [3gtoday.com] launched in September 2002.

    See 3G Today [3gtoday.com] for a very extensive list of 3G devices.
    • I somehow misread the info on Nokias website. It [nokia.com] says"The Nokia 6650 is a first-of-it's kind 3G phone, but developers need not wait for a full 3G network roll-out before taking advantage of its features.", which in essence means that it's the first 3G phone with those features, not neccesarly the first 3G phone.

      My mistake. :)
  • There's an intersting article at The Economist [economist.com] which compares the consortium driven but currently non functioning W-CDMA standard and the Qualcomm owned but currently 2 Million plus userbase CDMA2000-1X standard.

    Basically what has happened in Europe is that Telecom companies have paid about $90 Billion for the spectrum and rights to roll out 3G services but are *only* allowed to use W-CDMA. The problem is it doesn't work yet, and who knows when it will. Meanwhile in Japan, South America, and elsewhere they are using CDMA2000-1X and they've signed up millions of users.

    The Eurocrat regulators' stance seems to be "na na na na, I can't hear you, na na na na na na na" while telecom company debt builds up to the point where it may crush some companies before they ever get to actually roll out any 3G services.

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