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Handhelds Hardware

A Detailed Review Of A 3G Phone And Network 103

Posted by timothy from the melts-in-your-hand dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The NEC e606 and 3's recently launched 3G network has been reviewed at Mobileburn. They seem to be happy with the network, but the phone is buggy and unfinished. One cool thing is that you can download sample videos to see what 3G is really like."
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A Detailed Review Of A 3G Phone And Network More

A Detailed Review Of A 3G Phone And Network

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  • 3G Rollout (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aerojad ( 594561 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:44PM (#6481734) Homepage Journal
    Just wondering, I haven't really heard much more about in a while, but whatever happened to the huge rollout of 3G services that we were promised back in 1999-2000. I remember one company in particular, Qualcomm, had wonderful times [nasdaq.com] in 99 on the 3G hype, but it never really delivered as much as promised, and only had a huge rollout in Japan. Is that finally changing, and are these 3G phones that we look at actually ready to be used nationwide yet, or are we still talking major-city-only deals?

    • Re:3G Rollout (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, after paying huge amounts of money for the spectrum the carriers probably don't have much left to invest in new infrastructure... Not like there's a huge demand for 3G services anyway. 3G will become a reality but it will slowly replace older technology rather than take over by storm.

    • Re:3G Rollout (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ChilyWily ( 162187 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @10:16PM (#6482105) Homepage
      Well there are two major reasons why 3G hasn't taken off (atleast in the US):

      * The spectrum sales were done in years when money was no issue - unfortunately the dot com bust hit and suddenly the operators who had spent all their dough getting the spectrum had none left to actually build the infrastructure. (that's not to belittle the whole other issue of a seriously fragmented spectrum range here in the US where getting enough band to support 3G is pretty difficult for large operators - and almost impossible for new entrants)

      * 3G is a major step ahead as far as the wired backhaul of the cellular infrastructure is concerned. With major companies (e.g. Lucent, Motorola) still cringing from the shock of vendor financing it's upto the operators (Sprint, Verizon et al) to buy the (expensive) upgrades themselves. In this climate today that's increasingly difficult - though there is some hope with people adopting intermediatry technologies. (I believe Verizon is moving ahead steadily on that one too).

      But the fundamental questions remain: Do we really need 3G? What is the compelling reason? And will it be cost effective for end users or so overpriced that no one will be able to get it?

  • Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:45PM (#6481737) Homepage
    That site was slashdotted so fast it must be running on a 3G phone.
    • Ah, but if it were running on a 3G phone it would have all the bandwidth it needed!

      It must be on an older 2 or 2.5G phone.

  • Poor coverage? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Archon-X ( 264195 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:45PM (#6481739)
    A pilot friend of mine recently looked into getting a 3G phone, it'd be nice to be ableto see his wife and kids when doing long haul etc, but the major flaw that he could see wasn't the phone, but the covereage.. the 3G coverage is not global, in fact it's limited to a handful of countries apparently..

    • Re:Poor coverage? (Score:3, Informative)

      by superpeach ( 110218 )
      Make that a handful of cities in a handful of countries. 3 have different types of coverage, there is the voice only coverage (so, normal mobile phone) which is pretty much the whole of the UK and then there is the video coverage which you can get when you are in certain towns/cities.

  • Sample Videos (Score:4, Informative)

    by Psychic Burrito ( 611532 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @08:49PM (#6481757)
    This [burn.com] is a direct link to the 3G sample videos.

    I think it's funny that one needs to install another video player considering that the videos are supposed to be .MP4 files which should just play fine with Quicktime according to the Apple PR department [apple.com]... especially 3G phone files... strange... :-(

    • "I think it's funny that one needs to install another video player considering that the videos are supposed to be .MP4 files which should just play fine with Quicktime"

      The videos are 3GPP, which is based on mpeg-4 but is an entirely different standard.

      Look in the box on the right side of that page.

      "Add 3GPP capabilities to your player with the QuickTime 3GPP Component. Download Now [apple.com]"

  • java (Score:4, Insightful)

    by akb ( 39826 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @09:09PM (#6481830)
    The most intersting point I found in the article was the one about how the reviewer talked about being disappointed that it was hard to load 3rd party apps onto the phone and how much value he placed on that.

    Its good to see phones supporting java, cell phones will be an increasingly crucial platform its good to see some openness.

    Anyone have links to any development sites or places where 3rd party apps might be available. Ogg vorbis on a cell phone?

  • Ho hum (Score:2)

    by fm6 ( 162816 )
    I'm getting less and less interested in this 3G boondogle. All that hassle and expense to access a network that's only 3 times faster than GPRS? And who is going to buy a phone that's only good for 24 hours of standby?

    You could argue that the phone's other shortcomings (can't handle Bluetooth without an adapter; no spare battery slot in the charger) are just mistakes on this one project. But I think it says a lot about how totally screwed up the whole 3G thing is.

    Reviewer forgot to mention heat. Device

    • there are a few varieties of 3G, the most common is CDMA2000 1x which has a theoretical speed of 144kbps compaired to 77kpbs of gprs, but WCDMA which is used in japan has a theoretical rate of 2mbps (if you are using the phone during the summer solstice and a full moon and catch bill gates using linux simultaneously)
      • Actually GPRS theoretical is around 120 kbps, depending on the provider it can go as low as 20-30 kbps.
      • I'm reminded of the way they used to advertise those cheap cartridge tapes. They never listed their formatted capacity, only their theoretical maximum compressed capacity. That's just the sort of thing that makes consumer cynical!

        Due to my Sprint PCS experience, I have a terrible prejudice against any technology based on CDMA. And all the fun people in GSM-only countries have had with things like SMS prejudices me against any cell technology that doesn't aim to be universal. I guess I'm just immature.

    • Actually, in the UK at least, the most compelling reason to choose the 3G network ('3') is that is's quite a lot cheaper than the established GSM players - you get about five times as many minutes for a given subscription as you would anywhere else here, and the phones are being practically given away.

      I'd be the first to agree that the 3G phones on the market today are little better than prototypes. They're bulky and use more power than GSM because they are, effectively, two phones inside: GSM and WCDMA (m
      • OK, I had heard that 3G phones would be power hungry all by themselves, but perhaps that was wrong.

        If GSM networks are maxed out, does it really make sense to expand capacity using technology that requires more bandwidth? That is the big problem I have with 3G: there's only so much radio spectrum. Wireless streaming and multicasting may be ultrakewl, but I just don't see how millions of cell users can use this kind of application all at once.

        The bit rate you report for GPRS is about what's claimed by pr

        • I've been away from the Internet for a week or so, so apologies for the wait for a reply.

          You're right to identify spectrum as a scarce resource, and the 3G networks generally do try to make a better job of allocating it than current technologies - you should get about 3-5 times the number of voice conversations in the same spectrum as you would with a 2G technology. You could argue that that isn't a great improvement, but it's really the start of things - GSM networks have been optimised way beyond the exp
          • Thanks for clearing up some important details. I remain skeptical of the whole 3G thing. It's not that I see no demand for the apps -- imagine all the CNN wannabes out there! Nor does it bother me that the networks are overtaxed -- you can always expand a network. But if everybody starts using high-bandwidth applications on any kind of wireless network, where is the spectrum going to come from? Even without 3G, we're beginning to run short.

            You're right, 58kbs is plenty fast for a simple network applicatio

  • 3G is all hype... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WIAKywbfatw ( 307557 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @09:32PM (#6481910) Journal
    Never have I seen a new technology that was more hyped up but less uselss than 3G.

    The marketing people behind these products seem to have forgotten that the whole point of having a mobile phone is so that you can talk to people.

    Why do I need video calling when audio calling works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

    Why do I need picture messaging when text messaging (SMS) works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

    Why do I need to be able to slowly download movie trailers, news and sports clips to watch on a tiny screen when I can watch those things on my TV or PC at a fraction of the cost?

    Right now, with no decent applications, 3G is a joke. The only thing I've seen that even demonstrates a good use of this technology is doctors sending each other picture messages of patients' X-rays when looking for a second opinion. I guess it could be useful to other professionals too, such as estate agents, but for the price you pay to send a picture message right now you'd have to be mad to use it constantly like it was a digital camera.

    If you've got money to burn then go ahead and buy one of these phones. But if you've got that much money to waste then you can send me some too at the same time.

    • Re:3G is all hype... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Kenshin ( 43036 ) <`ac.skrowranul' `ta' `nihsnek'> on Saturday July 19, 2003 @09:58PM (#6482002) Homepage
      Why do I need video calling when audio calling works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

      Why do I need picture messaging when text messaging (SMS) works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

      Why do I need television when radio works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

      Why do I want a phone when a telegraph works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

      Yes, things are expensive and buggy when they first hit the scene, but give them a few years and they will go down in cost and go up in reliability.

      Personally, I think a video cellphone would be wonderful. Cellular is the perfect platform to introduce it to, since POTS tech is kinda at its limits.

      • Why do I need television when radio works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

        Why do I want a phone when a telegraph works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

        Yes, things are expensive and buggy when they first hit the scene, but give them a few years and they will go down in cost and go up in reliability.

        1. There's a world of difference between radio and television.

        Would Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast had as great an effect on the public if it had been on TV? Would it have foole
      • Yes, things are expensive and buggy when they first hit the scene, but give them a few years and they will go down in cost and go up in reliability.

        The Idea is not to take two steps backward while attempting to take one step forward?

        If you pay a penalty in terms of both COST and Functionality to get a feature that you will have little chance to use (because no one else has compatible equipment) then you will wait until it becomes more popular, cheaper, and does not penalize you in other areas (battery

    • I wish the manufacturers would spend some time making mobile-phone gear that can tell us the difference between the other party's silence and a loss of signal. I'm sick of having to say, "can you hear me now?" over and over. Forget the 3G frills until you make basic moile telephony work better.

      Mobile telephony service is already overpriced. I don't want to pay even more exorbitant monthly fees for Internet access and video, I just want my mobile phone to work reasonably!

    • Obviously you don't have that ability. I just got a camera phone, and it is worth it (at $50 and a year contract - but I was planing on not switching providers soon anyway, greater cost might not be)

      Now when I see the kid of someone my sister went to school with I can take a picture and show my sister. Every try describing what someone looks like? "He is soo cute, and he looks just like his daddy" - which is nice and all, but even if you know his daddy doesn't really tell you what he looks like. If I

    • You will find that it is actually cheaper to be on the 3 Network in Australia over the long run as the audio calls are cheaper and capped at $100 (for acceptable use).
  • That the camera is placed such that if you place the phone up to your ear. That the people could see inside. WOW your heads so empty.

  • My executive summary (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tftp ( 111690 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @09:40PM (#6481934) Homepage
    • The phone is heavy, buggy and runs out of power in a day if left unused. If you talk a lot you need to carry spare batteries!
    • The phone is badly designed, has tons of defects, and generally suffers from being the first.
    • The audio quality is as bad as always (probably due to standard G.7xx codecs.)
    • The 3G network has poor coverage.
    • There is little to no content on the network.
    • Video calls require handsfree kit and a head vice.
    • The phone is no more useful than any other phone. Actually, it has worse coverage than AMPS.

    So here is the question: who needs this phone and this 3G network? Am I alone in rejecting Web browsing on a tiny LCD, often paying per minute? Am I alone in treating this 3G propaganda as pure marketing that doesn't satisfy any real need that people have?

    • You forgot that the review is a network in Australia and has max speed of 384k vs the 144k in the US.
    • I'm getting it for the 500 anytime/xnetwork minutes for £25/m. That's a truly unbeatable deal.

      They are bending over backwards to sell these things and I'll deal with it for a year for those numbers.
    • I wish i'd seen this review before I went out and got one last week. Yes the software is buggy, and more to the point really badly designed. It just doesn't work the way you expect it to. Also network coverage is spotty and intermittent, and the battery life is pittiful. I should have got a p800.

  • 3G Distorts Gravity? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Freddles ( 471210 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @10:12PM (#6482091)
    From the article:

    > Weighing in at 150g, the e606 is no lightweight,
    > but it certainly didn't feel as heavy as other phones
    > that weigh this much

    Huh?
    • Because it's bigger for the same weight it doesn't "feel" heavy. Your brain looks at it and guesses a weight based on size. It's lighter than that. A small phone that weighs 150 g feels heavier.

      Perhaps you've picked up objects before?

      If not, just take my word for it.

  • Well, g3 would be nice. What would be even nicer is if i could get any kind of cell phone access at my house. Not every area is even covered by existing mobile phone technology, let alone new technology.

  • I have the sidekick (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Saturday July 19, 2003 @11:57PM (#6482471)
    I have an excellent GSM phone. It's a 2.5G GPRS device. It takes photos, albeit low-resolution ones. It has a nice color screen. It has AIM and SMS. It has a great microbrowser. And, to top it all off, it has an excellent *real* QWERTY keyboard. None of that "T9 predictive text entry" garbage... I can type 20 WPM on this thing. Think Blackberry, but spaced more. It runs a custom Java OS with a nice SDK. And the user interface is excellent.

    Add to that the fact that I get 200 voice minutes, 1000 weekend minutes, no roaming (anywhere in my country), no long distance (anywhere in my country).

    I also get unlimited GPRS data. Yeah, that's right. Last month I transferred 130MB of data.

    Oh, yeah, of course, and I can roam onto any GSM/GPRS network in my country (there are three major ones) and not pay roaming. And, of course, I can also switch to a different phone and keep my SIM card. Or switch to a different provider and keep my phone.

    All for about $40 per month.
    I paid nothing for the phone, but I had to sign up for a year.

    Any guesses where I live? It's the country with the first EDGE service. It's also the country with the most GSM towers.

    It's the USA.
    • Please.. get off your high horse.

      What model of phone is it?
      • Sorry... just wanted to dispel some of the myths of the US as a "backwards" country with no GSM or GPRS.

        Anyway,

        It's a T-Mobile Color Sidekick. If you're in Europe, well, sorry - the Sidekick is a single band phone and won't work in Europe (different frequency). They are planning on introducing a tri-band model.

        The Sidekick is actually a rebranded version of a device called the Hiptop from a company called Danger, Inc.

        http://www.danger.com

        I hear that the Nokia 3650 is quite nice as well, but that the ke
    • Yeah, the US might have the most GSM towers but it certainly does NOT have the best GSM *coverage*.

      That's quite a big, but important difference.
      • Yes,

        The US is 3x the size of Western Europe, with roughhly the same number of people. So, it's not hard for us to have "the most GSM towers". Per capita, nearly every European country has far more than the US. The EU has far more towers as well.

        Second,
        Remember the size difference here. For reference, France is about 2/3 the size of Texas. Germany+France would fit nicely into Alaska, with room to spare.

        Take, for example, Wyoming. Wyoming has 200,000 people in an area only marginally smaller than France. I
        • I'm interested in what you know about Cingular. I just learned myself that they support both TDMA and GSM in the same phone. They have 2 models that do this, the Nokia 6340i and the Sony Ericsson egg-shaped phone.

          So my question is this: If Cingular is currently using TDMA and transitioning to GSM, then why would they ALSO be adding WCDMA? I mean, isn't that 3 networks to support by the same company?

          Here's a source of info on the transition from TDMA to GSM. There are other places where you will r
  • I'm typing this e-mail from my laptop connected to the net through my Sanyo phone and Sprint PCS Vision.
    I pay $10/month for Unlimited data usage, and it is well worth it.
    I have been using this setup since November 2002. The coverage is excellent and the speed is awesome, except on Sunday evenings.
    My average download speed is over 100kbits. If I use multisource downloading I can almost always pull 138+kbits with bursts up to 250kbits.
    Supprisingly the upload is much faster than the download. Average upload sp
  • Yep, new 3G phone, uh huh, people are rushing out to buy it right?

    All of these nails are going in the US 3G coffin...

    One of them is voice quality, I have a "next gen" att phone, the voice quality sucks, I think I'll go back to old technology where I could understand the caller and get a signal in the middle of nowhere, or in a building in the middle of a city.

    Another one is WiFi, why do I need data on my phone with so many WiFi hotspots, it doesn't make much sense, now if this next gen stuff worked in th
  • Am I the only one who feels that phone manufacturers have gotten the totally wrong idea? I mean, why don't they work on making a cell phone that doesn't sound like garbage instead of making a cell phone that has 2 ultra crappy cameras and a color screen? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the purpose of a phone was to talk to people. The "normal" features make sense (text messages, vibrate, etc), but all this PDA, camera, web, junk is kind of ridiculous.

    • Re:Wrong idea (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ctid ( 449118 )
      Are you in North America by any chance? The thing about "sounding like garbage" is not a concern in the UK where I live. In the cities at least, phones tend to have very good reception.

      As for the PDA functionality, it's a logical next step, because virtually EVERYONE carries a mobile phone. If manufacturers want to sell us a PDA, it's going to have to have phone functionality otherwise we'll have to carry two gadgets.

      Having said all that, my friend got one of these e606s and he's not been overwhelmingly i
    • You must be in the USA. Voice quality on phones is not a problem anywhere else. If you survey any mobile user in Australia, or the UK, or Asia 99.99999% of them will say there is nothing wrong with the voice quality.

      Just the USA, as usual.
  • I'm sticking with GSM/GPRS for a few more years. We now have pretty much 100% GPRS-coverage in Sweden, and it works very well. Together with WAP it is quite a decent solution. My phone is rated at 48kbps, and lives up to its promises. Personally, I'd rather have a stable 48kbps than a flaky 376 kbps. Data rates has got to come down further. I get 3MB free and then pay 19 SEK (~2.1 EUR) for every additional MB, which certainly does not allow for web surfing.
  • The coolest stuff is here in Japan ;)
  • Well, I'm waiting for more ppl to sign up for 3G. So far I know of one person, of course, they can't actually make use of the video call feature cos they've got no one to call. I'm gonna wait until it gets to a point where ppl want to video chat with me and then I'll go and get one.

    Alternativelly I'll buy one if my network (Orange) shuts down its 2G service or if a killer app is produced for the phones. I can't think what though.

    The first phones are always going to be poor, in three years they'll be fa
  • The reasoson is NTT Docomo has started to support GSM cmpatible USIM card on 3G phone(it's called FOMA Card). Just inserting FOMA card into GSM phone enables to connect to telephone network. Motion picture, higher data taransfer speed were not enough to persuade me.

    I have sufferd enough from dis-compatiblity between PDC(Japan's 2G service) and GSM.

    Just new FOMA card has justified cost of transer(approx $230), shorter battery life(40% of before), heavier terminal weight.

  • I had one of these a few months back when they first came out, and I'm the sort of guy who buys into ALL the new gadgets and lives with the bugs. Heck, I buy into the BETAs of all the latest gadgets and live with the bugs.

    This phone had 2 good points: The Screen (its gorgeous) and The Keypad (really solid and positive).

    Everything else about this phone is junk.

    The user interface is almost impossible to figure out - as the reviewer says the thing is like some crazy puzzle with the Select button changing
  • there are two fundamental flaws in most of the posts that I read: a) people compare 3G to GSM GSM is mature and tested. 3G is new untested and not widely deployed. Yes I accept the fact that many companies spent a lot of money on buying bandwidth and now they will take them forever to actually setup a network with decent coverage but it's early! That was the case with GSM too when it first took off wasn't it? Handsets look ugly and bulky but this is not a serius argument anyway. Look at an early analog han
  • Wow - and I thought my P800 was a brick in my pocket (well, compared to my old Siemens SL-45, it was, but not compared to my SL-45 AND Palm Vx in the same pocket).

    This baby's huge - and I can easily view MP4's on my phone, admittedly not as fast while oline, but at that resolution...why?
  • Everyone knows this scenario all too well. You are at the airport, late for your flight, running to the gate, all the while you are on a critical conference call. Then, all of a sudden, you hear the sound of death 'beep beep', your cell battery goes dead. You frantically search for your charger that you have packed away in your bag. You have lost a crucial call and more importantly your ability to communicate. Never lose your ability to communicate. Cellboost gives you that power! Visit cellboost.com for

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