Nokia's New All-In-One Phone 317
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.'"
Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,81338,00.htm
Has most of the features of the N-series phones, but no camera, and much smaller and lighter to boot.
Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:5, Funny)
How's stuff treating you at Abu Ghraib these days, anyhow?
Seriously though... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:2)
Besides which, you can't take a camera phone in? Luxury! I can't take *any* mobile phone into our secure room; thankfully, I rarely need to be in there....
Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:3, Insightful)
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)
That's not the stupid part... (Score:3, Interesting)
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 in common (and preferably patent-free) forma
Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:2)
Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not normally pro-reguilation, but we need a few simple laws to fix this. Let's start with this:
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)
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.
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
The texting man, it kills us.
What I'd like to see is Yearly/Monthly Fees,No per minute contracts. I'll keep waiting.
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Where is this "open market" you speak of? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Where is this "open market" you speak of? (Score:2)
Re:Where is this "open market" you speak of? (Score:2)
Ask them what it would cost you to buy your own phone and not be tied down to a service contract.
Out here (.in), I have the choice of prepaid and postpaid connectivity, no contracts beyond the validity of the charge (or one month for postpaid), free incoming.
You don't pay more for a non-provider-provided phone [...] spend the $200 extra for an unlocked phone.
Am I supposed to
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2, Interesting)
I was using a 6585 from Ebay for 8 months. I sent it in to Nokia to have the firmware updated, and when I got the phone back, I was told that it was not compatable.
Not compatable when I had been using it for 8 months, and it was giving me much better service than the one Verizon branded phone I had been using
TDMA is quite common (Score:4, Informative)
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)
> 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.
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
That's exactly what I did, even though I'm unlikely to switch in the next couple of years. I've gotten screwed by such things at least as much as I've benefited, and I'm fed up with the crap.
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:3, Informative)
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
No need to guess at all (Score:2)
The fact that you almost never see people yammering on their cells is probably Japan's second-best feature (behind th
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
The problem is that in technology 2 years is a VERY LONG TIME. I could buy a phone/contract today and it may have the best service in the area or the best network or whatever. In 6 months that my not be true. In 1.5 years that may not be true. Yet I'm still locked into my contract.
That's another one for my list that I just thought of:
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
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?
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
Ouch, that really does make it sound like something is very wrong with the GSM networks in the USA.
How many GSM networks/areas have you used? Are all GSM networks in the USA this bad?
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
They shouldn't and the way it works in the places I've visited is the handset is locked to a particular network for some months, some amount of prepaid credit, however many calls, etc and is then unlocked (usually at the customers request). At that point you can do whatever you want with it.
I know there is an up-front cost to get an unlocked phone straight off but at least that's an option. If your
Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:2)
iPod obsolete? (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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
Re:iPod obsolete? (Score:2)
Re:iPod obsolete? (Score:2)
And high resolution, non-shitty CCD+Lenses in the camera?
I'm so sure it makes my Canon EOS 20D obsolete.
Durability? (Score:4, Interesting)
Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:2)
I think the most elegant solution to this problem will come from Apple in a year or two.
Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:2)
Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:4, Funny)
I think someone already perfected a rotary dialing interface [flickr.com].
Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:2)
Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:2)
Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:2)
Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless it's dead simple to transfer music you're out of luck. Add in the fact not too many providers are keen to offer cables to hook up your phone to your PC and the problem grows.
Bundle a phone with a dock and software for Mac's and PC's that just works, that's no more expensive than a Nano and you might start gaining market share.
Oh and price, I'm not dropping more than $200 on a gadget. I lose/break my phone, that's $150-200, I lose/break my
Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:2)
try not to laugh (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:try not to laugh (Score:2, Informative)
many more pics [google.com]
Re:try not to laugh (Score:2)
Re:try not to laugh (Score:2)
Re:try not to laugh (Score:5, Informative)
Pics at Nokia.com [nokia.com]
Re:try not to laugh (Score:2)
So the cover opens to left? I won't be using it as I'm unable to use it. I'm left-handed.
OK, get it over with (Score:5, Funny)
Right here (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Right here (Score:2)
Thanks to you and the other two of you for fulfilling my prophecy
Re:Right here (Score:2)
It meets some of my criteria: stylish, metal, speakerphone, price I suppose if you are right
It fails on: battery life (about half my old Sony-Ericsson t68i), robustness (I have heard endless stories of V3s breaking mysteriously), speed of menus (very slow text entry, in particular), adequate sized buttons, and weighed down with tons of unneccessary crap which cannot be removed or disabled
Re:Right here (Score:3, Informative)
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
Treo 650 (Score:2)
- slimline and actually fashionable design (
Got it, I like the Treo look
- integrated aerial
I assume you mean antenna, the treo is integrated to the body, but it sticks out. Not sure what you want...
- 4-6 day battery life
Works that long if not talking much and not searching for a signal. Using PDA only I have gotten a week, If not swap a new battery without loss
- medium sized colour screen
320x320, I want bigger but it works
- adequate sized buttons fo
Re:Treo 650 (Score:2)
Forgot to say bluetooth and the camera / video is pretty cool.
BT could be better (wireless mp3 would be better) but it is a neat trick.
Camera at 640x480 sucks, but having video and camera is nice. With 1GB card you can do like 3000 photos or 4 hours of crap video. 700p coming soon should have a 1+MP camera finally to help some on this side.
The treo 650 is awesome. You can navigate all without the stylus if you need, and you get palm PDA aps.
Word, Excel, PDF and it beats me a chess.
Re:Right here (Score:2)
Re:Right here (Score:2)
Old, not quite small, but awesome battery life.
Only lacking the color screen, but what do you need that for? Since you will not be taking pictures or playing games (I presume), I can think of no use for a color screen that would be a real dealbreaker
Re:OK, get it over with (Score:2)
Or maybe you can add a term, like swiss army knife vs. pocket knife. Yay, a Swiss Army Phone?!?!!1
Reminds me when this was going on with wristwatches, and some guy shows up with one that had a stopwatch, compass, light, altimiter, survival kit, radio transponder and in fact did everything but tell the time. And it weighed about 3 pounds
Re:OK, get it over with (Score:2)
I understand that in Europe coverage is better, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I understand that in Europe coverage is better, (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I understand that in Europe coverage is better, (Score:2)
Oooooo! (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Re:Oooooo! (Score:2)
"I don't use Windows. Can I get a rebate on the software?"
Obsoleting everything? (Score:3, Insightful)
If they shot this with the actual phone, then maybe it will make all that other stuff obsolete.
N80 (Score:4, Interesting)
Its all about battery life (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
Treo 650 (Score:2)
It definitely should handle a whole day of MP3s and phone. If not, you can swap a new battery and not lose anything if you need to.
Does all that other crap too, word, pdf, mp3, crappy camera, videos, 2 GB SD card,
No wifi, no stereo wireless MP3...
Had it all for a year so far.
Re:Its all about battery life (Score:2)
Enjoy! [geniusmouse.co.uk]
Where is the bloody photo? (Score:2)
Re:Here's a photo... (Score:2)
That's nice and all, but... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:That's nice and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's nice and all, but... (Score:2)
It depends on your carrier, and the software sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
Verizon will lock you out of your phone; if you go online and try to grab a copy of Motorolla Phone tools (yes, I know this is a Windows application suite), they specifically note that they have disabled thing, like the ability to download background images and ring tones, at the request of Verizon.
For other carriers, whether you can sync with Linux is a function of which SourceForge package you download, and how long your phone has been out. The best on
Re:That's nice and all, but... (Score:2)
The relevant bit of Apple's site [apple.com] has more info but hasn't been updated for these new phones.
Re:That's nice and all, but... (Score:2)
Re:That's nice and all, but... (Score:2)
Figuring out how to flash the hardware and make it boot your binary is left as an exercise to the reader.
bloat-o-phone (Score:2)
I understand some people like all-in-phone phones because they only have to carry around one device
Nice collection of images (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.dexigner.com.nyud.net:8080/forum/index
http://www.dexigner.com/forum/index.php?showtopic
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Phones are HUGE- Photos Here (Score:2, Interesting)
Check it out here: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/nokia_nx3/index
Also, the N73 was also announced, which is thankfully a smaller phone, still feature rich, and is quad band unlike the N93, and thus better for those of us in the US.
Check it out: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/nokia_nx3/index
Also, for those who are interested in phones check out howardforums.com It's the best message board for cell phones and network information.
operating system? (Score:2)
Cute, but.. (Score:2)
Or use my phone independantly of my PDA, like when I'm playing tetris while talking to my wife.
Having said that, I'll bet they sell a truckload of these to early adopters, who
Re:Cute, but.. (Score:2)
It also ran Symbian which meant there were tons of free games for it. I could store 1Gb of music on it, and play it with a fairly full featured player, and it had a cool jog-dial like the Clie PDA, only better. Even though it did everything, and quite elegantly, I still prefer separate devices. Go figure.
My needs are simple (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see:
simple -- no
cheap -- no
long battery life -- no
Sorry. Looks like it will fufill none of my needs.
Nokia's all-in-one product (picture) (Score:2)
How predictable. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Look... (Score:2)
This is why I my iPaq isn't seeing much action these days. Sure, it has the potential to do a lot of things, but because it doesn't do most of them in a way thats really good, I don't end up using it. Music player? iPod. Phone? I'll tak
Re:Obligatory (Score:3, Funny)
[gets a mop]
Linkage for those curious. .
technical specifications [nseries.com]
N Series overview [nokia.com]
Re:New? (Score:2)
Re:Forced Upgrades (Score:2)
Re:Music? (Score:2)
Re:Ever heard of ppc-6700? (Score:2)
N93 uses Symbian. In Q1 2005 Symbian had 61.4% market-share (up from 40.5% a year before). Microsoft had 18.3% share (down from 23.1% year before). So what on EARTH are you blabbering about "limited market share"?