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Not to rain on your parade, but that's a ridiculous generalization.

The biological reward pathway for guys is instantaneous, owing to the immediate success/failure of a fight-or-flight situation.

I suppose that you haven't heard of dating sims, which cater nearly exclusively to males? I don't really see a dominant 'fight-or-flight' theme there...

The biological reward pathway for gals is more gradual, accumulating more for repeatedly successful socializing, nurturing or gathering.

This is a load of rubbish -- there was a recent report that women purchase more mobile games than men -- pick-up-and-play mobile games like Tetris and Bejeweled are the *antithesis* of a 'gradual game' emphasizing 'socializing, nurturing or gathering'

http://www.3gnewsroom.com/3g_news/dec_04/news_5314 .shtml/

I was considering what tech to go with until I saw Donald Rumsfeld was supporting CDMA over GSM (article

Since then it was an easy decision to go with GSM. I assumed he was relying on the same intelegence when making this statement as Powell when making his presentation to the UN. So I figure its a pretty safe bet to go against anything that ASS says.

Bit of a joke BTW as I know CDMA does have advantages (like increased bandwith possiblities at least in theory) but I still prefer increased inter-operability.

I thought KDDI had introduced flat-rate? According to this article they have.

Here in Sweden it's all per packet charge. I personally pay about $1/Mb for my 3G data. Although I can stream 128kbit sound to my phone, those tariffs prohobits it for more proof of concept... :(

/ushac

i think 4G is closer than we think.
Japan's NTT DoCoMo is testing it.
India is skipping 3G alltogether and going straight to 4G.
the reason: 3G is too little, too late. It's not completely packet-based (voice calls are still point-to-point), and it allows for only up to 300kbps. read the fine print: that's bits per second. so in the best of all cases (3am, drunks home in bed, etc), you get... 30kB/seconds. rather underwhelming.

with 4G, on the other hand, NTT DoCoMo targets 100Mbit/s for the customer.

Um, in the US as a whole, the CDMA (Sprint/VZW) network is far superior to the GSM networks--and that includes both CingulATT and T-Mobile. Everyone I know agrees. My roommate got an ATT phone--and requested specifically the older TDMA technology just to avoid the GSM hell we have here.

Another example of this smart decision--another US TDMA provider, US Cellular, is transitioning its subscribers not to GSM, but to CDMA, after having considered all options. Who gives a shit if you can use the latest stupid-ass Sony-Ericsson phone if your service is so bad half your calls are dropped and the rest, nobody can hear you?

I'll take CDMA and no Bluetooth support over the pathetic US GSM network any day. And by the way, the whole world most certainly has not standardized on GSM technology. Far from it. Over 188 million subscribers worldwide rely on CDMA.

Just because large portions of Europe use GSM only doesn't make CDMA any more proprietary. What's wrong with competition in the marketplace? When several vendors join forces to cooperate on one network, we get what happened after the T-Mobile/Cingular accords in 2001--the companies cram twice the subscribers onto one network while investing no more resources in network infrastructure. This results in a shitty, unreliable network. But with competing standards, each companies has to keep up its network or die. I'd say that's preferable. Who cares if phones are portable between networks? The contracts keep you in one place for a year or two anyway, and by the time the contract is up you can buy a comparable replacement phone that works on the other network for $40 on eBay. Big deal.

"plans to bring a product based on the design to market within two years."

Ericsson showed similar devices years ago, and most other producers have had concept products similar to these ones. Lets just hope they start showing up in the stores for real this time. 2 years is a long time.

"plans to bring a product based on the design to market within two years."

Ericsson showed similar devices years ago, and most other producers have had concept products similar to these ones. Lets just hope they start showing up in the stores for real this time. 2 years is a long time.

YOU FAIL IT!

And in the meantime operators will sell you sucky res cameras for your overpriced phone. Oh and charge you an extra 20 ukp a month to send them to your one friend who was conned into buying one too.

The Nokia 6650 is defintely NOT the first 3G phone to be announced! You might want to take a look at the Motorola A820. It will use the UMTS standard, as defined by the ITU under their IMT2000 (a standard capable of delivering upto 2Mbps) - matter of fact, concept models aside, take a look at their whole range of 3G equipment. First? my lilly white butt! And when it comes to Nokia, announcements are one thing, delivering on it is another! But hey, I'm still waiting for my shiny new Sony/Ericsson P800 as well... "What?! Christmas you say?"

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 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 of such a handover in the Telia/Hi3G network in Sweden, with a Sony Ericsson handset. And we saw a network launched (Mobilkom Austria). 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, 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 for one of the keenest WCDMA investors coming up soon.

There is some good information about 3g networks here.