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New Nokia Phone
John writes: "infoSync has posted the official information about the two new Nokia phones which is going to be unveiled today. Quote: 'The Nokia 7650 will be the world's first 2.5G Symbian OS mobile phone with advanced messaging and imaging capabilities ...' It looks like ICQ on the mobile phone is closer than ever!" Includes a built-in camera and various comments about this not coming to North America anytime soon.
there is no per minute charge for local calls in america
Next, I re-read and thought it said "simian", and I thought, "whoah -- a phone for my spider monkey!"
Damn, what a boring phone...
Method of processing duck feet
This is not meant as a troll, but:
I've been able to ICQ to/from my GSM handset (as SMS) for ~1 year now.
More info here.
Apparently, one of our local CDMA carriers (Tellus) is offering AIM on their phones, as well..
Shesh.. 'News for Nerds'.. Or do you forget. 8-) It's a darned cool looking phone, so hence, gets 'space'.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Simple answer - number of subscribers to the different standards. "Regular" GSM is used throughout Europe, the Middle East, the Orient, etc. North American GSM has a tiny installed base. Standardize with the rest of us and you can use these goodies too.
One of the nice things about the GSM network is that the phone is separated from the account. Thus it doesn't matter if the phone is sold here as long as it works here. You could just order it from overseas and assimilate it with your SIM chip. The Nokia 7650 phone seems to be tightly packed with just about everything else, too bad they missed 1900MHz support. That foils everything.
Btw, I have a theory about the existence of the Nokia 8890. Nokia realized their non-USA customers probably wanted to travel to the USA, not that they wanted to deliver the USA a cool phone. That's probably the only reason we have it.
Anxiously awaiting the 9290.
I know there are restrictions on cell phone design here in the US (eg sparser grid-->more powerful transmitter needed-->bulky phones), but I still get jealous when I see the new European and Japanese phones that are coming out. And for god's sake why doesn't anyone use text messaging here? Once you get some practice typing on the keypad it's not as big a hassle as you might think, and quite convenient.
The deals on phones are not as good in the states, and Nokia/Ericsson makes money on selling the phones, not on few phones with expensive deals. Or rather they do, but that is when they sell basestations etc, which I imagine they don't sell much of in North America.
GSM is completely superior to CDMA and I would hope people will start buying more GSM1900 phones, then Nokia/Ericsson will sell their newest phones in North America as well. There isn't much of a problem to get it working with 1900 anyways.
Does everything in the world need to be "internet accessible" or "web-enabled"?!?!?
How long before phones start getting hacked or spread MS LookOut worms? How long before phone spamming becomes the norm?
*Sigh* I want the web for convenience. I want to web to make my life easier. I don't need the "cool" factor of every internet-capable device. I don't need my refrigerator ordering food for me, and I certainly don't need IRC on my phone. Frankly, I find it easier to CALL someone rather than attempt to type on a frickin' phone (or follow an IRC session with 50 people on one of those little phone LCDs). But I digress...
Am I the *only* person who feels this way?
I'm not sure. Maybe he means "there are no per minute charges mainly because the North American mobile infastructure sucks"?
Trust me, I work in the mobile telecoms sector, and the US infastructure sucks. South Africa has a better GSM network than any state in the US could hope to have.
Considering how *unreliable* ICQ has become, I frankly doubt that this would have any use. Honestly since some time it has become impossible to communicate with people running newer versions of ICQ (still using 99b-Rev A here, or LICQ).
Besides, I know it's possible to do ICQ on handhelds for a long time. I have a Psion and there is an ICQ client available. It is paying so I never bothered. (Use google to find it) I've used Opera on my Psion for the sake of it and that works great, if this is some kind of integrated Phone/Psion I could get interesed (including speadsheet, Contacts, Word, Jotter,...) I always have looked down on Palm owners, because the Psion in it's many incarnations is really superior IMHO. Too bad Psion stopped making hardware.
As for Nokia hardware, I alway found them "feeling" cheap, more like toys...Give me a good Siemens anyday.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
It was bad enough having to do 'busy office', 'stuck in traffic' and 'on the train' sound effects - and now this!
In the last 2-3 years or so, all our lines are becoming blurred, and it't useful just to stop and look at how much has changed so quickly.
Just 7 years ago very few people had a moblie phone, they were huge bricks with a battery life of 20 minutes. The digital camera was unheard of, the internet was just entering the mainstream (everyone said it would never catch on), and nobody had a CD writer.
Now we all have our digicam-watches, TiVos, DVD/TV/sound system players/recorders, Internet fridges (order food online as you use it), and miblie phones that can do pretty much enything you want except act as a sextoy [watch this space!].
The boundries between different technologies are becoming nonexistent. Different technologies are more cross-compatible. We are rapidly acheiving a situation where everything can talk to everything else.
As this trend increases, the total personal device (phone/pc/watch/camera/whatever) will evolve. It will do everything, go everywhere with you. It will interact with all the other devices in your life, making things easier and more personal. The electronic walls will change shade as you go into a public buliding, billboards will only advertise things you want. It'll be a better world.
These phones are a step in that direction. Which is, IMHO, very cool.
These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined. -- Homer Simpson
When American Standard releases a new toilet, are we gonna hear about it here first?
Probably not. I submitted this way back in April, but it was rejected.
Nokia 7650 Home Page (with specs, etc.)
Symbian Press Release
It looks like ICQ on the mobile phone is closer than ever!
Great! Now I can use my mobile phone to get in touch with people!
Uh...
--saint
Perhaps because the marketshare for GSM in the US is so far very low? Because CDMA and TDMA carriers currently offer vastly larger coverage areas than their GSM rivals, and there are plenty of CDMA and TDMA handsets that also offer analog roaming, GSM service is limited to pretty much only people that will be staying in and traveling between large metro areas. This will hopefully start to change once AT&T gets further along with their national GSM roll-out this should start to change. Of course, we start to get into a chicken vs. egg argument when you consider that more people (definitely me) would jump on the GSM bandwagon if some of these sweet Nokia handsets were available in the US.
What's the point? Trying to type an email on my nokia is impossible, unless these people come up with a better way to input text it really doesn't make since on a cellphone.
Currently the system is to type each letter by pressing cycling through the number keys, i.e. press '1' for 'A', 'B', 'C' etc.. Nokia does feature a auto-complete feature which might be handy, but I haven't had the motivation to make any use out of it.
-Jon
this is my sig.
The 9210 communicator, runs the Symbian OS, Java and is generally absolutely brilliant. The only issue with it is size, which this phone addresses.
These next generation mobile devices are based around common standards and architectures, SymbianOS , Java & GSM. No Redmond anywhere to be found. Symbian is a solid proper RTOS unlike the PalmOS or WinCE. Consumer devices need to be reliable, robust and pre-emptible.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
THAT came from Michael Powell, son of Colin, then a commissioner (now the Bush-appointed Chairman) of the FCC, not recused from the AOLTW merger vote even though dad was on the AOL board with $13million in stock options. It's from Powell Jr's pre-release statement after the merger went through. AIHS? Read on...
"Despite the Majority's analysis [of AOL's IM] that purports to show a competitive problem in need of a remedy, the Majority (perhaps to its credit) does not mandate interoperability for current iterations of IM. ... When a regulatory agency has to make up its own acronym to describe a product or service it intends to regulate, one should be concerned. ("Behold the Wizard of AIHS.")
"The concern is the implication for Internet regulation. This Order makes clear that the FCC has jurisdiction to regulate virtually every Internet product, or service that facilitates communications under Title I of the Communications Act. But, imposing IM conditions under that authority ignores the fact that the Commission, for decades now, has expressly declined to regulate similar computer, data processing and information services for the very reason that such interference would undermine the energy and drive toward innovation that characterizes these highly competitive markets. Based on the letter of the statute, this may be correct and FCC involvement in Internet communications services may be inevitable. Yet, the implications of that step are not fully considered here and that is why I am most hesitant (indeed unwilling) to make such a substantial leap in the context of an adjudicatory proceeding, without greater notice and a fuller and broader opportunity to comment that would result from an inquiry or rulemaking proceeding."
So AOL's IM near monopoly was left intact through the merger, to protect the open innovation of the Net, UNTIL a new-fangled video Instant Messaging product arrived. Then, perhaps, it would be time to get with the Net regulations... Goodie!
(See Michael's scrapbook photos, read his statements: click The Chairman.}
(Bias: I work for Symbian)
Nokia came out with an even cooler phone for SMS a few weeks ago, the 5510. It has a full char set keyboard... and an MP3 player... no dig cam though... info here: http://www.nokia.com/phones/5510/index.html
Wow, I really can't wait to have the newest beta of ICQ on my phone? Maybe they should wait until there is actually an official version...in say, 5-10 years?
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
That over 1 billion text messages were sent in the UK alone last month. txt'ing is _the_ way to communicate for todays youth culture. Even us oldies in their late 20's send text messages on a regular basis. Looking through my phone I sent 12 messages this weekend. Organising places to meet people, drunken banter from the pub, etc. It is great, no need to talk to the person and it is normally cheaper than calling during peak times.
Also Bt Cellnet here in the UK has just signed a deal with msn (and soon yahoo!) where there will be seemless IM between phones and msn/yahoo, including full presence detection. (With the current ICQ setup you have to send the message to the phone, not just the persons icq account).
PS: When will the US just actually understand the importance of text messaging in todays youth culture?????
[Please type your sig here.]
So once again I make the mistake of reading things with a tired mind. Been up all night. It says that it DOESN'T have GSM1900 support. I am sorry for any confusion I may have caused.
Wealth is the product of man's capacity to think. -Ayn Rand
All of this cell phone text messaging technology is aburdly stupid. It's useless, in my opinion.
Instead of wasting time on this useless capability, we should really be investing in new voice recognition technologies.
What a crazy idea!
I say "Remember to pick up kids" into my cell.
On the screen, a note is saved reading "Remember to pick up kids"
Just like when I speak to my Power Mac: "Empty trash" -- WHOA, my trash is emptied! I know it's complex technology, but believe me, headway can be made I am sure.
Only THEN will I buy these phones.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
It looks like ICQ on the mobile phone is closer than ever!
Great, now I can lose important messages where ever I am!
Thanks, but I'll wait for a Java capable phone that'll run a Jabber IM client.
It looks like ICQ on the mobile phone is closer than ever!
Why would anyone want this? Why would I ICQ when I can talk to someone?
This phone supports MID-P
I guess it'd be pretty easy to port a native Jabber client to symbian OS too...
that said, I don't really see the benefit in IM on a GSM phone - how does it differ from SMS exactly?
Looking at this photo of the new phone, it seems like they took the basic form straight out of The Matrix... the back of the phone looks like it pops down for off-hook mode.
-----
Over 4 years ago Nokia released the 9000 phone with a telnet client. At 9600 baud (which is pretty good) you could sit on a shell account using whatever UNIX clients you wanted to. IRC or a free ICQ client. You could also get VNC for it. so you had 640x200 res 8grayscale connection to any graphical unix client. Since then the 9110 provided 14,400 connectivity, 16greyscale and MUCH smaller size (roughly normal phone size and weight). Then earlier this year Nokia released the 9210 which has a 12bit colour 640x200 display (note that VGA is only 640x480 and that's pretty good). Battery life like 6 hours talk time and 80hours standby. EPOC6 (god knows what the reviewer of the linked article is on about boasting about first use of EPOC?) and 8meg SDRAM.
Yes Nokia arsed up by making it have Word Compatibility instead of a telnet client, but in the last few months a company has written a good ssh client making this (at last) almost as good as the 9110 and basically THE device for admins to use in a pub in a country village. In the UK we have almost 100% coverage all over the place, be it in the middle of fields and lakes or right in the middle of a City. ICQ? That's **cked up too. It's just a combination of about 5 other 20year old standards, like mixing talk, finger, ping, email, wall/write together.. all things that already existed. Why do I feel like nothing is progressing?
As long as you have a phone that runs PalmOS. Admittedly, GSM lends itself far better to this than CDMA.
Of course, there's something ironic about using a phone to chat with someone via text. Someone suggested a videophone that translates sign language into Braille was somewhere along the same line of ironic stupidity.
"And sms ? I don't get it, why don't you call the person?"
Because sometimes SMS is better. Sometimes you can't call someone. Sending a SMS is discreet and quiet.
Sometimes you have to send someone a small piece of information (address, shopping-list etc.). It's easy to send SMS, than to call. And the person receiving the info doesn't need pen&paper because the info is stored on the phone.
Why do people use pagers? SMS does everything a pager does and more.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Messaging != Talking!
Think about it. The people designing these phones a few years ago couldn't anticipate the SMS craze.
But people actually want it so much they're ready to tap text messages on the hugely uncomfortable numeric keypad - not bleeding edge early adopters, but even grandmas and grandpas. It's a billion business here, and the threshold is soooo much lower than 1) get PC, 2) get ICQ, 3) sit around PC waiting for something to happen.
So there must be something to it. Messaging is closer to email in form, than telephony.
I believe the cultures of email and messaging will merge, become mobile and omnipresent, and just like cell phones, perfectly culturally acceptable to keep turned off when you prefer some privacy. (Busy, away, leave a message... same thing.)
J
My point is though, once we got to Japan on our trip, I became blown away by the phones there. I have never really wanted to get one, but after seeing those I thought, crap can't wait to go back to the states to get a cell phone!
Once back, there were no cellphones that would even compare to what I saw there.
Here is a few things:
65k color screens in ultra thin phone.
Downloadable Javabased Nintendo games. Download and play, whenever you want.
People stand around in train stations doing email on their phones or surfing the web instead of telling everyone in the train about their sexual expliots of the last weekend.
We were in Shinjuku on a side street and there was a film crew filming some celebs. People grabbed their cell phones and took digital pics of the goings on and emailed their friends right from the side street.
Point is: Japanese cell phones are cool. I wish we had the services that they had.
some links:
http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20011116S0107
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9909/20/bandai.c ell.phone.idg/
http://foma.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/terminals/inde x.html
the US infrastucture does suck, but I'd like to see you drive 1000 miles in any direction from whereever you are outside the US and still have service. And that's on your "rest of the world" compatible network.
That ties the score.
And "there are no per minute charges because american customers will not allow it." I won't say never, but the reason that the service will not be offered in the US is because it doesn't pay. The phone companies have no incentive to offer extra services for a losing proposition. Every time you ICQ from Sweden or South Africa, the phone company makes money -- you pay less because you're not using as much bandwidth. In America, you pay a flat fee for X minutes.
"the US infrastucture does suck, but I'd like to see you drive 1000 miles in any direction from whereever you are outside the US and still have service. And that's on your "rest of the world" compatible network."
Europe. I could travel from Helsinki to Madrid and my cell-phone would still work. Distance: about 3000 kilometers.
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Maybe because the US so damn huge that it would be unfeasable to set up a complete GSM network. Europe has a much higher population density, which is why GSM is more feasable there.
Somehow I couldn't imagine GSM masts all through North Dakota and Montana.