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.

Comments

Oh, you said "Symbian"!

[Deagol]

As I skimmed the headline, I first thought it said "sybian". My next thought was, " Great -- I'll by my wife one of these."

Next, I re-read and thought it said "simian", and I thought, "whoah -- a phone for my spider monkey!"

Damn, what a boring phone...

ICQ -- not new

[TheTomcat]

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..

Drat, no 1900MHz support

[infiniti99]

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.

Re:Drat, no 1900MHz support

[rasjani]

I havent yet read any specs yet so i cannot really speculate about this topic BUT. If the main market for this phone is Europe, 1900MHz aint what people want. Hell, i havent even heard of that kind of frequency.

Afaik, only 900MHz and 1800MHz are used in europe. 900MHz which works pretty much everywhere and dualband 1800MHz in bigger cities & suburbians (and with w/ lesser money ofcourse)

And to the other reply in this thread, no, phones arent tied to certain operators (atleast, not in Finland). I do know thought that this is widely used marketing scheme in other countries (and imho, it sucks big time. There's no real deal why certain phone should be tied to certain operator)

Sigh...

[Asahi Super Dry]

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.

Arghhhhh!

[uslinux.net]

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?

Re:Arghhhhh!

[yatest5]

I heard a rumour that you don't actually *have* to buy these new internet devices - there's a recent law passed that means you can just spend your own money on what you want.

Surely your refrigerator ordering food for you does make your life easier - not that geeks need food - *real* geeks live off of nicotine and caffeine ;-)!!

Re:Arghhhhh!

[GauteL]

Not at all... but why are you complaining like this? This isn't even insightful, it is just a typical ranting.

You can actually buy a completely different phone if you want to, you know that right?

People have different usage-patterns, and thus there are lots and lots of different phones on the market. If you feel you belong to a group that are not covered, I suggest you write a letter to the phone-makers and argue why you think it would be benificial to both you and them to create "your dream phone".

Re:Arghhhhh!

[voop]

How long before phones start getting hacked or spread MS LookOut worms? How long before phone spamming becomes the norm?

Actually, this is happening allready. In France, Bouyges Telecom (a large tele operator) were frequently spamming my mobile with adds from different companies (e.g. Pizza Hut). It turned out to be an "opt-out" thing that they do to all new customers. After calling their customer service (and waiting a periode of 3 weeks "for technical reasons" - yeah, right!) the spamming stopped.

What, in reality, was more annoying was that they also spammed my voice mail in the same way: the phone would indicate a message, I'd dial (and pay the per minute charge) to listen, only to find that it was yet another piece of spam ("This week at Pizza Hut, you can get...."). Again, it was possible to "opt out".

It's worth noticing, that this was not on some "you get it cheap if you accept spam" subscription, but rather on their "pro" subscription....

Includes a built-in camera?

[iBod]

How the hell am I supposed to lie to my wife about my whereabouts now?

It was bad enough having to do 'busy office', 'stuck in traffic' and 'on the train' sound effects - and now this!

one more step towards total integration

[ariehk]

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.

Re:Ugh.

[WinstonSmith]

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 and Symbian

[Anonymous Coward]

Nokia 7650 Home Page (with specs, etc.)

Symbian Press Release

ICQ?

[saintlupus]

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

Re:Very slick

[RedX]

For some darn reason they always do that, North American GSM seems to be low priority for GSM phone builders.

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.

ya but.

[jon_c]

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

Re:ya but.

[jandrese]

Hmm, you both complained about the tediousness of entering text on your phone and your lack of motivation to use the autocomplete in the same sentence. Isn't the autocomplete supposed to make the text entry on the phone less tedious? What am I missing here?

Java and next gen

[MosesJones]

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.

You can write your own programmes

[streetmentioner]

I think the most important thing is that you can write your own programmes (in C++ or Java) for it. You can download the SDK from www.nokia.com.

(Bias: I work for Symbian)

Even cooler fone from Nokia for SMS

[rainTown]

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

ICQ on mobile phones?

[bribecka]

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?