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Nokia 6650, Super 3G Phone

Posted by Hemos on from the post-away dept.

Ch_Omega writes "Nokia has announced the 6650, which in short, is the first phone ever to meet the 3G-standard! It combines GSM and WCDMA into a single handset, then throws in a VGA still camera and video camera with sound. More info on Infosync and and Nokia forums!"

5 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. CDMA2000 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    For those that posted about living in the US or that 3G's problems are the economy....

    CDMA2000 is a 3G standard. Qualcomm sells it, US, Korean and even Japan providers us it.

    UMTS is a mess for technical and political reasons.

  2. What's the point? by hamsterboy · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I'm sure all these 3G gadgets will be cool and all, but what are they good for? What pointful activities can you do with a 3G phone that you can't do with a regular cell phone and a palmtop? Do you need your stock quotes in color while you're riding the train?

    I think that 3G's time won't come until PANs become the norm. I'd love to have my cellphone talk to my PDA for its phonebook, and for my PDA to use my cellphone's transmitter to access the web, and for both of them to use my pager-sized solid-state drive for storage. I'm just not sure I need to watch movies on a 1" screen.

    -- Hamsterboy

    1. Re:What's the point? by Observer · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Well, finding ways to justify the networks' investment in 3G mobile licences, perhaps?

      Demonstrating that you're still up there in the leading group of equipment manufacturers, certainly. Nokia have produced some very speculative pieces of equipment to try things out (eg last year's 5510, full alphabetic keyboard for text messaging plus a digital music player) then later integrated some of the useful results in later more mainstream models.

      I'm not particularly disagreeing with Hamsterboy's comments - I get to try out quite a range of the new phones where I work and haven't yet seen a reason yet to upgrade from the 6210, but some of the newer kit is very nice even for basic voice + messaging. I still haven't yet seen a true "killer app" for 2G or 3G classes of devices: getting your stock quotes on the train can be done easily enough with text messaging, and these days, the red color can be assumed. But with enough on-demand bandwidth, maybe the suppliers can grow a market for a device that provides visual proof of the archtypical irritating Mobile phone user's message "Hello honey, I'm on the train".

      --
      The question of whether the egg or the chicken came first depends on which of the two gets to write the history.

  3. Video vs. Communication by jeffersonebell · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's interesting that Nokia is positioning this phone, seemingly, as a "multimedia" phone vs. a communication tool. Their website seems to emphasize "movie making" and picture taking, but not better communication or interactivity with your office. However, I'm wondering who'd actually buy it for those features rather than just take a digital camera with them. I know that I'm a big fan of having a phone that communicates really well and a camera that takes pictures really well, not a convergence device. I'll probably sing a different tune in a couple of years when some magic device takes care of all of my pocket garbage, but until then give me a phone which handles one thing and handles it really, really well.

  4. Oh who gives a ... by Second_Derivative · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why the hell do mobile phone companies keep harping on about their integrated cameras. Come on, think about it can you honestly imagine even a contrived situation when a mobile phone camera can do something that a disposable or digital camera can't do just as well if not better. I get tired of it. My current mobile phone is a Nokia 7110. I plan to continue using this thing until it falls apart: predictive text messaging, vibration function and even WAP is in there, and I got it dirt cheap too because it was already discontinued when I got mine. And I don't even use the WAP.

    This isn't really ideal I suppose, though the manufacturers really need to just focus on more useful things. Broadband-speed, permanent near flat rate wireless access would rock: some other poster in a different story mentioned that his student brother/friend/acquaintance was working in Japan and could stream MP3's off his home machine and off his mobile phone on the way to work (and this guy was a student so he's hardly loaded). I want to be able to do that. Then there's all this fuss about personal area networks: you've got a mobile phone in your shirt pocket, connected to the internet and you can check your email and the like on your PDA. Or if you're in the car you can have a headset which uses a wireless bluetooth link to let you talk to people behind the wheel or initiate calls by voice: I want that too. All of these things would seriously rock.

    But for crying out loud, as for these worthless gimmicks take your damn FM radios and digital cameras and integrated mobile phone/PDA jobs and shove them.