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Nokia 6650, Super 3G Phone
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!"
3G has been hit the hardest when the economy went south... how will 3G gain a foothold in the land of disposable cell phones?
Finally, the beginning of the end for IPV4!
I live in the US. Crap.
They're going to be soooo expensive.
Reminds me of an old Spitting Image sketch featuring a puppet of Alexander Graham Bell and his mum. Went something like this..
*Phone Rings*
Mum: Hello, '2'. (quoting her phone number)
AGB: (disguising voice) Hello lady, what colour knickers you got on?
Mum: Alexander, I know that's you!
Made me laugh anyway.
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.
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
From the website:
My Ericsson T68 with the battery bar at half:
I've never had a Nokia even go close to this phone. I get about 5 hours of talk time on my phone, and I've verified it's battery reporting function too.
I'll stick with Sony Ericsson
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Is a phone that lets me phone people and lets people phone me. I don't want to surf the web, I don't want to take pictures, and I don't want to play games. I just want to phone people. Because it's a phone. That's what you do with it.
I guess that's why I have the most basic digital phone you could get two years ago, an LG 330. It lets you make and receive calls and store numbers, and that's it.
Wha? Is that how much this things gonna cost?
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.
Frankly, this is plain old blah. I want my cell phone small and simple and cheap, but capable of interacting with PDAs. Then, if I want all that multi-media crap, I'll use my PDA - which happens to be a much better platform for that functionality.
So - gimme a Bluetooth-enabled Tungsten and a small 3G-device, and I might think about it. For now, I'll stick to my regular GSM that I can upgrade to GPRS if I (want|need) to.
Stop the brainwash
It's okay, if you look at
this
you'll notice you really don't want to be anywhere near this phone. Apparently it's "connect anywhere / to anything" ability has rather a microwave-oven effect on the people beyond the lens of its camera.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Why does every new device come with a built in camera now?
Is it because people actually want them? Or just because it is now a really cheap feature to throw in so that you don't appear to be technologically behind your competition?
The cheapo cameras that make their way into these gadgets are treated like "hot items" at Christmas... once you show your friends that you have it, you never bother to use it again.
Sad to see that pop3 is not support by this phone :/ This is one of my most wanted features!
The first phone to meet the 3G standard? What about all the phones NTT DoCoMo have been using on their 3G service. Or am I greatly mistaken?
Phone works on 900 and 1800 MHz, USA uses 1900. Most of you, guys, will see it only on pictures!
camera, sound, ten frames per second, 4096-color display, up to 128 kbps and you can even make a phone call! ...but they forgot the coffee machine!
My spirit takes a journey through my mind...
Anyone can tell me exactly what the differents are between these two phones ? How much mem ? Features ? If I take a look at the pictures I can see that the 6610 has no camera.. What else is missing ?
All the 3G in the world won't change the fact that 99.9% of cell-phone conversations are moronic anyway:
What we need, for example, is technology that will summarily strangle anybody who actually uses a cell phone. That, I think we'll all agree, will improve quality of life for everybody, just like Jesus meant for technology to do.
Until then, I'll just go on tripping morons who walk down the street yapping into their fists and bumping into each other.
"Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive" -- hey, that's me!
Will these phones only be able to send video that you've recorded with the phone? Or will you be able to upload images to them? For instance, I'd love to be able to beam nude images of the Brazilian women's soccer team to people from my computer using this phone. I can't seem to find a data sheet which talks about the upload capability.
--
What happens when you outlaw guns
Everything invented now seems to be for the sake of p0rn or entertainment. Just think, these phone probably could be setup to send pics directly to webserver. And you thought you didn't have enough upskirt photos already. You could probably remote control these from a computer and set them up all over the place and take pictures every minute or so.
Seriously though, there are two sides to this. You could be being watched at any point in time and not know it (well, we are right now but I mean up close), or this could be the start of a turning point in moving more countries in the world towards democracy. When you can't hide what you are doing to your people you tend to be a little more scared of doing something bad. What are they going to do, ban cell phones?
Shango
--ngoy
Nokia have (here in Belgium) a very good reputation.
IMHO they deserve it. Good phones, well designed.
But Europe's mobile phone market is very sick.
The operators paid heavily for near-useless licences.
They cannot get WCDMA to work (first pilot in Finland was cancelled).
They cannot change to CDMA2000 (against their license terms).
They cannot sell or trade their licenses.
Basically, Europe's telecom regulators have screwed it and lost their world lead with GSM.
For Nokia, this is very serious: Europe is their main market.
Look at Japan: CDMA2000 got 2m subscribers, WCDMA got 150,000. In the same time period.
Qualcomm is looking like a very interesting company. They will find themselves in a monopoly position.
Not because they have twisted anyone's arms. Simply because their technology is better.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Of course, if I had any journalistic standards I would have written "concern" instead of "cocern." God bless America, we're all screwed.
Unfortunately, I'll bet it won't be cheap at all. I have GPRS on my phone, and bluetooth connect from my PowerBook when I'm mobile. But I have to use it sparingly because my phone service provider charges by the MB, and it can get very expensive.
If 3G can be charged by the minute, or even better at a fixed rate like Cable and ADSL, then it stands a chance at being widely used and accepted. If not, then they will just price themselves out of a market.
I have a motorola - Startac phone. The reception is incredibly crappy, the original antenna has a tendency to stick out and snap off, and I've actually managed to crash the phone itself in the web-browser.
I wouldn't brand motorola as good. The phones are rugged - mine's taken a lot of abuse - but they tend to be a bit weaker reception-wise, and the battery life on the older ones was horrible (1.5 days, less than 1 day on analogue).
I've heard mixed reviews on the timeports, they may be better, but look into it first.
3G promises 2Mb/s , this phone does 128kbps. as in this article, this is a hoax, this is 2.5G phone. Once 2Mb/s is here, then put 3G sticker on it.
Register reports on dubious branding uptaken by wireless providers:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/27250.html
it doesn't even support 1900Mhz GSM.... when will the quad-band model come out, eh?
Oh my god. You have no clue do you? WCDMA is the 3GPP standard that UMTS uses. It is certainly 3G. Peak bandwidth of 2 megabits/second qualifies.
OK, maybe I haven't been paying attention, but as far as I know, Verizon is using CDMA2000 (1xRTT, right?) and Sprint PCS is using CDMA2000 (I'm sure about that one), AT&T has a TDMA network (and some small bit of a GSM network) - so who's planning on deploying WCDMA? I've heard bad reports on wCDMA in Europe & Japan, compared to CDMA2000, so what's the scoop here? GSM compatibility is nice, but the Sony Ericcson phones seem pretty suave to me (T68i, anyone?)
Am I missing something here?
Please. Just because I said "Oh my god" I'm all of a sudden ditzy? :)
My point is that WCDMA is 3G. Not that he didn't know what standard UMTS is.
3G doesn't seem useful on a tiny cell display like that. Browse the web? The most text you could fit is 32 columns by 7 rows or so. My Palm Vx is 160x160 and I don't like reading text on that. This is even smaller.
-Kevin
I have 20 of them. and as I said the bulk of these phone have this problem. as well as the single send/end/menu button is the stupidest design... I have had many extra-long calls on the phones here because the user though they pressed end but it was currently at menu.
and from what the AT&T wireless techs tell me... this is VERY common as they are cheap phones.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
Funny how everybody's forgetting the Motorola A820, which was announced in... January? WCDMA, GSM, GPRS, and a bag of chips. here's a review and another.
WCDMA is a component of UMTS, the world wide 3G telecommunications standard being put together under the auspices of the ITU.
CDMA2000 is US PCS technology company Qualcomm's rival 3G standard.
The reason for CDMA2000 is primarily because Qualcomm wants to keep control over CDMA technology, and because UMTS has limited capabilities to integrate with old cdmaOne type networks such as that used by Sprint PCS and Verizon. It's also strictly a one-airinterface-technology standard.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
While all manufactures now offer 900/1800/1900
phones now, Nokia does just 2-band leaving
out north american customers.
Hide it in an office or whatever, monitor the suspects via the Internet, and just pick up the camera at the end of the day
You could even send it commands via SMS - I don't know what for, but if it's got some zoom features you could control those remotely!!
AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just remember to turn off the ringer ;)
Nokia is certainly not the first phone to operate on 3G. It isn't even the first phone to work on WCDMA 3G.
For those who don't know, the ITU defined a set of 3 CDMA-based standards for 3G; WCDMA, CDMA2000, and TD-SCDMA.
CDMA2000 services have been rolling out for quite some time. There are currently over 16 million subscribers (Korea alone accounts for 12 million and Japan with 2.14 million.) This is the standard rolling out in the US with SprintPCS and Verizon.
WCDMA on the other hand has very few users, on the order of 0.13 million.
Panasonic WCDMA device launched in September 2001 by NTT DoCoMo obviously beat this Nokia. NEC has a couple models launched in October 2001 for WCDMA as well.
Now, most CDMA2000 devices are 1x (low bandwidth first iteration.) Full blown 1xEV-DO (2 Mbps) devices were launched a while ago for the Korea market. These include LG LG-KH5000 in May 2002 and most recently the Samsung SCH-V300 launched in September 2002.
See 3G Today for a very extensive list of 3G devices.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
this phone has it.
with it, it can do all the cool stuff that you mentioned you'd "love" up top.
Q: What do you think about American Culture?
A: I think it's a good idea.
(adapted from Gandhi)
While Telco's aren't super stocks anymore, they are still moving on, most of the rest of the planet has suffered less in the last year because they didn't have as big a bubble that burst and haven't faced enough corruption.
GSM and 2G exploded in Europe and Asia well before it took off in the US.
This won't fail because the US doesn't do it.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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.
Q: Whats with all the cameras?
A: transferring images uses up minutes. or kilobytes, if you're metered that way.
This AC is right on the money.
SMS, if you remember recent history, was never intended by the networks to be a killer app. However it had such overwhelming grassroots support (albeit mostly outside the USA) that the networks have climbed on the bandwagon and now produced this: a way to charge you for as much bandwidth as possible without much meaningful communication occuring.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I recently got a discontinued Eyemodule for my old discontinued Handspring Visor ($30, why not?)
I'm having a lot of fun because of the simple fact that people don't know it's a camera. My friends are used to me using a PDA, and now I can get cool candid shots.
I feel like the fuzzy, low-res pictures I'm collecting are a better catalog of my life than the "say cheese" pictures from my film camera.
I could see a phone on a camera being used in much the same way. Yes, it's a toy. But it's a fun toy. Of course, I didn't rush out an buy this eyemodule 2 years ago when it was $200.
Depends on the Nokia phone :)
I have the Nokia 6310i, which has absolutely amazing battery life when running in the USA:
Talk time: 4h - 7h 30 min
Standby time: up to 17 days
Of course, the phone isn't very fancy. No color screen or anything. Just a slimmer 61xx-style phone, but with all the stuff you really want: GPRS, Bluetooth, WAP.
Of course, the phone isn't very fancy. No color screen or anything. Just a slimmer 61xx-style phone, but with all the stuff you really want: GPRS, Bluetooth, WAP.
:) (Fully charged is about 6h-6:30)
Well, I got a nice color screen so I'll take my 1 hour shorter battery life
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Basically what has happened in Europe is that Telecom companies have paid about $90 Billion for the spectrum and rights to roll out 3G services but are *only* allowed to use W-CDMA. The problem is it doesn't work yet, and who knows when it will. Meanwhile in Japan, South America, and elsewhere they are using CDMA2000-1X and they've signed up millions of users.
The Eurocrat regulators' stance seems to be "na na na na, I can't hear you, na na na na na na na" while telecom company debt builds up to the point where it may crush some companies before they ever get to actually roll out any 3G services.
Kyocera Wireless had the first 3G (CDMA2000 1X) phone launched over a year ago. The 2200 Series have sold in excess of 3 million units at Verizon, Sprint, and Virgin Mobile USA. Nokia really isn't doing anything special here.
Actually in_.jp it'll probably be more like 60G.
At least that's what the DoCoMo FOMA 3G phones cost.
Can someone explain why the FOMA phones don't meet the 3G standard?
They seem to make the same bandwidth requirements. I fail to see whats new about this. Is it the multitasking?
No warranty of any kind is offered as to the quality of this post.
Well actually there is no such thing as a single 3G standard! As far as I know there are several competing standards mainly the European one and the American one (by Qualcom).
As a matter of fact here in Japan we have 3G phones already for about a year, since NTT Docomo introduced the FOMA service. It is hardly very successful, expensive and unreliable but these phones contain more features than any GSM phone on the market.
In addition KDDI subsidiary AU has sported a 2.5G phone service called CDMA-One for about 3 years, which now has been moved to full 3G with CDMA2000.
It is easy to think of GSM and Nokia as THE WORLD STANDARDS, but please remember that Japan has a completely different phone system that is much more advanced in many areas (while lagging behind in others).
This is a bogus article. CDMA 2000 3G phones that are referred to as 2.5G operate at the same (if not higher) speeds that this phone does (~144 kbps). There are plenty of 3G-1XRTT capable phones available from SprintPCS and Verizon and those companies have networks that support 3G-1XRTT - that's right 3G-1XRTT at full 3G-1XRTT speeds! So to say that this piece of junk Nokia is the first 3G capable phone is a fallacy.
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?"
You think 3G camera prohes won't change that?
A: Look what I just did in the terlet!
B: HUH HUH HUH!
"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid, it is true that most stupid people are conservative."
Nokia seems to have numbering system like this:
ABCD{i} where:
A = market category
1 = basic (not much used lately)
2 = old "classic" phones (2110) (not used much since)
3 = young people phones
(for people that are not in serious work)
Look plastic, feel plastic.
You can change cover/ringtones/logos/screensavers.
4 = not used (in Asia 4 is like 13 in west;
you have to think also asian markets)
5 = mostly little bit special stuff
(5210=outdoor,5510=music-player)
6 = classic (matter a fact phones) for
people that use phones in work
(not outdoors). For men.
7 = special/extraordinary stuff (7110,7210)
Usually not so cheap stuff.
8 = Design mobiles (8110(=banana),8810(zippo),8850,...)
Ladies/small stuff (8210,8310,...)
9 = Communicators (9000,9210...)
B = generation/version (inside category)
(6110,6210,6310 (no 6410), 6510,6610...)
OR subcategory
8[23]XX = small/ladies stuff
88XX=design stuff.
C = network system
1 = GSM (first it was GSM900 now also 1800)
2 = AMPS (usa - old analog system)
3 = GSM (was just GSM1800 [6130])
4 = -
5 = GSM900+1800 (sometimes +1900)
now usually triple-band + something special
6 = D-AMPS/TDMA (usa+americas)
7 = CDMA1900/CDMA2000?
8 = CDMA1900 (usa)
9 = GSM1900 (usa)
summary: 1-5= GSM:euro/asia stuff 6-9=usa/americas
D = subversion (not much used in europe)
i = extended model (like 6310i)
That's a bit like saying, back in 1995, that 'Linux is doomed - Windows has more users, more desktops, high economies of scale, ...' Of course, back then Linux was not really ready for prime time the way it is now, with nicer GUIs, installers, more apps, etc.
W-CDMA is not really finished yet, as other posts have pointed out - NTT DoCoMo launched too early with a sort-of W-CDMA, but its phones didn't have any roaming onto the local 2G networks, so you had to buy a large expensive phone to get tiny coverage in a couple of big cities. Not surprisingly, it failed.
The real test will come when W-CDMA phones have integrated roaming onto 2G networks (mainly GSM) - only then is there any chance of serious uptake. These phones will have a much bigger potential market than CDMA2000, so as long as the phones and networks work well, and have good services at reasonable prices, it's possible that W-CDMA will gradually come to dominate. But only time will tell...
My T68 is being repaired for the second time in a month - it goes into a state where it refuses to make or receive calls, mainly on GSM-1800 networks. Along with the frequent crashes and spontaneous switching-off in my pocket (even though keypad lock is on), this is making me less than impressed with SonyEricsson...
If the Nokia 7650 wasn't so chunky I'd buy one like a shot, and I may still do just to get phone software that is faster and more stable.
My T68 is being repaired for the second time in a month - it goes into a state where it refuses to make or receive calls, mainly on GSM-1800 networks. Along with the frequent crashes and spontaneous switching-off in my pocket (even though keypad lock is on), this is making me less than impressed with SonyEricsson...
I'd ask for a replacement phone. I know 4 people that have T68's and have never had any problem. There is a bug with the keylock though, and you can turn the phone off. I've done it before, but forgot what the key combo was.. I remember thinking it was really stupid. I turned AutoLock on, and it went away (go figure) and doesn't do it anymore. The only gripe I have with the phone is that the clip that holds the battery in is easy to pry open when you are digging in your pocket. I've popped my battery of twice catching pens and what not on it.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
The camera doesn't point to the side the earpiece is. It's on the BACK of the camera...
--Drake 2c
I'm trying for a replacement phone but unfortunately I bought it on a UK network that doesn't make this easy. I usually get phones through Orange who have an excellent replacement policy as part of their insurance deal (free in the first year) - you just get a new phone by courier and send the old one back.
.. I used to get in more fights with SCO than I did my girlfriend, but
now, thanks to Linux, she has more than happily accepted her place back at
number one antagonist in my life..
-- Jason Stiefel, krypto@s30.nmex.com
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