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Nokia 3650 Released in US Market
A Swing Dancing Dork writes "Check out the new Nokia 3650! Video and still imaging, MMS support,Bluetooth,Triband, and polyphonic bliss all wraped up in a uber-modern package." I was looking phones all morning so I'm glad this showed up. Anyone have advice on cel phones? I'd like IMAP, HTTP, and IM, as well as PDA functionality that can sync via bluetooth to a Mac. I was looking at the Sony Ericsons, but this may work as well.
Two words - T-Mobile's Sidekick. Color units are coming in a month or two. Has SMS, full HTML web browsing (not WAP!), POP3 email, AIM messaging, scheduler, notes, games, hidden keyboard! GSM/GPRS device. Uber c00l!
All of your data is fully backed up to Danger's servers so there is never a chance of losing anything. Unbeatable deal for less than $100 with unlimited data for $39.95 a month.
No IMAP or syncing via Bluetooth though.
I was just about to buy one yesterday but they were just too big. I really wanted a phone with speakerphone and BT, and this seems to be the only one that I can get on T-Mobile or Cingular.
Went for a T68i instead. It'll have to do for now (atleast it has BT).
OLIVER
Better VDF than VD...check it out: Data Access
how irritatating it would be to try and dial that thing, with the buttons not layed out in the traditional, muscle memory configuration. Oh sure, you can use voice recognition, or look up numbers on a list, but even with all that enabled, I still end up *dialing* my phone about 50 - 60% of the time, and trying to deal with that keypad combination would suck, especially with numbers where you can only remember it by dialing it.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
I saw this device yesterday at the AT&T wireless store in the mall of america. Two word - it sucked. Sure it had a great camera, and big screen - but the buttons felt cheap, the device is huge, and feels realy lcheap in your hands. The 5 way navigator didn't click down very well, and.. you get my point. I think the size of this thing kills it. Sitting right next to it was some uber tiny color nokia that i really liked . It had a much nicer feel to it - nokia has good and bad designs.
As for a perfect cell phone i would wait for the Sony Ericsson T608 and T610 (CDMA/GPRS respectivly) They are compeltly new phones with the features of the t68i and more. I can't wait for them to be released.
Anybody see the unauthorized realistic but bootleg commercial advertising this phone on the Net? I had a link to it but it has been since taken down by Nokia's Lawyars.
.mpg's I have seen in a while.
It depicted a couple of zany guys taking a picture of a cat swinging from a celieng fan with this phone. Had the realistic Nokia logo and everything.
Rumor had it that the commercial was put together by one of the ad firms in charge of (or denided) Nokia's account and leaked on to the Net from there.
Definatly one of the most halarious
I just got call tags sent so that I can return mine to ATT. The phone is good. It has good rf performance, better than my T68i. But... It claims to be bluetooth audio, but doesn't work with any bluetooth headset but Nokias. It only works with the bluetooth 'handsfree' profile, not the headset profile that most bluetooth headsets obviously support.
It does synch over bluetooth with outlook, but the alarm for calendar events is fixed. You can't shut it off without silencing the whole phone (or turning it off). I was awakened at midnight the other night by an alarm for my mom's birthday. I like my mom and all, but that sucks. I want to be able to have just visual alarms for calendar events.
For $150, it's a nice phone, it just has a few issues. I'll wait for the P800 to be available through ATT. For now, I really do like my old T68i better.
Here is the latest story from an advertising trade rag. Here is the link to the commercial if you just can't wait.
This phone doesn't support SyncML, so the chances of you syncing with your Mac anytime soon are slim. Nokia does provide PC software to allow syncing with your Windows PC, though.
And as for Bluetooth, once again Nokia has failed to implement the headset profile, although it does support the newer handsfree profile. I can't seem to find any details on the differences between the two but what it does mean for sure is that of the current Bluetooth headsets available, only the SonyEricson HBH-60 and the soon-to-arrive Nokia HDW-2 support that profile. Nokia is known for their poor and buggy Bluetooth support (they must hate that their rival Ericsson invented it) and they do seem to try the "embrace and extend" scheme once in a while - they want you to buy their Bluetooth device and not someone else's. They've used the headset profile in the 6310i, but that's it for the US market.
It's hard not to support SonyEricsson (especially the Ericsson part) when they've made Bluetooth a licensed standard, and when they put things like SyncML, an open syncing standard, on their phones. And don't forget the SonyEricsson Clicker which is just plain cool.
A good review of the 3650 is here.
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."
I don't think you understand why text messaging became so popular. In some places in the world, people haven't grown up with free local calls, or buying airtime in blocks. Voice calls were (are?) considerably more expensive than text messages. Thus they originally became popular with poor (cheap?) students and the like.
I have a Handspring Treo that I really get a kick out of. It works as a regular (although larger) flip phone when I need a phone, and as a PDA when I need a PDA. Today I was waiting at the salon to get my hair done, and while I was waiting, I was surfing Google and trying to find a good software package for one of my clients.
The Treo has AIM/Yahoo/MSN support thanks to VeriChat, which I highly recommend. I also use Top Gun SSH to SSH into my servers from anywhere.
Treo Central is the hookup for new software, and is also a good site for ringtones (if you're into them -- I like the wide selection of ringtones that come by default.)
Also, PalmNet lets you connect your Treo to your laptop and get 10K/sec Internet access wherever you can find a Sprint PCS connection.
All in all, if you need more than just a phone, the Treo is a winner. If you want just a phone, get just a phone... but even my boyfriend, who has one of those LG phones that you get for free with Verizon, gets jealous of me surfing around the Internet, playing games, and chatting when we're waiting in line for something.
The Treo is $149 right now. If you are a current Sprint PCS customer and you sign another 1-year Advantage agreement, you may be able to receive a service credit. I got a $200 credit [4 1/2 months free] just for signing up for another year, but I had to negotiate heavily.
Hope this helps...
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I wish this was a CDMA phone, from the web site it had it listed as GSM
n nor.net
I am looking forward to the point when they have a bluetooth CDMA cell phone, I have the palm pilot tungsten t and a bluetooth adaptor for my laptop. I found that Jabra makes a bluetooth headset for non-bluetooth phones, but it only works for audio it does not do data. Here is the response I got from them when I asked about the headset.
The Bluetooth profile supports audio but not data. Sorry.
Thank you for contacting JABRA Customer Service.
Heather A. Fox
Customer Service Representative
800-327-2230
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael P. O'Connor [mailto:m.p.oconnor@verizon.net]
Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2003 4:10 PM
To: info@jabra.com
Subject: question about the FreeSpeak for non-bluetooth phone
I have the Qualcomm QCP-2760 phone and was wondering if this will also let other Bluetooth device to connect to the cell phone, so that I can use a Bluetooth pda to dial the phone, and to use both a laptop and the pda to connect to the internet via the cell phone thought the dial connection I have setup for the phone. Can I do data over the Bluetooth adaptor? Thanks for your time.
Michael P. O'Connor
m.p.oconnor@verizon.net
http://mikeoco
This has been talked about a lot on the Tungsten T mailing list on yahoo groups ( http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Tungsten_T/
It's a smartphone, you made a mistake going with the T68i. The T68i is a toy in comparison, can't install new apps, can't write your own.
The 3650 can run all kinds of apps, it's basically a modern colour PSION scaled to fit in a phone.
Who cares if it's a little chunkier than a dumb basic phone, it has more functionality. You might as well say a laptop is too big compared to a PowerPC, this is the difference between a 3650 and a toy like the T68i, only the 3650 is only a little bigger.
I love my Sidekick.
I thought you worked at Sega?
How's your Smell-o-vision project going?
Your educational background is pretty impressive too.
What about Super Marx Brothers?
Or Game Boy Advance porn?
Have you finished the HIGHLY ADVANCED SPEECH RECOGNITION DEVICE?
When cells first came out, a lot of people in the U.S. already had "mobile" telephones. These were basicaly point-to-point radios that tied into the phone network. Expensive, because they tied up a lot of radio spectrum. Obviously, you need a word other than "mobile" to describe the new service.
Methinks you have your head on backwards.
CDMA has poor interoperability; sure, if you only ever need a phone in the USA and your don't care about open standards, please, get a CDMA phone.
If you travel at ALL, then GSM is currently the only way to go.
The sooner CDMA and other US-centric telecom technologies buy the farm, the better for consumers.
The insane convenience of having one-phone, one-number, 6 continents and no hassels roaming FAR outweighs the slight technological advance that the CDMA air interface has.
They use the same scripts that Amazon.com uses, so that they can market to people based upon their prior purchases. Kinda sucks that you can't go back and edit your post, doesn't it?
At first I was mildly intrigued by the look of the 3650, and since T-Mobile (my carrier in AZ) actually offers the phone directly, I did some looking around... bottom line, pass on it (IMHO).
Others have pointed out the flaky Nokia bluetooth stuff, and the lack of syncml might actually be a bigger minus that I would have thought initially (I have an Ericsson R520 with all sorts of features, syncml among them, and I am just now starting to exercise the phone's feature set).
The keypad has to go.
I usually stop by here to get some phone scoopage (there are certainly many, many other sites as well). They have a review of the 3650 at the bottom-- or use the review search feature-- with the final thoughts (on page 3 of the review) rather humorous, but probably too true to be ignored.
Also on that site I found a review of the Siemens S55 which made me want to read more about the current and upcoming Siemens offerings. On the same site yet again is an article covering just that topic, about the upcoming SX1 and others from Siemens. The SX1 looks like it takes alternative keypad design in a slightly more functional direction.
Having tried out the Jabra FreeSpeak with my R520 (successfully and satisfactorily), and with a need to use some WAP and other wireless networking features lately, I am utterly convinced that getting a phone that does what you want it to do-- well-- is essential. Look past the buzz, get what will meet your needs, and pay attention to those details about keypad quality, low-light screen readability, and other such mundane details.
But that SX1 still looks cool...
I've been working on a project with the 3650 over the past 2 1/2 months and, what can I say, it's a piece of shit. If other Nokias are going to be like this, then they will fall off their pedestal - Nokia is popular as hell, but they're not a monopoly. Their total disregard for quality has pushed a lot of users, including me, to Motorola, Samsung, SonyEricsson and Siemens. The 6210 was a fiasco, bluetooth in the 6310 was buggy as hell (fixed a bit into the 6310i).
Anyway, what sucks in the 3650?
* The keypad. This is definately the *worst* element, it flies in the face of convention and not in a cool and edgy way. I've been using this phone non-stop for the last 11 weeks and I haven't gotten used to it.
* Usability. Nokia took over by offering good usability. Phones used to have a different button for everything, Nokia took that, stripped it down (in the 3110, 51x0, etc) to a single nav key. It's been worse lately - the 6310 has like 13 or 14 main menu options so you can't even use shortcuts (like menu, 2, 2, 1 to write an SMS) to control all the functions.
While it's been slowly getting worse, the 3650 is just a leap ahead. The menus are organized so poorly that it took me 10 minutes to find the clock, took me a cab ride home (25km) to figure out how to turn the keypad tones off. It's just... complicated. Plus, the software is inconsistent - you can link some elements, you can't link others - even tough they seem identical to you.
Anyway, the phone is a total pain in the ass, I hope we start doing something for a newer model but - knowing my luck - it'll be this model all the way until autumn.
Ugh.
I bought one of these off of eBay a couple of months ago, and sold it shortly after I bought it despite having invested in a 128MB MMC card. A few key comments:
1. While I thought the keypad would be interesting and innovative, it's actually a disaster in consumer product design. The standard 3x4 keypad design is so commonly employed that people now input numbers/PINs/etc. as much for the pattern of the digits as the number the combined digits form. I found while using the device that even numbers I have known and dialed for years did not easily come to memory as the phone lacks the visual queues the familiar layout provides.
2. The device supports a limited set of Bluetooth profiles, so that Jabra headset you bought or the first few generations of SonyEricsson headsets (through the HBH-30) won't work with it.
3. IMAP over SSL/TLS? Forget it. Doesn't work.
4. The user interface feels childish and inelegant. This is just my opinion, but when you compare it to either UIQ on the SonyEricsson P800 or PocketPC 2002 it appears more to be the product of an early-stage, open source project than commercial UI design.
5. The video camera only captures ~12 seconds of video. This is NOT a storage limitation, as this restriction exists no matter how much storage you have available.
6. Also personal opinion, the construction of the device feels cheap and "plasticy".
Still, the device category has come a hell of a long way since the IBM/BellSouth Simon...
"If you travel at ALL, then GSM is currently the only way to go."
I can travel in a country of 300 million people that is three times the size of Western Europe and never pay roaming fees or need to switch my phone. Not to mention coverage in Canada.
"slight technological advance that the CDMA air interface has"
2x more people per cell, as well as much larger cell sizes is not "slight". It's massive. That's why I have unlimited calling to anyone else on the same CDMA network. That's why I get unlimited off peak minutes and 500 free peak minutes. That's why I get unlimited 144kbps data service.
GSM doesn't work in the US. The cell size is simply too small. If you look at the carriers who have adopted GSM (AT&T, T-Mobile, Cingular) vs. the carriers who have adopted CDMA (Sprint, Verizon), the CDMA services have far better coverage.
17km cells may be fine when your country is the size of California. The US has fewer people than Western Europe, yet it is nearly three times larger. Much of that area is sparsely populated. Covering Wyoming using GSM cells is sinply not feasable.
"The sooner CDMA and other US-centric telecom technologies buy the farm, the better for consumers."
Nope. Having a diverse set of technologies is good for consumers. Being locked into a fast-aging standard is bad. What's good for consumers is having both standards available and letting the free market choose the best option.
Most people in the US will rarely need to leave the country. Europeans may travel from country to country often, but Americans do not. Interoperability with other systems is not a criteria most Americans care about.
So far, people in the US have chosen CDMA over GSM technologies. CDMA does more and costs less.
...but Nokia's interpretation of BT is spotty. Not all BT headsets are supported since it doesn't support the headset profile, opting to support only Nokia's headset. Otherwise, I think it works fine.
Is it too big? Somewhat, if you compare it to the T68i. But it's not as heavy as it looks (it's way lighter than my old 7110). But it has a big enough screen for ebooks (mobipocket reader is available), plus there's a gnuboy port for it. An mp3 player isn't included, but 3rd party programs are available.
Oh plus, it has an MMC (but not SD) slot, so the 3rd party apps are really useful. It's looking like a viable replacement for my PDA.
I just have to get used to the funky key layout.
The parent article makes some good points about the relative suitability of GSM and CDMA in a large and sparsely-populated area such as North America, however one point needs addressing:
Diversity in available technologies is only beneficial to consumers if those consumers are free to easily switch between technologies, and if the technologies are interoperable from the consumers' point of view. This is an often-forgotten tenet of competition; if there are barriers to switching between competing providers, you don't have competition, you have overlapping monopolies.
Consider the application of the above statement to Internet standards:
... and imagine that Internet devices could only speak either TCP/IP and HTTP or the other (proprietary) standard, not both. The result would be market fragmentation, consumer bewilderment, and the maintenance of proprietary monopolies.
I'm not arguing that GSM is superior to CDMA, or the reverse - they both have good and bad points. But don't be fooled into believing that it was the "free market" which put CDMA in place and keeps it there in North America; it's quite the reverse.