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Nokia 5100 Reviewed

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the high-tech-leashes dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Just read a review of Nokia's 5100 mobile phone. This phone has an integrated flashlight, FM tuner, a calorie burn application, sound meter and thermometer. And yet there is no Bluetooth capabilites. Is the cell phone market getting so desperate that companies are adding everything including the kitchen sink to sell these phones? Why would you want a sound meter or a calorie tracking application in a cell phone?" Looks like a good phone for people who like phones to look gaudy. Bells and whistles aside, the flashlight feature sounds pretty practical. A sound meter though?

2 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. Sound meter by archonon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sound meter actually quite cool, phone automatically adjust speaker volume depending how much there is background noise while speaking. It rocks! ;)

    --

    http://archonon.sytes.net/
  2. An explanation of extra features by psyconaut · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As someone who designs embedded hardware, I can probably explain a couple of the hardware-based features for those wondering why they're included.

    - Sound level metering is relatively trivial to implement when you're already digitizing a sound stream

    - The phone's battery pack might well already feature an IC containing a temperature sensor. It's not unusual for so-caleld "smart" battery monitor chipsets (such as the Dallas Semiconductor DS2438) to have onboard temperature sensing, because "smart" charging of modern battery cells requires this.

    So, the designers of the phone just found novel ways to use the existing components. Often made even easier as a lot of the separate ICs in phones these days are actually sitting on a 1, 2 or 3-wire bus (1-wire, I2C, SPI, etc).

    FYI...just in case anyone cares :-)

    -psy