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Nokia 7600 All-in-One Phone
prostoalex writes "The new Nokia 7600, reviewed by people at MobileMag is a 3G/GSM phone with radically new design and built-in functionality of an MP3 player, multimedia browser and digital camera. The phone supports WCDMA as well as GSM 900/1800. Some pictures of the product are available at Nokia's site. This is perhaps Nokia's first attempt to marry mobile phone and PDA in a lightweight and thin formfactor."
AFAIR Nokia was the first cellular phone maker, who introduced combined phone and PDA (Nokia Communicator). It wasn't maybe "lightweight and thin", but the times were different.
Regards
I have seen these before, and yet never understood why it's necessary to combine the two? Both are small enough to be insignificant, and to be honest, if I was on the 'phone to a client, then I'd want to be able to use my PDA without having to stop talking. Isn't this a bit of a niche market?
I already fail to use my PDA as much as I might do because its slightly too big to fit in my pockets. This thing is over 3 inches wide, which is half as much again, and surely isn't going to be comfortable to hold in one hand.
As much as part of me finds it an amusing gadget, this really does seem to be part of Nokia's drive to add so many other applications to phones that they stop being any good at phone calls. I wish my 3510i was as good at the phone basics as the old 3210.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Does anyone else thinks this looks like a $600 football?
Makes me feel a little better for buying the 3650. Now I own the second ugliest phone in the universe.
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
wheres the GPS mode? the full functional PDA features? maybe even a radio tuner? with 29MB of memory how useful is this as a mp3 player? more than all that what i'd kill for in a phone/phone service is better quality call sound. if 3G services have such a high data rate for better video capabilities, then why dont they use that to make calls sound less like a phone call and more like your sitting next to the person your talking to.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!
Review in The Register here.
Nokia page about the phone, with a better listing of fetures here.
on the new nokias being in funny layouts?! I know I'm not the only one, but sometimes, I only know phone numbers by pattern recognition on a proper numeric pad! :) If I use a phone with a different layout, man, there goes a bunch of my friends! :)
... admit it!
I know you do it too
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
That sounds like a press release if I ever read one.
I have no problem with press releases, but the submitter should *not* have claimed it was a review.
Watch the Teaser Trailer for "The Lightning Thief" Her
...but I've never understood the purpose of 'phones which can play music yet only have enough room for "up to 50 minutes of near CD-quality music". Go-betweens rarely turn out well and what's the point in having to convert your music to 96kb/s just to fit a whole album on there?
Mobile 'phones often suffer from poor battery life as it is and I can only see this feature reducing it yet more. Why include an additional "feature" that is detrimental to the device's main function? It's a pain having to switch the music on a player at the best of times, but why would you consider it when you've only got fifty minutes and no upgradabilty? I can't help thinking it's only bloated for the sake of it and to appear more trendy. I dread to learn the ways in which Nokia have organised music downloads straight into the 'phone from mobile services...Finally, I'm sure I'm not the only one to lament the lack of Vorbis compatibility. As for LAME, I bet you could barely even fit one song on there...
Turkeyphant
Every time there's a converged device, we get comments like this. Likewise, every time we hear about a new gadget of some sort, we get comments suggesting it would be better if we tried cross-breeding it with a laptop.
Just stop for a second and realize that not everybody has the same tastes as you. Variety is good! People who want all that and a bag of chips can go buy a PDA/Phone/Camera/MP3/GPS, and people who just want a phone can get one of the simple no-nonsense Nokia models. People who like to have their pants stuffed with electronics can buy it all separately so they can practice juggling it all while simultaneously talking to clients on the phone.
In the end, we all benefit when there's choices. Quit complaining when a product isn't the same as the products you like-- and just go buy those instead.
And yes, I should probably heed my own advice.
It appears to me to be a rather intelligent design. Both hands can be used to quickly manipulate buttons (as opposed to palming while pecking) without obstructing the screen. As for answering a call, that's what headphones are for. As to the 1st poster concerning Bluetooth... RTFA!
I like it: it's small, but they didn't try to shoehorn in a full keyboard for my sausage-like fingers to mash. The goofy key layout looks pretty optimal for texting with thumbs, actually.
Regarding "How do I use the PDA and talk at the same time?" -- use a $60 bluetooth headset.
What is it missing to make my perfect convergence unit?
a) Higher-res screen. According to the specs at Nokia, it's only 128x160, less than an older-generation Palm. Give me at least 320x240, and we're talking useful
b) Memory slot. I'm not terribly fussy. My camera is CF, my Palm is SD (but I don't own any devices for it, because it doesn't have good enough sound for me to want to download MP3s), my laptop supports SD and MS but not CF (which is solved with a PCMCIA card)
c) Maybe a stylus. I've gotten very used to touchscreen on my Palm -- it's sorely missed on my GPSr for selecting items and text entry.
d) Oh yeah, GPS receiver.
(a), (c) and (d) are mainly price issues. (b) means they want you to keep paying to download over the phone lines.
Design for Use, not Construction!
My dream phone is small, lightweight,and has a long battery life. Combining multiple features tkaes away from all three of these characteristics. Am I weird for wanting a phone that is just a phone?
By far my favorite so far is the Samsung SPH-i500 (see it here), and it's upcoming successor, the SGH-i500, which will be the GSM version, with Palm OS 5 and other goodies.
This is what I've been waiting for, for some time - a cell phone, with a Palm OS PDA built in, and complete integration between the two. You can manage one address book, click on your Palm address book and dial from there, search Zagat.com with a Palm web browser to find restaurants while walking the streets of New York, and pretty much do all the stuff I've always wanted to do with a PDA, but couldn't because it didn't have an internet connection, and getting one added on was too bulky/expensive, and browsing on your cell phone was waaaay too awkward for anything other than the simplest polling of your email to see any new subject lines, maybe reading a short email from a friend.
The CNET reviews are definitely mixed, but I spent an hour or two playing with my friend's SPH-i500 and I'm totally hooked. Now I just need to convince myself to spend 600 bucks on it, after my last large PDA expenditure on a Clie that I use once every month or two.
For anyone who lives and dies by their palm, take a look at KeySuite. It blows everything else away. The sync NEVER fails and it can have as many cals, address books, and todo's as you want, even from public exchange folders! YES! MULTIPLE!
PS. I am no shill. I just LOVE that program. And every time I hear that "SomethingXYZ(TM) can replace your palm!" I fear my time is being wasted by a reviewer who is younger than than Palm OS itself.
That's not a review! That is quite literally a cut-and-paste from the Nokia press release!
Here's the original
Here's the copy.
Spot the difference.
If you look, they even include the asterisk from the Press Release, without copying the footnote it links to!