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Motorola Announces E1060 Phone With iTunes Support
amichalo writes "Topping today's earlier news that Nokia and MS are collaborating on digital music in a cell phone, Motorola announced the E1060, a cell phone available Q4 2005 that supports MPEG-4/WMV/WMA/MP3 formats. Interestingly, Motorola is not locking themselves into Apple's iTunes, but also support Real Player. Reuters has more."
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Will it run Opera?
Is it just me or has motorola really made a come back with their industrial design? This unit looks great!
Some initial questions:
- Is there any word on what the iTunes interface looks like?
- Do we know what kind of removable memory it has? (What is TransFlash??)
- Will it DRM the music files so you can't transfer them back over bluetooth (is it a one-way sync?)
- Is the Bluetooth 2.0?
Just when you make it idiotproof, some idiot builds a better idiot.
I must be a dying breed... I want my phone to make calls with, I want my iPod to listen to music too, and now you guys are blurring the lines again... Stop it... I can see it now... in a year, I'll have an iPod that does PDA stuff, plays music, is a cell phone, has a 10 megapixel camera in it, and opens my garage door.
Why can't I have a phone that just works as a phone... and an Mp3 player that just plays music, nothing else? I thought apple was going in the right direction with the shuffle... it's small, and does just one thing... play music... is that too much to ask of phones?
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
It's just about the ugliest phone I've ever seen.
Plus it's not shiny white plastic or a grey metal shell.
-"I'm one of those Mac people that will break a bottle on the bar and hold it to your throat for bad-mouthing my system"
Not quite sure how this would be an ipod killer. It only has 32mb of internal memory and supports up to 512mb of additional memory. I can't really see cellphone/mp3 player combo devices really taking off until they start to have storage capabilities similar to an ipod mini.
That being said, I'm not sure I see downloadable music on your cellphone EVER taking off because once you've got tons of storage (and tons of your music) why would you spend the time (or money) downloading more through your phone. Where I think a device like this could become popular is if service providers offered streaming radio. This seems much more possible now with 3g networks taking off.
...but can i install Debian + X + GNOME on it then do a suitcase mod and carry that around with me ?
Too bad Moto isn't including iTunes support in their awesome (though expensive) RAZR phone or at least across most of their high-end mobiles. Moto also states that they will be compatible with non-iTMS offerings such as Real as well, so it's not an exclusive.
Ok, so maybe it supports AAC, but the songs that come from the iTunes Music Store have DRM protection in them, and Windows Media Player definitely won't support that format. So sure, you can copy your own songs encoded by iTunes into AAC, but why use AAC if it isn't DRM'd?
I think when you're trying to keep prices up and keep sales volume up, yes it might be too much to ask. I agree though, it's harder and harder to find a decent mobile phone that works well as a phone, first and foremost. Often you have to buy some super-fancy decked out version just to get a decent phone, but pay a huge premium for 45 features you don't want or need. Well, here's your market opening... get out the soldering gun.
I noticed that the Motorola phone supports MPEG 4 and WMV. Unless those are typos, now you'll be able to chat with friends OR watch movies while driving! I can't wait.
No QWERTY? Won't that limit all that instant messaging and e-mailing you could do with it, and before someone tells me about the size being a consideration you should check out my phone: the Motorola A630. Small does not mean no keyboard.
Creative Demolition
How is this a iPod killer? It would compete in Handsprings/PalmOne's Treo domain.
The really only thing new here is iTunes support, but then with the lack of real storage I would not think that this is a huge benefit over it competition.
Another day, another useless piece of gadgetry. 2005 is turning out to be another year in which the electronics industry as a whole adds to its products useless features, and expects (sensibly) consumers to lap it up and beg for seconds.
Man this took them forever. Call me a simple developer, however how hard can it be to add some more flash memory, better sound output through a headset, and modify the hardware to read MP3s. I've been pissed at the phone industry for nearly 2 years for not doing this. ~n
I won't be satisfied with cell phones until mine has a boombox attached to the side of it. When that day comes I'll truly reach the pinnacle of bling-bling.
-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn
I think when you're trying to keep prices up and keep sales volume up, yes it might be too much to ask. I agree though, it's harder and harder to find a decent mobile phone that works well as a phone, first and foremost. Often you have to buy some super-fancy decked out version just to get a decent phone, but pay a huge premium for 45 features you don't want or need. Well, here's your market opening... get out the soldering gun.
:P
Wait... you said a decent phone... I can't make a decent phone... if multi-billion dollar companies can't make one, how on earth could I make one? Short of buying one of theirs and frying all the 45 extra features I didn't want... hmmm... I think you're on to something...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
don't you know a flaming troll when you see one?
Or, alternatively, "Interestingly, Nokia has locked themselves into Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Motorola has not done so"
...or how about, "Interestingly, the device will support a wide number of formats"?
Really getting tired of slanted stories.
It's pretty big news that the Motorola device supports stuff other than WMP formats. Why? Because generally MS contracts for that sort of thing go as follows: "License WMP, get the technology really, really cheap, get lots of support from us, we'll practically write it all for you. Now, dump everything else, or the deal's off." Motorola told 'em to go screw.
Please help metamoderate.
Why do they keep putting the features of $comment{device1} into $comment{device2}? I just want my $comment{device1} to do $comment{device1_function}. Next thing you know, my $comment[25]{simple_device} will have $comment[25]{outrageous_feature}.
More storage would be nice, as would more megapixels, but I'm definitely planning on getting one to replace my V60 and Palm Pilot and use as a second iPod.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
The way to make money with music-enabled cell phones is this.
1) Make sure you can sync with your computer (e.g., iTunes)
2) Keep the airtime charge for download low (music biz to subsidize?)
3) Work with the radio stations so that when they play a new release they can also say, "And dial *1592 with your iTunes phone to buy and download this song now"
Instant gratification + low end user cost = profit
Divergence makes sense because some people just want a phone that does the phone function well. I don't really care for carrying around a shitty camera. I don't use a PDA. I don't like music. I therefore bought me a Nokia 1100 phone. Dumb as a rock phone with BW screen no bluetooth etc. Small, cheap and lasts for a month on a single charge (my mileage). When I do carry a digital camera, I want pretty good photos and carry a real digital camera.
If you look at hunting knives, you'll see a wide spectrum of just-a-blade knives to Swiss Army (does everything, but not very well). I expect that phone vendors will continue to mnake just-a-phone, but the incremental addition of a MP3 player etc is getting cheaper and adds a bunch of functionality (as well as a way to sell services), so the richer feature set will continue to grow too.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
512mb storage and (possibly) up to 1gb on an SD card? I can see it competing with the iPod Shuffle.
This phone is useful to me because I usually have a cell phone, while my iPod is mainly for my drive into work and while at work. To have a 5 hours worth of music with me at all times would really make the time I spend waiting in line, at appointments, etc, move faster. You can't always carry an iPod, even a Shuffle, but you can usually have your phone with you.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Am I getting younger, or do I detect the Old Man Syndrome squeezing itself into the discussion?
Really, I have said before that I get annoyed with all the stuff they attempt to put into a phone, but one of the main reasons most folks got into connectivity technology was to communicate in innovative ways.
I'm going to keep an open mind with this coupling. Who knows where I might find a use for this. What about Books on Tape "On Tap"? Downloadable audio books from a favorite author?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Really? I want my OGG support! Plus, sticking it in a product like this might get some more users of it, and make it just a little more used (another nail in the MP3 coffin).
(requires subscription or pay per view)
I've had a basic Nokia phone for the last two years that's worked great as my full time phone, but recently got switched over to a Motorola v551 and my reception is horrible. In additional, the user interface is annoyingly slow. Sure, it records video and crap like that but if I can barely get through a five minute call without it dropping then what good is it? Had the same trouble with the v501.
Is it because AT&TW/Cingular swithed me from their old digital service to GSM? Or are Nokia phones just that much better. I'm really disappointed with these Motorolas.
No one will buy it. No one is going to buy the Nokia/Microsoft thing either. Just like no one bought the Nokia N-Gage. People don't want this sort of thing.
The thing to remember about "convergence" devices is they only make sense if you can perform both functions without either interfering with the other. Let's say someone sells something that is both a video game system and a DVD player. This is a good idea. There is no interference, and the parts compliment the whole nicely; a DVD player needs some kind of MPEG decoder, a video game system needs some kind of optical drive, but the two never interfere-- you will never want to use your DVD player and video game system at the same time. Now let's say someone sells something that is both a video game system and a PVR. It will not sell. True, a hard drive and certain other features are desirable in both video games and PVRs. There is massive interference, though; you very much want to use both of these products at the same time. You want to be able to sit there and play GTA all night without worrying that you're missing Family Guy, because the Tivo will just pick it up. The engineer must thus either duplicate so much hardware that there is little or no benefit to the convergence, or just dictate "you can't use the pvr and video game features at once". (Your PC, of course, can act as both a PVR and a video game system without significant interference! But there you're trading functionality for convenience, ease of use, focus and cost. Someone could try to slap together a PC that plugs into a TV and say "look! it's a pvr and video game system!"... but they'll probably be as hard to use and charge as much as if you'd just bought a small PC.)
Now, let's think: What if someone tries to put an mp3 player in a phone? Even worse idea. The parts compliment each other poorly; you do not want or need the kind of playback quality on a phone that you need in an mp3 player, you do not want or need the kind of disk storage in a phone that you need in an mp3 player (unless you have the ability to record and save phone calls or ambient noise, which is a kickass potential feature, but unlikely due to legality). Meanwhile, there's interference. You want to be able to pause your mp3 player to answer your phone without losing your place; you want to be able to run your mp3 player all night without your phone battery being dead in the morning. The two features subtly, but distinctly, struggle for the hardware. Maybe if Apple is building the thing they can reconcile the two. If Motrorola designs it... probably not so much.
Basically the only benefit here is that unlike with PVRs or video game systems, people have shown themselves ready and willing in large quantities to pay too much for mp3 players and phones. OK... wait, actually that's a pretty good benefit, since people have demonstrated they're willing to pay more for a "luxury" product with the iPod name, and if this is a high-margin product it will make decent profit even if very few people buy one. Um, I might have just seriously damaged my own argument. But, you get the idea.
Someday a PDA, a video game system, a phone, and an mp3 player may all converge in a single cost-effective, battery-efficient device. Until that day it is unlikely consumers will bite on a product that is more than one, but not all of these.
(Note: If you object to anything above, pretend I prepended it with "In my opinion...)
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
This makes me wonder if Apple has designed a network Ipod that could download songs over a cell network. In my imagination of the product, it wouldn't function as a phone, because that would add unnecessary functionality. Apple has shown that extra functionality isn't always desired by consumers, especially if it's unrelated or inelegant.
It would look exactely the same as the current Ipod. I think you could browse the store fairly efficiently if they indexed the songs by artist and song title - I bet you could keep it to four clicks maximum without too much scrolling to get to a song from the main index.
Any thoughts?
Does anyone know what cell companies will make this model available in the States? I read TFA and it didn't seem to mention who would be offering this. Are we going to endure another Motorola Razor situation? I think this would be a poor decision by Motorola if they don't get this one out to more providers.
Quick! Grab your umbrella! There's about to be a flood of crotchedy old techies who think mobile phones that serve more than one purpose are crazy! Crrraaazaaay!!
Seriously though, I'm not the only one who WANTS to see the day where we have a phone, iPod, and PDA all in one device... right? Sure, bring on the "jack-of-all-trades master-of-none" arguement... but carrying around one device that does it all is better than having multiple gadgets. So what if the current creations need a little more R&D... it's not like basic phones can't be purchased anymore.
Making Over Motorola: If mobile communication is going to be seamless, Motorola has to be seamless. Forbes Yahoo Business: link
New chief reconnecting Motorola: Memories of earnings disappointments and last holiday season's product debacle are blurring as investors focus on rising sales and profits. link
How about fewer models and more QA?
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
I want it. Why must all geek toys (the GOOD PDAs, good computers, good gadgets, all gadgets before they go mainstream) be expensive? Fooey. But...I like cool toys. So it's more ramen for me while saving up for my next batch of toys.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
I, for one, welcome the chance to have an MP3 player on my phone. Why? Because I don't want to carry 4 portable devices. 1 phone, 1 camera, 1 MP3 player, and one palm pilot. That's effectively what I want and it's what the Treo 600 and 650 give me. Well actually no, I don't really want the camera, but I can't get a high end phone these days without it so I'll deal for now.
Frankly, I'm going to spend the money on the phone, and I like having a portable entertainment and workstation on my hip at all times, which is what it is. I can take care of simple work tasks just from that phone, and i can entertain myself very easily while waiting or traveling. The Mp3 player doesn't store that many songs and i need a memory card, but hell I don't carry with me that many Mp3s! I'm never going to fill up a 10,000 song player... or even a 1,000 song one.
Just because you don't want one doesn't mean other people don't. So far the only thing I don't like about those phones are the cameras. Everything else does in fact work great.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Can a moderator or admin ban this guy? Just look at his record. :|
I've got a Wasp T-12 including twin mp3 decks with scrubjockey interface, and sharkproof casing.
It's been out for three weeks in Japan - where's yours?
Nathan.
I hate to say this.. but havent we known this was coming since forever ? Hasnt it been showcased left and right and been made a big deal over already ?
My Nokia 6230 already plays MP3 and AAC files. I got a 256meg CF in it and bluetooth sync it to my library on my laptop. As far as WMV, or whatever, I couldnt care less.
Neither the press release nor the Reuters article says the Motorola phone will handle Apple's DRM or music purchased from the iTunes Music Store, only that it will work with the "iTunes format". Without explicitly mentioning the iTMS, in my mind that just means the phone will decode unencumbered AAC. Big woop.
AAC support huh? I want to fit 2 times as many songs on there with better quality! Truthfully, I'm really waiting for more of this...
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
The OP is a troll. You can find PLENTY of phones that are not stacked with features. You would be hard pressed to find one without a web browser, but that's just software. It's trivial to get phones without bluetooth, with no camera, without a case designed primarily for easy housing replacement, without a joystick, et cetera. YHBT. HTH, HAND.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
RTFA, hell, RTF description at the top of the page.
There's actually several good reasons for a phone to have music support:
Ringtones and hold music.
You call your buddy with an iTunes phone and are put on hold. What do you hear? How about something from Schubert? Someone calls you, and what do you hear? Why not Snoop Dog?
Yes, some people will think it's stupid and some people will think it's annoying.
GPL Deconstructed
Excuse me, but 2 shops isn't enough. I want to able to buy from any shop I want.
Please, no more anouncements of products that aren't expected for 3Q's.
If it is currently expected in Q4 2005, that means 50% it will be cancelled before it comes out, and 50% chance it will ship 6 months late. EVen if it does ship on time, announcing it today doesn't make much sense (it guess it makes pr sense, but not practical sense).
Phones that take flash cards and can play mp3s have been out for over year. Slashdot crowd is getting old as you can tell with all the +5 insight posts that say "All I want is phone that just makes call". Its like talking with my dad, he compains his simple cell phone is too complicated and its 4 years old and it does is make phone calls(no camera,no ring polymoric ring tones, no web. He doesn't even know how to check his voicemail.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
I can't wait until I can replace my Samsung!
(yes I know, dupe of joke, how original :)
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
iTunes compatible, realplayer compatible??
i don't want to deal with a shitty "music library" interface to download my tunes to the phone. what ever happened to seeing the device show up as a drive that you can just dump mp3 files onto?
is that so much to ask for?
also, why support ALL these damn formats and not even include the one FREE one (ogg).
Not anymore, michael no longer works for Slashdot and co.
Go down to your local mall and its food court. Take a look at the teenagers down there and what they are doing. There has become a huge culture built around cell phones -- talking (of course), text messaging, picture mail, wallpaper, and especially ring tones. I've seen primetime TV ads lately for companies selling animated cell phone wallpaper. It's big business. The iPod, as amazingly popular as it is, is just starting to become a fixture of youth culture. So there just might be some serious money to be made in the convergence.
Get a recond player.
Oh! And one of those phones you have to crank.
PS - The wagon is leaving for the west at high noon. You better get on.
The problem I find with combination of things is that if one of the components breaks and you have to send the device back, you're down the other components too. Like having a fax/copier/answering machine/combines hat and shoe rack, if the fax breaks and you have to return it you're all of a sudden stuck with nowhere to hang your hat and shoes.
I have a motorola e398 which has 'stereo' speakers on either side of the unit, a camera, a largish colour LCD and 64Mb of RAM for storing MP3's too. If the CCD breaks for some reason, I have to send the phone back to get it fixed, and then I'll be without a phone.
Task Mangler
I'm wondering if this really the long-awaited iTunes phone. I saw this on Reuters earlier today and closely read Motorola's press release, which doesn't say a thing about iTunes support. If this phone does support iTunes, I would imagine both Apple and Motorola would be trumpeting the fact, given the great fanfare around the announcement of the partnership last July.
the motorola mpx220 already supports all of those formats and more with freely available software that is easily installed.
it also has a mini-sd slot for storing volumes of music and data.
you can but it today. it runs windows smartphone and is very versatile.
I mean, that phone looked to be the shiznit. Now, bupkus. The A780 is the closest thing to something that may actually exist in white market form in the US, but it's way too expensive.
Then again, what with UMTS coming in the next year or so, it's probably a bad idea to get hung up on something that can only do GPRS..
I am the target audience. I bought an 1G iPod within 4 months of its release, I switch cell phones and providers every year to take advantage of the rebates, and my Mac is indispensible to me due to the synchronization of my calendar and contacts via iSync over Bluetooth to whatever cellphone is flavor-of-the-year.
And this phone will almost definitely become my next pick: my 1G iPod just died (not of battery issues -- I replaced that with a Newer Tech high capacity unit a while ago), my phone contract only has a few months left on it, and this advice would therefore let me slim down my pockets by cutting a theoretical iPod Shuffle out of the loop.
With so many phones on the market -- just browse through the US, GSM Nokia lineup sometime if you want to make your head spin -- there needs to be differentiation. All phones are reasonably small, and smaller yet is not worth $400 to me. All phones that I'd consider use Bluetooth and furthermore have adequate to excellent RF reception for all the neo-Luddites out there clamoring for "just a phone. sheesh". iTunes syncing is just the ticket for those like me on the fence.
Yes, but I like those features fine.
I want a big one.
Nobody makes a phone big enough for me anymore. i want a phone that extends from my ear to my mouth, and can rest comfortably on my shoulder. I'm not interested in putting it in my pocket, I'll clip it to my belt, thanks. But I'm sick of small telephones.
Oh, and one more little feature that I want - GOOD VOICE QUALITY. I can almost live without big for that one.
People are afraid of new things. You should have just taken an existing product and put a clock on it or something. -- Homer, on the baby translator, "Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?"
I was really interested in the idea of a phone/iPod(Shuffle) combo when I first heard about it. I figured that Motorola and Apple could really make something happen, especially with the work that was going on with the Shuffle. Sadly enough, this seems to be more of a phone with 32mb of storage tacked on.
With the size of the iPod Shuffle, and the low price, you would think they could cut it in half, remove the buttons (the controls would be software based on the phone), and stick it inside a phone.
I was waiting to upgrade my phone until the new Apple/Motorola stuff came out, because I was looking forward to a phone that would work with the Bluetooth on my iBook, and also would serve the purpose of an iPod Shuffle, all in one. Sadly enough, it looks like I'll be carrying my Shuffle and a cell phone around separately, because I never go anywhere without either of them now.
I guess I'll just buy a small clamshell phone with Bluetooth on it, and tape my iPod Shuffle to it.
Once again RTFA.
I think we're jumping the gun here on this being the iTunes Motorola Phone. Even Motorola doesn't list iTunes in it's feature specs.
As many have pointed out Apple designs the physical interfaces for all of its branding products--if iTunes were in the phone it would mean that iPod OS would be on the phone. This is just an MPEG-4 compliant phone.
Good voice quality? Good luck. Maybe if we get WiFi phones and places to use them...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Who also works for cingular wireless GASP.
i have a nokia 3600 blue tooth phone, have had it for a year, use blue tooth for a headset. Have 12 mb mmc stuck in back. Gotta couple of odd pics on it.
I have a pocket pc, and IPOD. And countless other gadgets.
At 35 this crotchety old techie who access to all things celluar, uses his phone to make and place calls. Pocket PC looks pretty on desk, ipod goes on vacations with me.
I only carry the phone. Cause I came to the realization about a year ago there was a whole lot more to life than me being connected to the net and gizmoed out.
The day I need these three things to make my life complete, well is the day I need to consider a change of careers and habits.
Puto
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Mobile phone shipments and market shares for 2004
Now if Apple managed to get iTunes licensed for the top five leaders then it would be in good shape.I work in an IT/Internet company in Tokyo and every few days, someone in the office pulls out yet another latest and greatest cellphone with a higher resolution camera, better ringtones, bells, whistles, doo-dads. Mine is an old piece of junk that doesn't do much of anything. It has some sort of proprietary email function that I have never used, expensive web access, I think, again never used.
Recently, a company Tu-ka came out with a new model that caught my eye - their "S" model, a nearly featureless phone. It has no camera or web or email. It doesn't have an address book. For that matter, it doesn't even have any sort of display. It has an LED to let you know that it's on, I think, and that's it. If you miss a call, well, you had better hope they call back. If you catch the call, you have to ask who's calling.
On the upside, it has 840 hours of standby and 240 minutes of talk time in the battery. The operation is exceedingly simple and straightforward. The buttons are large and the sound is clear. For talking, it's a great phone. As you may have guessed, the target market is Japan's elderly, for many of whom this will be a first cellphone, probably a direct upgrade to a black bakelite rotary phone. The advertisements show old people in kimono.
For me, I want one because it will do what I want it to and nothing more. It will never become obsolete. As for showing it off to my cow-orkers, sure, maybe for a few laughs, but it will be pretty clear that I'm just not playing along. If it only had a rotary dial...
More and more, I'm getting away from the needless gadgets that used to clutter up my life. Where I used to say "always be charging," I now grab a couple of rolls of black and white film for my camera, my notebook and a pen and head out the door. My pictures are better for it, my notes more accessible and will never become unreadable because the hardware has become obsolete. I don't read e-books -- I read books. Sure, my music collection is a server full of MP3s, but I tend to listen at home, using speakers, rather than on my now-obsolete 5GB iPod.
-- My Weblog.
Well you'll hear something good now!
For those of you who've never heard of it, Motorola's MPX aka the MPX300 (pre-production model number) is the first phone to have a dual-hinged clamshell design. It can open in portrait mode (phone number pad has precedence) or landscape (qwerty has precedence)
Have a look at http://www.motorola.com/motoinfo/product/images/0, ,48,00.html
They're not available through any providers yet, but I got one off eBay and you can now get it from Tiger Direct. This phone has Bluetooth, 802.11b, GPRS, and IRDA all in one! Drop a 1gig SD card into the SDIO slot and you've got loads of storage.
Having had one for a month now: if you're a hardcore PDA user this might be underpowered, particularly in the ram dept. If you want always on Internet for E-Mail, IM, SSH, Terminal Services, VNC, and general communication then it kicks ASS.
I can listen to MP3's, watch videos, SSH into my servers (and actually type no stupid pecking or stylus squiggles), have voice dialing through my bluetooth headset (realtime voice recognition, no pre-recorded voice labels), etc, all in one device.
I hate carrying multiple devices around. This is, by far, the best all-in-one I've found. Is it perfect? No, but it's damned good.
You mention they were farmed out, would you know to whom?
Blockwars: free, multiplayer, head-to-head on-line game.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
For that, you'll need a holster rig...
I actually know someone who uses an underarm holster rig to hold his mobile phone. It's not a bad idea really considering that he actually uses it when wearing "overalls" and works with chainsaws.
It is also concealed but close to the chest (sensitive area) so he can feel the vibration even when working in noisy surroundings.
Except there's no mention of iTunes on the Motorola product page. There is however a press release about the new IMS features of the new phone, which in this case means Instant Messaging Service, not iTunes Music Store. Is Reuters suffering acronym overload?
Is that a Click Wheel on the E1060? If they collaborated with Apple, maybe they licensed the Click Wheel and are using it for navigating the phone's functions. It may make it easier to access them.
The Nokia 6600 is one such largish phone. As far as voice quality, my 6600 performs quite happily on T-Mobile. The sound isn't bad at all.
I'm still struggling to understand this line of thinking... (and also the current line of thinking of phone manufacturers, although I can see how it is economically favourable to lock you into proprietary systems)
Why can't we be running bluetooth enabled mobile PDAs? Ie. A PDA running the same file system as a PC, running the OS of your choice (probably a lean VNC capable version of linux?) It would only need very basic specs as it would simply be an input and network device
=======
1/ You could simply VNC to your home PC when in a wi-fi area or use the phone company network to VNC when not in a wi-fi area -
2/ You could access itunes from your PC to stream MP3s from yours or anyone's computer... (300gig of music in your pocket anyone?)
3/ Hell, you could even play Halflife 2 (optimistic perhaps.. i'm not sure of the limitations of mobile data rates, but I can't imagine this is too far away for wi-fi these days)
4/ I could buy a PDA with a camera on it (if they don't make them, they should) or I could buy a camera with bluetooth support (if they don't make them they should).
5/ Literally any software I wanted to run... Voice recognition... anything I need a 3ghz to process could pass instructions back to a PDA for offline use.. I could stack commands and send at once to avoid using too much online call time (until call costs go down, or until people stop considering "calls" and start accepting nothing less than permanent mobile net connectivity..)
6/ The possibilities are endless... Hey I'm just thinking even something crazy like if someone said "I just bought a new dirigible" I could press a button and say "define dirigible" and it would send it to by home PC running dragon dictate or some such, DD would send it to google and audio stream back the response in text to speech, allowing me to know what a dirigible was and how much I wanted one of my own... *within seconds*.... ("Tank, I need the program to operate a 1930s dirigible" or your matrix quote of choice) Hey! Try do that with a motorola!...
7/ And last but not least, I could make phone calls on it on the road over the telephone system and VOIP calls when in wi-fi areas.. just like a regular mobile (but with VOIP!)
=====
My life is on my desktop PC. I don't want to be trying to duplicate it on 512mb.
Any comments? Am I missing something? This is just a modern application of existing technology as far as i'm aware... Has anyone got a system like this one running currently?
'plex
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
I think it's a kewl looking phone, albeit for someone younger. This isn't really a ground-breaking phone, like the PalmOne Treo, Siemens SX66, et. al. But I think convergence is a good thing when it makes sense or the technologies overlap. Why carry around a PDA, cell phone, GameBoy, and have 30 remote controls at home, when you can have them all in one, for about the price of just the PDA?
The problem I have with this phone is, Motorola makes it. Moto, can't write good software for making a device compatible with a real computer to save their life. Oh, and don't even think about trying to write you're own code... They'll sue you quicker than you can say "GPL".
I'm still waiting for ASUS or Dell to market a smartphone with a 40 GB harddrive, 1+ MP camera, good display, stereo output and decent built-in software. Hell, I don't even care if it is M$ based. As long as I can buy and/or write code for it, and it has decent integration with my PC regardless of my OS. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi would also be mandatory.
You know, the funny thing is, I don't need the thing to have the normal dimensions of a phone, because I hardly ever put any phone to my ear any more. I find Bluetooth and speakerphone (as a backup) is sufficient in most places...
It's an iPod killer in what way exactly? It's ugly and it has 32mb ram. I'm not sure how this is news exactly, as almost every other mobile phone that has been released in the past 6 months can play MP3s. Yes, it can play WMA files (as can numerous other mobile phones) and it can hook up to iTunes. Great.
Automatically gets you a +5 funny, because that is really the only funny comment in the whole damned post. Well in that case...
Testicles.
who cares about a phone with non-essential frills like camera, games, or mp3 (or whatever) player?
what i want is a mobile phone with a built in digital answering machine, similar to what you can get for under $50 for a land line....or even better, use a 128+MB flash "disk" and mp3 or ogg to encode the recorded messages
i suspect that i'll never see one, though, because telcos are the biggest customers for mobile phone manufacturers, and telcos definitely do not want to lose the revenue stream that they get for charging by the minute for people to retrieve their voice mail.
i resent paying those fees, and i certainly do not want MY messages stored on THEIR systems - i want them on MY machine.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/09/jablotron_ big_mobile/
You may want to get a stronger belt though.
-- Intelligence is soluble in alcohol
You're not interested in getting laid at all, either, are you.
Check out http://www.pokia.com/. They make adaptors to plug conventional analog phone receivers into cellphones. In fact, some of their fancier models even have bluetooth, so you can be walking down the street, talking on the batphone, while your call is routed through your normal cellphone in your pocket. I think it's a pretty sweet idea.
Does this "technology convergence" thing remind anyone of the insane barage of all-in-one personal devices introduced during the dot-com era?
Generally such devices fail miserably when the economy is not booming... but its still nice to see.
There are 10 types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who do not.
Here are a couple of really high res images (cached) of the front and back of the new E1060 cell phone:
Front
Back
Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths....
He's probably married or in a long term relationship, the implication being that he masturbates a lot.
It is also concealed but close to the chest (sensitive area) so he can feel the vibration even when working in noisy surroundings.
"Excuse me, I have to take this call. It's making my nipples hard."
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
...for a phone *without* digital music toys in it?
I got a Motorola V600 phone from AT&T because it had bluetooth. Unfortunately, Apple never got iSync over Bluetooth working with the phone. I've heard that the phone doesn't properly comply with bluetooth specs, but I'm still really surprised that a year later, the only way I've found to get iSync working is to buy a USB cable. Kinda defeats the whole bluetooth feature.
How can this phone claim to support iTunes when it doesn't support AAC/AAC+??
The way it looks to me is that it's a MP3 player with add-on support for windows media player. Largely from within the Java space.
What does that even mean? "Something that does more than one thing is usually going to be of a lower quality than a device that does more than one thing" is how I read it.
What's your sig say? I can't quite make it out...
Not from a girl who wants to do me for my cell phone, no.
Trust me on this one - if she sees a fancy cell phone and wants you, she's in it for the money. Run.
yeah but if she sees a cell phone at all and it's attached to a giant belt clip, she's not going to want you, money or no....
The day I need these three things to make my life complete, well is the day I need to consider a change of careers and habits.
... or choose a Frontal Lobotomy ... whatever floats your boat.
Yeah, or could do that
As submitter of the original story to Slashdot, I am embarrassed to post this retraction based on new information from Mac Observer.
Though Motorola demonstrated the E1060's ability to play iTunes music at the GSM World Congress "the E1060 is not going to have the ability to play iTunes songs" according to Jason Gales of Mobile Tracker.
A thousand pardons.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Woo, think of the battery life you'd get on a phone that size...
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
What if that "giant belt clip" were attached to his TRON costume? Eh, smart guy?