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Nokia Announces Hard-Drive Phone
blorg writes "The new N91 features a 4gb microdrive and a 2 megapixel digital camera, and plays music in MP3, AAC and WMV formats. With this phone, Nokia reckons it has an iPod killer and aims to become the largest seller of portable MP3 players this year, having already outstripped camera manufacturers in the photography market. However, as the BBC points out, people are not necessarily buying these phones for their camera or music features."
The only downside is the long extension cord.
However, as the BBC points out, people are not necessarily buying these phones for their camera or music features."
Really! This pub chef story was carried by the BBC World Service, this morning (California time) regarding a chef bitten by a spider and had the presence of mind to snap a picture or two of it, which helped identify which spider it was and how to treat the venom. I think this link carries and actual photo from the phone.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Will this be anything like or as successful as their Gameboy killer?
At the moment, these devices that do everything don't really to anything really well. A stand-alone camera has better quality than the phone. ...but we are starting to see that change. As technology continues to develop, and manufacturers are able to pack more and more into a device, the quality of the combined unit might start to be acceptable for more and more people.
:)
I am quite looking forward to the time when I only have to carry one device around, and it will do everything! (including allowing me to SSH into my home computer)
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Sounds great until you see the price tag - it's nearly $800!
3 .phones.reut/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/ptech/04/27/nokia.mp
If the Motorola Razr is any indication, you can't get insurance through Cingular. My boss told me that Lockline refused to insure his Razr when he bought it.
Screw that!
The reason people like the iPod is because of the interface. You could legally (and illegal) get music before the iPod. Companies made mp3 players. But the reason people got the iPod is because it had a good interface which people liked. Then the hype came in and it became large. If you are going to make an iPod killer your interface has to be natural and easy to use. Now what cell phone has that good an interface? Sure, some cell phones have okay interfaces, but it has have as easy to use an interface as a walkman or iPod to be an iPod killer. Otherwise, it is just so much typical marketing fertilizer.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
We may not be getting the flying cars promised to us in the sixties and seventies by Hannah-Barbara and company, but the day of handheld devices that can do nearly anything is quickly approaching. As the BBC points out, this device, though not quite there yet, is a big step in that direction.
It is important, however, to reflect upon the advancements of the late twentieth century and how they've impacted our way of life. In particular, have TV, the internet, computers, and all the rest of today's modern miracles made us more virtuous? Have they made us less virtuous? What are the dangers inherent in having everything at our fingertips?
There's a great deal of social criticism these days about the so-called "Generation Now," the sense of entitlement and so forth. These matters are especially important for us, as afficianados of technology, to consider, particularly in an open forum such as this.
-- Molly Lipton, Born Again Technologist.
Blah. If you want to get locked into a contract you'd "buy" a phone like this. If you just want to make and receive calls you'd go and buy one of the billions of Nokia 3210s or Motorolla flip phones available on the second hand market and get a pre-paid sim. All these fancy camera, mp3, email phones are just for people who want the wizz bang new thing. Those people will always be behind the 8 ball.
How we know is more important than what we know.
http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/7610
http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/3660
http://www.nokiausa.com/phones/3205
Wake me up when Nokia can make a phone look like this:
http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?cc=hk&lc=zh& ver=4000&template=pp1_loader&php=php1_10235&zone=p p&lm=pp1&pid=10235
Yes, I know Nokia is the top manufacturer of phone and their phones tend to work better as phones than other manufacturers, but seriously, they need to hire some designers and usability experts!
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
Uh, yeah I didn't get that call you see because unfortunately, I drained my celly battery listening to Kraftwerk.
cat
There's been some studies in the US (sorry, no link) which show that folks will actually watch feature-length films on their phones. Until recently this was thought to be entirely ridiculous. Now, with a 4GB drive and some nice MPEG4 encoding, I could conceivably get 100 hours (!) of video content onto my mobile. (MPEG4, well compressed, uses about 40MB per hour of audiovisual content.) That's really something - more amazing than having 600-or-so songs on my mobile... And that's going to lead to some interesting content being developed for this platform... TiVo on your mobile, anyone?
Since when was WMV a music format? I believe they mean WMA. That is, unless the phone plays videos as well (which wouldn't be suprising).
Nokia expects to become the largest seller of portable MP3 players this year.
Then why not make a really good MP3 player? I'm not going to drop another chunk of change just because Nokia crams another "feature" into a cell phone.
If I want a digital camera, I'll buy a good digital camera. If I want a PDA, I'll buy a good PDA. If I want an MP3 player, I'll buy a good MP3 player.
My Swiss Army knife has lots of all-in-one features, but I'm not likely to use it to open my soup or screw in a new door knob. I have real tools for that.
Well, that capability has been out for at least a couple of years. I've been using ssh on my Nokia 3650 for a while now. The version I use is Putty for Symbian, but there is another SSH client written for the Java VM that comes on most cell phones.
You can't buy a pre-paid SIM in the USA. The closest thing we have is pre-paid phone cards. You buy a $50 phone card, and then using your manufacturers pre-chosen phone, you call it in and add the money to your account.
Last time I checked, those Virgin Moble and TracPhone cards were very expensive, over a dime a minute. If you talk 10 minutes a day, every day, that is 300 minutes a month, or $30 bucks in pre-paid. Many monthly plans start at $30 a month and give closer to 1000 minutes.
I would love to see the pre-paid market get in touch with reality. No more crap like "you must buy a card every X days or lose your credits and phone number" or "we only have 2 phones to chose from".
If I could get a motorola flip phone and use prepay without losing my credites just because I don't use them all in 30 days, and not be threatened with losing my phone number if I don't buy more credits, I would consider pre-pay. Also, if the yearly contracts can get you 2 cents per minute, why do some pre-pay charge 25 cents per minute. It is dumb.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
the Beeb's analysis is flawed methinks.
4Gb is a sweet spot on storage, but more importantly *everyone* is already carrying a phone.
if the phone means i don't have to worry about keeping and charging an ipod mini then it's a winner for me and mine.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Yes. Every single manufacturer out there makes a base model phone that is just a phone. And every fucking time slashdot posts a story about a new phone all of you retards come out with the same annoying fucking comment. How about you open your eyes and go look. Plain phones are easy and cheap to find.
- Interface
- Style
- Marketing
Like it or not, Apple has the golden touch of style that Nokia never had, and it seems that Nokia has really gone off the deep end with some of their recent phones (lets not even talk about the DOA N-gage).Specifics? This thing has a joystick, 4 buttons around it (like my clunky T610), a play/pause, forward, back, stop, and (im guessing) a popout-button to shift the playpad down to get the number pad. I'm not going to go into all the possible confusion, but it looks busy.
As if that weren't all.. the color seems to aim for the stylish/classy 20-30s market, but the features (cameraphone, music) seem to really gear towards a younger market (think teens - 20s).
I wish them well, but from just looking at it, it seems a bit misguided.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
In basic terms you said, I want someone to make this, but I'm not going to buy it
Or to put it realistically, I just want to bitch and moan about something, so I'll complain that phones have too many features...
This is a news for nerds site, celebrate technological advances...
Nokia announced a whole new line of phones, the Nokia Nseries (press release).
In this series, three models were introduced:
Has anyone tried this? What was the reaction of the seller, who was no doubt expecting further income from a telephone plan?
Perhaps that is an indicator of when a mobile phone's 'other' services come up to scratch, when people buy them with a view to ignoring the telephone function?
iPod killer? No. iPod mini competitor? Yes.
The target market is obviously somewhat similar to Apple's target for the iPod Mini.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
I'm tired of people recycling this garbage every time the issue of cell phones comes up. Think about what you're saying. You have a Swiss Army knife. You've probably been somewhere you needed a knife, or pliers or whatever. You whip out your multi-tool and get the job done. Sure, you could have done the job better if you had been carrying a power drill but that makes little sense, right? The whole point of having a multi-function tool is convenience. It may not be the best tool for the job, but you get stuff done.
I can think of several times where it would have been handy to have a camera phone. Usually it's some strange scene, like a funny sign. It would be cool to have an MP3 player on the phone if I run into an unexpected wait and feel like listening to some tunes.
To sum up, if you want to carry all of those devices around all the time, then do it and quit complaining when they add new features for cell phones. There are plenty of folks like myself that would like to have a sort-of digital Swiss Army knife that can do things like check a calendar or listen to some music in a pinch (but not quite at that price--ouch!)
harmonious design
iPod killer? Far fetched. The best I could claim would be iPod mini 4GB killer - and even then, that only depends on design, UI and tight integration with iTunes (haha, like Apple will let this one run through).
This one may be a 5.0V, but nonetheless it will sacrafice size and weight (not to mention battery life) if it were used as a music player.
Only so many Watts of power can be crammed into an electronic device these days, and I seriously doubt that one could get even 6 hours of continual, uninterrupted music without a power adapter plugged in. The hard drive and the RAM just consume too much power.
Will this be anything like or as successful as their Gameboy killer?
The difference is that ipod is very easy to kill. It's an mp3 player, there is nothing special about it.
A gaming platform is a different thing altogether, because it represents a different level of "commitment", and is influenced by such things as availability of games.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
How long is the HD going to last in a phone???
I've have four Nokia phones as I got a new one with each job i took over the past 7 years. Each on has been dropped on the floor a number of times, and generally subjected to a fair bit of abuse. All four of them work, and I have never had a problem with any them.
I doubt a small hard drive could take this kind of punishment. One hard knock, and somethings going to break. I'd much prefer 1G of flash memory in a phone that I know will last me a few years.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated up.
The BBC article claims that this 4Gb device can hold "up to 3000 songs in CD quality".
Bollocks it does. My 4Gb iPod Mini claims to hold 1000 songs (I actually hit around 800, due to having some long stuff on there), and I don't know anyone that claims 128kbps lossy compression is actually "CD Quality". God only knows how they fudge the numbers to get that value.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"