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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."
Will this be anything like or as successful as their Gameboy killer?
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.
...snap a picture or two of it, which helped identify which spider...
That's why I always carry a 2lb fire extinguisher with built-in MP3 player with me just in case.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
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?
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 agree. But I think they are moving in the right direction. Thank god the did away with those HUGE palm looking phones. Those were so big. Smaller is nicer when it comes to something you want to keep in the pocket.
The 2MP is a huge jump forward for cell phones. For the longest time, finding a reasonably priced 1MP phone was difficult. Even the less than 1MP phones were well over $150. I hope this new 2MP phone pushes prices down a bit.
But the huge winner is the 4 gig hard drive. It is a breakthrough for a cell phone.
I think with cell phones you will always be a couple years behind everything else because the tecnhology needs to shrink. But the days of 10 and 20 gig hard drives on phones are comming.
Since cell phones are so small, I can see new applications like voice recognition tied into the OS. You want to write a report? Talk into your cell phone.
I see so many uses here. This will be fantastic. The only worry I have is with cell phone camera's getting such high resolution, it will invade the privacy of people. Nobody will be free to walk in public anymore and protect their image. For example, say you live down south where black people and white people don't date because of social pressure. You see two kids flirting and take a picture. Post it on the web, and now two people's lives will become miserable.
Or you are in a store and some woman is trying to look at the bottom shelve. Unfortunatly she is wearing a skirt, and the kid clicks a picture. Up on the web it goes.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
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."
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.
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
Obviously the spider is more deadly than "most deadlier" but less deadly than "mostest deadliest."