Nokia's New All-In-One Phone

conq writes "BusinessWeek has a piece on Nokia's new phone, introduced today and hitting the shelves in July. The N93, costing $660, will supposedly fill all of your needs for electronic equipment on the go. From the article: 'Should anyone miss the point, Nokia's press extravaganza in a spiffed-up Berlin warehouse ended with a video in which the camera slowly panned across a tableau of dusty, discarded electronic equipment -- including digital cameras and a cobweb-covered iPod. The message: Nokia plans to make these products obsolete.'"

Comments

Re:try not to laugh

[Anonymous Coward]

another pic held in the hand (no its not a childs hand)

many more pics

Re:Right here

[pnot]

Seriously, have you tried finding a phone that is stylish, small, has good battery life, and yet doesn't cost an arm and a leg because all it does is voice/text?

Yes. It's called the Nokia 1100. OK, it doesn't *quite* meet all your specifications---the case is plastic, and the screen is monochrome. But it's robust and splash/dust/sand-proof, the buttons are big, the aerial is integrated, and the battery life is huge. Dirt cheap, and very reliable from what I've seen. If my ancient Nokia 3310 ever dies, this is what I'll be getting.

Re:Trying to outdo the NGage

[Anonymous Coward]

You want the Nokia E60
http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,81338,00.html

Has most of the features of the N-series phones, but no camera, and much smaller and lighter to boot.

Re:iPod obsolete?

[plover]

Somehow, you should probably just go read the specs for the phone rather than make uninformed generalizations.

To answer your specific questions:

50MB internal memory. The mini-SD memory card reader accepts cards up to 2GB.

3.2 megapixel (2048 x 1536 pixels) camera, Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens, 3x optical zoom, MPEG-4 VGA video capture of up to 30 fps.

Power Management

• Battery: Lithium Polymer battery BP-6M 1100mAh
• Talk time: up to 3.7hrs (WCDMA)/up to 5.1hrs (GSM)*
• Stand-by time: up to 10days (WCDMA)/up to 10days (GSM)*

* Operation times may vary depending on radio access technology used, operator network configuration and usage.

TDMA is quite common

[Reality Master 201]

Both GSM and iDEN (the Nextel system) are actually TDMA systems.

Time Division Multiple Access is a strategy for multiplexing radio access rather than a specific standard, though in the US the term TDMA is often used to refer to IS-136/D-AMPS. D-AMPS service is still provided in many parts of the country, by Cingular among others (my dad still has a D-AMPS phone).

Code Division Multiple Access is sort of a standard, except that it's not. Originally, there was IS-95 which everyone (i.e., Sprint and Verizon) supports. Unfortunately, they've put incompatible protocols on top of that such that they're unable to use one another's networks anymore - you cannot roam between networks with CDMA. I used to work at a place that sold cellular data modules, and provisioning CDMA customers always required a flash of the module firmware to support the network (as well as to set the ESN for the module). Of course, all the data functionality is not part of the IS-95 spec, so maybe you could get away with an unflashed handset if you were only interested in making calls. You'd probably lose most of the bells and whistles, though.

GSM is nice because it's made for easy portability of devices - you change SIMs and that's that. CDMA may be "better" from a technical perspective (it seems to attract fanboy zealots), but it suffers from real world implementation issues. Plus, you gotta pay the Qualcomm tax.

Re:TDMA is quite common

[Magnus Pym]

Lots of mistakes mixed in with some bits of truth in the parent.

> Code Division Multiple Access is sort of a standard, except that it's not.

What does this mean? All CDMA protocols are standardized by the 3gpp2/TIA bodies, and are ratified by the international standards bodies. CDMA is every bit a standard as GSM.

> Unfortunately, they've put incompatible protocols on top of that such that they're unable to use one another's networks anymore

Incorrect. A VZW user may be unable to use a Sprint network, but that is due to the lack of roaming agreements between VzW and Sprint. There is nothing about CDMA that makes it network specific. I have used my VzW CDMA phone in Australia and India, where the CDMA carriers have roaming agreements with Verizon.

> Of course, all the data functionality is not part of the IS-95 spec,

Completely wrong. All CDMA functionality is covered by standards. Otherwise, no carrier would be dumb enough to deploy it.

> GSM is nice because it's made for easy portability of devices - you change SIMs and that's that.

This is true. Not a limitation of CDMA, but a deliberate choice made by the CDMA operators. There is nothing inherent about CDMA that prevents the use of SIM cards, I believe Qualcomm is developing a SIM-type phone for the Chinese market.

> CDMA may be "better" from a technical perspective (it seems to attract fanboy zealots), but it suffers from real world implementation issues.

This is like saying that a Honda accord may be "better" than a Yugo. The only reason why CDMA exists is because it is so overwhelmingly superior to GSM that it won against the combined opposition of the biggest vendors/carriers in the world. In Europe, they actually passed laws to prevent local carriers from deploying CDMA, to protect their GSM-only vendors like Nokia, Ericcson, Siemens and Alcatel.

> Plus, you gotta pay the Qualcomm tax.

This is another half-truth that appears to have been accepted because it is repeated so often. It is certainly true that you have to pay Qualcomm royalties for using CDMA. What is also true that if you are building GSM phones/networks, you have to pay royalties to about a dozen different companies. The only difference is that a lot of the GSM patents have expired, and so the royalties are less than the CDMA royalties at present. But a lot of the CDMA patents are set to expire next year, so that might level the playing field a little.

Magnus.

Re:try not to laugh

[10Ghz]

Why not go straight to the source?

Pics at Nokia.com

Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it.

[penguin-collective]

First, you enter any of these contracts completely by choice. If you don't want to sign up for a two-year commitment, buy your phone on the open market -- without their discount. It's an incentive, not an imperative.

Actually, that's not necessarily true. Some markets simply don't offer no-commitment contracts.

But the free market is still out there.

You're making a common mistake: you assume that if there is more than one source and if people have a choice whether and which contract to enter, the market is a free market. That's wrong. For a market to function like a free market, there need to be numerous other conditions. Usually, they won't be met unless there are dozens of competitors with similar product offerings.

Calling a market a "free market" when it is not is a way for companies to avoid the kind of government regulation that is necessary to keep monopolies and oligopolies in check.

Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it.

[tsa]

Jeezz, you live in America, `the land of the free?' I live in Holland, and except for point one we have everything you list here. Amazing.