Nokia Unveils "World's Thinnest" QWERTY Smartphone

Barence writes "Nokia has revamped its E-series of business-oriented smartphones with two new models, including the 'world's thinnest' QWERTY device. The GPS-enabled E71 is the slimmer successor to the Nokia E61, with a thickness of only 1cm. It's HSDPA-enabled, offers switchable home screens, and gives a claimed 'two full days of heavy, heavy use.' The E66, on the other hand, is a slide-phone with a conventional numerical keypad and a built-in accelerometer. At the same event, Nokia also gave a tantalizing hint about its plans for an iPhone rival, with its senior vice president saying, 'we will have touchscreen devices coming this year.'"

Comments

Why Why Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why can't the people making these devices with "full QWERTY keyboards", actually include the row for numbers. Having to switch modes to type numbers and then have all the alternate symbols on the number buttoms (!@#$, etc) hidden elsewhere is such an incredible pain. I would deal with the device being an eight of an inch longer in order to actually include a full keyboard.

Great...

[Wireless Joe]

...for the rest of the world. Now if we could just get a carrier to stock Nokia again in the US.

Re:Great...

[Thelasko]

How come they never shipped any good thing to USA market? I have a theory. It's because Nokia doesn't play nice with the carrier pricing models. Most notably, they include Wi-Fi on their phones. Phone carriers in the US subsidize the price of the phones based on charging high rates for data. Wi-Fi enabled phones prevent them from doing that.

I've noted this before on Slashdot and have been modded into oblivion by what are presumably Apple fanboys claiming it's the iPhone's interface that made it popular in the US. That may be true, but I still stand by what I said.

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess what -- Nokia would love to play big in the US. It's no small secret that they can't because of the carriers here. Practically every phone sold in the US goes through carrier channels. And if the big carriers don't like Nokia's phones or don't think they will appeal to enough people, they're DOA, no matter how cool the phone is.

So go complain to AT&T and T-Mobile. Seems like the only Nokia phones they actually want are low-end featureless ones. It would be awesome to see a phone like the N96 come to AT&T.

Yes, more phones are coming to the U.S., but the rest of the world will have had them forever by the time we get them.

Touch Screen != Success

[imstanny]

People and companies are attributing the success of the iPhone to its Touch technology. Yes, it was the first one to come out with it in a successful design, but the iPhone is succesful mainly because it capitalizes on Apple's software platforms. The iPhone brings together iTunes, iPod, & Telephone, and Web capabilities in a unified architecture that is based on OSX format. A Nokia or Blackberry with a touch screen will not be able to support anything remotely close to what Apple is offering. Yes, they will look similar and offer 'me-too' capabilities, but just b/c users can touch the screen and the phone can play music, doesn't mean it will be remotely competitive to the iPhone.

Re:for a quick fix fine

[CastrTroy]

I agree. Having a full qwerty keyboard would be nice, but in this instance, and many others, it just means that the actual number keys are quite a bit smaller. I'd rather have number keys I can actually press rather than having an extra 10 cpm typing rate on 160 byte messages.

Re:Button Masher

[AmiMoJo]

Having used similar devices with small keys and being 182cm tall myself, I can assure you that they are not a problem even for people with big stubby fingers.

The trick is that the keys are not flat, but rounded on top and require a small but important amount of pressure and travel to operate. Thus the hard part of your thumb or finger can easily press the right key, and the soft flesh around it does not push the neighbours.

It's a lot better than the iPhone interface (which is similar size "keys" but flat) and traditional predictive text because it doesn't rely on any kind of prediction or spell checking, so is much less prone to errors. You can also type non-dictionary and unusual words as easily as common ones, and not having to check if the phone picked the right word as you type speeds up the rate of entry and makes it easier to just think about the message rather than how you are entering it.

Re:for a quick fix fine

[morcego]

You do realize some people actually use their smartphones for other things than phone calls and SMS ? Like remote computer maintenance (ssh) ?

Trust me, even if you can find a ssh client for a non-qwerty phone (and you can), it is simply impossible to do anything.

I love my Nokia E62. To a point I never even bothered to upgrade to a E61 (I don't need a camera ou Wifi).

Not an iphone rival

[goombah99]

The thing is everyone thinks iphone==Touch screen. This is like saying iPod == simplified MP3 player with round dial.

If you happen to catch the last apple keynote, then you know it's about the integration. some stats:

>80% of iphone uses have used 10 or more applicaiton functions on their phone
>95% use the internet and google says most of their mobile queries come from iphones.

Now they are launching a app store for developers which will allow anyone to sell in 70 countries and apple handles all the delivery, installs, micro payments, currency conversio, and store UI languages.

It's first year the ipod sold because it was cool to look at and hold. But it sold the next year because the iTunes and the Itumes Music store were so freakin easy use with it.

Making a touch screen is not making an iphone. These companies have about exactly 1 year to figure this out before the apple app store has a lot of applications on it. After that it's too late.