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Nokia's New All-In-One Phone 317

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the new-toys dept.
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.'"
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Nokia's New All-In-One Phone More

Nokia's New All-In-One Phone

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  • Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:5, Funny)

    by AuMatar ( 183847 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:32PM (#15201790)
    As the greatest stupidity in consumer electronics.

    • Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wonderful. Another phone I can't use because every freaking version of it comes with a camera. Why are these companies not at least attempting to court the market of professionals who can't bring cameras into their place of business? Samsung does a decent job, as they at least offer flip-phones without cameras, but Nokias are uniformly awful with this.

      • Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:3, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        You want the Nokia E60
        http://www.europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,81338,00.html [nokia.com]

        Has most of the features of the N-series phones, but no camera, and much smaller and lighter to boot.
        • Yep. I find it rather strange that people stare at specs of some multimedia-phones, and then complain that it has (shock and horror!) multimedia-features. Nokia has plenty of phones for business, like the e-series (which are meant specificly for business) or Communicators.

      • Re:Trying to outdo the NGage (Score:5, Funny)

        by flyingsquid ( 813711 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2006 @02:20AM (#15202779)
        Why are these companies not at least attempting to court the market of professionals who can't bring cameras into their place of business?

        How's stuff treating you at Abu Ghraib these days, anyhow?

        • Seriously though... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by spectrokid ( 660550 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2006 @07:34AM (#15203585) Homepage
          I know Nokia's R&D gets paid by 16 year olds doing overtime at the local McDonnalds, but it keeps on amazing me how nobady develops the business marked. My phone can synch with Bluetooth and IR. Guess what? The average corporate desktop has neither. How about a intelligent USB craddle? When I put the phone in it, it not only recharges, but automatically forwards all calls to the desktop phone standing just beside it, and all text messages to my email inbox? How many mobile phone owners sit 8 hours a day at the same desk? Why does nobady cater for them?
      • With all due respect, the market for people who cannot have a camera phone is negligible compared to the market who either want one or simply don't care. The vast majority of people have no such restrictions, and as economies of scale help keep prices down and profits up, there simply isn't much incentive for the manufacturers to cater to people like you.

        Besides which, you can't take a camera phone in? Luxury! I can't take *any* mobile phone into our secure room; thankfully, I rarely need to be in there....

    • Target market:: Corporate droids (Score:5, Funny)

      by EmbeddedJanitor ( 597831 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @10:56PM (#15202121)
      The press release has enough buzzwords to give a corporate climber a bigger stiffy than Viagra. "Digital life", "global convergence"... Geez I better buy one so I'm corporately compliant!
    • The stupid part is that these phones can't interface with computers well. All I want is one of these fancy phones that will interface well with my Linux PC.

      These are the things I expect from a phone:
      - Appears as a USB mass storage device.
      - Data like contacts, messages, and so on should be stored as CSV files or some similar sort of text files. I want them editable in a text editor.
      - Photos and videos stored in /photos and /videos, respectively.
      - Photos and videos in common (and preferably patent-free) forma

  • Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by crazyjeremy ( 857410 ) * on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:35PM (#15201800) Homepage Journal
    This is essentially a computer.

    It may or may not be as much of a computer as a Treo or a Pocket PC, but it has many trademarks of a computer. Pictures, music, videos, wifi and even voip services are possible. This in particular make phones in direct competition with their carriers. Why pay $150 a month for cell phone service when you can get a "Multimedia Enabled" voip capable phone with a $50 dataplan and talk all you want through Skype or other similar services?

    Bottom line? If we let carriers like Verizon continue to cripple these awesome phones, we lose money, ease of use and a significant portion of usability. But if we keep taking them to court and winning, we will have the ability to use all of the features the manufacturers intended and save money in the process.

    • Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:54PM (#15201879) Homepage
      There is no way to fix this in the US without pro-consumer laws. The market would sort it out, but the locks in place (including crippled phones, 2 year commitments, locked phones, etc.) prevent the market from being as effective as it should be.

      I'm not normally pro-reguilation, but we need a few simple laws to fix this. Let's start with this:

      1. You must publish phone prices just as large as the prices after discounts
      2. You may not charge more for service to a customer who didn't buy their phone with you
      3. Users must be able to take their phones to/from competitors with the same kind of network (from Sprint to Verizon, both CDMA)
      4. You may not disable features of a phone or cripple them (no file uploads, no locking bluetooth down, no 'you must e-mail your photos, can't download them from your phone bypassing our extra charge')
      5. You must clearly list which features of the phone would require extra service (i.e. most camera phone functionality on Sprint) and what it would cost. None of that "Extra charges may apply" bull at the end of a list of 40 features.

      I'd like to just outlaw contracts longer than 6 months and bundling phones with service, but the above will do as a start. Hell, a government mandated network standard (instead of GSM/CDMA/EDGE) could be an improvement, even if in the form of a mandate for the industry to pick their own standard with some regulatory backing to the mandate ($1,000,000 per day per company per metropolitan area if they go over the deadline to decide or the deadline to implement sounds good to me).

      • Re:Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by plover ( 150551 ) * on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @10:44PM (#15202071) Homepage Journal
        As much as I loathe the business of cell phones, and feel as if I have been "trapped" in one contract or another for several iterations of phones now, I think regulation is completely the wrong answer to fix the "problems" you mention.

        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.

        You are already allowed to bring your own phone to their network. You don't pay more for a non-provider-provided phone.

        If you want a phone that's portable between carriers, again, you're free to buy one on the open market. (AFAIK, not counting locked phones, GSM phones are more portable between carriers than CDMA phones. Analog is a few months from death, and I have no idea whatever became of TDMA or PCM.)

        If you want a phone that's not crippled by Verizon (the worst) or another carrier, buy one on the open market.

        Basically, the reason contracts are as bad as they are is that people are very attracted to the "free" phones, or the steeply discounted phones available from the cellular providers. That's the idea. But the free market is still out there. Quit whining about locked-down phones and insane contracts and spend the $200 extra for an unlocked phone. Or take their discount and STFU about it.

        What I'd rather see is sanity brought to the plans. Having to "guess" at how many minutes you'll use in a month is a pretty lame way to force us to make a purchase. But all of the "pay as you go" plans cost far more for anyone but a mime.

        • What I'd rather see is sanity brought to the plans. Having to "guess" at how many minutes you'll use in a month is a pretty lame way to force us to make a purchase. But all of the "pay as you go" plans cost far more for anyone but a mime.

          The texting man, it kills us.

          What I'd like to see is Yearly/Monthly Fees,No per minute contracts. I'll keep waiting.

        • The only phone company where I live with GSM service requires a two-year contract, regardless of where you get your phone. Also they don't subsidize phones, except to give away the bottom-end model that they're trying to get rid of. Since they're the only GSM game in town, nobody else sells GSM phones, so you're pretty much SOL unless you want to order one online. Which I will do.. to replace the freebie I got. At least I can swap out the SIM card and there's nothing they can do about it.

        • If you don't want to sign up for a two-year commitment, buy your phone on the open market

          Where is this "open market" you speak of? Does it have a store in Fort Wayne, Indiana? If you mean online, what close substitute is there for inspecting a phone in person before I purchase it?

          You are already allowed to bring your own phone to their network.

          The carriers make it seem like the opposite. I know little about GSM; can you show me that this is true despite what the carriers say? How do I determine wh

          • I can guarantee you that you can use your SIM card in any phone. The opposite is not always true - the phone can be locked to the network (though is unlockable for a fee, etc, yadda yadda). Putting the carrier SIM card into your phone will not let the carrier lock it - this is done in the firmware at 'manufacture'. The carrier can send disabling codes to the phone, but this is done in the case of theft / loss - they can only do it outright, not on a "to lock phone to carrier, aftermarket" basis, and if any
          • The carriers make it seem like the opposite. I know little about GSM; can you show me that this is true despite what the carriers say?

            Ask them what it would cost you to buy your own phone and not be tied down to a service contract.

            Out here (.in), I have the choice of prepaid and postpaid connectivity, no contracts beyond the validity of the charge (or one month for postpaid), free incoming.

            You don't pay more for a non-provider-provided phone [...] spend the $200 extra for an unlocked phone.

            Am I supposed to
        • "Open market" phones are no longer that viable on Verizon's netwrok. I have used them for years, and they have the best coverage anywhere I've been. For years, I rarely used a Verizon branded phone.

          I was using a 6585 from Ebay for 8 months. I sent it in to Nokia to have the firmware updated, and when I got the phone back, I was told that it was not compatable.

          Not compatable when I had been using it for 8 months, and it was giving me much better service than the one Verizon branded phone I had been using

        • TDMA is quite common (Score:4, Informative)

          by Reality Master 201 ( 578873 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2006 @01:05AM (#15202602) Journal
          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 (Score:4, Informative)

            by Magnus Pym ( 237274 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2006 @08:26AM (#15203722)
            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.
        • spend the $200 extra for an unlocked phone

          That's exactly what I did, even though I'm unlikely to switch in the next couple of years. I've gotten screwed by such things at least as much as I've benefited, and I'm fed up with the crap.
        • 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
      • Buy the minimum and learn to send text messages most of the time. I have lived in Japan for over a year and have less than THREE HOURS of talk time on my cell phone. 95% of the time I need to communicate with someone via cell phone, it is nothing more than "Hey, I will be 10 minutes late" or "where are you?". No need to talk, and no need to bug the hell out of everyone in a 50ft radius.

        The fact that you almost never see people yammering on their cells is probably Japan's second-best feature (behind th
      • 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.
    • This device still doesn't match the HP Ipaq 6515. No built-in GPS, no MS Office, and it will probably be bigger than the Ipaq.
    • Awesome phone? Carriers will cripple it.
       
      How did mobile phones in the USA become so messed up in the first place? The idea of not being able to buy any handset to slip my existing SIM card into is strange to me.

      I know that GSM networks haven't been big in the USA but surely they are an option by now?
      • That and GSM isn't particularly well implemented in the states. I have GSM and GPRS through T-Mobile and it comse up short next to CDMA phones. Not only is the coverage not as good, but there have been more instances of dialing up someone and having only half of the connection actually work (I can hear what they're saying or they can hear me but not both) and the sound quality is definatly not as good. I tried to read out a CD key to someone over my phone (that's what he gets for leaving the sleeves behi

  • iPod obsolete? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:38PM (#15201809)
    So this thing will have 2-60GB of storage in it?

    And high resolution, non-shitty CCD+Lenses in the camera?

    And last as long or longer than both devices, on the same battery?

    Somehow I doubt it, and this is Nokia sticking their collective foot in their mouth again, just like they did with the ngage.

    • Re:iPod obsolete? (Score:5, Informative)

      by plover ( 150551 ) * on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @11:09PM (#15202175) Homepage Journal
      Somehow, you should probably just go read the specs [nseries.com] 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.
      • Parent is right in his statement, those specs are crap. Battery life being the most boring of all, I don't see any improvement over any current phone. The camera doesn't excite me either, even with the named lens. Big deal.

    • And high resolution, non-shitty CCD+Lenses in the camera?


      I'm so sure it makes my Canon EOS 20D obsolete.

  • Durability? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by NoTheory ( 580275 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:43PM (#15201829)
    So has there been any serious discussion about the fact that the screen is held to the body of the phone by a single strut? My inclination is to say that it looks flimsy, and while i'd be interested in the functions of the phone, i'd be afraid to do things like cradle the phone.

  • Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Filiks ( 578065 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:45PM (#15201840)
    The problem with browsing songs on a cell phone is the lack of an iPod-like wheel to navigate with. Well you know how the iPod has tactile buttons under the scroll wheel? The cell phone solution to add twelve buttons instead of five like the ipod has. Put the buttons in a standard dial-pad orientation. Then replace the wheel shape with a rectangular touchpad. Print the image of the wheel and the numbers on top, and put a protective clear coating as the final layer. End result: A touchpad with cursor functionality if desired, standard dialing with the numbers in the right locations and tactile feedback, and iPod wheel navigation!

    For naysayers out there who might complain the touchpad can't be made accurately enough for a cursor, fine. Forget that part. But the iPod wheel and dial-pad could be created today. It's just taking Apple's tech to the next step.
    • http://www.middlewareblog.com/2006/04/20/the-futur e-of-ipods/ [middlewareblog.com]

      I think the most elegant solution to this problem will come from Apple in a year or two.
      • Solve the problem of tactile feedback. Users for the most part, want to feel a click as they press a button. They don't want to accidentally dial a "1 instead of a "2. Girls (and guys) with long nails makes this feature especially important. With a touch screen, clicking requires lifting the finger and tapping, like on a laptop's touchpad. On a cell phone and iPod, people are used to, and it's easier to slide a finger or thumb over the keys/wheel then press harder to select.

    • Re:Phones are so close to replacing the iPod (Score:4, Funny)

      by gozar ( 39392 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @10:40PM (#15202064) Homepage
      The cell phone solution to add twelve buttons instead of five like the ipod has. Put the buttons in a standard dial-pad orientation. Then replace the wheel shape with a rectangular touchpad.

      I think someone already perfected a rotary dialing interface [flickr.com].

    • Your idea is great. Seriously. I love it. The problem is this: Apple would sue Nokia all to hell and we know it. It's a good sensible design, but Apple probably has some sort of patent on the wheel.
      • Sounds like Nokia and Apple should team up! Nokia probably has patents on cell phone features and UI that Apple will need if it ever wants to make a phone of it's own. Of course since Apple is dedicated to simplicity and intuitiveness, the versatility of the N93 probably makes it too complicated. Instead I fully expect to hear a future announcement from Motorola and Apple about a simple and Apple-styled phone that integrates the click wheel.
      • The pad is just an electronic component, like a transistor or a switch or a button. Apple may have a patent on their specific implementation (the iPod wheel), but touchpads have been around for over 20 years, probably longer, so I doubt there's even an existing patent on the engineering part of it. Nokia has the resources to defend its designs in court, although with the recent judicial conservatism regarding IP in general it may still be risky. Part of me is repulsed by all the IP regulations, but the o
    • There's another half of that problem. The interface with a PC.

      Unless it's dead simple to transfer music you're out of luck. Add in the fact not too many providers are keen to offer cables to hook up your phone to your PC and the problem grows.

      Bundle a phone with a dock and software for Mac's and PC's that just works, that's no more expensive than a Nano and you might start gaining market share.

      Oh and price, I'm not dropping more than $200 on a gadget. I lose/break my phone, that's $150-200, I lose/break my
      • Plenty of consumer cameras are over $200, probably most. Until two years ago if you wanted a decent 3.2MP camera they cost $200. RAZR's are $100, but the more internet-enabled phones like the Treo 650 are way above $200. Most notably, iPod's with a hard drive start at $299. If you won't even pay for a 30GB iPod, what makes you think you're the intended consumer for a convergence product? YOU ARE NOT.

  • try not to laugh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:45PM (#15201841)

    image of phone [engadget.com]

    one thing is for sure, Nokia are pretty consistant in making phones asthetically ugly as they can, still looks like a Motorall flip phone from the early 90's, its as if a good display, touchscreen , hi-res etc isnt important to them, unlike the massive surge of smart phones with hi-res screens, touchscreens to replace aging remote controls, handwriting recognition, etc etc

  • OK, get it over with (Score:5, Funny)

    by randyest ( 589159 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:52PM (#15201868) Homepage
    Cue the asshat that appears in every convergence thread to cry "I just want a phone to make calls and nothing else" in 5, 4, 3, . . .

    • Right here (Score:4, Insightful)

      by caitsith01 ( 606117 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @10:03PM (#15201922) Journal
      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, there are plenty of small-ish, plastic phones that do this. But they lack the elegance of, say, a Motorola V3 or a high end Nokia or Sony.

      I think there is certainly an untapped market for the following phone:
      - metal body
      - slimline and actually fashionable design (may I suggest sleek, matte-silver or black, no clear plastic or flourescent colours?)
      - integrated aerial
      - 4-6 day battery life
      - medium sized colour screen
      - adequate sized buttons for SMS
      - speakerphone feature
      - compatible with ordinary (wired) handsfree
      - robust and preferably semi-hardened against water and dust
      - FAST and bug free software
      - price reflecting the functionality and manufacture cost, not the desirability of the device

      Leave out bluetooth, photos, videos, IR, memory card functionality, internal hard disk or flash drive, huge colour screen and any other crap you might consider adding 'because it's cool' that would drive up the price.

      I and many others will buy this phone.
      • Yes, I have and I got a Motorola V3C. I guess you live somewhere very different from me (New England) or you haven't looked hard. The V3C is free after rebate at Verizon. Cingular too, I believe. It also plays music and video and has a 1.3MP camera and Bluetooth. Great phone. Nothing wrong with having all those features -- they don't seem to take up much space and you can save battery by disabling or not using them.

        Thanks to you and the other two of you for fulfilling my prophecy :)
        • I have a Motorola V3.

          It meets some of my criteria: stylish, metal, speakerphone, price I suppose if you are right

          It fails on: battery life (about half my old Sony-Ericsson t68i), robustness (I have heard endless stories of V3s breaking mysteriously), speed of menus (very slow text entry, in particular), adequate sized buttons, and weighed down with tons of unneccessary crap which cannot be removed or disabled

      • Re:Right here (Score:3, Informative)

        by pnot ( 96038 )
        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
      • My treo 650 does all that crap. The 700p is coming soon.

        - slimline and actually fashionable design (

        Got it, I like the Treo look

        - integrated aerial

        I assume you mean antenna, the treo is integrated to the body, but it sticks out. Not sure what you want...

        - 4-6 day battery life

        Works that long if not talking much and not searching for a signal. Using PDA only I have gotten a week, If not swap a new battery without loss

        - medium sized colour screen

        320x320, I want bigger but it works

        - adequate sized buttons fo

        • Forgot to say bluetooth and the camera / video is pretty cool.

          BT could be better (wireless mp3 would be better) but it is a neat trick.

          Camera at 640x480 sucks, but having video and camera is nice. With 1GB card you can do like 3000 photos or 4 hours of crap video. 700p coming soon should have a 1+MP camera finally to help some on this side.

          The treo 650 is awesome. You can navigate all without the stylus if you need, and you get palm PDA aps.

          Word, Excel, PDF and it beats me a chess.
      • From Nokia alone: 1100, 1101, 1110, 1112, 2310, 2610. Sure, some of those might have some features that you do not need. But would the phone be REALLY one bit better if they dropped those features? I bet that those "unneeded" features don't drive the price up all that much. It's like RAM these days: embedded devices re getting more and more RAM, because having more RAM does not cost one bit more than having less RAM, and it's getting harder and harder to buy small RAM-modules. I have had phones with feature
      • Try a Nokia 6310i

        Old, not quite small, but awesome battery life.

        Only lacking the color screen, but what do you need that for? Since you will not be taking pictures or playing games (I presume), I can think of no use for a color screen that would be a real dealbreaker
    • You need a new term to describe your gadget then, because "phone" does not begin to describe all those wonderful, battery sucking, bulky, heavy and ugly low-quality features.

      Or maybe you can add a term, like swiss army knife vs. pocket knife. Yay, a Swiss Army Phone?!?!!1

      Reminds me when this was going on with wristwatches, and some guy shows up with one that had a stopwatch, compass, light, altimiter, survival kit, radio transponder and in fact did everything but tell the time. And it weighed about 3 pounds
      • You need a new term to describe your gadget then, because "phone" does not begin to describe all those wonderful, battery sucking, bulky, heavy and ugly low-quality features.
        RTA:
        If you are old fashioned enough to call these devices "phones," Nokia people will politely correct you. They are multimedia computers, which offer features and picture quality to rival digital cameras or camcorders, and music quality to challenge an iPod.

  • I understand that in Europe coverage is better, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ScrewMaster ( 602015 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:52PM (#15201872)
    but here in U.S. I'd be happy to have a cellular telephone that can actually place an occasional PHONE CALL! Keep your camera/MP3player/PDA/whatever technology and just give me a trustworthy cellular network. Then we'll talk about extras.

  • Oooooo! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by quadra23 ( 786171 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:56PM (#15201888) Journal
    Purchasers will also get a free copy of Adobe (ADBE) Premier Elements 2.0 video editing software.

    If you buy this multimedia computer (AKA not a phone) will it be able to run this software (as you would assume since its bundled)? Alas, apparently this does not replace your other computer [adobe.com] that requires at least 4 GB of disk space. I suppose if someone figured out how to run DirectX 9 on this multimedia computer...

  • Obsoleting everything? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @09:57PM (#15201893)
    ...ended with a video in which the camera slowly panned across a tableau...

    If they shot this with the actual phone, then maybe it will make all that other stuff obsolete.

  • N80 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by somethinghollow ( 530478 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @10:01PM (#15201912) Homepage Journal
    I've been waiting my ass off for the Nokia N80 [nseries.com], out of the same series of phones. It shares many of the same features. While lacking the Carl Zeiss lens, it gains wireless LAN (802.11g). Combine that with a keyboard accessory, the N80 could be very handy for remote on-the-go system administration (via whatever Series 60 SSH client exists) or blogging while on-the-go with the built-in 3MP camera. For the geeks, the N80 seems a bit cooler and isn't quite as crazy of a form factor as the N90 (though sliders might still be a little off-beat).

  • Its all about battery life (Score:5, Insightful)

    by owlman17 ( 871857 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @10:02PM (#15201921)
    Unless they somehow make a new battery that's dramatically better than the ones we have, people aren't really going to take these all-in-wonders seriously. I wanted to get a new phone last Christmas, that had an mp3 player and could play good games. Didn't want to have to carry so many gadgets in my pockets everytime I went out. So I got myself an SE Walkman phone. I won't do a review on that here, but to sum things up, the sound was ok, I could play games, make calls, etc. (Also had a camera and and FM radio btw.)

    In the end, I had to make up my mind each day what I was going to use it for since I had to recharge every so often. (Much more often than what I would have liked.) A phone? A camera? Or a player? Maybe a little of each?

    I ended up buying a small Creative flash player. A single battery lasted about 18 hours, could hold much more songs, etc. In practice, since I use it about 2 hours a day, I could go on a single charge for a week. (And no more calls or text messages interrupting my music or games.)

    Instead of shelling out more than half a grand for an ultra-phone, I think money's better spent buying a regular phone, plus a dedicated gadget. (Player, camera, etc.)

    (And on a slightly unrelated note, a lot of people still prefer regular calculators over the ones in their PCs.)
    • My Treo 650 works for days without charge doing limite phone / pda / mp3s.

      It definitely should handle a whole day of MP3s and phone. If not, you can swap a new battery and not lose anything if you need to.

      Does all that other crap too, word, pdf, mp3, crappy camera, videos, 2 GB SD card,

      No wifi, no stereo wireless MP3...

      Had it all for a year so far.
    • (And on a slightly unrelated note, a lot of people still prefer regular calculators over the ones in their PCs.)

      Enjoy! [geniusmouse.co.uk]
  • I don't see a photo of the new phone anywhere on the page.
  • ... Does it run Linux? </cliche>

    • Re:That's nice and all, but... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spectre_240sx ( 720999 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @10:36PM (#15202051) Homepage
      While that might not be all that important, I am curious as to whether it's possible to get it to sync with linux and OS X. The next phone I get I'd like to be able to sync without being forced to use Outlook.
      • almost every major phone syncs with OSX using isync pretty much out of the box. You even get a little picture in isync that looks like your phone. This is nothing new and has been in OSX for years. Linux on the other hand probably works somewhat with a hodgepodge of software.
      • It depends on your carrier, and the software sucks...

        Verizon will lock you out of your phone; if you go online and try to grab a copy of Motorolla Phone tools (yes, I know this is a Windows application suite), they specifically note that they have disabled thing, like the ability to download background images and ring tones, at the request of Verizon.

        For other carriers, whether you can sync with Linux is a function of which SourceForge package you download, and how long your phone has been out. The best on
      • Pretty much any recent Nokia phone will work with iSync and I'd bet money on any Series 60 phone working with it (as soon as Apple releases device profiles or someone else puts one together).

        The relevant bit of Apple's site [apple.com] has more info but hasn't been updated for these new phones.
      • Most modern non-Microsoft phones have abandoned the proprietary sync protocols of old, and now use SyncML for syncing the phonebook/calendar etc, and USB mass storage for accessing at least the external memory (SD Card). Some still use prorietary protocols with Windows only drivers for accessing the phone's internal memory, but you can move files between internal and external memory using the phone UI, or use bluetooth file transfer, so this can be worked around.
    • All recent Nokia phones use ARM based processors, so in short, yes.
      Figuring out how to flash the hardware and make it boot your binary is left as an exercise to the reader.
  • My initial thought was "Oh great, another Japanese-style bloat-o-phone" -- but after looking at the specs, I see the N93 is actually even more bloated and heavy than that (a typical Japanese bloat-phone is around 115g, and already seems kind of clunky and awkard; the N93 is 180g!).

    I understand some people like all-in-phone phones because they only have to carry around one device ... but it seems rather silly when it reaches the point where you don't want to carry it around at all because your pockets aren't

  • Nice collection of images (Score:5, Funny)

    by mo ( 2873 ) on Tuesday April 25, 2006 @10:47PM (#15202087)
    Here's some images of this thing.

    http://www.dexigner.com.nyud.net:8080/forum/index. php?showtopic=5892 [nyud.net]
    http://www.dexigner.com/forum/index.php?showtopic= 5892 [dexigner.com]

    Seems like they could have thrown in a keyboard for such a big phone. Seems more like a camcorder-phone than an all-in-one device.
  • This phone is seriously huge!

    Check it out here: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/nokia_nx3/index .php?p=9/ [phonescoop.com]

    Also, the N73 was also announced, which is thankfully a smaller phone, still feature rich, and is quad band unlike the N93, and thus better for those of us in the US.

    Check it out: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/nokia_nx3/index .php?p=7/ [phonescoop.com]

    Also, for those who are interested in phones check out howardforums.com It's the best message board for cell phones and network information.
  • How about if it came with some kind of OS other than the crappy ones usually bundled with phones? I'd like to see a device like this with Windows Mobile or something linux based, that normal people can actually write programs for.
  • Most people do not really want one device to do all of these functions. I have gone through several such devices, and they are essentially a gimmick, soon discarded in favour of separate devices that do each job well. What I want is to be able to receive phone calls on my mobile, even when the battery on my MP3 player is dead.

    Or use my phone independantly of my PDA, like when I'm playing tetris while talking to my wife.

    Having said that, I'll bet they sell a truckload of these to early adopters, who

  • My needs are simple (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rssrss ( 686344 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2006 @12:22AM (#15202473)
    "The N93, costing $660, will supposedly fill all of your needs for electronic equipment on the go."

    Let's see:

    simple -- no
    cheap -- no
    long battery life -- no

    Sorry. Looks like it will fufill none of my needs.
  • Here's a picture of Nokia's all-in-one product [opera.com].

  • How predictable. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by vjouppi ( 621333 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2006 @02:20AM (#15202782)
    I like the way the people on Slashdot always complain about new multitalented phones. Don't buy them if they don't suit your needs or work properly in your networks!

    Nokia and all other manufacturers have plenty of entry level, sub $100, "calls only" style phones in the product portfolio for you critical consumers to purchase.

    I like my 9500, soon to be replaced with an E70 (I want more CPU power and 3G). Yes, I use the camera daily (sending MMSes to friends/moblog).. I listen to MP3s and C-64 SIDs often from my 1GB MMC card. I use it for GPS navigation with TomTom mobile when I'm driving in an unknown town. I use PuTTY over GPRS or WLAN for remote terminals every day on it.

    They wouldn't make these if there weren't people willing to buy them.. And usually the will to buy comes from a need for some certain features.
  • I'm all for reducing the number of bulges in my pants (is that an ipod+pda+cell+wallet in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?), but I'd rather have you know, separate devcies that do one thing well, rather than one that does everything piss-poorly or even averagely.

    This is why I my iPaq isn't seeing much action these days. Sure, it has the potential to do a lot of things, but because it doesn't do most of them in a way thats really good, I don't end up using it. Music player? iPod. Phone? I'll tak

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