Mobile Phone News

There have been some iconic mobile phones, over the years. Handsets that have really stood out, and stood the test of time. The reasons a handset becomes part of mobile folklore will usually be either because of a classic design, or outstanding features. Take the Motorola Star Tac, for example. Feature-wise nothing special but it is a real design classic of a mobile phone. Or who could forget what popularly became known as the Motorola Wings, the Motorola V3688. This handset was tiny, and just felt great to use, despite being absolutely useless for anything other than calls. The V3688 even sucked at SMS, with poor message input and early handsets had no link to the phonebook, so unless you knew the number you didn’t know who messages were from. Great keypad for such a small phone though.

Moving on from the Motorola design classics, we come to another iconic handset, the Nokia 6310i. Certainly not a popular handset because of its looks, this is one of the most sold handsets Nokia have ever produced, it sold in its millions. It was such an easy phone to use, simple in layout, it had Bluetooth and GPRS back in the day when this was important and new. I know people at this time who still insist on their 6310i and won’t swap. There is a roaring trade on 6310i refurbs on Ebay. This is one phone that will run for a few more years. A friend told me he is taken with the simplicity, whilst at the same time of course, there is the legendary 6310i battery. That thing just goes forever!

Personally, I just the iconic status of my handsets by the amount of time I buy one. It works something like this. I buy a phone, use it, like it, buy another, but the replacement doesn’t cut it, either in usability, or design, or features, so I purchase another of the model I had previously. It’s like my little vice, I don’t drink, smoke or gamble, I do buy lots of phones! Over time phones like the V3688 and 6310i have been iconic handsets in my phone ownership history. Also the Nokia 7650, the first camera phone in the UK, the first Symbian phone, the handset that got me hooked on S60 in general, became an iconic handset. The 6600 after it, the N73, all iconic handsets.

A few months ago, I was invited to the launch of the Nokia N82, with a few other bloggers, and we were given a live handset to take away with us and put it through its every day paces. A fantastic opportunity to get real hands on with the latest S60 product, and really find out how it performs. I cannot recommend this handset enough. In the three months I’ve used this phone it hasn’t failed me. Recently I purchased an 8GB memory card so storage was never an issue, the N82 has a great camera, WiFi, HSDPA, easy email to setup and use, an excellent web browser, the acceleromator, GPS, a handily placed 3.5mm audio jack on the top of the phone, a great bright clear screen, all in my favourite phone shape, the classic candybar.

The trial period with the N82 is at this time at an end, and the handset is going back. It is the only time I’ve ever trialed a handset that I really didn’t want to give back, the N82 is that good.

I am plan to by another N82. In my mind, the N82 has achieved the level of an iconic handset, to me personally. However, I am plan to wait until I can get my hands on the black version, I’ve seen one in the flesh, so to speak, and it really is nice. In the meantime I will use an N95 8GB which I haven’t owned since they came to market, but I’ve had the N95 previously and the N82 to me is a much better handset, even if just for the form factor.

At the Nokia Press contest today, I also had the opportunity to get some hands on time with the Nokia N96. The first thing I noticed was the size, it was smaller than I expected. The design is similar to the N95, with the dual slider, but overall reflects more the N81 in design. Some people are not too impressed by this, for myself I like the look of the phone.

The screen is large, and dominates the handset when closed. Open, and you see a good keypad, well laid out and very easy to use. There will be no problems with text input on this phone.

A lot of the innovation on the N96 is inside. Firstly there is support for DVB-H which is basically support for digital television. I’m not sure how this affects us in the UK, the last time there was a Nokia phone with DVB-H support it didn’t release in the UK as our digital signal is not compatible. For more technical detail, see in this place, in this place and in this place.

The N96 is endowed with an impressive 16GB of internal memory and there is also support for Micro SD cards, so in theory you could increase capacity to an amazing 32GB. For at this time you will have to make do with 24GB as 16GB cards will not likely be on the market until towards the end of 2008 (My guess, not based on any concrete info)

The N96 has a mini ‘kick stand’ at the back. In place it sits flush around the camera lens, opened out it allows the phone to stand for watching video. The N96 will support WMV videos and it is expected to also support DivX video during the handsets lifecycle.

Overall I was again impressed with the Nokia N96, the build quality was solid, the slide worked well, and the screen is very bright and clear. One thing I did like, thanks to the FP2 support, is using the phone theme you can finally remove the Nokia calendar from the front screen. Well, kind of. What actually happens is the theme will remove the standby icons from there normal position across the main screen, and list them down the left handside. You can choose which icons appear, so if you decide not to include the calendar, then obviously it won’t appear. If you do choose the calendar, then appointments are only shown if you highlight the calendar icon, a mini screen pops up. Much better than the way all appointments are shown on the main screen right at this time, but not Truly as good as the ESeries plugins.

Tomorrow I am flying out to Barcelona to attend the MWC, I will try and get some more info on the new phones, and some more pictures.

Earlier on today I attended the Nokia Press Conference in the new flagship store in Regents St in London, as Nokia presented live from Barcelona their new handsets. In all four handsets were declare, the Nokia 6210 Navigator, Nokia 6220 Classic, Nokia N78 and Nokia N96. in this place, I’m interested in the two NSeries handsets.

First, the N78. The N78 is a direct replacement for the very popular Nokia N73. The N73 is probably one of my favourite ever handsets, it matched a good feature set, for its time along with a very good battery life. Overall Nokia sold over 50 million N73 handsets. But, as with all things in the mobile industry, we move forward.

I saw an N78 a few months ago, and to be honest, I was not impressed. It is continuously hard to judge what is clearly a prototype handset, however I didn’t like the look, I didn’t like the feel and neither the design. And that keypad, it was awful! So of the new handsets to be seen, the N78 was the one I wasn’t really to bothered about.

Well, I’m happy to say those initial impressions have been shown to be misplaced. The N78 I saw today, whilst still a prototype, was way ahead of the model I saw just a short while ago. The keypad seems to have been changed slightly, in the numeric keys are more aligned than I remember. And, whilst it does still look uncomfortable, it actually isn’t. Three months of using the N82 and you soon get used to using those slim keys. The keys on the N78 are slightly different, they are not separate but one long line. In fact, none of the keys are cut out separately, but part of one whole plastic design. You can get an idea of this from the pictures below. Just click on the image to see them in full size.

The N78 is equipped with an FM transmitter. This is the first time that a mobile phone has included an FM transmitter built in. I need to try the feature out, but it works in much the same way as those add on modules do for music players. The transmitter will scan for an available FM signal and you can transmit your music via the transmitter to your car or home stereo.

The N78 has HSDPA, and WiFi, and support for Bluetooth 2.0. There is also GPS support, and this includes support for geotagging, which will capture information when you take a picture, so when you upload the picture details are stored of when and where the picture was taken.

Overall the N78 did impress me, and I imagine that in two years or so, we will be looking back and seeing that the N78 has achieved similar sales figures to the N73.