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» Americans heart clamshell phones » Changes in the Finnish mobile phone market » New Blog: S60 User Experience » Introducing Samsung SGH-D720 » Taking a break... |
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Star Trek. All Americans grew up watching Star Trek. We all wanted to be Captain Kirk. All little Americans boys had (still have?) aspirations to travel around the galaxy, having romantic affairs with beautiful alien women battling the Klingons and saving the universe.
Remember the "mobile phones" they used on Star Trek? Weren't they basically clamshell phones (always set to loudspeaker mode)? *THAT'S* why Americans love the clamshells so much, we all secretly want to be crew members on the USS Enterprise! Star Trek has been sending us subliminal messages to buy clamshell phones for decades now! Marketing geniuses. :-)
For years, Finnish law required that handsets and service subscriptions be sold separately. Recent changes in the law, however, now allow for tie-in sales after the first of April.Under the new law, if a consumer signs up for a phone contract with a certain operator, a phone can be thrown in for free or at a considerably reduced price. The deal is alluring for many consumers, especially as the going rate for 3G phones is over 500 euros.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications says it hopes that the move will encourage more Finns to upgrade to newer and better phones.
With so many laws, there's always the pro's and con's. Like the Ministry says, Finns will be more likely upgrade to newer and better phones more often (Finns are very thrifty people, many people hold onto their old phones for many years). When people have nice smartphones on fast networks, they'll be more likely to purchase cool applications, thus supporting the software developers - and we have a LOT of mobile developers in Finland who could benefit from this.
On the downside, people feel their overall mobile phone costs will rise. There's no such thing as a "free phone", operators will just raise their rates to compensate. Also, people fear they'll have less selection of phones, they'll be forced to choose the smaller selection of phones their operator offers. S60 is the world's leading smartphone platform, but we don't perform as well as we'd like to in the United States. This is partially due to legislation like this which gives the operators more power in the industry - If the handset maker and operator don't strike a deal, your phones don't sell.
It's a controversal new law, something that probably has no wrong or right answer. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is Finland making the wrong move?
Useful but fun! This blog discusses Usability and User Experience issues with a S60 twist.
...this should be an exciting blog on a unqiue topic, I'm really looking forward to their articles!
Seconding Teppo's earlier review of S60 team benefits, I thought I'd write a couple of lines on Samsung's second device - the SGH-D720 .
The first ever S60 phone was a slider (Nokia 7650). Sporting a VGA camera and a 12-bit display, the 7650 was indeed a device for the techies. A couple of years later, Samsung brings us the second S60 slider with a lot more to look forward to.
The first thing you notice about this phone is how well it sits in your hand. It's small and compact and the slider works really well. The slider also brings other benefits. The keypad is nice and large and locking the keypad by closing the slider is a nice bonus.
Comparing the 1st S60 slider (Nokia 7650 on the right) and the 2nd S60 slider (Samsung SGH-D730 on the left)
Most of the software and hardware features on the D720 are the same as D730 so not much to add to the D730 post. A couple of nice things worth mentioning though:
1) 256 MB MMCmicro
Samsung have included a nice 256 MB card to the sales package. Having been using 128 MB so far, the added 128 MB is a nice bonus. In other words, ca. 2 more CDs of music to go ;-)
2) Magix Music Maker
Being a music freak, having something a sequencer on the phone is a definite bonus. If you are familiar with creating music with a sequencer you'll get the hang of it really quick. Basically you put little bits of sound on a timeline to create your own songs...which you can then use as a ringtone. If you have a friend using a music maker as well on another S60 device, you can make one device the slave and one the master and make them start playing the music simultaneously!
I'd definitely recommend this phone to anyone who wants to have S60 functionality in a small and compact package. Looking at Samsung's websites, the D720 appears on at least the Russian and Belgian websites. Also several online stores seem to list it.
Taking a break from the demos to read Darla Mack...
Wow, CeBIT is huge. I knew it was a big event but I had no idea how massive this really is. A half million people, 30+ airplane-hangar sized buildings, all full of vendors. The fairgrounds here in Hannover are practically it's own little city. I even heard its own congressman. :-)
Nokia were nice enough to give S60 some space in their exhibit. There's a million things for the visitors to see, so people need to be "wowed" fast or they'll quickly move on to the next stand. I've been showing the new S60 open source OSS web browser and have quite successfully "wowed" nearly everyone - It's a giant leap forward in mobile web browsing. If you haven't seen it yet, I'll have a video demo online soon. In the meanwhile, try out this online demo from S60.com
If you happen to be at CeBIT this week or next, be sure to stop by the S60 booth! I'll be there presenting the S60 platform and spending my free time blogging about the event. Come by and say HI!! We'll be located in the Nokia tent. Here's a summary of the event from Wikipedia...
CeBIT is the world's biggest, and one of the world's most important, computer expos. It is held in Hanover, Germany, each spring and is a barometer of information technology. With an exhibition area of 400,000 m² and 700,000 visitors, it is bigger than COMDEX.The name CeBIT stands for Centrum der Büro- und Informationstechnik (Center for office and information technology) and was traditionally the CeBIT part of the Hanover Fair, a big industry trade show held every year.
Let me tell you what I think it is - battery life (did the image give it away?). Mobile devices could pack in ultra fast processors, lots more memory, bigger hard disks, brighter screens, and all sorts of other fancy components - but everytime you add something new or crank up the juice on an existing component, you're sucking more precious battery life.
PVPs (portable video players) boast their big screens, large hard disks, large codec compatibility - but you might get 3-5 hours of playback on the average PVP. What good is that? Maybe it doesn't seem like a long time to me since I'm so used to S60 device's notorious long battery length. I don't recharge my Nokia E61 for days and regularly use it's browser and listen to podcasts.
We haven't really seen *that* much progress in the world of mobile batteries, like everything else it's been quite gradual. I guess I should be patient while the technology develops and allows us to put a 3GHz processor in our pockets. And what happened to that garbage-fueled flux capacitor we were promised back in 1985? :-)
