Tuesday, May 08, 2007 Limpag: New phones from Sony Ericsson, Nokia By Max Limpag Celltalk
PRESS JUNKET. Sony Ericsson scheduled a press junket last Saturday to launch its latest models. I did not attend the launching in Sumilon Island but I’ll be writing about the new phone models in the next column. I am, as I keep saying in this column and my blog, a confessed Sony Ericsson fan boy.
I wished the company just launched the new phones here in the city, though. I would have loved to try it out.
ENTRY-LEVEL UNITS. Nokia last week launched several new models, many of them on the entry-level range. What’s noteworthy about the new units is the idea that Bluetooth connectivity and cameras are now considered integral parts of a phone that they come bundled with entry-level models. Increasingly, our lives are centering on phones. Right now they’re just communication devices. For most people, they are also the primary digital media players as well as point-and-shoot cameras.
While Nokia said the two entry-level units they launched last Week—the Nokia 2630 and Nokia 2760—can play MP3 ring tones, it did not say whether the units have digital music players. But my impression, though, is that the memory of the handsets couldn’t be expanded with memory cards. This makes the units unusable as digital media players because what’s the use of the multi-media playing capabilities if you’re limited by storage space.
THIN IS IN. The Nokia 2630 is described to be the “thinnest handset in Nokia’s portfolio at a mere 9.9 mm.” That’s almost as thin as the bullets our policemen use. It has an “easy-to-use camera” and Bluetooth connectivity. It has e-mail, MMS, and calendar capabilities. When companies say their phones have e-mail capabilities, they mean mobile clients with POP3 access.
But if I were you, I’d ditch this and use GMail for mobile application. GMail revolutionized e-mails; its mobile client revolutionized mobile e-mails. The 2630 has a VGA camera (it means this can’t be used as your main point-and-shoot digital camera) and it’s resolution, I’m sure, will be awful. But what do you expect; this is, after all, an entry-level phone. The 2630 also has an FM radio with a direct shortcut button.
WITH GPRS. The 2760 features almost the same capabilities as the 2630, only it looks sleeker with its clamshell design. The 2760 also has GPRS connectivity and features video recording as well as playback. The 2760 comes with an FM radio, Bluetooth connectivity and mobile e-mail and Internet. The two units, however, will be available only by the third quarter of this year.
