Mobile Digest

Nokia 3200 on test

Nokia has come up with some, how shall we put this, interesting handsets this year. Some have been complete bulls eyes – like the 7250i, others have stiffed like the 3650 and there’s a few, like the 6600 smartphone, for whom the jury is still out.

After putting the boot into the company’s handsets more than once this year it something of a relief to find a Nokia phone that is an absolute winner. Meet the girl phone par excellence the Nokia 3200.

If this isn’t the handset of choice in the budget camera phone market this Christmas I’ll be staggered. Vodafone has clearly chosen well with this one.

Essentially it's a budget rehash of the 7250i, arguably Nokia’s best handset this year. Here’s what you get for very little cash.

Design

No new territory here for the 3200 sports the standard old school Nokia candy bar design. Nokia is however taking customising phone covers to the max with this handset. You can pretty much put anything you fancy behind its plastic fluorescent casing. How cool the phone looks is down to you.

Usability

Well it wouldn't be Nokia phone if there wasn’t some quirky feature. In this instance is the keypad. Instead of each number having its own button, two numbers share the same switch. And yes it is as chaotic as it sounds as is sure to slow down serious texters. You kind of get used to it though.

The interface is classic Nokia territory. You toggle between the various menu options by pressing a four-way rocket switch, with side switches taking you deeper into the applications.

Screen

Compared to its rivals the screen is a little second rate. It has a 4k colour display with 128x128 resolution. Still the small size of the screen means it isn’t too much of a handicap. Just don’t go comparing it with the screen of the Sharp GX30.

Features

The headline feature is the handset’s integrated camera, which takes low res 352x288 images. Still at least you know that each image you take you can send straight away without having to edit it. There’s also a self-timer, though using one on a mobile phone seems a near impossibility. The pictures look fine on the screen too. Other facilities include an FM radio, XHTML web browser, 16 polyphonic ringtones and infrared connection.

The phone is also triple band too.

On the debit side it only has 1Mb storage – but as the photos are so low res this isn’t going to matter too much.

Edge technology

The handset is also one of Nokia’s first to be compatible with Edge technology. It is basically a 3G hybrid that triples the speed of data rates of GPRS connections. Edge is likely to reach at least certain parts of Europe next year. Incidentally it seems all of Nokia's handsets from now on will be Edge compatible.

Overall

So it is a budget handset with quirky keys a low-res camera and limited storage. Why is it a winner? It just looks and feels like one. It is a logical step on from the candy bar handsets that Nokia has been selling mainly to women and kids very successfully for the past three or four years. The fact it is likely to be very cheap certainly helps too.

If you want a very cheap camera phone it is either this or the 02 X1 in our book.

Panasonic autofocus camera phone

Is Panasonic set to become the major new force in mobile phones in the UK? Well it could be if it can bring models like the P505iS to these shores. Just launched in Japan it is the first camera phone to feature an auto focus. As anyone who has tried to take pictures with a camera phone can tell you this will prove invaluable. Expect other manufacturers to follow Panasonic’s lead very shortly.

The P505iS can also take pictures of 1.27 mega pixels –twice as detailed as European camera phones, features a Mini SD card for storage and can play back TV programmes stored on the SD card. It can also twist round so the main screen becomes the front of the phone like LG’s 7100. The only weakness in our book is a colour screen of just 65k colours, which is the same as European phones like the Sharp GX20.

O2 X1 on test

O2's excellent revamp of the XDA might be its high profile launch for this month, but it has another phone that has just gone on sale.

The big story with the X1 camera phone is that it is free, which in our book makes it great value.

Firstly it is pretty small for a camera phone coming in at around the same size as phones like the LG 7100. The effect is slightly spoilt by the protruding aerial, although, possibly because of this voice quality is spot on.

Screen quality with 65k colours is reasoanble and the images it takes via a camera with a rotating screen are pretty good quality. Other features include Calendar and Organiser (it can synchronise with Microsoft Outlook), Java, T9 predictive text, Call vibrate, Clock and Alarm and changeable Wallpapers.

Its big weakness though is that it is a pain to use. The menu is tricky to negotiate and on our sample the buttons were sticky and unresponsive.

Still, as it costs nothing there's hardly room to complain.

Nokia 6600 on test

Next week’s sees Nokia’s smartphone aimed at the corporate market, the 6600 finally arrive in the stores.

Officially, review samples don’t go out until next week, but The Guardian got to play with a pre-production sample and was pretty impressed by it. It apparently feels like the 3650 (the company's rather large handset with its unusual keypad) shoehorned into a wide, though not very deep casing.

Features include a 65K colour screen, 640x480 still camera and a video camera both of which feature a 2x digital zoom. Also on board are Java, a RealOne player audio/video player, an XHTML web browser and POP3 e-mail support.

Sony Ericsson has GPRS and Wi-Fi

We mentioned a while ago that Motorola was lining up a 'broadband to go' 3G/Wi-Fi network card for PCs. If you can’t wait until then Sony Ericsson has one that features both Wi-Fi (802.11b) and GPRS (general packet radio service). The £250 triple band GC79 card can access the Internet at speeds of up to 11Mbps at Wi-Fi hot spots and at up to 53.6Kbps using GPRS networks.

More from the card’s dedicated site

Nokia 7200 review

Nokia has launched three new handsets. All are due in early 2004.

Nokia 7200

Firstly the Vuitton style phone the Nokia 7200. It features an integrated camera, colour screen, presence-enhanced Chat function, MMS functionality and an FM radio. It also has a 65K colour display, video camera and xHTML browser. Shipments in Europe begin during the first half of 2004. Looks like a bit of a girl phone to us, but it is certainly the best-looking handset Nokia has produced in ages. Comes with a matching pouch and suits you sir!

Nokia 7700

It appears that one of the handsets, the 7700, will include a TV tuner of sorts. It will also support the Nokia Streamer SU-6 accessory, the first mobile IP Datacast receiver designed to demonstrate the mobile phone television experience using the DVB-H network. The Nokia Streamer can be attached to the Nokia 7700 like a battery pack, and will be used in pilot projects to showcase the future of digital broadcasting on mobile devices. So no EastEnders just yet. It'll be interesting to see if TV companies are interestd in experiemting with it. It would certainly be good for major sporting events like the Euro 2004. Wonder how long the batery lasts though when streaming TV? That model also has video and camera options, full HTML Internet access, a wide touch screen and a built-in FM radio. It goes on sale in Europe in Q2 2004.

Nokia 6230

Kind of overshadowed by the other two this is a triple band camera phone with Bluetooth and a 65K colour screen. There's a video camera on board, an XHTML browser and an MP3/AAC music player. It is first to the stores arriving in February 2004.

More details from here

Motorola A835 and Sony Ericsson P900 review

Over at The Guardian there's a double hit on two of the most-talked about phones of recent weeks. First the Motorola A835, Three's big 3G hope for the Christmas period, gets the thumbs up (with the usual reservations about Three's lack of e-mail and HTML Internet services), while Sony Ericsson's P900 smartphone is given a cautious welcome.

Sendo smartphone launches in November

The phone with the longest development period in history appears finally to be heading for the stores. Sendo has announced that its smartphone, the Sendo X, will be available in the UK by the end of 2003.

The product was first sighted way back in 2001 when the company was grooming the handset as the first to use Microsoft’s smartphone operating system (as found now on the Orange SPV). Things didn't go the way the two parties had planned and days in court are looming.

Sendo may have had the last laugh though as the X now features the rival Symbian operating system. Its big trump card is that it packs a lot of features into a small and light (120 grams) device.

Overall the spec looks pretty good. We reckon it will be up against the Siemens SX1, Nokia 6600 and our favourite the Motorola MPx200.

Other key features

Sendo Now! Screen – which can be customised to give users instant access to favourite web pages, applications etc. It is a TFT screen with a resolution of 176x220 and up to 65,536 colours.

Video – Includes RealOne player. Users can either view downloaded clips or take their own using an integrated camcorder

Camera – VGA standard. The real news is that it features an integrated flash (only LG’s 7100 handset has this feature so far) and a 4x digital zoom.

Audio – RealOne player for spinning MP3s. Apparently includes a quality speaker too.

Internet – Compatibility with HTML 4.2, Frames, WAP 2.0, XHTML MP and Security (SSL and WTLS) formats. Also up to six POP3 e-mail accounts.

Other stuff – Infrared, Bluetooth and USB connectivity, Java, triple band, 64MB of flash, memory (32MB free for users), voice control, Word, Excel etc compatibility.

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