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SGH-Z300: Samsung Announces Music Phone
The mobile world domination plans by the white cat-stroking mastermind at Samsung continues apace with the news of yet another new phone from the Korean giants.
Hell bent on filling every pocket on the planet with their products, the prolific phone producer has sent out swarms of smart phones, 3G phones, swivel phones, slider phones and MP3 phones.
With a strategy dictating that every possible consumer should find something for them in their colossal products range, Samsung’s scientists were quickly despatched to their laboratories after someone spotted a niche unfulfilled: the 3G music phone!
Immediately, great brains went to work and before long the new flip-tastic SGH-Z300 was born.
Seen at CeBIT 2005 earlier this year, Samsung have announced a June release date for their SGH-Z300 phone, described as a “classically designed, clamshell handset with a range of music, camera and video features.”
Petite in size yet delivering a surprisingly hefty sonic whack, Samsung’s wee 3G phone incorporates dual stereo speakers for its MP3/AAC/AAC+ audio player, with a healthy 50MB of internal memory for song storage.
The 89 x 47 x 26 mm handset sports a sizeable 262K colour TFT Samsung screen with the whole caboodle weighing in at a handbag-untroubling 110g.
Because Da Kidz are, like, down with multimedia, Samsung have kitted the handset out with dual lenses – one 1.3 Megapixel and the other 0.3 Megapixel – offering video calls, still photography and video recording.
User reports say that the viewfinder isn’t exactly the fastest kid on the block, but it seems an acceptable compromise considering the wealth of functionality on offer.
The comfortably large keyboard glows with a de rigueur blue backlight, and there’s an intuitive circular navipad above the number keys.
Basic Web browsing is taken care of with a WAP 2.0-enabled micro-browser also present, and the handset offers support for J2ME MIDP 2.0.
Samsung earn a big gold star for using a mini USB connector (instead of the usual proprietary solution that comes with most handsets), but this is quickly ripped out of the book and replaced with a silver star for their decision to use the highly unpopular TransFlash memory card format.
The SGH-Z300 is due out this June in Europe, and will offer GSM tri-band 900/1800/1900 MHz and WCDMA 2100 MHz connectivity.
Pricing has yet to be announced.
Samsung
23 May, 2005
Mobile TV Launches on Orange UK 3G
Orange has become the first UK provider to offer live television channels to its customers’ handsets.
Available exclusively to UK-based Orange 3G customers, the service will give customers access to nine channels, including ITN News, CNN, Cartoon Network, Extreme Sports, as well as dedicated Big Brother and Celebrity Love Island channels.
Mobile TV is seen as the latest hot potato in the telecoms world, with the service enabled by the DVB-H broadcast transmission standard – a digital TV technology that offers low battery consumption and robust reception.
With their announcement of a UK service, Orange have jumped the gun on rivals o2, who are still experimenting with Mobile TV trials in the Oxford area.
Orange are already broadcasting 23 TV channels over mobile phones in France, along with other European networks selling selected live TV via 3G network streaming.
“This is truly a service where 3G comes into its own. We don’t expect people to watch for hours at a time but to dip in and out,” beamed Julian Diment, head of commercial and brand partnerships at Orange.
Not surprisingly, 3G operators – who collectively shelled out £22.5bn for the networks – are extremely hopeful that mobile TV will prove an alluring attraction for consumers to sign up for their flagging service.
Keen to milk the franchise for every last penny, there are a slew of interminable reality TV show tie-ins lurking around the corner.
For the terminally sad, Channel 4 will provide live 24-hour streaming from the Big Brother house during the next series, which is launched next month.
We can’t imagine any circumstances where we’d consider paying to watch barrel-scraping Celebrity Love Island program on a mobile, but someone clearly thinks that a dire mobile channel based on the show will be a hit.
Orange’s service launches next Monday and will initially only be available on the Nokia 6680 from Orange.
Subscriptions are charged at £10 (~US$18.3 ~€14.5) a month on top of regular bills. Orange
20 May, 2005
3 Launches UK’s First Mobile Blogging Service
UK video mobile network, 3, has announced the first mobile blogging service, letting their 3 million customers share mugshots, arty scenes and video clips captured on their video mobile via the Web.
The service, called ‘My Gallery’, integrates 3G technology and Web blogging, with pictures or videos sent from a video mobile instantly published to a customer’s unique Web site, hosted by Yospace’s Media Community Platform.
Customers can choose to share their images with everyone or maintain an ‘invite-only’ blog for friends and family. Visitors to the sites will also be able to interactively “blog” their feedback.
Earlier this month, David Springall, CTO and founder of Yospace excitedly spoke about his own product: “MMS has yet to reach its full potential. Users need a compelling reason to start sending MMS and blogging is this year’s new media phenomenon. By fusing the two, we have created what we think will be the next major communication revolution. We’ve seen mobile phones, email, instant messenger and blogging. Now it’s time to say hello to mobile blogging.”
Graeme Oxby, Marketing Director of 3 was also big on the idea: “Video mobile technology is all about immediacy, whether it’s downloading the latest music video on the move or being the first to share the breaking news from Big Brother with your friends. With My Gallery, you can share your antics straight away with your friends and family without being tied to a PC.”
The service – exclusive to 3 customers – also lets users upload pictures from their home computer, manage their content and invite chums to visit. Each blog can contain up to 10MB of pics and clips
“3’s My Gallery is set to transform blogging from a ‘geeky’ hobby to a mainstream communication method. The immediacy of this type of web publishing means that people can comment instantly as it happens, on the move” added David Springall of YoSpace.
The procedure for 3 customers to set up a My Gallery site is straightforward enough: users simply send a picture or video message to “3333” (this will be charged at a standard rate) and they’ll then be sent a password via SMS to manage their blog site.
Blogging remains a boom industry with analysts Technorati calculating that the number of blogs in existence has doubled every five and a half months for the last 18 months.
With nearly 5 million blogs now estimated to be online, 3’s new service may prove a winner with consumers.
3 My Gallery
YoSpace
20 May, 2005
Vodafone Simply Offers Back To Basics Mobile Phones
Poor old granny. All she wants to do is ring up a cab to take her home from the bingo, but her hi-tech, Bluetooth enabled, all-vibrating, MP3-playing, camera-toting, WAP-enabled phone is trying to get her to download the latest Blink 182 ringtone and asking for her GSM details.
With the simpler needs of the technologically challenged and technophobic in mind, Vodafone is launching two feature-stripped handsets in a move to entice customers who want just basic voice and text services with no razzamatazz.
The ‘Vodafone Simply’ service, a result of customer research and feedback, will offer two easy-to-use phones developed by French telecoms bigwigs Sagem.
The phones will sport large screens with legible text and symbols, as well as three buttons giving access to the most commonly used services: the main screen, contacts and messages.
“We have many customers who want the latest mobile phone with all the advanced services from full track music downloads to video calling and mobile TV,” said Chief Marketing Officer Peter Bamford.
“We also have customers who just want to make and receive calls and text messages on their mobile phones. Vodafone Simply is as easy to use mobile service…to help them stay in touch with friends and family.”
With manufacturers creating ever more complex, feature-laden multimedia smartphones glistening with widgets, a market has opened up for customers who just want a blooming phone.
With the more advanced phone tariffs making the small print of an insurance company look like the Beano, some telecoms companies have been trying to woo customers wanting just basic services with simpler pricing.
With easyMobile, Fresh and Virgin Mobile already offering flat-rate phone and text deals, it’s a bit surprising to see Vodafone not following suit with their “Simply” tariff.
Their scheme offers a pre-paid Vodafone Simply handset for £80 (~US$146 ~€116) (free with a monthly price plan) with a “Stop the Clock” price plan only charging customers the first three minutes of calls (up to an hour long) made in the evenings and weekends.
Without a price plan, pre-paid calls will sting customers at a rate of 35p per minute during the day to any network and 5p per minute in the evenings. Text messages cost 12p each.
Vodafone is targeting the new phones at customers aged from the mid-thirties upwards, believing the market opportunity to be “quite large”.
The service will be available in Portugal, Spain and the UK from 24 May, with Vodafone Germany, Vodafone Greece, Vodafone New Zealand, Vodafone Sweden and Swisscom Mobile following in June and Mobilkom Austria in July.
Vodafone
20 May, 2005
It’s all Gone Pete Tong: First Advert on UK 3G Mobiles
UK’s first video mobile network, 3, has announced the first advert to be broadcast over a 3G service.
The 30 second advert promotes a new cinema release and is the result of a video mobile marketing agreement between 3, mobile marketing services provider Flytxt and RedBus Film Distribution.
3’s customers will be able to download a trailer of the new British cult film “It’s all Gone Pete Tong” – a Toronto film festival award-winner – released in UK cinemas on 26 May.
Notably, this is the first time that 3G has been introduced into the traditional marketing blitz of TV, online and print media, and may well prove a precursor to future advertising campaigns.
The clip will be launched in mid-May and made available via ‘Today on 3’, with the first 100,000 customers able to download the clip for nowt.
Viewers will be able to view clips from the “hilarious” comedy, and obtain information about the film, the plot and its stars.
Gareth Jones, COO, 3 energised: “This is a very exciting development; advertisers now have a new and targeted visual medium with which to reach consumers.
As the UK’s largest video mobile operator, we know what our customers enjoy watching over 3G, we also know the profile of our customers, this means that adverts or paid-for content can be tailored and relevant, so the consumer wins too.”
Pamir Gelenbe, co-founder and Director of Corporate Development, Flytxt was equally chuffed: “We’re delighted to be working with 3, the UK’s leading 3G network on such an innovative approach to mobile marketing and advertising. The advantage for brand owners is that mobile marketing combines the wide reach of TV with the precision of DM and the tracking potential of the Internet. ”
“It’s All Gone Pete Tong” examines the life of superstar DJ Frank Wilde and has been praised as ‘Sharp, funny and mind-blowingly good’ by those connoisseurs of taste, The Sun TV Mag.
We’re always up for a bit of free content when we get to choose to download it or not, but the cynics amongst us can’t help suspecting that mobile advertisers might become a little more aggressive in the future, with ‘promotions’ rapidly turning into mobile spam…
3 (UK)
It’s All Gone Pete Tong
19 May, 2005
Strategy Analytics: Nokia 6680 ‘Best’ 3G WCDMA Device
The Nokia 6680 imaging smartphone has been declared the new ‘Best in Class’ 3G device according to a report by Strategy Analytics.
Four of the best 3G devices currently available in Western European were put under the microscope by Strategy Analytics’ Advanced Wireless Laboratory (AWL) panels in London, UK and Milan, Italy.
All of the phones were assessed on four categories: Video Features, User Interface & Input, Display, and Style/Design, with the Nokia reigning supreme in two categories, Display and Style/Design, as well as registering a joint highest score for User Interface.
When the white-coated, clipboard-toting boffins had finished tallying up the scores, the Nokia 6680 was also the only device to score above the mean score across all four categories.
The 6680 achieved a composite mean rating of 73, compared with 71 for the Sony Ericsson V800, 69 for the Motorola E1000 and 64 for the NEC e338.
The report noted strong deviations (oo-er!) in the results of these evaluations by gender with the lay-deees preferring the Sony Ericsson and NEC devices, whereas the geezers exhibited a strong preference for the Nokia and Motorola handsets.
“This acknowledgment underscores Nokia’s leadership in 3G devices,” purred Joe Coles, Director of imaging product marketing at Nokia. “The Nokia 6680 is an example of an engineering masterpiece that offers very sophisticated technology combined with ease of use and extremely desirable design. Devices like it pave the way for transforming the way people live, work, play and communicate.”
The Nokia scored particularly well in the Style/Design category, with 98% of participants nominating the phone as the ‘coolest’.
Users were also mightily impressed with the clarity, resolution and brightness of the Nokia 6680 smartphone’s display.
The phone’s User Interface and menu system was considered “logical and easy to use” by the majority of users, with the smartphone scoring highest in the exciting sounding categories of ‘Configuration and Usability of Hot-Buttons’ and ‘Ease of switching between text options’ (who dreams these things up?).
Kevin Nolan, Director of Strategy Analytics’ Advanced Wireless Laboratory commented: “As handset manufacturers compete to launch compelling devices that will meet the demands of the advanced buyers who will drive multimedia content consumption across 3G networks, the Nokia 6680 has set a new standard for performance in terms of usability and device size and style.”
As we announced in March, the Nokia 6680 imaging smartphone comes with a shedload of features including two integrated cameras, a flash, the Nokia XpressPrint printing solution, an active slide for easy camera activation and a bright screen of up to 262,144 colours.
All the vogue Smartphone features are present and correct, with the Nokia sporting an organiser, video streaming, Internet browser, email and 3G-enabled services, such as two-way video calling and video sharing.
As competing handset manufacturers try to catch the eye of consumers by ramping up the gizmos and widgets, it’s important that the phones remain easy to use.
Nokia have acquired a well earned reputation for the simplicity of their interfaces and this writer still rues the day he moved from his Nokia phone to a fiddly-tastic Sony Ericsson.
Strategy Analytics
Nokia 6680
17 May, 2005
Windows Mobile 5.0 Unveiled By Microsoft
Microsoft has unveiled Windows Mobile 5.0, a new version of its Windows operating system for mobile devices.
The new OS includes features to make it easy for device makers to equip phones and handheld computers with typewriter keyboards and iPod-sized hard drives.
The announcement by Chairman Bill Gates at the company’s annual conference for mobile software developers in Las Vegas, marked the end of the distinct Pocket PC and Smartphone brands of the operating system.
Microsoft initially offered a single mobile platform based on Windows CE (short for ‘consumer electronics’) with the platform fragmenting into Pocket PC PDAs, “smart” cell phones, and then Pocket PCs equipped with phones.
By dumping the 5-year-old Pocket PC brand and the ‘Smartphone’ label, Microsoft is elbowing its Windows Mobile platform onto the same table as rival mobile device platforms such as Symbian and BlackBerry.
Although the underlying software code remains 90 percent the same as its predecessors, the new Windows Mobile removes some technological distinctions that gave the phone and PDA platforms different capabilities.
This means that integrated support for Wi-Fi will be available for smart phones rather than just Pocket PCs, and that Pocket PCs will now include “persistent” memory storage.
This preserves basic user information, contacts and personal settings when a device’s battery runs out of juice and was previously only available for smart phones.
The new Windows Mobile platform rather belatedly adds support for internal hard drives, with Microsoft hoping that device makers will design phones and organisers with enough storage capacity to take on the likes of Apple’s iPod
Other feature enhancements in Windows Mobile 5.0 include tools for “push-to-talk” and video conferencing, support for 3G and USB 2.0, and improvements in soft-key operation and landscape display orientation.
Swivel action business folks will appreciate updates to the mobile versions of Microsoft Word and Excel, with the software providing more consistent formatting of documents created on a computer and allowing charts to be created from a spreadsheet.
Windows Mobile currently generates the loose change in Microsoft’s voluminous pockets, with the combined software revenue from mobile and embedded devices totalling US$80 million (~€62.5m ~£43m) in the first three months of 2005.
Although this was up 31 percent from a year earlier, it only amounted to a piffling tenth of Microsoft’s overall revenue for the quarter – but things are likely to change with Microsoft’s forthcoming marketing blitz (rumoured to reach US$100 million [~€78m ~£53.5m]).
Microsoft execs haven’t given out exact figures, but Susan DelBene, a corporate vice-president of marketing for the mobile and embedded devices division at Microsoft said, “You’ll see a bigger marketing effort from us than you’ve ever seen in the past for Windows Mobile.”
At stake is a lorra lorra loly, as smart phones are one of the fastest-growing segments of the tech industry, with sales expected to increase 67 per cent this year (32.2 million units). Compare that to the single digit growth of the PC market and you can understand Microsoft’s enthusiasm to get their sticky fingers in the smartphone jam jar.
Windows Mobile 5.0
12 May, 2005
Mobile Web Initiative Launched By The W3C
If you’ve ever accessed the Web through a mobile phone or PDA, you may be familiar with the annoyance of finding some sites inaccessible, hard to read or just a right royal pain in the Bluetooth.
Hopefully, such experiences will soon become a distant nightmare thanks to the good folks at W3C, who have just launched their Mobile Web Initiative (MWI), designed to make browsing the Web from mobile devices a much happier experience.
The problem has traditionally been that content providers have difficulties building Web sites that work well on all types and configurations of mobile phones, so two working groups have been formed by the W3C to push the adoption of its standards for browsing on mobile devices
“Mobile access to the Web has been a second-class experience for far too long,” Web founding father and W3C director Tim Berners-Lee said in a statement. “MWI recognizes the mobile device as a first-class participant, and will produce materials to help developers make the mobile Web experience worthwhile.”
The MWI, first proposed late last year, is composed of two working groups: The Best Practices Working Group – who will publish guidelines and best practices for Web content authors – and The Device Description Working Group, tasked with publishing a database with descriptions that content authors can use for tailoring their pages to various devices.
It’s not the first time that the W3C has focused on the actual application of its recommendations rather than their design, with their 1997 Web Accessibility Initiative focusing on education, advocacy and technical development to make the Web more accessible to people with disabilities.
“Web access today is so fundamental, that it shouldn’t be hampered by wires,” table-thumped Philipp Hoschka, W3C’s deputy director for Europe.
“Through this initiative, we’re committed to improving the state of the art in mobile Web content production and mobile access,” he added.
W3c
12 May, 2005
100 Million Cellular/VoWi-Fi Phones By 2010:ABI Research
Figures from a new study by ABI Research reveal that annual global sales of “dual-mode” mobile phones – clever-clogs handsets that can connect to either a conventional cellular service or a Wi-Fi network – are likely to exceed 100 million during the final year of this decade.
Currently, such dual mode devices are as familiar to the public as the five headed Dongo Worm, with most of the enterprise sector equally clueless.
But according to ABI Research senior analyst Philip Solis, some of the King Dongs of global telecommunications – notably British Telecom and Korea Telecom – plan to roll out dual-mode services as soon as the end of 2005.
“The advantages of dual mode handsets and services, when they arrive, can be summed up in two words: seamless and economical,” he said.
In the wonderful future world of dual mode phones, seamless network switching between networks is promised, although all the groovy stuff is unlikely to appear in the first generation of products.
When the technology is mature, users should be able to ring up a chum and start rabbiting at home, with the phone connecting via the residential Wi-Fi network, in turn connected to a broadband VoIP phone service.
The nattering can continue uninterrupted in the car to work, with the phone automatically switching to a cellular network, and there’d be no need for the marathon chinwag to come to an end upon arrival at work, as the phone could switch to the company’s 802.11 LAN, and VoIP.
Despite all the travelling through different locations, the smartypants handset would sense the available signals and switch automatically from one network mode to another, keeping the user connected at the lowest cost.
With the Digital Lifestyle office currently sporting a desk-hogging, charger-needing collection of mobile phones, DECT phones and Skype phones, we can’t wait for the telecoms convergence revolution to happen.
Elsewhere, Infonetics Research has predicted that VoIP service revenues will jump from 2004’s US$1.3 billion (~€1.01bn~£690m) to US$19.9 billion (~€15.5bn~£10.5bn) in 2009 – a 1,431% jump.
Infonetics directing analyst Kevin Mitchell commented that part of this growth can be attributed to the technology’s newness, noting that with VoIP services representing less than 1% of wireline carrier revenue in North America last year, the market can’t really go anywhere but up.
“Growth is driven by carrier footprint and solution expansion, marketing, and service bundling, leading to more adoption by new business/government/education and residential/SOHO customers and increased usage at more sites,” Mitchell said in a statement. “Our forecast also assumes that revenue growth is due to incremental revenue from add-on VoIP applications, such as conferencing, remote office integration, presence/location-based services, and collaboration.”
Infonetics also expects the number of residential and small office/home office VoIP subscribers to rocket from 1.1 million in the last year to 20.8 million in 2008.
ABI Research
Infonetics Research
10 May, 2005
Taiwan NFC Scheme Moves On, BenQ Supplies Handsets
According to industry insiders, trials of mobile phones doubling as payment tools will be taking place in Taiwan shortly, marking a big step for the nation’s contactless technology development.
They’re using Near Field Communication (NFC), a close-range wireless technology that operates over a few centimeters, enabling the simple transfer of information. Created by Nokia Corporation, Royal Philips Electronics and Sony Corporation, it uses a restricted version of RFID and we’ve been last 18 months, or so.
Taiwanese cardholders can already make payments at contracted petrol stations, coffee shops, video rental stores, train stations etc by simply waving their NFC-enabled device in front of sensor devices.
BenQ, one of the 12 partners in the NFC consortium, is expected to deliver 100 new mobile phones embedded with smart chips for the trial program next month.
Stage one of the trials will be conducted by Taipei Smart Card Corp, who will start testing the BenQ phones as a means of payment for services on bus lines, the MRT and public parking lots in the capital.
If that all goes tickety-boo, developers will look to strike deals with mobile service providers to integrate chips with Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) cards in handsets, giving access to mobile banking functions and even debit or credit card functionality.
The merging of cell phones and IC-chips is part of the government’s M-Taiwan (mobile-Taiwan) scheme, which put together a (NFC) consortium in November last year.
Taiwan’s alliance pooled the resources of BenQ, Taipei Smart Card, the Institute for Information Industry, five cellphone service providers, MasterCard International and Visa International.
NFC handset payment services are already tickling the public’s imagination in Japan and South Korea.
In Japan, Sony has been conducting contactless payment services with a mobile phone operator and train company, and in South Korea, SK Telecom has launched the Moneta card program with a circulation of 100,000 Visa-enabled mobile handsets.
According to Peter Manners, regional head of Visa International Asia-Pacific, the next phase is to promote the use of Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM) cards in 3G handsets.
Addressing besuited execs at the Smart Card Expo at the Taipei International Convention Center, Manners said Taiwan is second only to Malaysia in the Asia-Pacific in terms of chip-embedded card penetration.
Nokia 3220 Brings Contactless Payment and Ticketing
BenQ
NFC Forum
10 May, 2005