Mobile Phones News

Smartphones are the fastest-growing segment among mobile phones. There were 625 million handsets sold last year worldwide of which there were only 25 million smartphones so there is obviously enormous potential. Nokia is now dominating the smartphone market (80% in Europe). I have often said in the past that Nokia mobile phones are the easiest to understand and use, and that probably explains their popularity, but now they are also leading the field technically so I am going to end this review with a brief summary of the Nokia 7710 which is a very different looking and acting smartphone.

The Motorola V3 is the thinnest mobile available in the UK and it is in the popular clamshell design so when it is open it is very thin indeed! It is made out of aluminium and even has an alloy keypad with flush keys which have been etched. It is easy to use and glows blue in the dark and has now become available in black. The TFT screen has 262,000 colours and is one of the best displays available on any mobile phone. It has a good quality digital camera, video playback, Bluetooth, Quad-band capability and great clarity when listening to calls. It isn't a smartphone but it is one of the most beautiful phones on the market. It doesn't have an MP3 player; it won't record video; its software, especially when communicating with a PC, is very average and its battery life very poor. Its appearance can't be faulted though, it engenders serious phone envy from onlookers, but it lacks many useful functions.

Samsung is one of the most successful Korean manufacturers noted for its clamshell designs, bright vivid screens and distinctive ring tones. The Samsung D500 has a slide-up design however, and this is becoming more and more popular, with an integrated antenna. It has a 1.3 mega pixel camera with flash, an MP3 player and Bluetooth. Its colour display has up to 262, 144 colours. It is not a smartphone and is made in black or silver, black being more popular. It has a built-in dictaphone which will record several hours of voice memos but strangely and disappointingly, will not record a phone conversation. Another drawback is that it doesn't have voice recognition for dialing which is popular for business users and in-car use but is not particularly necessary for trendy fashion phones like this one. A new version will be coming out soon with a clamshell design.

The Nokia 6630 is a combined mobile phone and PDA powered by Symbian OS v 8 (Series 60) currently the leading smartphone platform in the world. Symbian is licensed by LG, Lenovo, Panasonic Samsung Sendo, Siemens and of course Nokia. The 6630 is the smallest third-generation (3G) handset available, has a 1.2 mega pixel camera and an MP3 player. It has Tri-band and is an unusual pear shape which makes it much easier to operate one-handed which is quite important for a smartphone.

The Nokia 7710 is a widescreen multimedia smartphone. It has a touch screen (640x320 pixels) with over 65,000 colours which recognizes handwriting or you can use the on-screen QWERTY keyboard. There is a built-in stylus which is used on the screen for tapping or writing, and a mega pixel camera (1152x 864 pixels) with enough memory for 800 photos.

Also with camcorder and MP3, its office tools are quite similar to those on a Blackberry, namely calendar, contacts list and to-do lists and you can send and receive e-mails and connect to the Internet. With such a large screen you can view documents and give presentations. You can also view music videos. It is Bluetooth enabled, Tri-band and even has a radio, known as a Visual Radio which allows you to interact with your favorite radio stations so that you could find the details of any song which is playing including the name of the artist, and then if you wish download it. Presumably it is intended to compete with the Blackberry range and it will be interesting to see how successful it is. Nokia 6822 Mobile Phone

There is another option worth looking at, the Nokia 6822 which has a unique fold-open QWERTY keyboard although apparently the camera is very poor. It doesn't have polyphonic ring tones like nearly all of the other top of the range mobile phones do. It has a good MP3 player, an excellent video player, Bluetooth, dictaphone, good reception and transmission and a radio. However it is not very popular and doesn't sell well for some reason!

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