Nokia Unveils "World's Thinnest" QWERTY Smartphone 266
Barence writes "Nokia has revamped its E-series of business-oriented smartphones with two new models, including the 'world's thinnest' QWERTY device. The GPS-enabled E71 is the slimmer successor to the Nokia E61, with a thickness of only 1cm. It's HSDPA-enabled, offers switchable home screens, and gives a claimed 'two full days of heavy, heavy use.' The E66, on the other hand, is a slide-phone with a conventional numerical keypad and a built-in accelerometer. At the same event, Nokia also gave a tantalizing hint about its plans for an iPhone rival, with its senior vice president saying, 'we will have touchscreen devices coming this year.'"
Why Why Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Touch Screens (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can't promise that, keep it off my phone.
Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
Touch Screen != Success (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Touch Screen != Success (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:for a quick fix fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noted this before on Slashdot and have been modded into oblivion by what are presumably Apple fanboys claiming it's the iPhone's interface that made it popular in the US. That may be true, but I still stand by what I said.
Re:for a quick fix fine (Score:2, Insightful)
We had to pound moose antlers into antelope hide using logs for the pounding... a different antler for every letter too... and don't even get me started about having to chew the hide smooth first or what we had to do for carbon copies.... kids, sheesh, don't know how lucky they got it I tell ya.....
Re:Button Masher (Score:4, Insightful)
The trick is that the keys are not flat, but rounded on top and require a small but important amount of pressure and travel to operate. Thus the hard part of your thumb or finger can easily press the right key, and the soft flesh around it does not push the neighbours.
It's a lot better than the iPhone interface (which is similar size "keys" but flat) and traditional predictive text because it doesn't rely on any kind of prediction or spell checking, so is much less prone to errors. You can also type non-dictionary and unusual words as easily as common ones, and not having to check if the phone picked the right word as you type speeds up the rate of entry and makes it easier to just think about the message rather than how you are entering it.
Re:Looks good but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mind you, there are 1) different versions of the Symbian OS, as well as different versions of S60 (the gui). The E61/E61i both use S60v3, dunno what version of Symbian OS is under that. I have pretty recent firmware though. Full stability, so far. Best phone I've ever owned.
Re:Great... (Score:4, Insightful)
So go complain to AT&T and T-Mobile. Seems like the only Nokia phones they actually want are low-end featureless ones. It would be awesome to see a phone like the N96 come to AT&T.
Yes, more phones are coming to the U.S., but the rest of the world will have had them forever by the time we get them.
Re:Which is it nokia? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:for a quick fix fine (Score:4, Insightful)
Trust me, even if you can find a ssh client for a non-qwerty phone (and you can), it is simply impossible to do anything.
I love my Nokia E62. To a point I never even bothered to upgrade to a E61 (I don't need a camera ou Wifi).
Not an iphone rival (Score:4, Insightful)
If you happen to catch the last apple keynote, then you know it's about the integration. some stats:
>80% of iphone uses have used 10 or more applicaiton functions on their phone
>95% use the internet and google says most of their mobile queries come from iphones.
Now they are launching a app store for developers which will allow anyone to sell in 70 countries and apple handles all the delivery, installs, micro payments, currency conversio, and store UI languages.
It's first year the ipod sold because it was cool to look at and hold. But it sold the next year because the iTunes and the Itumes Music store were so freakin easy use with it.
Making a touch screen is not making an iphone. These companies have about exactly 1 year to figure this out before the apple app store has a lot of applications on it. After that it's too late.
Re:for a quick fix fine (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:for a quick fix fine (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, why would I need to carry something as big as a laptop (even a 12" one) when all I need is ssh ? Carry a laptop and a cell phone, since I have to receive calls.
This little baby here makes my life much easier, but I know I'm the exception to the rule. Most people (98% ? Maybe more ?) get smartphones just for SMS and e-mail (if that!). But I'm glad they do, since it drives the price down quite a bit.
As a side note, I also read books on my smart phone. The screen is very nice for it, even if I don't need the qwerty keyboard for that particular task.
Re:Not an iphone rival (Score:3, Insightful)
What is truly making it success, includes:
- It Just Works,
- it doesn't crash (often),
- it looks good,
- it is easy to use,
- and most of all: It Just Works.
With that I summed it up mostly. Like many Apple devices, there is not much really innovative about it. They took existing tech, integrated it, made it work out of the box, made it work easily, made it look beautiful, and that's about it. But that's not easy to do: if so, many other companies would have done it.The iPod is a great example. It is tightly integrated with the iTunes application on the PC, and thus very very easy to copy music onto. It works very easily and intuitively: the scroll wheel that is not really turning but feeling your finger, a very intuitive way. Right turn moves up, left turn moves down, click to select. No more buttons needed. The beauty of simplicity.
Re:Great... (Score:3, Insightful)
In many other markets (Europe, Hong Kong to name the two that I am familiar with) it is also practice to heavily subsidise handsets. That is nothing new.
And to further undermine your argument: isn't the iPhone also WiFi enabled? It was when I checked last. And since when is WiFi really an issue? Only since a few years at most, so that can't be a big reason of stopping operators to carry Nokia phones. Before, mobile data (certainly in the mobile backwaters of the US) was not much of an issue. SMS may be but WiFi is not an alternative for SMS.
The iPhone is also not just popular in the USA, it is also in Hong Kong. The release of the 3G iPhone made front page(!!) of the main English language daily here! It's just a phone! Or at least I'd think so... Nokias are also widely available and popular here, so it's really not just the pricing model that does it.
That said, it makes me wonder really why Nokia is so poorly available in the USA.