New handsets hit the streets

04-05-2004

by Aoife White

Competition in the maturing mobile market means that phone makers are adding a range of attention-grabbing new functions to their devices.

Samsung SGH-P730: Samsung's swivel phone broke new ground for the Korean manufacturer by pioneering an entirely new style of phone. The cover of the SGH-P730 snaps open like a clamshell or swivels around a full 360 degrees. In an increasingly gimmicky market that's veering away from the traditional handset, these innovations matter, and Samsung has rarely paid as much attention to the design of its phone range until now. The tri-band phone is a chunky 123g, partly due to the built-in 1-megapixel camera and video recorder. The phone also has a colour display and a mini MMC card slot to save multimedia files. Additionally, it supports 64-chord polyphonic ringtones and MMS.

Siemens PenPhone:Siemens' latest bright idea is unfortunately still at the prototype stage but that didn't stop it from stealing the show at the 2004 CeBit technology show in March. The PenPhone is a tri-band mobile phone the size of a biro which contains all the features you expect from a mobile. Just 140mm long, the device recognises handwriting and dials the number or writes text messages directly into the phone without the need for a special surface. The phone also has voice-recognition, an integrated loudspeaker, handsfree and Bluetooth. It can't come on the market too soon.

Maxon MX-C160: Another Korean firm Maxon is at the cutting edge with the "Mighty Mini," claiming to be the smallest mobile in the world. At 59g this matchbox-sized mobile is a little beauty. The 65mm x 37mm x 22mm packet contains a colour display, WAP and polyphonic ringtones. The Mighty Mini clamshell device has three hours talktime and 150 hours standby. It should be priced at around EUR140 when it launches in Europe later this year.

Sharp GX30: Poor-quality pics made camera phones a disappointment when they first launched, but all that is about to change. Fuzzy pictures the size of a postage stamp are finally a thing of the past as the first generation of high-resolution camera phones comes on the market this spring. The Sharp GX30 has a built-in CCD camera offering 1 megapixel (858 x 1,144 pixels), a first for European networks and for GSM. For more information go here.

Panasonic X300: Camera phones must be taken seriously, Panasonic believes, so they're starting to make them in the image of their big brothers, the DV camcorder, with a tiny pop-up screen. Turn the X300 to its side and use the screen as a viewfinder to see photos or video shots being captured. If the gimmick doesn't convince, Panasonic's features might. The tri-band phone has a 65k TFT colour display with WAP and MMS support and 40 polyphonic ringtones. It will be available from autumn 2004.

Nokia 7610: The battle for mobile phone market share in 2004 will be fought over 1-megapixel cameras, according to the offerings at CeBit. Nokia's model for world domination is based on its Series 60 smartphone platform which uses Symbian OS 7.0. The phone has a TFT 65k colour display with a camera embedded in the back snapping high-resolution pictures sized 1152 x 864 pixels, just a little less than the 1280 x 960 pixels from its main rival, the Sony Ericsson S700. At this resolution, the pictures exceed the 100kb limit to send via MMS, meaning users would have to store them on their phone or take another picture at a lower resolution. Thankfully Nokia has included a solution: the phone can compress the photos for sending. The phone can also record up to 10 minutes of video at 128 x 96 or 174 x 144 pixels. The smartphone platform includes the RealOne player to watch live streaming video and Lifeblog software so on-line diarists can upload pictures, video or text to their PC. If that wasn't enough, the 7610 should also have an MP3/AAC music player, polyphonic ring tones, Java 2.0 and xHTML browsers. The IrDA port disappears in favour of Bluetooth and the RSMMC slot comes into play for storage. Standby time should be a lengthy 10 days while talktime will stretch up to 180 minutes. The 118g phone will launch in the second half of 2004 with 8MB of onboard memory.

Sony Ericsson S700: The S700 is shaping up to be this year's must-have model. Inspired by phones designed for Japan's not-quite-3G multimedia platform i-mode, the S700 has a large 2.3-inch colour screen and a rotational keyboard. But the clincher could be the 1.3 megapixel CCD camera whose picture quality trumps Nokia's by a whisker. The camera has a built-in flash and 8x zoom with an MP3/video recorder and player using Sony's Memory Stick storage just to up the ante. The 360-degree swivel cover also cashes in on this year's answer to the clamshell and the polished aluminium cover is a stylish riposte to the bright plastic covers favoured by rivals such as Nokia. The tri-band phone runs Bluetooth, Java 2.0 and Hi Corp's 3D gaming software. Weighing in at a hefty 137g, the phone offers an unparalleled 7 hours talktime and 12 hours standby. It should be available next autumn.