Motorola's first 3G mobile phone, the A830, is expected to be available before the end of the year and almost certainly through the Hutchinson 3G network 3.
The A830 offers a rich selection of multimedia facilities. A clear break in design, the model has a large screen, relatively small buttons and a snap-on video and stills camera at its head. It is designed to allow users to make voice calls while sending or receiving data, and is compatible with existing 2G (it is triple band so will operate in the US as well as Europe and the Far East) and 2.5G (GPRS) networks.
Its headline feature is its camera, which enables the user to take and send images and short video clips. These can either be as part of multimedia messages (MMS) sent to other phones, or attached as files to emails.
The phone also allows the user to download movie clips, which can be viewed on its colour screen. On-board Java enables the phone to download Motorola's latest games and applications, while Bluetooth offers simple wireless connections to PC notebooks and phone headsets.
Two key facilities embedded in the phone are an MP3 player and a GPS chip. The MP3 player's music is stored on either a SD/MMC card, while the GPS system enables the user to take advantage of online location-based restaurant, bar or cinema guide facilities. Talk time is rated at 100 minutes, or 90 minutes if the video facilities are heavily used. Standby is around 120 hours. Its price is expected to be in the region of £400. (AN)
In Finn air?
Nokia's big-budget launch of its first 3G phone last week ended in confusion after the company refused to say exactly when the device might appear, or how much it would cost.
More than 200 journalists were flown to Finland to witness the unveiling of the Nokia 6650 which, like the Motorola A830, is a combined phone and camera.
The phone was duly presented, with Nokia's executives boasting of data speeds of up to 128 kbps, 140 minutes of talk time in 3G mode, multimedia messaging and Java and Bluetooth compatibility. Analysts were impressed by the size, battery life, and - most importantly - the promised "seamless" swapping between today's GPRS networks and tomorrow's 3G networks.
The problem for Nokia, and the rest of the 3G world, is that this seamless moving between networks has not yet been mastered (although Nokia's big rival, Ericsson, last week demonstrated its solution to the problem). This will mean the new Nokia will not even go into commercial testing until the first quarter of next year. Company executives would not provide any more than the vague promise that it would go on sale "some time later in the year".
Pricing is similarly unclear: Nokia would only suggest from €250 to €750.
