By: Hillel Fuld
Today’s tech community is somewhat buzzing over new announcements from two of the mobile industry’s leaders; RIM and Nokia. Both companies announced nice phones that will surely sell by the millions, but none of the announced phones are going to revolutionize the the mobile consumer experience in any way, far from it.
RIM announced the new Bold 9650 and the Pearl 3G. The Bold 9650 is basically a Tour with some small additions, namely 512MB of internal memory, a trackpad to replace the trackball, and Wifi 802.11 b/g, that is pretty much it. Excited? Yea, me neither! This phone is basically a Bold 9700 with an extra 256MB of memory. OK, it is a step in the right direction, but not a very big step, to say the least.
The Pearl 3G is basically the same as the old Pearl with the addition of, you guessed it, 3G connectivity. Yes, it has some extra speed, memory, GPS, and a trackpad, but all these additions are so 2009. Like I said, these are simply the next step in the evolution of RIM’s wildly popular BlackBerry devices.
Nokia is a slightly different story with the announcement of their new flagship N8. The specs on paper are phenomenal, with a 3.5 capacitive (about time) touch screen, OLED 640×360 display, a whopping 12 mp HD camera, 16GB of internal storage with the ability to add 32 more, plus the other regular features including HSDPA, Wifi, Bluetooth, and Nokia’s free turn by turn navigation.
The phone seems promising if I am judging by its specs, but then comes the bad news. The phone is running on Symbian^3, the next gen Nokia OS, and from what the initial reviews are saying, it is no competition for iPhone, Android, or even WebOS. I am overall very unimpressed with Symbian as an OS, but to be fair, I have not used any of the newer versions of the Nokia operating system.
The N8 is going to be released within a few months, and like I said, I am sure it will sell by the millions, but will it compete with the newer kids on the block or will it just become another N97 style smartphone that provides an OK user experience at best?
Whatever the case may be, none of these new handsets can be called revolutionary, but they are all definite steps in the right direction. What do you think of these new announcements? Any reason we should be excited about them?
i guess I would be happy to be one of the millions who would buy the N8.
The N8 is an important step forward, but as you said, both Nokia and RIM’s devices are only a step forward, instead of big leaps. Still, it’s Nokia, and people will buy it 🙂
As for 9650, if it’s a 9700 with +256MB, shouldn’t it be called 9750? Just a thought…