Nokia launches 5800 xPress Music phone “Tube”

At 5 PM London time on October 2, 2008 (incidentally, birthday of Mahatma Gandhi) Nokia formally launched the “much awaited” handset “Tube” that media has been writing as “iPhone Killer”.

By taking a very different approach, Nokia managed to play the “leadership game” of setting the bench mark than do a “catch up” act.

First, Nokia  “Tube” is a music phone; it is “also” a touch phone; it does NOT attempt a copycat iPhone;

Second, by pricing at neary half the iPhone and Google G1 (Nokia “Tube” will cost about $ 300 with no service provoder lock-in; iPhone costs $ 199 with AT&T lock-in; Google phone costs $ 179 but adding the cost of 8 GB flash makes it far higher in price), Nokia “Tube” will have a much larger user base

Third Nokia “tube” offers touch, T9 and hand-writing recognition (for 60 languages); while it lacks “multi-touch” Apple iPhone appeal, it has taken “touch” to a different level

With excelent video support (recording and play back), 3.2 meg camera with flash, 3.2″ screen with 360X640 resolution, 16 million colors, surround sound, much larger volume bulit-in speakers and standard audio jack, in terms of multimedia Nokia “Tube” is far better than iPhone or Google Phone or even other models from LG & HTC 

Fifth, Nokia “Tube” supports 4 GSM frequencies and 2 HSDPA, making a global phone

By suporting Adobe “flash”, Nokia “tube” will provide better browsing for any site (not those that are optimized for non-flash support as many iPhone supporting sites have done)

By supporting WMA, Nokia  “Tube” has wider reach of media in addition to Nokia’s own store; by signing up with 4 labels (Sony, EMI, Universal and Warner) the music base is much larger too

Finaly, it has “copy / paste” too!

By announcing “Comes With Music” service, Nokia has given a new twist to the competition.

After all what else one can expect from a leader who sells music phones alone at million pieces a month and 300 million phones a year, compared to HTC talking of 4 million G1 phone sales by end 2009 and Apple setting 10 million goal for year end

Mobile handsets scene continues to be exciting

 

In summary Apple iPhone has fantastic features and attempts to attract anyone with those compelling features

Google G1 appeals with “open” philosophy (though the phone does not synch with anything beyond GMail, not even with desktop machines Mac or PC) and appeals to Geeks

Nokia clearly targets youth around the world (there was specific mention of India, something music to my ears) and delivers something that youngsters would love – a clear winning strategy

Google G1 is a reality today

On 7:30 PM IST today (September 23, 2008) Google Phone (G1) was launched in New York by the 4th US Cariier T Mobile (part of Deutsche Telekom) after more than 18 months of “rumour mill”

With Apple iPhone setting a very high benchmark, the show was “damp squibb” compared the “hoopsla” created on the launch of iPhone (July 2007) and iPhone 3G (July 2008).

The phone itself is made by HTC; it is a good phone; it has “touch” interface (I used HTC Touch 6 months back and gave up as the “touch” works “on and off”). One hopes it has improved.

G1 is a clear “Google Phone”; if you Google Search, GMail, YouTube you would love it. One is not sure of great “audio” the basic need for a phone! G1 lets you multi-task (based on several Video blogs including NY Times, Times London, BBC, BusinessWeek) that I could watch within 2 hours of launch; I feel almost I were there for the launch!

It will be an interesting 3 G phone to watch; $ 179 ($ 20 less than iPhone 3G) with GPS, 3G, TouchScreen with some “lock in” (all US consumers get “lock in” unlike India a “free country”) is not a bad buy

Google talks of all “open”; one has to see whether it is a “rhetoric” or “nice philosophy” to preach to others (the way “super rich” Indian politicians who were “corrupt to the core” using “capitalitic money and goods” used to talk of the virtues of “socialism” for decades)