Christmas wish list leaders

Without having to employ the services of ACNielsen or send out my own informal e-mail survey, I bet it’s safe for me to conclude that new mobile phones would rank tops in most consumers’ wish lists this Christmas. Most especially, include in the wish lists advanced smart phones, camera phones and gaming phones. This is why I found it quite opportune for me to write about new handsets Santa has in store for lucky gift recipients. Yup, it’s time to save up your 13th month pay to be able to fill your loved ones’ Christmas with joy!

Recently, I have been noticing that features once exclusive to high-end handsets last Yuletide season, are now being offered in mass-based handset models. First-mover manufacturers such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson are hoping to get their new low-cost colored phones into the mainstream to move user experience of gaming and messaging to new levels. Take the Nokia 3100, for instance. The phone carries a high-resolution passive matrix color display that supports up to 4,096 colors, a snap-on Fun camera option, MMS, tri-band compatibility with networks in Europe, Africa, Asia and North and South America, new electroluminescent game effects with the Xpress-On gaming covers, integrated hands-free speaker, Nokia PC Suite software for send/receive pictures, graphics and back-up – and retails for less than P9,900, almost half the price of a comparable handset from last Christmas season. Wow, it will be an appetizing 2004 for budget-conscious handset lovers like you and I.

At the higher end of the spectrum, Sony Ericsson unveils its P900 pocket smart phone. The phone which I guess will retail for about P40,000 is a fully functional handset with e-mail, Internet and Instant Messaging, a camera with video recorder, a fully featured PDA, a music player with a 32 MB removable memory stick, an advanced widescreen gaming unit and more. The phone also connects to your PC directly through a USB cable or wirelessly via Bluetooth for data synching.

Here are some of the other new phone models consumers are basing their wish-list hopes on:

• N-Gage. Nokia will have as many as 18 console-quality games in store for this gaming handset with full-phone features. Download Java-based games and experience new game levels with its EGSM 900/GSM 1800/1900 compatibility, and make calls and check e-mail from five continents, too. The game deck has battery power to play MP3s for up to eight hours, 20 hours of radio, and from three to six hours of games. For MP3 storage, 32, 64 and 128 MB external memory cards are available separately. It will probably retail for P17,000.

• Nokia 6600. Its gamut of features and enhancements will turn heads with a large 2.1-inch, 65,536 colors TFT display, VGA camera with three modes (standard/portrait/night), still capture with 2X zoom and video recorder with 2X zoom. It has an MMS SMIL Player/Editor and RealOne player for multimedia support, richer mobile Internet browsing with WAP1 2.0 x HTML1 browser, multimedia card (MMC) support for add-on memory expansion and more. It will retail for probably P30,000.

• Treo 600. Handspring’s latest 160 x 160 bright color-screened smart phone is designed to be used almost entirely with one hand, except when using the text-messaging function via its Qwerty keyboard. It runs on Palm’s famous OS with literally thousands of applications you can download and use–like MP3 players, organizers and more. A VGA (640 x 480) camera is built into the back of the Treo 600, allowing it to be used to take normal JPEG pictures for sending using MMS or picture messaging. This fine handset will probably retail for about P35,000.

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Patrick R. Garcia is managing director of Bidshot Wireless Services. For comments or suggestions, text your message to 233011 (Globe) or 2430018 (Smart), or e-mail [email protected].