Nokia fresh

When the market leader speaks, everybody listens.

At the media roundtable discussion hosted by Nokia Philippines Inc. at the Mandarin Oriental recently, the Finnish mobile phone maker unveiled its digital innovations for the next season, freshly minted from its research labs and ready to ship to the Philippines.

The Nokia spirit is alive both in the low- and high-end segments of the market, making good its promise of "connecting people" more than ever in the increasingly complex and mobile phone market characterized by fierce competition among handset makers.

Bannering Nokia phone’s trademark simplicity and userfriendliness, the new phone models introduced during the media luncheon are easy on the pocket but loaded with features.

"Today’s launch showcases Nokia’s commitment to offer consumers easy-to-use mobile phones in a variety of desirable designs – regardless of cellular technology," Parikshit Bhasin, country general manager of Nokia Philippines, said in a statement.

"A handset must be easy to use in order to bring tangible benefits to consumers. Simplicity is the key for technology to enrich people’s lives," he added.

Starter Phones

The Nokia 1110 and the Nokia 1600, which will be available in the third quarter, are both entry-level phones targeted at first-time users in growth markets like the Philippines, Africa, India and Vietnam. As such, both phones feature a "demo mode" or an on-screen visual guide for first-time users.

They also have a text message counter, which will come in handy for budgeting the load, obviously assuming that most of their users will be on a prepaid plan.

The Nokia 1110 has a talk time of over five hours and standby time of up to 380 hours, while the Nokia 1600 will have a talk time of 5.5 hours and standby time of 450 hours.

The expanded battery life is great for staying outdoors most of the day and for longer periods on the road while traveling.

Anabelle Co, product manager of Nokia Philippines’ mobile phones and customer and market operations, said, though, the two phones’ most innovative features include large font sizes, graphical icons and their capacity to accommodate as much as 900 characters per text message.

The Nokia 1600 also has a 65,536 color display and a unique Pilipino-English predictive text dictionary. Localizing this feature to suit Tagalog-speaking users is in part an acknowledgment of the importance of the Philippines in the Asian market.

Both the Nokia 1110 and 1600 have speaking clocks with alarm, announcing the time in the user’s local language.

Another unique feature is the "write now and send later" text feature, which allows users to choose the time when to send the message. This feature will fit those who need to send time-bound messages and would like the convenience of leaving it all to the phone to take care of these little details.

To protect the phone user’s privacy, the phones have text screening features that filter messages from barred numbers. Being both entry-level phones, their cost is very reasonable, making them affordable to their target market and value-driven for those who are not really new cellphone users but who would like a fancy-free but value-laden second phone.

"When the cost of mobile services becomes this affordable, we foresee the growth curve in growth markets accelerating sharply," said Bhasin.

3G Phones

A second set of Nokia phones for the middle-end segment of the market – the 6280, 6270 and 6111 – was also introduced to the media.

All three are slide phones and 3G-enabled for GSM and WCDMA markets. The phones are expected to be available toward the end of the year.

Co said the Nokia 6280 and the 6270 take full advantage of 3G multimedia such as two-megapixel and VGA camera, 262K color display with 320 X 240 megapixel resolution, while the Nokia 6111 has a one-megapixel camera and flash with 6x digital zoom.

The Nokia 6280 can announce incoming calls with video ringtones and photos can be sent via Multimedia Messaging System (MMS) or e-mail or printed to compatible printers. Files can also be stored on a miniSD memory card.

The Nokia 6270, on the other hand, has an integrated e-mail client that supports attachments and a built-in music player that supports a variety of digital sound formats such as MP3 and AAC.

Meanwhile, the Nokia 6111 has push-to-talk functionality that can connect to groups or individuals at a push of a button. It also features the Nokia Xpress audio messaging, which enables the sharing of voice clips and greetings with friends and family.

Lost on the mobile tech lingo? Nokia recently launched the Nokia Mobility Plus, a tutorial session for Nokia users who want to learn and maximize the features of their Nokia mobile phones. Schedules for the venues of the Nokia Mobility Plus are posted on the Nokia Philippines website at www.nokia.com.ph.

Among other things, they will teach you how to set up and use the e-mail, print images or documents from your phone and use the PC Suite for backing up or restoring data or for synchronizing your mobile data with your PC or laptop.

Because most people usually graduate to higher-level phones after using a starter phone, one need not worry about the transition with Nokia.

Bhasin said the replacement market is also a significant market for mobile phone makers and while consumers vary from one country to another, people generally hold on to their gadgets in shorter periods now and usually replace their phones in an 18- or 24-month cycle.

Nokia Mobility Plus is actually meant to encourage use of more high-end phones by educating users on what more they could do with their phones and how technology could work for them.