You could have a 3G cell phone already

You could have a 3G cell phone already

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

First of all, let us briefly go back to my article last week on
Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

Right after I submitted my article to this newspaper, a reader
sent a screensaver that he had created for me. My special thanks
go to Matthijs Wiggers from Dot.us Indonesia.

I have installed it on my computer, and it has worked fine
until now. In case you are interested and want to try it for
yourself, here is the URL: www.citycontrol.us/newssaver/.

You will get only newsfeeds and no advertisement on the screen
when the screensaver is active, and it will give you a clearer
idea of what RSS is.

Enter 3G handsets

Now, imagine how surprised you would be if one of our domestic
airlines ordered an Airbus 380 today. While Airbus is working
with airports around the world -- including Soekarno-Hatta
Jakarta -- to ensure that their runways can handle this very
large aircraft, it will be ages before you can fly on it from,
say, Jakarta to Biak in West Papua.

Now, you may be equally surprised to find out that 3G handsets
are already available here in Jakarta. It was certainly a
surprise for us, a group of IT journalists, who were invited to
Nokia's recent launch of its latest 3G handset, the N6680.

If you have been following the news on Cyber Access
Communications and Lippo's Natrindo Telepon Seluler, both of
which have acquired 3G licenses from the government and sold
their shares to overseas telecom players, you will know that it
may also be ages before you can use 3G cell phone services in
Indonesia.

Therefore, bringing 3G handsets into Indonesia is akin to
bringing an A380 to this country although no airport can
accommodate it yet.

But Nokia has at least two strong reasons for introducing 3G
handsets to the Indonesian market, even without the
infrastructure.

First, as can be expected, it has to do with competition and
image-building. Nokia, along with other leading handset makers
including Motorola, Sony-Ericsson and Samsung, wants to be
perceived by consumers as the first to bring the technology to
Indonesia.

Second, as pointed out by country manager for Nokia's handset
business in Indonesia Hasan Aula, a lot of Indonesians regularly
travel to other countries where 3G services are already up and
running. If they already have a 3G cell phone, they can simply
buy a SIM card from a local operator and communicate with their
business counterparts using 3G features such as video calls.

Handset features

First of all, the 3G N6680 is also a GSM phone. It works with
EGSM 800, 1800 and 1900 MHz as well as Wideband CDMA at 2100 MHz.
Thus, during my test, it worked flawlessly with my Telkomsel Halo
SIM card.

One of the more interesting features of the N6680 is that it
has two digital cameras instead of one. It allows you to see your
own face on the screen in addition to that of the person you are
talking to.

There is a sliding cover on the back that protects the rear
camera lens. It is also a switch. If you push the cover up, the
other camera will be activated and you can capture the image of
your own face.

By the way, the camera in the rear is a 1.3-megapixel one with
6x digital zoom, while that in the front is a VGA camera with 2x
digital zoom. There is also an LED flash in case you do not have
enough light for photo- or video-capture.

As this handset falls into Nokia's imaging category, printing
is made easy by the adoption of the Pictbridge standard. Just
connect the handset with a USB cable to a Pictbridge-compliant
printer and you will be to print directly from it without
requiring a computer. Nokia calls this feature XpressPrint.

The keypad is more conventional, unlike some handsets from
Nokia that make it difficult to enter text or numbers. The N6680
comes in attractive pearl-white or blue-gray colors.

As for its functions, this model has some other 3G features,
such as one-way video-sharing and always-on Internet. With the
video-sharing capability, you can start your call as a voice
only, and then you can turn on the video call in the middle of a
voice call if you need it.

In some countries, such as Singapore, the operator may charge
more or less the same rate for video and voice calls. The video-
sharing feature can be a money saver if your operator happens to
apply differential rates for these two types of calls.

The maximum download speed of this 3G WCDMA cell phone is 384
Kbps, while the top upload speed is 128 Kbps. This is more than
enough for live video.

Overall, the design is handsome, and the almost rectangular
handset is very well built, too. The audio volume can be very
strong and tends to be too bright.

Two more models

At the same press conference Nokia also launched the N6681 and
the N6101 models. The N6681 was particularly interesting because
it was almost a carbon copy of the N6680, except that it is not a
3G cell phone.

Aside from the fact that it has only one camera, it looks
exactly the same as the N6680. If you use this one, people might
be deceived into thinking that you are now using its 3G brother.

The N6680 is by no means the first 3G handset from Nokia, and
for sure Motorola and Sony-Ericsson have their own 3G handsets,
too. The sad thing is that, due to some people's decision to grab
a quick profit, it seems that we shall still have to wait a long
time before we can enjoy 3G WCDMA functions here in Indonesia.