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.