> Talking of the 6630 - what happened to it (well the Vodafone 702NK
> version)?
[Frengle, Nik, VF-JP] Nokia's website says it should be available soon. Our own says the same thing. I saw a report in a public news source which says that it will sell for approximately 15,000 yen through us. The (non-sim locked) Nokia-branded version will be available mid-January according to their web site.
> There was a release date, and then suddenly there wasn't - must have been
> some real "show stopper" bug!
[Frengle, Nik, VF-JP] Sorry, I don't know, and if I did wouldn't be able to tell, but as an employee had access to a pre-production version for a few minutes, and was quite impressed: The response time is very good, about what you should be used to on a 2G handset. The design feature that one of my colleagues most liked was that it had a space key on the 0 button, something none of our other handsets have. I also liked the docking stand with it's built-in camera for videotelephony.
> Does anyone think it will actually work - so far Vodafone's WCDMA
> offerings seem to have been very rough (does anyone have a reliable
> connectivity with a V801SA?).
[Frengle, Nik, VF-JP] Sorry, not totally sure what you mean by this: I have had the V801SA for over a year now, and not had any connectivity issues, either for telephony or data. In fact, I found it a more reliable data connection than the European-version Vodafone Mobile Connect card, even when traveling to Europe. There were the usual issues of short battery life and it being rather heavy, as well as a couple of quirky little design issues (the blue LED not being able to be shut off is rather annoying, and means that, combined with the battery issue, many Japanese users do something that they are not used to doing, which is to shut off their mobile phone while they are sleeping).
I have had a brief look at all of the 7 new Vodafone 3G handsets available in Japan, and I was actually impressed by the Nokia. The Sony-Ericcson was also pretty flash. I have the feeling that many Japanese Vodafone customers, however, will opt for one of the Sharp's, since they are already our most popular 2G models, and people are familiar with the interface. Sharp has done their typically good job, and it is a good choice. It will be interesting to see how well the NEC does: Our first NEC 3G handset was enough to turn customers off of that company's offerings, but since so few were actually sold, maybe they will be ok: The build is pretty decent, the design well-fit to the Japanese market, and the user interface, well, actually the user interface on all of the 3G models is very similar to NEC's interface approach on models such as the 503 and so on. The Motorola's have their charm, one of which should be low-cost, and another pretty good PC integration and synchronization.
Best,
Nik
Received on Tue Nov 30 04:15:02 2004