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Handhelds Hardware

Nokia 5100 Reviewed 211

Posted by CowboyNeal from the high-tech-leashes dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Just read a review of Nokia's 5100 mobile phone. This phone has an integrated flashlight, FM tuner, a calorie burn application, sound meter and thermometer. And yet there is no Bluetooth capabilites. Is the cell phone market getting so desperate that companies are adding everything including the kitchen sink to sell these phones? Why would you want a sound meter or a calorie tracking application in a cell phone?" Looks like a good phone for people who like phones to look gaudy. Bells and whistles aside, the flashlight feature sounds pretty practical. A sound meter though?
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Nokia 5100 Reviewed More

Nokia 5100 Reviewed

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  • Eep! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pinguu ( 677142 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:20PM (#6084816)
    This phone has an integrated flashlight, FM tuner, a calorie burn application, sound meter and thermometer.
    Nokia 5200 has a built in microwave

    • Tricorder (Score:3, Funny)

      by NickFusion ( 456530 )
      The StarTak phone was built by people who grew up with classic Trek, and wanted communicators.

      To the next gen, communicators are passe, so they've given us the tricorder.

      I'm just hoping the next generation after this phone gives us phasers.
    • Of course, to make space for the microwave oven, a seldom used feature was removed, the phone.
    • >Nokia 5200 has a built in microwave

      Still doesn't have anything on the taser phone. [everythingisnt.com]

      Est time to find a bottle of mace at the bottom of purse: 3.2 seconds. Est time to point cell phone you're already talking on at attacker .3 seconds.

  • Features (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JustKidding ( 591117 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:23PM (#6084837)
    The flashlight would seem practical indeed, but i doubt it would be very bright, considering there is no room for a decent mirror to focus the beam. Besided that, i think it would quickly drain those precious milliamps from the battery.

    The sound meter seems pretty useless to me, but i guess, since a phone typicly has a microphone build in (d'oh), all it takes is a piece of software.

    • Re:Features (Score:5, Interesting)

      by pete-classic ( 75983 ) <hutnick@gmail.com> on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:32PM (#6084893) Homepage Journal
      This thing [thinkgeek.com] is tiny. And it is mostly battery. If it runs off of the phone's battery its size and power consumption would both be negligable.

      LEDs generally have an itty bitty mirror built in. Look at a clear one that is off some time, it is pretty easy to spot.

      -Peter

    • Re:Features (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SaiReyan ( 579810 )
      Could be a LED flashlight? Low voltage requirements, and are bright too.

    • Re:Features (Score:3, Funny)

      by zdzichu ( 100333 )
      Just tomorrow I've been on night party in the middle of forrest. When we were going back, nobody had a flashlight. But anyone had a cellphone and we were able to light up our path. In complete darkness, three cellphone display are sufficent to look around.

      I was grateful for Netmonitor functionality my Nokia has. It allowed me to turn on display backlight on constantly.
      BTW, my nokia is 5110 model (few years old). Netmonitor includes also a temperature meter. It's in fact sensor in then battery.

    • Could Be Useful (Score:3, Insightful)

      by waldoj ( 8229 ) *
      The sound meter seems pretty useless to me, but i guess, since a phone typicly has a microphone build in (d'oh), all it takes is a piece of software.

      Actually, that could be really useful if it works slightly differently than as advertised. Frequently, I will be using my phone in a semi-public (or, worse yet, public) place, and after hanging up, I'll realize that I've been more or less screaming into the mouthpiece. I have no idea of why I do this, but if grocery store phone-talkers are any indicator, th
    • Wow, this sounds like the perfect phone for stagehands!!! Integrated flashlight, so we can see what we're doing backstage, and an integrated sound meter(!!) so that when the venue manager tells me that the band is too loud, I can whip out my phone and say "Look! 93dB! Within contract limits!!"
      The FM tuner would come in handy on those long city-to-city bus rides, too...

      Now if it only had a rope wrench*

      *rope wrench = knife. :)

  • Sound meter (Score:5, Interesting)

    by archonon ( 662612 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:27PM (#6084853)
    Sound meter actually quite cool, phone automatically adjust speaker volume depending how much there is background noise while speaking. It rocks! ;)

    • Re:Sound meter (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mgarraha ( 409436 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:38PM (#6084930)
      I suppose you could also use it to tell whether it's quiet enough to make yourself heard without shouting. What the world really needs, though, is a cell phone that automatically switches to vibrate mode in a movie theater or concert hall. A light sensor wouldn't help because so many people carry their phones in purses or bookbags - and have to dig for 10 seconds before they can make them stop ringing.
      • This is why cell manufacturers need to get together and develop a protocol for some sort of suggested operating mode. They could use RFIDs or something... the movie theatres could purchase them and as people walked in the tags would "suggest" to the phone to switch to vibrate. Of course the user could tell the phone to ignore these suggestions, but the default state would be to follow them. Expand it to things like putting it in cars... the phone can automatically answer itself for you, assuming you;ve got

        • Re:Sound meter (Score:3, Insightful)

          by rusty0101 ( 565565 )
          This would be rather easy to implement as a bluetooth feature. Every theater I have ever been in has had a single point of entry, and two or three points of exit.

          The main door, and the emergency exits would all have a bluetooth device that tells phones it is ok to go audio ringing again.

          The doors into the auditorium would have bluetooth devices that tell phones to go to vibrate mode.

          Phones could vibrate as they are told to go to that mode, (briefly) then chirp as they are told to go to audible ring. With
          • this was the USP that ericsson were selling BT with back in maybe 1997...libraries would have a BT "shut the hell up" beacon installed, and phones would switch to silent. never happened, mind...
      • What you actually need is a feature which automatically switches the phone off when it's in the cinema or theatre!
  • Kitchen Sink Mode?

    =)

  • sad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by appleLaserWriter ( 91994 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:29PM (#6084864)
    Nokia used to make the best phones -- compact, reliable, with modern features. Now their phones look like Nokia raided Ideo's discard pile. These phones look great as objects, but each new Nokia suggests "phone" to me less and less.

    If you want a feature packed monster, go for the Sony-Ericsson P800. Now THAT is a phone!
    • Now THAT is a phone!

      I'd have said that its more of a PDA with telephone abilities, than just a phone.

      Mobile phones are just going crazy.. don't get me wrong, I love phones with extra gadgets built in. The first Nokia phone with the camera in really surprised me.. you can take some really entertaining 'in your face' style photos with that thing.

      But the P800 just seemed like it had gone too far. I think its a marvel of modern technology but it just seems to be so much more than a phone, that it really isn

      • Re:sad (Score:2, Informative)

        by Second_Derivative ( 257815 ) *
        I dunno. I've got a P800, and I'm fairly happy with it. 128MB is a LOT of Ogg files, and with a suitable player it's sure as hell handy for those long car missions (ok yes both of them. Sue me, I've had my license for less than a month =P )

        The problem is the extortionately priced memory cards (110 quid for a four gram 128MB piece of crap!?) and the utterly trashy handsfree kit that comes with it (all the weight is held by the right ear so the right earphone keeps slipping out. And it looks crap. Worst piec
    • Now their phones look like Nokia raided Ideo's discard pile. These phones look great as objects, but each new Nokia suggests "phone" to me less and less.

      You think they're bad, check out Xelibri [xelibri.com] handsets. As for me, I'm very happy with my Nokia 6310, and I was happy with the 6210 before that.

  • flashlight (Score:4, Funny)

    by unborracho ( 108756 ) <ken.sykoraNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:29PM (#6084872) Homepage
    I guess it beats using my old nokia green blacklit screen to find my missing contact when it falls out at the movies...
    • Funny you should mention the use of the screen as flashlight, as I regularely use my 6310i large backlit screen to wander around my in-law's house at night on my way to the toilets. That doesn't quite have the same output as my trusted Photon Light [thinkgeek.com] but comes in always handy when unexpected :)

  • Calorie burning.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by TwistedSquare ( 650445 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:30PM (#6084876) Homepage
    Clearly the calorie burn meter is to find out how much energy you waste playing snake...

  • Bloatware! (Score:1, Interesting)

    by BelDurnik ( 127900 )
    It blows my mind that they throw all of this stuff in there. Yet again a company packages bloatware and throws it out into the market so many people can buy it for many reasons. It is me or are these phones becoming the new "Microsoft-ish" bloatware repositories?

    Too much, too expensive.
    • is another man's primary utility. Honestly, I don't see how you can attack Nokia, because it does all of these things well. If it struggled to do a simple phone call (we're talking phone here, not service) I could see why you would see this as a waste of time; but, Nokia has conquered the basic calling and has moved on to adding more features. They focused on minimizing their handset size -- all the way until the 8210 and people complained that it was a little too small.

      So now they have the right size

  • Everything but the kitchen sink? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by corsec67 ( 627446 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:31PM (#6084881) Homepage Journal
    why would the leave out the bluetooth connectivity?
    I think that bluetooth would be more valuable than a flashlight, or the thermometer.

    They include stuff that just about nobody will use, and leave out bluetooth. I think that a great selling point of Bluetooth would be local wireless multiplayer games. Then you would convince people to get this phone so that you can play games.

    • I think that bluetooth would be more valuable than a flashlight, or the thermometer.

      Indeed... a thermometer especially is going to be pretty damn useless if you carry the phone on you, where it's going to be warmer. Surprise surprise, my coat pocket is warmer than the air outside! Who'd have thunk it.

      Phil

    • Have a look at the User's Guide [nokia.com].

      It's also missing audio multimedia messaging. I.e., you can't record a voice message and send it as a clip. It only has MIDI MMS for ring tones (bleh.)

    • The 2004 Toyota Prius is going to have bluetooth built in, allegedly for hands-free operation with a bluetooth cell phone.

      Now if the Prius would have a calendar that bluetooth-ed synced with my 12" G4 Powerbook, I'd buy the car in a heartbeat! Imagine, having a car that can nag you about upcoming appointments, or the ability to be on a call on the cell phone and have your boss schedule you for an appt, and you just reach down to the multi-function display and punch in your new appointment right before yo

    • why would the leave out the bluetooth connectivity?

      I agree this would be very useful. But the answer is probably they don't conceive majority of users using bluetooth. My opinion is they are wrong - last time I wanted to buy a bluetooth adapter, local Best Buy was sold out.

      I never really liked Nokias, never really liked their UI at all. However, having said that, their new 3650 looks very nice with a camera, bluetooth, big color screen, etc. AT&T sells it for $150 with new 1-year contract. Something
    • Hmm... The flashlight feature might actually be of use, but regarding the lack of Bluetooth I have a suspicion that it might be that Bluetooth is an Ericsson standard.
      They are not exactly best friends. =)
      Maybe they're not able to get a good deal when trying to licence it.
      But it *is* a damn shame that they haven't got Bluetooth in any of their products. (As far as I know at least.)

  • A phone with a flashlight? Great! (Score:5, Funny)

    by BillsPetMonkey ( 654200 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:31PM (#6084886)
    So I don't have to suffer taping a mini mag-light to my handset now? Phew.

  • Mobile phones today (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DarkGreenNight ( 647707 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:31PM (#6084887)
    The phones today are becoming the one thing you don't go out of home without one. This is the reason we are seeing more and more things integrated in phones. A picture is word 1000 words? then take it. You want to remember something? record yourself speaking. etc...

    Are all this possibilities usefull? One nevers knows. I'd really like to take a termometer and a sound meter to my work place. Then I would have objectives reasons to say "I'm feeling cold" and "It's really noisy in here".

    This way perhaps my workmates wouldn't find strange that I am with t-shirt, shirt, sweeter and sport jacket in my workplace (It's nearly summer, I want to sweat dammit!)

    Be happy.

  • Feature Creep (Score:2, Insightful)

    by The Only Druid ( 587299 )
    So, when do we all just sit down and admit that our phones have acqured way too many useless features. I'm sorry, but who needs a calorie counter in their phone? All the atheletes I know who use such a device wouldn't want a low-end one like this; they'd use the higher-end systems like Polar makes. Ditto with the FM radio: beyond the question of who actually listens to the radio beyond their desk, car or gym, who would want to burn their phone battery doing this? It all seems pretty nuts...

    • I'm sorry, but who needs a calorie counter in their phone?

      Most people in the U.S. We are the fattest nation on earth [womhealth.org.au] (Australia, don't laugh, you're #2).

      I mean, c'mon, look at the bellies around you at work. And how often have you sat on the bus or an airplane and realized your seatmate is 1.5x the width of his allocated space?

  • What's with their dialpads these days? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slantyyz ( 196624 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:33PM (#6084897)
    Out of all the cell phones I've ever had, I've always admired the usability of Nokia's menus.

    But what the heck are they thinking with these stupid non-standard dialpad layouts? Do they assume that everyone likes using voice dial? I like the ability to be able to blindly use my phone without looking at it, navigating by feel and memory.
    • If you pick most of their phones up and try dialing a number you'll find that the keypads aren't so bad. Models like the 3595 look a little funky but the keys are all in the right place.

      I will admit that the 3650 has a keypad that really is too weird to use.

  • Sound Meter (Score:2, Funny)

    by McBeth ( 1724 )
    The use for the sound meter is obvious.

    Often, when I am sitting in a movie talking loudly on my cell phone, I want to know how loud the movie is so I can put protective ear plugs in to save my hearing. Right now, I just start the movie with them in, but it makes it hard to hear my phone ring. :-)
  • Hmmm.... I ride bicycles, motorcycles, go camping, skiing, etc. I think I lead a fairly active lifestyle. And yet I would not touch this Nokia with a 10ft pole. I like Nokia, my 2 year old 8260 has 700 hours of talktime on it (I have no landline for those who are wondering). It's still working well, after a few faceplate and backplate changes and a couple of thorough cleanups inside (dropping your phone while biking will tend to crack stuff)

    I can understand rugged designs, but why did they have to make it
    • Dunno what you consider 'professional', but my cell phone the Panasonic TX220 "Duramax"

      http://www.cellphones.ca/panasonic/pan33695.html

      isn't gaudy or anything and is the ruggedest pocket size dual mode I know of. It's what virtually all the dock workers here in Vancouver carry, which was a quite conclusive recommendation as to its durability as far as I was concerned, and it's taken some pretty darn good whacks, dips in hot tubs, and so forth without a single problem.

  • These new phones suck. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Morky ( 577776 )
    I have a Sony Ericsson T68i. It sucks. It feels ergonomically weird, the navigation stinks, and, most importantly, the number pad is painful to use. The buttons are small, not alligned, and you have to bend your thumb at a weird angle to dial. The flip-open StarTak-like phones with nice buttons are the way to go. Also, ever hear of Cingular? AVOID THEM LIKE SARS! Long live the StarTak.
    • I have a Sony Ericsson T68i, and I love it. The navigation seems okay to me. While the buttons are indeed small, their size is dictated by the overall small size of the phone. I think the buttons are aligned just fine.

      Even if the buttons were subpar, the phone supports voice dialing-- why don't you use it? Practically the only time I use the buttons on my phone are when I power it on and turn on the keypad lock in the morning. Then it stays in my pocket all day, and I just use my Plantronics Bluetooth head

  • An explanation of extra features (Score:5, Interesting)

    by psyconaut ( 228947 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:39PM (#6084937)
    As someone who designs embedded hardware, I can probably explain a couple of the hardware-based features for those wondering why they're included.

    - Sound level metering is relatively trivial to implement when you're already digitizing a sound stream

    - The phone's battery pack might well already feature an IC containing a temperature sensor. It's not unusual for so-caleld "smart" battery monitor chipsets (such as the Dallas Semiconductor DS2438) to have onboard temperature sensing, because "smart" charging of modern battery cells requires this.

    So, the designers of the phone just found novel ways to use the existing components. Often made even easier as a lot of the separate ICs in phones these days are actually sitting on a 1, 2 or 3-wire bus (1-wire, I2C, SPI, etc).

    FYI...just in case anyone cares :-)

    -psy

  • Obviously it's a spy device. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mdechene ( 607874 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:41PM (#6084953)
    I'm not quite sure about the Calorie Burn meter, that might just be to throw off the CIA or FBI, but the rest of the functionality is obvious:

    Flashlight - So the Finnish spies can see where they're going and crack safes.
    FM Tuner - To receive secret messages coded as Finnish boy-band songs.
    Sound Meter - So they know when they're about to go over the threshold of security systems based on sound volume.
    Thermometer - Same thing, but temperature based.
    It pretty much looks like a bunch of devices from Sneakers rolled into one without the thermal suit. Good thinking on the Calorie burn meter, that'd throw anyone off.

  • Another review (Score:3, Funny)

    by Faeton ( 522316 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:44PM (#6084966) Homepage Journal
    Another review done about 3 months ago can be found here:

    HowardChui.com [howardchui.com]

    I'm friends with Howard, and got to see it then. It's a decent phone, and the white LED flashlight is really handy at times (much like the Photons). As for the sound meter and themometer, I guess you can use it when reviewing the latest PC =)

  • sound meter (Score:5, Funny)

    by spoonist ( 32012 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:46PM (#6084977) Journal

    With the sound meter you can measure how loud that dude has to say "Can you hear me now?" to be hear over the static.

  • Monitoring noise levels (Score:3, Informative)

    by vinsci ( 537958 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:50PM (#6084997) Journal
    The included sound meter application is probably one of the most useless applications available on any phone. It measures the decibel rating of the sound level around you. Why anyone would want this is beyond us.

    Think construction sites, factory floors, heavy machinery, kindergartens (picture 20 kids playing, er, screaming at the top of their lungs) etc. All extremely noisy, sometimes over the top. Developed countries have regulations on noise level, the responsible personnel needs a simple and practical way to measure the level.

    • "Think construction sites, factory floors, heavy machinery, kindergartens (picture 20 kids playing, er, screaming at the top of their lungs) etc. All extremely noisy, sometimes over the top. Developed countries have regulations on noise level, the responsible personnel needs a simple and practical way to measure the level."

      Even more practical than that... and I'm surprised they didn't implement this (as far as I know)... but couldn't it also be used to automatically adjust the speaker volume depending on

      • RTFA
        "The 5100 features an automatic volume feature which will automatically change the volume for you depending on how much background noise is present; perhaps this is where the sound meter plays in. This feature worked very well in most of our tests and comes in extremely handy while driving."

  • Calorie Burn? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jubii ( 315611 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:52PM (#6085014) Homepage
    An application that actually burns calories?!!

    Jesus!!! Has someone ported this to Linux yet?!!

  • Sound meter... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by adenied ( 120700 )
    Would be pretty interesting in a club or a concert to see just how damaged my ears are getting.

    Probably it's used for the automatic volume control and someone figured it'd be a fun little toy to let the user have access to it as well.

  • Serve the purpose? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pkunzipper ( 652520 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:54PM (#6085031)
    The question still remains...does it work as a phone? Sony-Ericsson and the 8200 series and many other new "tech phones" drop calls, have bad conncection, and break after the first drop. 3 decades of cell-phone technology and they still don't realize that the best phones have an external antenna. I'll stick iwth my old billy-club-size mobile until they can solve those frequent problems.

  • Woohoo! No more strawberry Slimfast shakes for me!

  • calorie burning feature (Score:3, Funny)

    by anonymous loser ( 58627 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @12:57PM (#6085047)
    Why would you want a sound meter or a calorie tracking application in a cell phone?


    The phone is designed for "active" people who like to work out. Just looking at the design, and noting the fact that it is water-resistant and hardened should clue anyone in that it's made for people to use while they're exercising. As such, the calorie tracking application is something I'd find useful. I don't like to carry a bunch of crap to the gym when I workout, but I usually take my cell phone with me. This one I can use as a walkman (listen to FM radio), record my calories (takes the place of similar PDA apps, or a pen & paper), and also handle any phone calls or whatever. And BTW it has other PIM features like address book, calendar, and to-do list which are the only features I really use on my PDA.

    So far as the sound meter is concerned, I'm not really sure what that's for. I guess so that instead of saying "Speak up! It's really noisy here!" you can say "Speak up! It's the ambient sound level is 125dB here!"

  • Bluetooth & the sound meter (Score:3, Informative)

    by wadetemp ( 217315 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @01:08PM (#6085103)
    And yet there is no Bluetooth capabilites. Is the cell phone market getting so desperate that companies are adding everything including the kitchen sink to sell these phones? Why would you want a sound meter or a calorie tracking application in a cell phone?

    Bluetooth is just another one of these features.

    Now, the decibel level hardware were able to adjust the phone's ring/speaker volume to be appropriate for the conditions, I'd say that would be more useful than Bluetooth. I'm willing to bet it does and the reviewer just didn't notice. The sound meter app is probably just because-we-can-ware.
  • this thing is flat out fuckin' ugly as hell!

    However, Liberace [liberace.com] would be proud of them.
  • It may be oriented towards teens, but the 3650 has a camera, Bluetooth, IrDA, GPRS, MMS, SMS, everything that I want in a phone (well, Bluetooth and GPRS mostly). And it runs Symbian so I've been able to find a range of software for it.

  • I own this phone (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Here's some insights for you:

    the flashlight is useful. I've got a photon microlight on my keychain, but once it's stuffed in a pocket with keys and wallet, it's not handy to get to.
    The phone, in it's own little pocket is just great for that.

    The soundmeter, and calorie counter: i've never used. They are just toys. I don't bother with them.

    The FM radio is a godsend. I used to have a nokia 5510 - the mp3 player, but the software to copy mp3s was so bad that i only used to listen to the radio on it. The radi

    • Uh, GPRS [cellular-news.com] is a link protocol; it just gets the data in & out of the phone. You don't use it directly. Also, GPRS speeds will vary dramatically per phone, depending on how many 13.4 Kb/s download channels the phone uses (between 1 & 7, typically 2-4, or 26-53 Kb/s).

      WAP [nokia.com] is a browsing protocol for fetching stripped-down websites. It can use GRPS, or it can operate over a standard 9.6 Kb/s GSM data connection (or equivalent). It's a very different thing to GPRS - comparing them makes no sense.

  • I've been noticing this for a while. Everyone in the industry is trying to stay afloat by packing in useless features into their products.

    Microsoft:
    Office - XP performs nearly the exact same tasks as 2000.
    IE - We've been able to browser the web fine since 4.0, but somehow they've bloated it up to 6.
    Windows - need i say more

    Hardware:
    My machine runs at 1.1GHz. I might upgrade for Half-Life 2 when it comes out in sept, but really... do we need 3GHz cpu's and 1GB ram to browse the web?

    Phones:
    My cell phone is
    • My cell phone is a nokia 3361 (AT&T's Prepaid package). I pay roughly $10/month for service and use it only for necessities. No color screen, no voice dialing, no GSM/GPRS crap. It does what it needs to.

      Wow, what a deal! What package is that? I have yet to see a need for color screens, camera, or any of the other crap that comes with phones these days, which is one of the reasons I don't have one (damned expensive service plans being another reason). AT&T's wireless site just went down for main
      • at&t free2go wireless:
        http://www.attws.com/personal/prepaid/

        Phone/starter kit: $50
        minutes cost depending on how much you buy at a time:
        As described at: http://www.attws.com/personal/prepaid/epw_plans.jh tml ...

        $100 = 833 min
        $75 = 500 min
        $50 = 166 min
        $25 = 71 min
        $10 = 20 min

        I started in december, with phone($50) + 500min ($75) and have been adding $10 cards every 45 days. I still have 420 minutes left on the account after all this time.

        Only catch: Your account expires (ALL MINUTES GO AWAY)
        • I started in december, with phone($50) + 500min ($75) and have been adding $10 cards every 45 days. I still have 420 minutes left on the account after all this time.

          Sounds like a good setup, and a good plan, storing all those minutes up front.

          I had a Tracfone, and kept it for about a year; I wasn't all that impressed with the service, and even less so when they switched my area from analog only to digital only without notifying me. Of course, the phone I had was analog only, so it was promptly useless.
  • I have a friend who is a real cheap bastard. He bought a new phone and he is ranting and raving about all the new features it has like games, a world map and a tip calculator. I said, now that you have a tip calculator, are you going to start leaving tips, and he simply responds no.

  • Is that it? (Score:3, Funny)

    by dlb ( 17444 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @01:57PM (#6085437)
    Where's the piano wire or the snakebite kit?

  • The State of the Telecom Industry (Score:3, Interesting)

    by badasscat ( 563442 ) <basscadet75@@@yahoo...com> on Saturday May 31, 2003 @03:37PM (#6085967)
    Everything that's wrong with the telecom industry (or at the very least, the mobile phone industry) is encapsulated in this phone. Why do I own a DVD player? To play DVD's. Why do I own an air conditioner? To cool my house. Why do I own a phone? To communicate with other people.

    I need all this other garbage on this phone like I need a dishwasher on my VCR. Meanwhile, call quality has actually dropped with the increasing use of built-in antennas (like on the Nokia 5100), at the same time as all these useless new features like calorie counters have been added to the mix.

    Service providers are not exempt from the same criticism (and let's face it; they're the ones who ask phone manufacturers to include or not include certain features, so the phones are partly their fault to begin with). They've spent the last several years adding new features to their services such as downloadable graphics and ring tones, video games, etc. without doing much of anything at all to increase their basic service quality itself despite an increasing number of complaints about signal strength, even in major metro areas. And let's not even talk about 3G, shall we?

    The last time I bought a new phone it was because I physically destroyed my old one in a fit of anger at about my 20th lost call in a row (I threw it at the wall, and it shattered). The next time I buy a new phone will probably be the next time that happens - it certainly won't be because of any of the new features in any of these phones. The industry needs to realize that adoption rates and sales of phones to existing customers are slowing because of serious and basic issues like these, not because our phones don't have calorie counters or FM radios built in.

  • Flashlight (Score:5, Funny)

    by CausticWindow ( 632215 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @04:24PM (#6086213)

    Couple of years ago, me and some friends were going snowboarding. We were going to a cabin belonging to the parents of one of us. It was a long drive and when we finally got there it was quite dark.

    Problem was, the cabin were in the woods, some distance from any road, and the one who were supposed to know where it was, hadn't been there in about ten years. So.. we ended up stranded in a dark forest, with no idea where we were or where the cars were, with snow up to our thighs. When we finally found a cabin, we found ten of them.

    Since it was pitch dark and extremely cold, fiddling with a key trying to find a keyhole in ten cabins were almost hopeless. Until we remembered that we had mobile phones. With the light from the panel of five Nokia phones, we finally managed to find and open the right cabin. So, yeah. Americans suck.

  • Always choose the penny phone (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Go Aptran ( 634129 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @04:27PM (#6086227)
    When you start a cell phone plan, just pick the cheapest phone that they offer. Often it's free. It has the fewest features but as a result, it tends to have a longer battery life, the sound quality is usually indistinguishable from the more expensive phones and if it breaks, the company won't mind giving you a free replacement, since it's only the "penny phone". Heck, most of the time they'll swap it out for you on the spot if you're polite to the sale assistant.

    I used to work for a cell phone company and the we had far more defective returns on higher end phones than anything else... and it's much harder to explain to your manager why you swapped out a $400 phone than a $20 phone.

  • Thermometer? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Cushman ( 73322 )
    I think it'd be a bit hard to fit this thing under your tounge. Let's not go to the other place you can take your temperature.
  • It's a tool that every home handyman needs!
    It's a jigsaw! It's a power drill! It's a wood-turning lathe!
    It's an asphalt spreader! It's 67 tools in one!

    I'd love a new phone, but as long as my 7110 is still working, I am not going to change. Not because I am wild about it, but having to install a new cat kit sucks. It's a bitch to install. Why can't the coordinate it at bit so you at least doesn't have to change the entire car kit everytime you change phone, at least in the same brand dammit.

  • Slasdot phone Luddites (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jez_f ( 605776 ) <jeremy@jeremyfrench.co.uk> on Saturday May 31, 2003 @08:25PM (#6087258) Homepage
    This is one thing that I can never work out on ./ Putting a USB memory stick in a watch is cool, Putting a PC in a toaster/playstation/other novel object is cool, Getting a pc to do something new is cool.... but as soon as someone puts extra features into a phone it becomes excessive. Mobile phones are becoming more and more ubiquitous, they are probably the only electronic device (other than a watch) that we are likely to have with us at all times. They are toys, fashion accessories, and PDAs'. Manufacturers are experimenting, seeing what users want and will use. Surely this is a good thing. Remember that mobile phones are going to be soon if they are not already more common place than PCs. If you just want to use them to make calls that is fine but if you can have something as powerful as a 386* on you, it may as well allow you to do other things on it * Crude estimate, based on the fact that both can play wolf 3d.

  • Why these kids today want sound meters (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hatless ( 8275 ) on Saturday May 31, 2003 @09:17PM (#6087438)
    Seems to me that the sound meter would be fun for people with booming sound systems in their cars and trucks, both for bragging rights and as a possible defense against getting ticketed for violating noise ordinances.

  • This is about market segmentation (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Sunday June 01, 2003 @03:21AM (#6088500) Journal
    Nokia was one of the first to actually (gasp!) design mobile phones for specific market segments rather than assume we're all geeks. This phone is for - I'm guessing, because I never met anyone who used a alorie burner - young urban women who would not know what Bluetooth was if it came up and slapped them on the buns.

    The design, feature set, and price is not intended to make this phone "compete" directly against other phones, it is instead supposed to make certain people - who the /. crowd almost by definition will not identify with - say "hey, that's MY phone!"

  • > Why would you want a sound meter or a calorie tracking application in a cell phone?

    You are not getting it. In some markets, to some people, cell phones are fashion accessories. It's not about Bluetooth or standby times, it's about the latest and the greatest in design and gadgets.

    You and I may find that to be silly, but Nokia is just going where the money is.

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