Nokia Communicator 9300: A Smaller, Shinier Brick

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/08/nokia_slims_communicator/' target='_blank'>http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/0...s_communicator/</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Nokia is launching a slimmed-down version of its flagship Communicator. The Nokia 9300 will go on sale worldwide sometime in early 2005, priced at between $785 and $845. It weighs in at less than six ounces (170 grams), compared with 8.6 ounces for the most recent Communicator, the 9500. The 9300 lacks the 9500's digital camera and Wi-Fi chipset - lending to the machine's smaller battery - but it is also noticeably slimmer than its predecessor. Like all previous Communicators, the 9300 has a traditional "candy bar" shape and can be opened along its side to reveal a larger LCD screen and QWERTY keyboard."</i><br /><br /> <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/nokia_brick.jpg" /> <br /><br />The 9300 comes with Blackberry wireless email software, can edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations, has a PDF viewer and a MP3 and multimedia player. There is 80MB of storage capacity, along with a MMC slot as well as Bluetooth and USB connectivity. I rather think that leaving Wi-Fi out of the 9300 will prove to be a mistake, but the form factor certainly has a lot gong for it. I wonder when we are going to see similarly shaped Pocket PCs with clamshell style keyboards. That's a form factor that is sadly missed in the PPC world. Sigh. Still, well done to Nokia. Any company that starts removing embedded cameras from PDAs and phones has my vote! :wink:

[jonathanchoo]

There is the 9500 with built-in WiFi and digicam. Digicam is good for devices of this class since its targeted at those who frequently needs to work out of office, eg. estate agents who need a snap of a property.

[jlp]

I hate it when companies announce devices so long in advance like 6 months to one year. Look at what happened to the Nokia 7700: scrapped altogether :(

So how will this one fare in a year (we all know they never come out when they say it does, especially from Nokia, if at all :twisted:)

[jonathanchoo]

I hate it when companies announce devices so long in advance like 6 months to one year. Look at what happened to the Nokia 7700: scrapped altogether :(

So how will this one fare in a year (we all know they never come out when they say it does, especially from Nokia, if at all :twisted:)

Most Nokia mobiles do get released. The 7700 was scrapped because there are no contents yet to take advantage of its hardware. However Nokia did say that a mobile will debut with series 90 next year just not in the form factor of the 7700. Which is good since the 7700's design is plain weird. Don't be surprised if Nokia release a series 90 mobile in a Sharp Zaurus CL-8xx form factor.

Stuff like the 9300 and 9500 are always announced early to gauge the reaction of businesses and let IT admin to test units first before deciding whether to order and deploy.

It happens in the computer industry (A64 was known years ago before release so was Prescott etc), in the car industry (in this case several years) and even fashion industry (they are already previewing autumn/winter 2005 to potential customers).

[Johan]

A big yawn..... Nokia used to be king now their specs and design are way off. Sony Ericsson has taken over the lead.

[Yo Boss]

Too bad for the WIFI, but I am happy someone in the field is starting to see some sense into scraping embedded cameras... This must be a great contributing factor in the size of this unit. If a camera is needed for professional purposes, then the quality of a camera in phone will certainly make the pictures look unprofessional.

[Bruno]

Do NOKIA HATE Microsoft so bad??

Why don't they support WMA/WMV?? I just cant believe it. 8O

All non technical PC users (that's your mom and aunt) will simply use the technology in front of them. That means saving CD albums to hard disk in WMA format and working with the Christmas video in WMV format, editing it in Windows Movie maker.

90% of all users are running Windows and a big majority just uses what's included as long as its good enough. Seems like NOKIA don't want these people as customer. Why don't they just hang up a sign on their WEB site telling: No Windows users here please!.

I just don't get these guys. No more NOKIA phones for me. My next phone must be able to handle all media files I can throw at it (including WMA and OGG).


Good luck NOKIA! See you next time. :?

[Rudolf]

Do NOKIA HATE Microsoft so bad??

Why don't they support WMA/WMV?? I just cant believe it. 8O

All non technical PC users (that's your mom and aunt) will simply use the technology in front of them. That means saving CD albums to hard disk in WMA format and working with the Christmas video in WMV format, editing it in Windows Movie maker.

90% of all users are running Windows and a big majority just uses what's included as long as its good enough. Seems like NOKIA don't want these people as customer. Why don't they just hang up a sign on their WEB site telling: No Windows users here please!.

Hahhh, I would put it in an other way... WMA/WMV is microsoft's own (closed) format which will not be supported on symbian/linux etc. because MS DOES NOT want it. They dominate the desktop, and MS movie maker is installed on all XP, most people will use it (and lock her/himself to WMA/WMV format), once they want to play their clips on a mobile device, they will figure out, that NOKIA (or any other non MS licensee) does not support it. But all PPC or MS smartphone does...
So this is more a MS issue than a NOKIA one. Just my 2 cent...

[Bruno]

Do NOKIA HATE Microsoft so bad??

Why don't they support WMA/WMV?? I just cant believe it. 8O

All non technical PC users (that's your mom and aunt) will simply use the technology in front of them. That means saving CD albums to hard disk in WMA format and working with the Christmas video in WMV format, editing it in Windows Movie maker.

90% of all users are running Windows and a big majority just uses what's included as long as its good enough. Seems like NOKIA don't want these people as customer. Why don't they just hang up a sign on their WEB site telling: No Windows users here please!.

Hahhh, I would put it in an other way... WMA/WMV is microsoft's own (closed) format which will not be supported on symbian/linux etc. because MS DOES NOT want it. They dominate the desktop, and MS movie maker is installed on all XP, most people will use it (and lock her/himself to WMA/WMV format), once they want to play their clips on a mobile device, they will figure out, that NOKIA (or any other non MS licensee) does not support it. But all PPC or MS smartphone does...
So this is more a MS issue than a NOKIA one. Just my 2 cent...

As the media industry is supporting WMA/WMV i dont get it as how this can be MS problem. Get me right here, I´m not in any way trying to start a media format flame war. Just state the facts:

1. All portable MP3 players except iPOD supports the WMA format.
2. WMV is part of the DVD-HD standard (as is MPEG4). So in the future a lot of media will be playable on many kind of devices as long as they are in the WMV/WMA format.

You see the regular guy doesn't care who owns the format as long as it does its job. Isn't the CD format owned by SONY/Philips? Has never been any problem for the regular guy to go buy a CD.

So Microsoft is cleverly pushing out their own format as a standard to come on all devices and the most of the device makers pay up. Matter a fact, the Windows Media License is a little cheaper than the MPEG License.

So thats what makes me so disapointed. Instead of making the world easier on the regular guy NOKIA have to make the same people disapointed by not supporting one of the most used media formats out there. All things that claims to play media should at least support MP3 and WMA. Then they can add on support for other formats as ACC and OGG.