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S60 Summit 2007. Expo

S60 Summit, Madrid 2007>>>

At the exhibition one could familiarize himself with numerous services, applications and technical solutions of S60 affiliates. While there were about eight tens of small booths, there is no point in writing about them since our readers are already aware of these products and applications thanks to the articles we posted previously. Specifically Nokia’s Sport Tracker and a handful of other Nokia Research Lab developments were showcased here. Let us spotlight the most interesting things we saw.

As usual, the S60 had a small-scale booth, where anybody could stick a decal onto his phone; grab a strap, stress-ball and other trinkets like that. This is the booth that never experienced shortage of visitors, which was quite expected.

It was interesting too see Motorola’s backpack, whose owner was deliberately hanging out at this stand.

The primary problem for the organizers of such events is how to make all attendees have a glimpse of all technologies showcased. Over at Nokia they looked at this from the standpoint of creativity and apart from handing Nokia E61i for the time of the exhibition (whereas at NSeries events one could keep the device after paying a nominal price, this didn’t work here), together with the booths list and map, where you could mark all places you called at and then get a prize. It would seem, what’s so special about it, but even serious-looking people enjoy playing this game and keep putting more stars on their clearance sheets.

Another find of the hosts is the flash-cardsembedded in badges, which were meant for allowing you to upload electronic versions of all presentations. Pretty smart, isn’t it?

Speaking of the products, the centerpiece was definitely the global introduction of Samsung i400 – a mid-range slider (300 Euro) with GSM (EDGE) connectivity, 2 Mpix camera, stereo-speakers on the back and S60 3rd edition FP1. The sales start is slotted for May-June, and in case the smartphone is a success, the truth is there are all prerequisites for that, Samsung is likely to rapidly expand its range of S60-base offerings, giving this area one of the top spots on its priority list. However, the device has no traits that it would have to shout about, packing standard functionality, which was already disclosed in our review of S60 platform.

Software Series 60 3rd Edition>>>

S60 3d Edition Feature Pack 1>>>

Hardware-wise, similarly to Samsung i520, it runs on TI OMAP 2430, neither of the handsets sport graphics accelerator onboard, which is actually the manufacturer’s decision. At the same time, most of Nokia’s products, namely Nokia N95, Nokia E90 employ its abilities (TI OMAP 2420).

To me, Samsung i400 somehow seemed like Nokia E65, but there is a huge price gap between them and it’s clear that the newcomer to Samsung’s line-up will have substantial sales.

It’s always exciting to have a glimpse of hardware platforms, as they are not always exposed to an average man.

One of the stands played host to the showcase of Nokia 5500’s built-in sensor – by deflecting it one could move a ball on the big screen, and while it was merely a simple game, it did well at demonstrating what such sensors could do, particularly for managing external devices.

At the booth where the abilities of UI found in Feature Pack 2 were on display, I was thrilled to see a slide with iPhone-esque icons.

You can learn more about all capabilities of Feature pack 2 in our article>>>

Sysopendigia’s booth looked interesting as well, since the company created a solution for wireless device management, uploads of software, applications and data - Remote Phone Management. The solution’s cost is subject to change, depending on every given case, but its capabilities are quite remarkable. What looks even more fetching is the application that allows saving on a device, even remotely, corporate phonebook. In other words, you upload a phonebook remotely, and on inbound call get the number automatically identified, on top of that a stand-alone window pops up to feature addition information on the caller (post, country and so on, at that you can even add images, in case extra traffic on synchronization means nothing to you). Such application is quite pricey – license for use on personal PC costs about 99 Euro, while having 100 employees you will need to pay 200 Euro a month and 1 Euro for every staff member, when there are more than 100 of them. So it is an expensive solution with obscure market prospect, and for many it will go no further than just pure interest.

Probably, this material will be continued, or we will post another article. Anyway, stay tuned.

Eldar Murtazin (eldar@mobile-review.com)
Translated by Oleg Kononosov (oleg.kononosov@mobile-review.com)

Published — 25 April 2007

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