Nokia and Vodafone today unveiled a new S60 device that will be exclusive to the Vodafone network. The Nokia 6730 Classic, which will be available from June, runs on S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, has a 3.2 megapixel camera, 2.2 inch QVGA screen and integrated GPS. It continues the push of S60 into mid-tier devices, using the platform to take services to the mass market. Read on for more.
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LOL, T-mobile has the iPhone and G1 (at least here in Holland, I suppose in more countries) and Vodafone gets the exclusive right for a phone that no-one will want to have.
Should do well as a run of the mill free with contract, or free upgrade offering with casual users. Nothing exciting to look at though.
If you want S60/Symbian to grow and grow, and get more supported, and more users for things like Ovi Store (to make us developers more money and give more support to the platform) you need to make S60 more available and more widespread. Sticking it into lower priced, non smartphone level hardware is one of the best ways to do this.
Anyone who's in any way disappointed by the hardware spec on this device has missed the point entirely.
Am not a developer but i agree with the comment above,Ovi services need popularity to success & limiting the S60 to +300$ (sim free) phones will kill it.
Am not going to buy one of these but for people complaining:did you forget 6120 classic?
btw,I hate Vodafone brand.
Looks very nice wouldn't mind if the N82 looked like that (with N82 features of course) too bad about exclusivity, would look good in black too.
If you want S60/Symbian to grow and grow, and get more supported, and more users for things like Ovi Store (to make us developers more money and give more support to the platform) you need to make S60 more available and more widespread. Sticking it into lower priced, non smartphone level hardware is one of the best ways to do this.Anyone who's in any way disappointed by the hardware spec on this device has missed the point entirely.
I totally 100% agree with all of that.
Online services aren't a "who's got the highest spec" competition, it's more about growing userbase as quickly as possible. Something like 85% of people buy non-smart phones, and even with smartphones most sales are mid-range models like the 5800 or 6120. The number of people who actually own a high end smartphone is tiny (iPhone's global market share for example is currently 1.5%).
Nokia's main strength is in selling very very large amounts of mid-range and low price devices. If they want to make Ovi services succeed, it is absolutely vital that they put it on devices of all price levels because medium and cheap devices are the ones that lots of people actually buy.
They need to lower the cost of being an OVI software publisher, and of hosting and upgrading apps. Right now, its the worst of the industry compared to the rest.
In my opinion Vodafone are one of the very worst ambassadors for S60 - Why? They are sooo slow to release their precious operator-specific firmware. They want you to have the latest phones, but have no idea that keeping up with firmware updates might be a good thing for customers. I waited so long for N95 8GB firmware I debranded in the end. Is it out yet? My wife's 5800 XM is stubbornly on V11 with "No updates available". Of course we could debrand or go to a Nokia Service Centre but that's hardly the point - a key feature of the OS and an often major opportunity to improve user experience are crippled by the laziness of the operator. So what happens? S60 fans debrand and "normal" users form early opinions of "slow and buggy" and don't come back.
wow, must be a slow news day when this phone gets a 'top story' billing.
Maybe I've been smoking crack, but I can see a time when series 40 is consumed by S60 (or its future iterations).
If and when we reach that point, will AAS be heralding 'new mundane Nokia phone' every other week? I really hope not.
morpheus2702 wrote:If and when we reach that point, will AAS be heralding 'new mundane Nokia phone' every other week? I really hope not.
Agreed. Used to be that every new Symbian phone was worth announcing. Each time it brought something new to the table.
These days Nokia is pushing Symbian even on low end phones for the masses. Symbian sadly is no longer the OS of choice for the power user. We have a flurry of crap phones that don't differ from each other that much.
Arthur wrote:Agreed. Used to be that every new Symbian phone was worth announcing. Each time it brought something new to the table.These days Nokia is pushing Symbian even on low end phones for the masses. Symbian sadly is no longer the OS of choice for the power user. We have a flurry of crap phones that don't differ from each other that much.
That's a really good point that has crystallised something that I've been feeling about Nokia/S60 for a while now.
The point in case: "...that don't differ from each other that much."
I've had a N95 followed by a N95 8Gb... the greatest phones I've ever owned. From a long time Windows Mobile user, I jumped ship with the N95 and was amazed at just how advanced it was compared to WM devices of the time (2007).
2 years later, for the 9 things S60 does better than WM, the one thing I do miss is the ability to customise the phone. The home screen, numerous settings etc. I could go out and buy any Nokia S60 handset right now and within an hour, will know that phone inside out. Sure, the argument for is familiarity so you don't have to spend days getting to grips with your new phone.
But to me that's half the fun of a new phone! Buying another S60 device to me would be like only buying 'half' a new phone because of its familiarity. I'm sure the same can be said of anyone moving from one Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG etc. feature phone to another.
I acknowledge that the N97 will most likely open up a new dimension of customisation and Symbian Foundation releases even more so. I've still a few months on contract left, so no urgent decisions required... but unless the N97 is reasonably affordable and not a complete turkey, I'm beginning to look at the Samsung I7500 Android phone with envious eyes, and wonder if the 3rd gen iPhone will win me over?
> The number of people who actually own a high end smartphone is tiny (iPhone's global market share for example is currently 1.5%).
Your iPhone stat is incorrect, a couple of months ago there were 37 million combined sales of iPhones and IPod Touches, so iPhones alone will be significantly less than that. There are 4.1bn mobile subs as of about the same time, so that works out to about 0.9% of phone users even if we imagined all 37 million are iPhones. Realistically I'd guess iPhones are about 0.5% of all phones.
Smartphones in general were about 10% of global phone market, but that has risen slightly in the last year. S60 is just below half that I think, so about 5% or about 10 times iPhone deployment.