Newest Wireless-Phone Models Are Ready for Internet Access
By ALMAR LATOUR
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
STOCKHOLM -- The new generation of Internet-ready mobile-phone handsets from Telefon AB LM Ericsson and Nokia Corp. is making its way slowly to the market, but already the differences are becoming apparent.
A look at the latest models, which are still hard to purchase or not yet available, suggests that while Ericsson might offer easier linkage between the phone and the PC, Nokia has some innovative hardware features that make its handset easy to use.
Surprisingly, the turtle-paced rollout of these new devices is good news for consumers. That is because the success of phones featuring Wireless Application Protocol -- software that provides wireless access to the Internet -- depends on the quality and number of online services available. To secure growth of these next-generation phones, Nokia and Ericsson spent the past year jump-starting WAP services across Europe and elsewhere. "There had to be WAP services first," says Thomas Jonsson, a spokesman with Nokia in Stockholm. Adds Joakim Nilehn, an Ericsson product manager for smart phones: "We had to convince people of the possibilities with WAP before we could enter the market with such advanced phones."
Full-Service Setup
Indeed, mobile phones no longer serve as mere voice communication devices. Increasingly, they offer a host of services including banking, flight reservations, news and entertainment. They have also turned into pocket-size offices, featuring calendars and data banks that can communicate with laptops and PCs using infrared technology. Nokia estimates that in five years more than half of all phones will be WAP-equipped. And for now, the Nordic mobile equipment makers can barely handle the requests from companies wanting to introduce WAP services for consumers or for internal corporate use.
The new Ericsson and Nokia phones are at the very beginning of the WAP evolution, but they each show clear trends of where the industry is headed. Both feature WAP 1.1 software, which is accepted by all major WAP players: The availability of WAP services is mainly due to the operators a user deals with. Ericsson does, however, feature its own WAP portal -- including news and entertainment entrees -- and Nokia so far doesn't.
That leaves the hardware and some of the features to compare the quality of the phones: Most striking for both Nokia's 7110 and Ericsson's R320 is that the screens are three times larger than the mobile phone screens we're used to. Ericsson's R380, due in the first quarter next year, will feature a screen the size of the entire phone. Bigger screens are needed as WAP services work more or less like the Web: WAP pages are like web pages, albeit without banner ads and photos.
Adding an extremely attractive function for business people, and demonstrative of the ever-growing capabilities of mobile phones, both WAP phones feature calendars that can be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook calendars on PCs and laptops. The difference: According to Mr. Jonsson of Nokia, the company's 7110 phone package currently doesn't come with PC software that is needed to synchronize the calendars -- a big hassle, because users then have to look for the much-needed software elsewhere. By contrast, Ericsson promises to include such software when the phone hits the market. Ericsson's R320 transferred data flawlessly during a quick test at the Wall Street Journal Europe's Stockholm office; Nokia's 7110 didn't offer user-ready synchronization software and could thus not be tested on its Outlook functions.
Right Way to Write
Wireless Internet services will force most phone users to write more with their handsets. So far, sending messages via phones has been a cumbersome process: To find the letter of choice, users often must press phone keys up to three times.
The Nokia 7110 offers a few alternatives: Applying the so-called NaviRoller -- an innovative small wheel that serves as the phone's mouse of sorts -- users can scroll through the alphabet and click return as soon as they see a letter they need. Or users can turn to Predictive Text Input, a technology that guesses words while users are entering letters, drawing from a elaborate dictionary. Nokia claims the technology allows for writing that is at least twice as fast as pre-WAP mobile phones, but that does require some practice.
Ericsson's WAP phone doesn't offer a NaviRoller, which Nokia put in the dead-center of the 7110's design, but features a similar search tool on the side of its phone. Ericsson's lack of innovation there in fact offers an advantage for Pavlovian phone users who have gotten used to operating the volume of their phones by pushing a button on the side of the phone -- not in phone's center, as does Nokia, which may be inconvenient when trying to adjust the phone's volume amid conversation.
Though launched in September, Nokia's 7110 media phone is hard to find at retailers across Europe: It is shipped in relatively small numbers and demand is so high that the phones disappear from the shelves upon arrival at the stores. Ericsson's Internet-ready R320 is slated to come out "some time during the first quarter of next year." That's much too late for the Christmas season and nearly a year after the phone was first shown to the public.
Write to Almar Latour at: Almar.Latour@wsj.com
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