Asia Handsets WOW Vodafone Live! Subs
Apparently, some high end handsets are selling in Europe - they're simply not Nokia's.
Asia bi-valve technology... the Euro fashion in 2003?
LOL!
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Looking Sharp and Live!y
Unstrung
By Gabriel Brown | 12.24.02
Unstrung can think of a number of highly entertaining double acts: Laurel and Hardy
are at the top of the pile, we reckon, while Abbott and Costello are usually good for a few laughs. (Martin and Lewis don't quite make the cut.)
A more modern duo offering a modicum of entertainment is the less hilarious, but perhaps more relevant, Live! service from Vodafone Group plc (NYSE: VOD - message board) and the GX10 handset from Sharp Electronics Corp. This is a tidy combo that sets a new benchmark for European consumer wireless data.
At stores in central London, these devices are selling faster than hot chestnuts on a cold winter's evening, and an extensive survey of London’s bars last weekend marked them out as the new dog’s bollocks among beery Christmas revelers.
But let's be clear, it’s not just a gizmo we’re not talking about here -- it's the Live! portal, stuffed full of ringtones, pictures, and games, that's the really interesting bit.
The handset itself, which is only available with a Live! subscription, has a couple of nice touches. The built-in camera is easy to use and, like others on the market, takes a decent picture in natural lighting conditions. The screen size is more than adequate for the resultant picture messages and for gaming. And from our experience, the battery life stands up well to quite intensive use.
Significantly, though, it’s great to finally get hold of a GPRS phone with a color screen and camera that's small and light enough to fit in your pocket without a problem! And, like any half-decent mobile, all the important buttons (no, not the ones with numbers on) are arranged in a practical thumbpad pattern that makes it really easy to use with one hand. This is obviously pretty essential for the always-on-the-move public-transport user and others with a frenetic lifestyle, but it’s also quite appealing for couch potatoes who need to keep one hand free for their remote control, beer bottle, or cookie jar. [Ed. note: That's enough of the "one hand free" examples, thanks.]
The user interface is tightly integrated with the Live! service and is so seriously easy to use that you’d have to be completely stoopid and soft in the head not to figure it out. [Ed. note: Cue millions of calls to tech-support]. Navigation is intuitive, and the icons helpful. It is this level of simplicity that will be the foundation of success in the consumer wireless data market, so kudos to Sharp and Vodafone for appealing to the lowest common denominator! I mean, even the London-based Unstrung team could figure it out!
Live! is Vodafone’s own-brand portal that offers all kinds of pre-approved downloads, chat, ringtones, news, sports scores, horoscopes, ever-so-slightly- saucy screen savers, "Find & Seek," shopping, and entertainment services. The content is all sourced from big-brand media outlets, so there’s pretty much something for everyone, albeit a little bit bland, editorially speaking.
The games download section is especially good and extensive, and the ringtones section has a good Bob Marley selection, so I’m happy. For some unfathomable reason, there’s also an entire section dedicated to aging British spy James Bond. Maybe they thought they could sell these gadgets to old ladies?
But the real commercial genius behind Live! is the way all the premium content is nestled in among the free stuff. And, because the service is so easy to use, this makes it incredibly easy to spend a lot of money very fast. For example:
One Space Invaders download – £5 ($8)
FHM’s 100 sexiest women – £0.25 ($0.4) per picture
One month’s ongoing subscription to the Wall Street Journal – £2 ($3)
One polyphonic ringtone download of Stevie Wonder’s "I Just Called to Say I Love You" – £2.50 ($4)
One Daffy Duck screensaver – £2 ($3)
One celebrity voice answer phone service – £1 ($1.6)
At these prices you’ve got to wonder how long a kid’s pocket money will last out. But to be fair, Live! makes it abundantly clear how much something will cost before you actually get to buy it, so there's no real cause for complaint here.
Color picture messaging is obviously a lot of fun, and the camera on this gizmo is so tiny that even non-techies will be impressed. But the sooner we get intercarrier MMS the better – imagine what a mess we’d be in if we could only make phone calls or send SMS to folk signed up to the same provider!
The same goes for the Vodafone Instant Messenger – it’s a really nice feature, but it’s a shame you can only talk to other Vodafone subscribers. Still, with Vodafone listed as an official supporter of the Wireless Village Instant Messaging and Presence Initiative, this is hopefully just a temporary hitch on the way to open wireless IMP standards.
In a nutshell, then: Live! is a well-executed, consumer-focused package that's fun, colorful, and easy to use. Best of all, it will really help introduce wireless data into European pockets.
On the downside (Bah, Humbug!), the phone could do with a bit more memory.
— Gabriel Brown, Research Analyst, Unstrung
unstrung.com |
