The Red Ferret Journal Product of the Year 2007: Mobile – Nokia 6110 Navigator. It may not have the glamour, marketing spend and sheer all out glitz of other contenders in this sector, but this fairly plain-Jane product marks a significant turning point in the future direction of the mobile phone. For the first time ever, a conventional mainstream mobile phone handset exceeds the functionality of a personal computer out of the box. Not only can you download, install and run programs on it, play music, take reasonable quality photos and surf the web at HSDPA broadband speeds which are as fast or faster than at home (no need to hunt for a WiFi hotspot with this puppy), but you can navigate your way from anywhere to anywhere in the world at any time as long as you can see the sky.
Oh sure, there are lots of things that should and will be improved as time goes on, including camera resolution, screen size, data input and the like, but basically with this model we have now reached a peak of mobile functionality. It’s no co-incidence that Nokia has paid $8 billion for GPS map company Navteq, the functionality we can expect to see from handsets like this in the future is likely to be astounding. And apart from that it’s a great handset to use, day to day. It’s now my main phone, and is probably the best handset I have ever used. Why? Well for one thing the battery life is excellent for the functionality, even when under load as a sat nav device. It’s great for phone calls (gasp!), SMS texting and as a music player, and most importantly I continue to stumble across great little free and commercial Symbian applications that I can download and install to make it even better.
Nope, there’s no bells or whistles, no fashion statement design or clever UI, but as an all-round pocket friendly micro-computer, phone, satellite navigation, digital camera, MP3 player, e-book reader, voice/video recorder, this is one amazing product.
iPhone!
Heh, happy new year Ron! :-)
I find this a little odd Red. I looked at getting a 6110 as a replacement for my fabulous N73 and was very very underwhelmed by its GPS ability (which was supposed to be the big thing about this phone). I stood outside with it for 2 minutes waiting for a passing satellite to drop by, but nothing happened. I have no idea how it would perform in a car. Maybe you have more satellites in the Northern Hemisphere. ;)
I have since decided that the N82 will replace my N73.
You’re right though, the sheer number of things you can do with a Symbian60 phone is just phenomenal and my N73 is getting quite long in the tooth now. I’m hoping after the N82, I just won’t need any more features on a phone.
Yeah DTM, you’ve actually pinpointed one of the things that can be a pain. The first time you try and GPS synch can take ages. But once it knows where you are, subsequent synchs are almost instant. I was up town a couple of days ago and got lost looking for some shop, so I just pulled out the Navigator, powered up the GPS and asked for the street. Within half a second it was giving me the directions.
The A-GPS means that it uses the local cell tower as a primary indicator for the satellites, so you need to have good signal for the phone to fast synch though. And the other thing which is excellent is the fact that because the GPS is on-chip it’s extremely fast, it re-calcs your route on the fly if you miss a turn almost instantaneously. It’s *very* cool.