Phones Are The Future

While the PC has revolutionised our lives over the last 10 years, I think the future belongs to mobile phones. It's small and soon will do all the computing we could need. Phones are amazing. But if you look around for some of the latest models you'll see what we're all getting excited about.

I've been checking out the Nokia N96. If you want to have a look there are some details at www.dialtosave.co.uk...



As you can see it's a dual-slide camera phone. But if you're after something to make calls on, and maybe take a few pictures, you don't have a clue of what you're in for.

This plays video files (MPEG-4 Part 2/MPEG-4 Part 10/Windows Media Video (WMV9) and others) so you can watch films as you're sat waiting for someone to call. You can watch vids that you have stored on your microSD memory card (hot swappable, of course), or watch TV over the web connection, or, and this is the brilliant part... watch digital TV. It can get DVB-H TV signals.

It has a 2.8" QVGA LCD TFT display, so the picture you're watching will look great.

It's also great for music, playing mp3s and other files, plus getting FM radio with RDS, but it's the TV that makes this Nokia phone a breakthrough.

You can take all the entertainment you need with you where ever you go. This is the point after which phones will be TVs.

It's not just a TV viewer. They have some other great tricks in this device. with Nokia Maps on it you can find addresses, so you'll never get lost again. And you can get turn-by-turn pedestrian navigation on it. Sat Nav for your legs.

Seeing as your phone always knows where on the planet it is, your photos will benefit. The pictures get tagged location they were taken in. You know how useful it is when you pictures have the timestamp on them? Well, this is the next logical step.

And when you're sat in a coffee shop boasting about how good you phone is, you'll be able to show your friends as it can connect to the local hotspot and you're on wifi.

When a phone does so much you start to worry about the battery. But with a talktime of around 4 hours, 5 hours of vid playback, and a standby time of 220 hours, there realty is nothing to worry about.