Is this Nokia mobile-tv? — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{User test starting in Finland} Is this Nokia mobile-tv?

26 Sep 2004 at 18:43 GMT Timo Poropudas

Nokia stopped the development of its 7700 media device last spring when it had get busy cranking out more medium priced handsets. Yet, Nokia is going all out pushing mobile television development and deployment.

Obviously Nokia needs to have a mobile phone with tv-receiver and large, high quality screen available when commercial mobile tv-broadcasts start rolling.

Last week Finnish Mobile-tv consortium decided to start a friendly user test (FUT) in two weeks. The test will involve 120 volunteer named by the companies participating in the project. Nokia, Elisa, Sonera, MTV3, Nelonen and Digita will all name their own testers.

“We have shown that the DVB-H-based technology works. Now we are looking for viable business cases,” says Seppo Sutela, the manager of the mobile-tv effort at Nokia Venture Organization.

Sutela is enlarging the core team of 80 people working on mobile-tv. He says nothing about the future mobile-tv devices. The FUT uses Nokia 7700 with tv-modification that fits in the battery slot. There are enough 7700’s around for testing purposes, Sutela says.

Ewan Spence, a senior administrator of All About Symbian website, has posted a photograph of new Nokia phone.

Spence writes: “Here's a few more shots of what is being tentatively labeled the Nokia 7710. We're making an educated guess that this is the "evolution" of the 7700 Media Phone that Nokia were showing off earlier this year. It's clearly running the Series 90 interface, but we also hear that there's no on board microphone or speaker - it's headsets only for making phone calls. No sign of a keyboard either.