HANOVER, Germany-Megapixel camera phones were the name of the game at the CeBIT trade show, with Nokia Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Siemens and NEC Corp. among those releasing new advanced products.
First, Nokia released its first megapixel camera phone, the 7610, which the company said will be available in the second quarter of this year. The phone will ship in two variants, GSM 900/1800/1900 and GSM 850/1800/1900, and will sell for around $600. The advanced device features the Symbian operating system with Nokia’s Series 60 user interface, Bluetooth support, RealNetworks Inc.’s video player and video recording of up to 10 minutes.
Nokia also announced its Image Album that features a 20 GB hard disk drive, its multiplayer Pocket Kingdom: Own The World game for the N-Gage mobile phone/video game device, and its Mobile RFID Kit, which allows the Nokia 5140 phone to read RFID tags.
Separately, Samsung released a variety of high-end devices. The company’s new SGH-Z105 camera phone supports UMTS networks and features WAP, Java and streaming video. Samsung’s new SGH-E800 and SGH-E810 feature a sliding design as well as integrated digital cameras. Finally, Samsung introduced its first megapixel camera phone for the European market, the SGH-P730. The phone supports video recording and offers a swing clamshell design and removable MMC memory cards.
Samsung also released two new CDMA EV-DO devices. The CDMA SPH-V4400 features a 2 megapixel integrated digital camera. The CDMA SCH-V500 features a 1.3 megapixel camera and support for MP3 music files.
Not to be left out, Siemens introduced three new camera phones, including its first megapixel camera phone, the S65.
Finally, NEC released its new n400i phone for European i-mode services. The phone, which features an integrated camera and video support, will be supplied to KPN Mobile in the Netherlands, E-Plus in Germany and BASE in Belgium.
