Wap's light fantastic
Now for the deluge. Ericsson's new R320 internet phone is the latest of what will soon be a flood of new phones using wireless application protocol (Wap) enabling us to get news and entertainment from the world wide web while on the move. It is part of the Swedish company's attempt to wrest world leadership from its Finnish rival Nokia ,whose 7110 model released earlier this year has set the pace for mobile telephony.
Two features of the R320 immediately impress - its large screen (for a mobile ) and its startling lightness. It weighed in on the kitchen scales at only 100g and almost floats in the shirt pocket. Its weight compares with 125g for the rival, Nokia 7110 and 130g for Mitsubishi's Trium running BT Genie's pre-paid tariff (also released this week).
Ericsson's R320 doesn't have the slickness of Nokia's rollerball menu control but its four directional cursors are a reasonable way of navigating the available services including text messaging, voice mail, the infra red port (good), call diverting, share prices, games and, of course, the Wap applications.
It is a timely reminder that the killer applications of Wap (or its broadband successors) are still in the future. It is good to be able to get the latest news from the BBC and the football results or entertainment. But after doing it for a while and suffering the costly time wasting of failing to get instant connection - because of reception difficulties or whatever - you begin to appreciate the benefits, in terms of cost and time, of having a newspaper or magazine in front of you which doesn't disappear when reception fails.
I tried hard to buy a CD-rom on the train between Paddington and Penzance but the seller (boxman.com) kept rejecting the suffix to my telephone number. However, Ericssson says that the 1.1 version of the Wap browser doesn't support secure payments, anyway, so we will have to wait until version 1.2 later this year.
The Trium has a speedy two-click access to the internet with lots of services, including the BBC and the Guardian news services. It is a very solid phone but the smaller type faces make the screen more difficult to read than the Ericsson.
If you want to sample the attractions of Wap phones then, so far, they don't come much better than the Ericsson - especially if you are prepared to trade the longer battery life of the Nokia 7110 for the lightness of the R320. But Wap technology (limited to 9,600 data bits per second at the moment) gives you only a taste of what is to come when broadband interactivity offers permanent online access to the internet and two-way video transmission.
It's really a question of whether you can't resist the hors d'oeuvre - or whether you have the willpower to wait for the main course. The Mitsubishi Trium BT Cellnet phone costs £99.99 with pay & go tariff of £10 a month. The price of the Ericsson R320 will be announced near its release date next month. (VK)
Colourful touch
Motorola is hoping to add a splash of colour to the mobile market with the launch its V.2288 Wap phone. This model is the first from Motorola to offer a series of interchangeable covers.
The buyer can choose from a host of ultra-bright shades including Electric Lime, Azure and Canary. For the moments between voice calls, users can either explore the Wap internet sites or listen to music via the phone's built in FM radio.
The phone features dual band coverage (so it can be used in Europe), boasts a talk-time of up to 210 minutes and standby time of 130 hours. It will go on sale in June priced at around £100.
Thanks for the memory
Toshiba has announced the imminent Japanese launch of the first product to use the high-security, high storage SD (secure digital) memory card. The MEA110AS is a mobile audio player that's compatible with both MP3 and its rival format AAC (which is to be launched later this year).
The player sports a removable postage-stamp sized SD card that can store up to 64MB of music. It also features a slot for a second SD card that doubles the player's listening time.
Toshiba, along with SD's co-creators Panasonic and SanDisk, has been heavily hyping SD for almost a year. The trio claims that the card will become the industry standard for use in internet music players, mobile phones, digital still cameras, digital video cameras, PDAs and other products.
So far more than 70 companies have signed up to join the SD Association this year. A 128MB SD is promised by the end of 2000, while the trio predicts that a 1 Gigabyte card is only two years away. The MEA110AS is expected to go on sale in the UK later this year. (AN)
Pup squeak
Poo-Chi, an "interactive puppy", sold out in Japan when it was launched on April 1, with queues of buyers snapping up 100,000 in three hours. The new robopet, which has been developed by Tiger Electronics and Sega Toys, is small enough to sit on the palm of your hand and has an animated head, ears, legs and mouth.
Although it's not as sophisticated as Sony's robot puppy Aibo, Poo-Chi senses light, sound and touch, and communicates and interacts with other Poo-Chi pals. Hasbro Inc's Tiger Electronics will launch Poo-Chi in the US later this month at an estimated retail price of $30. There is no date yet for a launch in Britain.
Tiger - the company behind the Furby electronic toy - has also launched a Tech Pets section on its website at www.tigertoys.com.
For you and ME
Microsoft is due to release the third test (beta) release of its next version of Windows this week: Windows Millennium Edition or ME. This is the first version of Windows to be designed for home users, so the emphasis is on things like a fast start-up time, digital media capabilities, and a self-repairing feature called System Restore. ME includes the Internet Explorer 5.5 web browser and Windows Media 7 player, both of which have just been released separately. ME is expected to be sent to manufacturing on June 6, reaching customers from one to two months later.
Digital VCR
It looks like a standard VHS video recorder, but it will record for up to 21 hours in long-play mode. The new HM-DR10000 digital VCR, uses D-VHS digital tape. The inventor and manufacturer, JVC, says it will record just about anything, including analogue signals (ordinary Pal TV broadcasts), and digital signals from a DV camcorder.
The HM-DR10000 converts signals into MPEG2 format files as used by DVD players, and a D-VHS tape can store up to 44.4GB of information - probably enough to hold 10 DVDs. (JS)
