Nokia’s GSM/Wi-Fi phone - cheaper costs and better indoor coverage?

by Alex Zaharov-Reutt

Friday, 21 September 2007

Page 1 of 2 ! Nokia’s 6301 is a traditional tri-band GSM candy bar phone that can seamlessly transfer your calls when in range of a connectable Wi-Fi network, offering the prospect of cheaper calls and a promise of better indoor coverage. Look at Nokia’s latest phone, the 6301, and you’ll see what appears to be a standard 2G cell phone, ready to let you make voice calls and access the Internet at up to EDGE speeds. But as is increasingly becoming common in select models from Nokia themselves, Samsung, Blackberry and for a long time from manufacturers of Pocket PC Windows smartphones, the 6301 can also connect to an available Wi-Fi network in the home, office or when out and about to transmit phone calls over the Internet, using VoIP technology, turning the cell phone into the equivalent of a landline phone. This is done using UMA (Unlicensed Mobile Access) technology, which handles the seamless handover between GSM and Wi-Fi networks. UMA also works with any Bluetooth networks that are also connected to the Internet, although these are almost unknown in a world of Wi-Fi networking. While other phones from Nokia and others already come with Wi-Fi, Nokia's UMA phone is claimed to be the first to allow seamless handover of your phone calls and your phone's number on GSM and Wi-Fi - and that's the crucial difference. The reward for making phone calls over the Internet whether you have an existing phone that has Wi-Fi and can make Internet calls through a separate number or identity, or you have Nokia's 6301 UMA phone, is a reduction in costs for both the user and the operator - you're connecting over Wi-Fi and using VoIP technology at lower costs than using the GSM network. Another reward for consumers is that a Wi-Fi network in the home or office will generally offer much stronger coverage than mobile phone towers do in many homes. So, having your phone connect via Wi-Fi and still receive calls normally, with better coverage than with GSM alone, is certainly a clear benefit, letting users make cheap and clear calls from home using their cell phone. The penalty for the user is that connecting to a Wi-Fi network on a mobile phone uses more power than connecting to the standard GSM tower infrastructure, giving users shorter talk times when only Wi-Fi networks are used. It’s for this reason that Nokia has included a desk stand in the package, which Nokia says is “to hold the phone and keep its battery charged while connected to WLAN [Wi-Fi]”. Naturally, Nokia and others are working on ways to create lower power Wi-Fi chipsets and increase battery capacity, but this is a limitation Wi-Fi delivers to all phones, with the iPhone’s claimed 6 continuous hours of ‘Internet Use’ over Wi-Fi the only phone so far to really break the Wi-Fi power barrier. So, how much talk time does the 6301 have over Wi-Fi, and does it matter anyway? Also, what about alternatives like Fring, other Internet phone call companies taking advantage of Wi-Fi phones and Skype itself? Please read onto page 2 for the conclusion... << First page <   1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>

 

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