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Nokia 7650 Modified to Record Video Clips 126

Posted by CowboyNeal from the porn-industry-ready dept.
rocannon writes "T-Mobile has started offering MPEG4 video messaging on the Nokia 7650 with a modified software created by the Finnish company Hantro. This is the European debut of the service that allows users to record, save and play back video sequences, up to a maximum of 95 Kbs in size, on their mobile phone. Clips can be transmitted and received to/from peers via (MMS) e-mail."
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Nokia 7650 Modified to Record Video Clips More

Nokia 7650 Modified to Record Video Clips

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  • Now I can... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 27, 2002 @01:16AM (#4342239)
    Email the expression on my face when i get the bill (-:

  • Cool, but I still want a P800 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Too bad the P800 will probably cost something like $800.... But I bet they will mod the P800 to record video, as well. Too bad the camera points away from the LCD screen -- most of the video I would shoot would be of myself, for a video email to a friend or family member. Clumsy to not be able to see the screen when shooting yourself.

    Maybe I'll just get a Hiptop. Out now, apparently. To be officially released on October 1st via CompUSA/T-Mobile.
    • Clumsy to not be able to see the screen when shooting yourself.

      Come on man! It's not that bad is it? Sure the price is high, but not worth commiting suicide over!

    • fsck the P800.
      The recently announced Nokia 3650 [slashdot.org] will have video-recording capabillities by default as well, and cost ALOT less than the P800 while still being a Triband phone, with SymbianOS, memory expansion-slot(MMC), Bluetooth, etc. I won't pay almost three times the price of the 3650, just to get a slightly bigger thouchscreen, more built in memory, and an inabillity to use the phone effectively with one hand.

  • Isn't that a measure of streaming speed, and not absolute size?

    In any case, one can think up of many "innocuous" uses facilitated by its innocent facade. "Oh dear, I dropped it again." :-)

    • Re:95 Kbs in *size*? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jfanning ( 35979 )
      Nope, that is the size. The standard for MMS multimedia messaging restricts the size of any message to 100kb. It doesn't matter what the content is, voice, video, image.

      Jody

      • So, basically, you can stream, what, a sunny "Hi there bob" before it cuts off? How much MPEG4 does 96Kbs - that's kilobits mind you (or is it bytes) - either way, very, very small file.

      • From Nokia's MMS faq [nokia.com]:

        How big can an MMS message be?
        The standard does not specify a maximum size for an MMS message.

        • From the Nokia 6650 FAQ:

          What is the maximum size of an MMS that the Nokia 6650 phone supports?
          The maximum size is 100 kB. All of Nokia's MMS-enabled phones support the recommendations set in the MMS conformance document that defines minimum requirements for MMS and has the backing of 3GPP and the WAP Forum.

          In terms of characters, how much text is it possible to include in an MMS message sent from the Nokia 6650 phone?
          In practice, the number of characters is unlimited. The only limitation is the maximum size of an MMS (100 kB).

          How big of an audio clip is it possible to include in an MMS message sent from the Nokia 6650 phone?
          The only limitation is the maximum size of MMS (100KB) or the remaining space in phone's memory.

          What is the maximum size of a picture that can be included in an MMS?
          The only limitation is the maximum size of an MMS (100kB) and the phone's available memory.

      • Re:95 Kbs in *size*? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by AftanGustur ( 7715 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @03:36AM (#4342564) Homepage
        Nope, that is the size. The standard for MMS multimedia messaging restricts the size of any message to 100kb

        The unit 'Kilo' in physics, meaning 1000, is written 'k'
        The unit 'Kilo', in CS, meaning 1024 is written 'K'
        Bytes is written 'B'
        bits is written 'b'
        Seconds is written as 's' or '/s' as in 'per second'

        Then, 95Kbs is logical to interpret as 95Kilobits per second, and that, my dear watson, is a unit for streaming capacity.

        • And since the original comment was "a maximum of 95 Kbs in size" I would think it is more likely that they screwed up their units.

          Besides, it is a 7650, it can't even stream video at that speed.

        • But if I order 25Kgs of potatoes, people realise that I'm accidentally making it a plural (25 kilos) and not asking someone to stream mashed potato to me

          I'm guessing it was a simple slip of the fingers to indicate a plural, but it's always fun to get to play "Captain Pedantic"[1] for a day, isn't it (bigger grin!)

          [1] There is no such character as Captain Pedantic, to the best of my knowledge, but I could be wrong! - General Comment, DFC and (cash) bar.
        • Alternately, "b" may represent "bit", and someone may be inclined to write "Kbs" as a plural for "Kb". It is certainly within the realm of possibility...
        • The unit 'Kilo', in CS, meaning 1024 is written 'K'

          Nope, the (somewhat recent) ISO standard says Ki, that is 95 KiB for CS-type "kilobytes". Harddisk manufacturers use 1000 just to inflate their numbers... (128 MiB =~ 130 MB)

  • Yoik! Video ringers! (Score:4, Funny)

    by csmorris ( 610681 ) <`cmorri9' `at' `lsu.edu'> on Friday September 27, 2002 @01:23AM (#4342265) Homepage
    Great. So theoretically, instead of interrupting movies and lectures with an obnoxious rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody", cell phones can instead play highly compressed scenes from "Can't Hardly Wait."

  • I can understand the appeal... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by neksys ( 87486 ) <grphillips AT gmail DOT com> on Friday September 27, 2002 @01:24AM (#4342266)
    But is 95k worth of video enough to be useful? I mean, even at really low quality, and acknowledging the small resolution of these phones, that still leaves you with quite a short message. On the other hand, the cost of sending that 95k of data to another phone must be high - hell, it costs me a fortune to download a few thousand bytes onto my phone through my web connection.
    • Think porn... They pretty often split the movie into 150-200KByte pieces ;)
    • True, but the displays are often small with limited resolution and colors so you can apply a fair deal of compression. But of course it doesn't leave room for a movie, for that you need one of new Nokia phones with lots of memory.
      One could see this as a proof of concept or the opposite depending on how it works in real life. Take WAP as a example, sounded great but real life use of it is a pain in the butt.
    • At least in here Finland, mobile operators have very different billing schemes. One operator charges only static monthly (very reasonable) cost of GPRS usage, with no limits on data transferred - which is a great way to promote GPRS to public. Some operators on another hand have ridicilously high rates on data transfers, most likely their services are rarely used.

      In practice this means that you will pay the price you are ready to pay for that service.And it is up to economists to figure out what you're ready to pay, not up to you. ;-)
    • The cost isn't necessarily a big issue. GPRS capable phones (just about any phone available, at least in Europe) can stay online 24h and you won't be charged more than a small flat fee every month up to a certain amount of data, usually some MBs (depending on subscription model).
      • Technically you are always connected but of what help is this if my provider here in Switzerland charges me 10 cents/10 kb of data and a monthly fee of about 3 euro/month just for GPRS? And there's no way changing the provider because they all have that high rates. Really silly. Rince
    • You understand the appeal? Good, can you explain it to me? I have no idea why someone would want one of these( except maybe vanity). It seems to me to be a totally worthless piece of technology. But I could be wrong, that's why I'm asking.
    • In Germany you can calculate 5 EUR / MByte (that's nearly 5 US-$ for anyone who cares)
      concerning GPRS and most of the 4 carriers available. So with 95 kb you will stay below 50 cent which is not so much more than the price of an SMS. When I think about the popularity of SMS in Europe and the popularity of this new Nokia SymbianOS-Camphone among my friends, I'm sure that MMS will be used frequently in the future.
      On the other hand GPRS is (and UMTS will) be far too expensive for other video-on-demand or video-phone applications than short (and bad quality) clips. The licences for UMTS had its price:
      In Germany alone 50 Billion EUR.
      So I'm using GPRS only for ICQ and IRC (low traffic) because it is really great to chat with your friends whereever you are for hours and paying not much money. But surfing the web is much too expensive.

  • Nokia 6650 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by leijona ( 554932 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @01:26AM (#4342271)
    Nokia has announced yesterday a new camera phone with ability to record video (and sound) clips, up to 7MB in size [http://www.nokia.com/6650_event/index.html]. It is WCDMA (that's why external antennae, btw) and is capable of (at least) 128kb/s transfer rate in 3G network. It works in GSM networks too, of course, achieving very agreeable transfer rates using GPRS.

    Of course, it supports MMS, polyphonic ringing tones, Bluetooth and what-have-you. Large color screen, hefty weight and unbelievable stand-by time.

    Do you notice, btw, that phones grow bigger in size nowsdays?

    • More about the features of 6650 (Score:4, Informative)

      by jukal ( 523582 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @01:36AM (#4342300) Journal
      6650 product page [nokia.com]:

      - Weight: 141 g
      - Dimensions: 132 x 52 x 25 mm
      - Talktime: 2 h 20 min (WCDMA), 2 h 40 min (GSM)
      - Standby time: Up to 350 h
      - Key features: Integrated camera for taking video and still images, new WCDMA air interface, fast connection: up to 128 kbps, multimedia messaging (MMS), large graphical color display, multitasking: talk and send simultaneously
      - Operating frequency: Tri-band mobile phone for WCDMA and GSM 900/1800 networks
      - Imaging resolution: Image/video capture at 640x480/128x96, more than 10 frames/second

      Full specifications are here [nokia.com].

      So althought the product from Hantro is interesting, it seems to unfortunately have entered the market 6-12 months too late to do a difference. These (and better) capabilities will be a standard feature too soon.

      • When is 6650 going to enter the market? If I am not mistaken these phones are entering the market next summer or something, or that's what I heard on Finnish news anyway. So Hantro has ~8 months to sell their software before introducing something new. I must admit I wasn't paying much attention to the news so it is very well possible I misheard it. // ville
    • Devices like 6650 don't take long to spring in to the market. The catch is that none of the US wireless service providers support #G as of now. Most of my friends think that the current PCS Vision and AT&T mLife is 3G enabled. But as a matter of fact they are not. Well they are kind of in between say 2.75? As a proof none of these companies ads mention anything about video.

      Anyways don't get your hopes high on 3G atleast for a couple of years with this economy.

    • It will be available in the European and Asian market, and isn't scheduled for release until the first half of 2003 (read June...)

      So it looks like 7650 still has some time left on the market.
    • "It is WCDMA (that's why external antennae, btw)" Whatever happened to fractal antennas which can just be flat and lithographed/etched on chip? I read about them years back, and we still have these annoying, breakable, low quality stubs poking out of our phones (and even the ones which are antenna-less just have them on the inside of the casing). This sounded like some kick-ass, instantly applicable and applyable tech to me...so why isn't it being implemented? Anyone?
      • I don't know any specifics regarding this on-chip antenna, but I do know that there were medical studies regarding the radiation emitted by cellphones and the consensus then was that external antennas (pointing out at a specific angle) greatly reduce the -possibly- harmful radiation.
        • Say [i]what[/i]? We're still talking about the electromagnetic spectrum, right? Circular antennas, which can't help but broadcast omnidirectionaly? Remember? Right hand rule and all?

          Now either my high-school physics have deteriorated dramaticaly (possible, as I haven't needed that for years), or it just doesn't matter what direction an antenna is pointing,over short distances?

          Now of course picking up signals is quite different, but not broadcasting them...
    • New technologies always make the phone bigger in size. When manufacturers went from analog phones to digital phones, it took them a couple of releases before they knew the technology well enough to shrink the phone and make the battery life competitive. Motorola didn't realize this at first, and thought that digital phones were going to suck forever, so didn't invest much in releasing them, and as such, fell behind Nokia.
    • Do you notice, btw, that phones grow bigger in size nowsdays?

      I wonder if that's a usability thing and nothing to do with the technology. Take the Nokia 8210 for example: it's too small. It's uncomfortable (for me at least) to use, and it's easy to lose. My 6210 feels at lot more comfortable in my hand, the buttons are easy to use, and the speaker and microphone are the right distance apart, closer to that on a landline handset. Some people may like miniaturization, but for me, it's not a selling point at all - I want a bigger handset anyway, so why not pack in as many features and as much battery life as possible?

  • I think I should be the first to point out... (Score:4, Informative)

    by dknj ( 441802 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @01:30AM (#4342285) Journal
    That you can fit decent quality movie clips [kttech.com] into a 95kb file. Original article here [slashdot.org]

    -dk

  • mpeg4? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Trojan ( 37530 )
    Well maybe I didn't look carefully enough, but nowhere do I see mention of mpeg4 encoding, and I actually doubt very much that a mobile phone would be capable of that. Probably more like animated gif or so.

    • Re:mpeg4? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is MPEG4, and MPEG4 at small frame sizes is pretty light on CPU to encode/decode; it takes ~35MHz of an ARM CPU to to MPEG4 QCIF encode or decode. I think the 7650 has a ~90Mhz ARM9 core internally.

  • 7650 Camera Resolution (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Joel Rowbottom ( 89350 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @01:51AM (#4342335) Homepage
    Resolution on the 7650 is pants. Don't expect anything spectacular ;)


    Photos using the Nokia 7650 can be viewed at nokia7650.fotopic.net [fotopic.net]


    I'll try and get round to installing this video stuff and do some messing though. The 7650's not a bad phone, pity Nokia's SDK sucks so much.

    • this has hardly any meaning since you are NOT going to encode the video at full resolution anyways, or are you? 95kb isn't all that much..

    • Resolution on the 7650 is pants.

      It's a mobile phone not a professional camera. There is no zoom, the focus is not great, but it's not bad as a phone that can take photos as well. VGA resolution is pretty good for that, I don't know what you were expecting?

      Completely agree about the SDK though. It might be free, but that isn't an excuse.

      • I get better quality from the ov511 camera plugged into my laptop.

        I guess my gripe is that no matter what conditions, it looks like someone's smeared vaseline over the lens.
        • it looks like someone's smeared vaseline over the lens.
          Well maybe they have! Actually, joking apart, I have found that it really depends on the lighting. In natural lighting [geocities.com], the shots are crisp, but as soon as I am in an artificial lighting environment [geocities.com], I get very soft focus shots. One thing that really has amused me is if you try to take a picture of the tip of a cigarette, it comes out blue, and not orange as you would expect.

  • Great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by sillydragon ( 18114 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @01:53AM (#4342342) Homepage
    Great, I can just see it now... You call in sick to work...

    *ring*
    Yeah, hi, I'm not going to be able to make it in to work today because I strained my *sound of fingers accidentally hitting button*

    *Picture of you standing on beach appears on boss' cell*

    Beach? What beach?? No, seriously! Fired? What? Hello? Hello?!

  • One step closer..... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sawilson ( 317999 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @02:05AM (#4342369) Homepage
    to a realistic portable personal concealable full
    motion video device. I can't wait. Especially
    when the video is automatically shot through the
    air to somewhere else and can't be taken away,
    destroyed, etc. So many good uses:

    #1 When your girlfriend calls you a liar about
    where you've been

    #2 When the cop lies about what he said and did
    in traffic court

    #3 When your boss tries to take credit for
    something you did

    #4 When that coworker gets fitshaced at the
    office party

    #5 etc.

    You get the idea.
      • #2 When the cop lies about what he said and did in traffic court

      Riight, like you're going to be standing with your camcorder pointed at the traffic officer as he comes by youyr car to fine you.

      • #3 When your boss tries to take credit for something you did

      That also means you're going to be filming all you do/say, plus all the people around you, basically not doing work at the time. Let's not even talk about transmission costs or limited storage available in the phone. That, and everybody has a webcam anyway..

      • #4 When that coworker gets fitshaced at the office party

      Yeah that sounds more realistic already :) But then, see webcam point above...

  • porn-industry-ready dept.

    Come on, stop the flow...
    CowboyNeal, just the thought of a huge fat geek 'enjoying' his porn on a tiny screen..*shudder*
  • I clicked the video message link and was despondent when I couldn't read the page. Luckily I remembered babelfish... "T-mobile brings mobile communication in motion. The Segeltoern on weekend, the travel in the Cabrio, the first steps of the child. Mad moments, on which you would like to leave spontaneously their friends and acquaintance sharings." I'm sure in it's native German this is high quality commercial-speak, but mad moments made for acquaintance sharings doesn't really work for me =(
  • cute... imagine meeting a cute girl, seeing she owns a cute 7650, send her a cute java applet displaying cute flowers on a cute background with a cute music and in the (cute) meantime making cute pictures/videos of this cute girl and sending it to a cute guy like you :)

  • But Why Will This Be Used? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Videophones have been an abysmal failure in direct wired connections. Why would this feature be popular for cell phones?

    People are already worried about traffic accidents [apparently] caused by cell phones. Imagine if people are not only talking on cell phones but also watching them when driving?
    • > Videophones have been an abysmal failure in direct wired connections. Why would this feature be popular for cell phones?

      Because no-one is interested in walking to a certain FIXED place, and wonder out how on the earth THIS SPECIFIC videomeeting thing works. When those services are available on your pocket, through a relatively simple and relatively standardized interfaces, you might actually use it. Also, I don't believe their main use will be as video"phones", instead they will be used to send images and videoclips. Atleast I never have a camera with me when I would have needed it.

  • PORN....as always (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    this is going to be a money-maker for pornographers...brings a whole new meaning to "dirty phone calls". people already spend £1.50 a minute to download ringtones or £1 a text message with text flirting services, think how much could be made from mobile adult video services...

  • Video! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Video + sound, they must be kidding, they can't even get me a day to go by without saying "What did you say?"

  • One wonders (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CaptainZapp ( 182233 ) on Friday September 27, 2002 @04:40AM (#4342698) Homepage
    If MMS will really ever fly.

    The Neue Zurcher Zeitung [nzz.ch], which features one of the best Media & IT section from any German speaking newspaper tested the MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) capabilities of the 7650 and the Ericsson T68i three weeks ago.

    In a nutshell: It sometimes works. But only if the sender and the receiver both have the same phone. If you have the T68i and I send you an MMS from a Nokia you either get gibberish or nothing at all.

    If we have the same phones we also better be with the same carrier, otherwise: see above. Regardless of success you're anyway billed 55euro-cents per message.

    After WAP and some exorbitantly overpriced UMTS licenses mobile services could see their third Waterloo here by giving up simplicity and standards and bloating those devices with extremely complex and buggy sub systems, for which they weren't designed for in the first place.

    The beauty of SMS lies in its simplicity and its standardization (partially basterdized by carriers in the US), which is adhered to throughout the European GSM network. Adding crappy features that nobody wants or needs and that rarely function the carriers and manufacturers do themselves a disservice.

    Besides, I don't think that the business user (the one generating the most revenue) is very interested in sending 95KB video clips (or fotos for that matter) around the world. The guy wants a reliable phone, which is connected without hiccups after leaving the plane in Basel, Barcelona or Bangalore.

    • Umm.. I'm not entirely convinced the target audience for this phone is business-people. It seems more like a fun-phone to me. And I don't know where you live, but here in sweden there's no such thing as a revenue generating group, *everybody* has a cellphone.
      • And I don't know where you live, but here in sweden there's no such thing as a revenue generating group, *everybody* has a cellphone.

        Same here (Switzerland). Nevertheless telcos really love their business clientel for the same reasons as airlines love them:

        They spend most per contract.

        For a fun phone the 7650 is just too darn expensive.

    • In a nutshell: It sometimes works. But only if the sender and the receiver both have the same phone. If you have the T68i and I send you an MMS from a Nokia you either get gibberish or nothing at all.

      It may not be just the handsets - the MMC (multimedia messaging centre) may be to blame as well.

      My company did some MMS apps, back when you could count the number of MMS-capable handsets without taking your socks off and we didn't have any of them :) All we had was a vague standards document, which said that the T68 would support "a subset of SMIL" (which is an XML-based presentation language). At this point I didn't know of any Nokia handset, and if it existed whether it would even support the same "subset of SMIL". We tested using a media player that could handle SMIL.

      With the MMC we were using, nothing happened. Nothing. We racked our brains for ages. Eventually we discovered that the MMC didn't like the whitespace in our nicely-indented SMIL. It wanted the whole thing on one line without a single extraneous space. I'm sure it's quite concievable that both handsets are outputting perfectly valid messages, even identical messages, and the MMC in the middle is screwing it up.

      It's easy to blame the handsets, and I'm sure they're far from perfect, but I can't help wondering how good the infrastructure is. I also can't help wondering why it's so hard to send what is, to all intents and purposes (at least in transit), a multipart email.

  • NTT Docomo foma [nttdocomo.co.jp] stuff pics [nttdocomo.co.jp]

    Then there's J-phone's video sha-mail which is more like animated-gif mail [zdnet.co.jp]... but hey.

    AU/KDDI's A5301T [toshiba.co.jp] Toshiba brand video yay.

    Costs five bajillion gazillion jillion yen... monthly as Dr. Evil-san and those companies know.
  • ~Clips can be transmitted and received to/from peers via (MMS) e-mail.~

    I'd been wondering where all that spam was suddenly coming from. Thanks, Finland.

    ;)

  • Kind of gives a new meaning to "outcall"
  • T-online states that the 95kB is the maximum size of a video and that this means about 8 to 15 seconds, depending on the dynamics of the scene.

    Their three GPRS-rates are EUR 0.29 per 10kB for occasional use, EUR 10 for 1MB/month and EUR 40 for 20MB/month. So, this makes about EUR 0.02 to 0.26 per second of video.

    The Nokia 7650 provides 3.6MB of RAM, but MMS size is limited to 100kB as has been pointed out already.
  • Video messaging would only take off if users deem a need like SMS, but the average john doe in the west doesn't like to SMS, unlike the feverent asians which deem it like an extending and enhancing their communication languages.

    I remember the japanese were using it and one of their commercials promoting their services shows this guy bowing profusely to appoligize to his girlfriend ;-)

    But would the average john doe do the same for his girlfriend? Or for other matters?

    The other factor would be cost, it's already prohibiting when they first launched data services over GSM/CDMA networks, now even with GPRS i doubt there would be much drop in pricing.It would be nice if telcos were to evaluate their charges for data =)
  • I predict it would be used first to send porn clips to unsuspecting woman. "Hey honey, here I am spanking my monkey."
  • These are shooted using nokia 7650 and hantros software. It is a mp4 file, at least realplayer was able to get mp4 codec and play files. http://www.sunpoint.net/~nettinayttely/ [sunpoint.net] www.geocities.com/aatukarri/kuvaa.html [geocities.com]
    Software was distributed by t mobile in germany. t mobile [t-mobile.de]
  • Friend of mine just called to say he had downloaded Doom for his Nokia 7650! Apparently it worked well, he was pretty enthusiastic about it: More info here!
  • I think this whole thing is getting a bit out of hand - I mean: gadgets nowadays do everything - you have watches that have built in address books, calenders, altimeters, weather forecasters, TV/Video/MD remote controls; cellphones that have games, icq, internet (p0rn...), cameras and who knows what else that will come out. It seems that lots of things are merging into do-it-all devices... I think it won't be long till things start merging on a wider scale. Maybe one day we'll have a single gadget that does everything... I mean everything... scary.
  • Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off
    during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent.
    -- Dave Barry, "Sex and the Single Amoeba: What Every
    Teen Should Know"

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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