Nokia India has started a new competition as it launched its latest business communications handheld device, the new Communicator E90,on Thursday, in India.
Priced at Rs 40,000, the new Communicator has been clubbed under the enterprise-centric E-series phones by Nokia as against earlier Communicators which carried prefix nine.
E90 has come in the market at a time when the landscape for handheld and PDA phones targetted at the business phone users has changed vastly with the onslaught of new feature-rich smartphones from the likes of Blackberry from Research In Motion, and phones based on Microsft Windows Mobile operating system such as those from HP, Motorola, O2, iMate and HTC.
Even Nokia’s own N72 and E61 series phones have cannibalized on the Communicator’s niche market segment to some extent.
Nokia has taken care to port the latest Communicator – 11th in 10 years – with everything that its previous avatar, the 9500, sorely lacked. It is significantly faster and has vibrator mode; voice dialing; supports voice over IP protocols for IP calls; GPS for navigation and location-based services. The navigation and menu are also quite improved and it has a larger screen.
The phone has now been loaded with a 3.2 mega pixel (as against 1.3 MP earlier) camera with flash and auto focus with another add-on camera for video calls over the enhanced 3G network (wherever operational); FM radio; and stereo sound with twin speakers. Besides, it supports multiple push and pull mail software platforms, besides the standard
However, even as the phone has become smaller compared to 9500, it remains what it has all along been known as: the `brick’. Among the present class of phones that are ultra sleek while being ultra smart, Nokia continues to live in a make-belief world that weight does matter. So, while the earlier model weighed 230 gm, E90 is 210 gm, but feels comparatively heavier as if somebody packed in metal in a small frame.
The Communicator user base in India is approximately 150,000 users at present. Nokia has already slashed the price of the earlier Communicator 9500 to Rs 19,000 which would now fall even more before Nokia phases it out completely.With the launch of the new communicator ,Nokai is likley to set new records and will be applauded by its users.