VoIP and GPRS technology enable the 5140 to act like a walkie-talkie, with the ability to automatically broadcast your voice to many handsets at once.
With expected availability in the second quarter of 2004, the most innovative feature and biggest selling point of the 5140 will be the walkie-talkie functionality, which Nokia officially calls push to talk (PTT). The product manager of mobile phones at Nokia, Gill Flynn, demonstrated the technology on prototype versions of the 5140 mobile phone at the FutureLab development facility in Sydney this week.
There is a dedicated push to talk button on the side of the 5140 that is used in the same way as one you would find on a walkie-talkie. Communication is not instant as voice is sent as data via GPRS, which is integrated with the existing GSM networks. However, the time taken to send the instant voice message is only a couple of seconds.
Upon picking up the message the receiving 5140 handset beeps briefly, the screen displays the name of the contact and the message plays automatically through the loudspeaker. We can see many practical uses for this technology, especially for organising groups of people. For example, push one button and say, "Who wants to meet up for a drink after work?" Inevitably, you'll hear the recipients responding with suggestions of pubs/cafés within a couple of seconds.
You can set the 5140 to broadcast to just one of your contacts or to many of your contacts, assuming they have a PTT-compatible handset. As it works over mobile phone networks, recipients can be in the same office, down the street, interstate or overseas.
Because of the slight lag incurred by sending voice as data, round-trip conversations will be stunted. It operates as a half-duplex transmission (voice can be transmitted in both directions, but not at the same time) using voice over IP (VoIP) technology. You can send an instant voice message to one contact or send to many people using the groups feature. To prevent talk-over Nokia ensures us there will be a queuing system for messages in place when the 5140 is released.
The 5140 will be the first Nokia phone released with PTT functionality embedded and mobile operators will also need to support the technology. Software will also be available for installing push to talk capability on other Symbian OS-based handsets (such as the Nokia N-Gage).
Another emerging technology the 5140 will possess is called presence. FutureLab business manager, Leslie Shannon, touts presence as part one of instant messaging (IM) for mobile phones. Users of IM software will be familiar with the concept of having an online status, status description and icon. Presence works in a similar fashion but through the contact list.
Subscribers to the service will see an open or closed door representing the contact's availability beside other subscribers listings in the handset's phone book. A more detailed text description and logo can also be displayed on the screen. For your own updatable listing you can choose to be seen as available, busy or not available. A short text description can be entered (eg. in a meeting, down at the pub for lunch, etc) and an image (less than 4KB) can be set for friends to see.
There are two types of presence you can set: public and private. Public information is broadcast to all users (with presence-supported mobile phones) whom you have subscribed to share the information and private links can also be set up to send out a different status and message.
So far Nokia has only released one handset that supports presence; the 6220. When you update your own presence information, the handset sends the information to your carrier's presence server. The information is then sent out to the handsets of pre-established contacts over GPRS.
By the time the 5140 is released it is expected the major mobile operators will be supporting both push to talk and presence. Details on how subscribers to these services will be charged for the data transmitted has not yet been made available.
Other features of the 5140 include tri-band operation, a digital compass, a fitness coach application, an VGA (640 x 480 pixel) camera and SyncML. At first glance the Nokia 5140 looks quite similar to its predecessor; the Nokia 5100. It has a similar durable, rugged body that screams, "energetic person". But what impresses us most about the 5140 is what lies underneath; push to talk and presence.
First Look: Nokia 5140
Company: Nokia
Price: TBA
Availability: Mid 2004
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What about the GPS? not GPRS but yeah GPS...
Why wasnt that feature mentioned???
GPRS push to talk is a great feature...but the Xpress-on GPS shell should have been mentioned
This phone has a full map GPS function aswell for outdoor activities....the GPS function will be a big hit...just suprised it wasnt mentioned
The GPS function was discribed by nokia at the time of this publication...so it not new knowledge