The curtain drops on Nokia's 7700 before it's had a chance to meet the masses; a new media category device will see the light in 2005, and Visual Radio is due for Christmas.
Originally announced in October 2003 and slated for commercial introduction in the second quarter of 2004, Nokia has now decided to put its very first media device - the 7700 - on ice. The device, which was to be powered by the Symbian OS powered Series 90 platform and feature Nokia's first touch screen, will instead assume the role of a pilot tool which is to be demonstrated to network operators and media providers.
Equipped with a landscape-oriented, touch-sensitive screen boasting a resolution of 640 x 320 pixels, the 7700 was to become the first product in Nokia's 'Media' category, enabling the consumption of various types of media - both audio and video - to a more advanced degree than the manufacturer's line-up of smartphones.
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Commenting on the 7700's change of career, Kari Tuutti, Director of Communications for Nokia's Multimedia division, readily admitted the Nokia 7700 had not reached a stage where Nokia felt comfortable launching the product. "Industry elements, in terms of content and service availability, are not yet mature enough."
The 7700 was to champion the Visual Radio concept, developed by Nokia to allow a heightened degree of interactivity between radio stations and their listeners, merging built-in FM tuners with data transmissions over WAN networks. Visual Radio trials are currently ongoing, with early pilots in Helsink and Berlin recently joined by a similar effort in Asia.
Despite the retraction of the 7700, however, Visual Radio will still make it to consumers by the end of this year as Nokia plans to launch the service with one of its Series 60 based smartphones to be available by the end of 2004. The most likely candidate would be the recently announced Nokia 6260, which features an integrated FM tuner, however should this not be the case Tuutti also confirmed that Visual Radio software would be backwardly compatible with smartphones equipped with FM tuners.
As for the Series 90 platform upon which the 7700 is based, the future still appears bright since, according to Tuutti, Nokia will launch a new device based on the platform some time in 2005.
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