The
Nokia Research Center has another tech tease that gives us a glimpse into one of our many possible mobile computing futures. The so-called, Explore and Share concept starts by placing an N900 onto a "writer" that's tethered to a PC at a retail store. At that point, the PC recognizes the handset and serves up a number of options to the purchaser. For the purposes of the demo, an unnamed Finn selects an album that downloads to the handset in less than 10 seconds.
Less than 10 seconds, wirelessly! If we assume that the 18 track Bruce Springsteen album is somewhere between 100MB and 200MB then we're looking at a 10MBps to 20MBps transfer rate. Nokia doesn't admit to what tech it's using, referring to it only as "a new radio technology." It's certainly not
NFC which tops out at 424kbps, or Bluetooth 3.0 + HS which tops out at 3MBps. It also negotiates much faster than WiFi (though that could just be editing trickery). It's closer to Wireless USB's
real-world data rates of around 15MBps or
TransferJet's 375Mbps effective throughput. Or as a long shot, maybe
Bluetooth 4.0 which targets 60Mbps (theoretical) transfer rates. Regardless, it's fast so we have to agree with Nokia when it deadpans: "Sounds great. Doesn't. It." Check out the action after the break.
posted February 23rd 2010 7:06AM
..or you could just send files via bluetooth (no pad required)
@commenter7 But that's not as blistering fast! I wouldn't mind that 'writer' technology in my house! Ship it Nokia, ship it fast! (and while you're at it, make it universal!)
@commenter7 I think we'd still be waiting for that download to finish, if they used BT... This looks fast, I'd like to know what they used for this. Given how Nokia likes to release phones that need firmware and software updates before even working properly (e.g. N97), having a quick way to update and upgrade, and download content, even if it means you need to walk to a retailer, would be a welcome improvement.
@commenter7
100mb via BT? going to the record store and buying the album is faster than downloading it via BT.
transferjet?
@nicholasphan (@engadget Thomas Ricker)
On the very next related video the NOKIA guy says the technology is NOVEL ULTRAFAST RADIO.....
nicee!! sync with twin turbo..lol
now where the hell is the new flagship? n8?
It's always - "Nokia hints", "Nokia is rumored", "Nokia's leaked", "Nokia is supposed to.." - it's hardly ever "Nokia releases".
So, yet another hype machine created news article.
@jussipussi
You have to remember that a lot of Nokia projects start in Beta Labs. Once they are completed they become a standard part of their OS. No one talks about it once it ships as standard!
@jussipussi What about: "Nokia demonstrates"?
@jussipussi What about "Nokia Patents" and "Others pay Nokia royalties" and even better "Some just copy without paying"... ;)
@jussipussi
what about "nokia don't just patent stupid ideas"?
@Nino they make them too?
@Nino Or Nokia doesn't patent the obvious...
imagine this, u were shopping at HMV, heard a nice song n want it on your phone, but u have no data plan, so u put your phone on that pad and in less than 10s u got the whole album, with Come With Music u got the whole thing for free, coool
WiFi is more than capable of achieving such speeds - I'm more concerned how ~100MB of data got written on the eMMC and got indexed by the Media Player under 10 seconds on the N900. It takes more time than that to transfer locally from the microSD (class 6) to the internal eMMC and to reindex everything, even tho theoretically it could achieve such speeds.
@incognito
Probably wasnt written on eMMC. Theres 32G of internal memory too, not to mention the nonvolatile memory to buffer the transfer.
@newone, since I have N900 I pretty much know what its got - internal 32GB of storage (27GB data) is on an eMMC type of memory. rootfs is on much speedier NAND, but its got only 256MB and is not for data usage.
@incognito
Theres the 256M of sram to buffer the transfer. If it uses that wisely only large files will start to slow down with the limited write speed of the nonvolatile memory.
Not sure what the max write speed of the N900 eMMC is, but wikipedia gives 104MB/s for eMMC generally.
Have you thought that they might have overcompressed the album and it might wasn't 100mb but 40-50?
@Bobot
Does it matter? They sent the whole album in 10 seconds or less
If you look carefully the monitor says loading up 1 file in 10 seconds. Is that one album or one title?
@Wevenhuis,
I was thinking exactly the same...
@Wevenhuis
also notice the NGAGE icon :O
the whole interface is new... will this be ovi suite v3.0?
@Usta
He said it was the entire album in less than 10 seconds. In the related video in YouTube, he says that the radio can transfer data at 100Mbps. Interestingly, that related video is from September last year.
Incognito has a point. I'm too concerned about data write speed on eMMC
so i'm gonna make a trip to a retail store to get my music because of this????
yea right.. you guys are on some kinda drugs
Buying music is old skool!
All about sitting at home and downloading data. Make that speed over the phone network and were in business.
@thegasman2000
Imagine you're at a Walmart or Best Buy, etc and a kiosk is setup to this. I would purchase an album this way. And how do we know this isn't meant for the home as well? Basically it's a docking station.
when will Nokia learn to make THIN phones...
@mi canuck
When Apple learns to make multitasking, hardware keyed, decent cameras with flash, Flash enabled browsers, removeable batteries, alternative browsers and media players, file transfers via BT, video chat cams able to be used as a web cam, better media format support, offline navigator, and for a lower price.
This is obviously not a bog standard N900, and this dock is featuring some next gen tech...
@mi canuck
Nokia E55 9,9mm...
@mi canuck
"Thin" means "Easier to lose". Besides, everyone stares at your phone if it's big, but nobody will notice it if it's thin
@christexaport
for some strange reason I can listen to my iPod while surfing the web and answer a call when it comes in when I am on my iPhone. Is that multi tasking or not?
What flash sites do you have to use? The most commonly mentioned is hulu. But I haven't seen a netbook run hulu well... doubt any mobile device can support it either! The only reason I use firefox on my pc is to block flash! I rather use the hulu desktop product.
@jaffreywali
no, that's just listening to your ipod, surfing the web and answering your phone. It's you that's multitasking, silly!
On the very next related video the NOKIA guy says the technology is NOVEL ULTRAFAST RADIO.....
It should be 10 MB/s, not MBps, 10 MBps is around 1.25 MB/s
@bbrook154
ps = per second = /s
MB = Megabyte
Mb = Megabit
Don't know what this is but since transferjet is ready can't everyone just use it? It would be a lot quicker to become common place. Nokia can help or whatever for transferjet 1.1.
This could be a big replacement of the old nfc which could be very amazing if it didn't have to be on the receiver to respond. Way fast comparably though.
That store will probably close down too...
its amazing what nokia pulls out of the N900 Oo i'm still mad that it only comes with a 3,5inch screen and a resistive one to that. but i gotta say nokia, bring it with some HD2 hardware and you guys will so kill the market
That's some sweet tech.I had no idea the terminator was into streaming:)