HdVoiceCall
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Ericsson delivers HD voice on CDMA, crystal clear calling coming to a network near you
Smartphones continue to improve in the "smart" areas: better screens, faster processors, more memory, etc., but there's not been a lot of innovation in the phone aspect of those devices. HD voice technology can change that, but since its introduction in 2009, hi-fi calling was only available on GSM networks... until now. Ericsson has just made the first HD voice call via CDMA -- made possible by a new Enhanced Variable Rate Codec Narrowband-Wideband (EVRC-NW for the awkward acronym-loving crowd). The codec delivers sound in the 50Hz - 7000Hz range, which makes traditional calls limited to the 300Hz - 3400Hz spectrum sound like they're coming from a drive-thru attendant at your local Mickey D's. So far, the tech's limited to the lab, but here's hoping Ericsson lets it roam free to deliver the dulcet tones of our friends and family sooner rather than later. [Thanks, Fdegir]
Orange HD Voice service and handsets go live in the UK, we go ears-on (video)
(function() { var s = document.createElement('SCRIPT'), s1 = document.getElementsByTagName('SCRIPT')[0]; s.type = 'text/javascript'; s.async = true; s.src = 'http://widgets.digg.com/buttons.js'; s1.parentNode.insertBefore(s, s1); })(); Digg Good news for UK mobile addicts: Orange's long-anticipated HD Voice service has officially made it to the Land of Hope and Glory. Starting today, British customers can pick up a HD Voice-enabled handset -- including the Nokia 5230, X6, E5 and Samsung Omnia Pro at launch -- from Orange, and start buttering their ears with "crystal clear" phone calls while within the carrier's 3G coverage. Prior to the launch, we were fortunate enough to try out the new service on a couple of Nokia E5 prototypes in Piccadilly Circus, and boy, that was some pretty impressive stuff there -- the wider speech bandwidth really added a lot of clarity to the caller's voice, and additionally, the noisy traffic from the caller's end was well suppressed at where it'd otherwise crackle over a normal call. Perhaps the easiest way to put it is that this is much like jumping from a bad FM radio broadcast to some sweet CD audio, thus making conversations a lot easier to interpret, even if the recipient is in a noisy environment or has hearing problem (as proven by Orange's public trial). As always, hearing is believing, so do check out our sample audio clips after the break. While Orange remains a dominant driving force behind this mobile revolution, the carrier assured us that it expects other companies to pick up this open standard. That said, it's rather disappointing that current owners of the aforementioned handsets won't be getting a software patch for the HD upgrade (we were told that no extra hardware is involved), but we can understand -- the manufacturers do need to sell new phones to stay alive in this rapidly changing market. Anyhow, here's hoping that the forthcoming flagship Android and Windows Phone 7 devices will also get a taste of this crystal clear call quality.
