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First Picture of new Motorola iTunes Phone? 264

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-i'd-like-to-see dept.
swissfondue writes "macprime.ch. is reporting a link to a pdf presentation by Motorola's North Asia manager Michael Tatelman, VP and GM Mobile devices, made on 21 June 2005 to analysts of Morgan Stanley in Beijing. Page 15 of the presentation shows a picture of a yet unknown Motorola phone playing iTunes visualizer, with the usual Apple logo. The silhouette of the phone is not in RAZR style, but in PEBL. It seems to also be featuring a scroll wheel."
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First Picture of new Motorola iTunes Phone? More

First Picture of new Motorola iTunes Phone?

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  • So... (Score:5, Funny)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:08AM (#12940955) Homepage
    if you get put on hold you can listen to your own music instead of theirs?
    • It is mostly moderated funny, but it is actually a very interesting feature idea. I would love it if I could avoid the horrible pan pipe music normally infesting my ears when calling any big company.

  • Kind of ugly IMO (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:09AM (#12940961)
    That doesn't really look like any kind of phone that I'd want to be carrying around.

    Perhaps this is Apple's answer to people saying cell phones are poised to serve as MP3 players and music downloading devices. Since Apple isn't in the mobile phone business, this might be a way to get their brand name out there even more and to keep some of their market dominance.

  • An iTunes phone would be great... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Unloaded ( 716598 ) * on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:10AM (#12940966)
    ...but the carriers won't sell it because they all want the content piece of the revenue stream. They're convinced that they can get you to buy into a plan that has you downloading songs from their service, while they charge you airtime for browsing and downloading, on top of the price per song.

    No thanks.

    • Re:An iTunes phone would be great... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:14AM (#12941009)
      They're convinced that they can get you to buy into a plan that has you downloading songs from their service, while they charge you airtime for browsing and downloading, on top of the price per song.

      They're convinced because people do it. Ringtones, applications, and stupid games for mobile phones is a billion+ dollar a year industry.

      For 30 second ringtones with crappy quality, T-mobile gets to charge $1.25+ each and people buy into it!

      I'll be more worried when they realize that they could make even more money by charging you to put your phone on buzz.
      • And Verizon locks out your memory card (ala V710), preventing you from transferring custom ringtones from your PC to encourage you to send them via their network as an attachment... gaining them 25 cents a pop.
    • that's exactly it. IIRC, telecom companies has been resistant to the idea of an itunes phone because they get cut out of the revenue stream. Additional surcharges diminish the appeal of itunes, so hence the impasse.

      Ringtones are a market in which the telecoms are making a killing. I think the worldwide market for ringtones was valued at around 4 billion. They also sell ringtones for 3 bucks, whereas you can get an entire song for a dollar with apple. so there are some issues about cannibalizing revenue str
    • Anyone who purchases a song via a phone, given carrier restrictions & fees, ought to be aligned against a wall ans slapped (or microwaved).

      But the point of this phone is to merge your phone and music device in one. As a die-hard Mac fan as I can be, I still dont own an iPod because I feel the product lacks features. I mean, it's a portable drive that plays music. Oh wait, you can *view* contacts and limited calendar entries, buut that's it. My phone does all that, better, minus the music playback and d

  • Famous sayings? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nharmon ( 97591 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:10AM (#12940967)
    "I will never combine an iPod with a cell phone" - Steve Jobs.

    "There will never be unions in my plants" - Henry Ford.
    • "640k ought to be enough for anyone" - Bill Gates.

      "4 Letters is all anyone will ever need in a cell phone model number" - Motorola CEO.
      • There's no evidence that Bill ever actually said that. Go on, find the quote. If it was in a magazine or newspaper someone would know which one and when. If it was at a keynote somewhere, there would be a recording.

        "No-one should believe anything I post on Slashdot" - Aardwolf64
        • I was going for humor... The Motorola CEO obviously didn't say that 4 digits should be good enough for any phone model number, but has introduced models like the RAZR and SLVR.

          Get a sense of humor, dude...
        • There's no evidence that Bill ever actually said that. Go on, find the quote.
          Interesting challenge. I did a small amount of research, and couldn't find anything.

          Snopes [snopes.com] doesn't even have a 'true' or 'false' on it... perhaps that'd be a good project for them? :)

    • Re:Famous sayings? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by fanblade ( 863089 )
      Well, technically he's got a way out. This isn't an iPod. It's a cell phone that sports a mobile version of iTunes (iPods don't run iTunes).
    • When did Jobs say that? Link?

  • Microsoft's Prediction... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LegendOfLink ( 574790 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:10AM (#12940969) Homepage
    Didn't Bill Gates predict the fall of the iPod with an MP3-enabled phone?

    Looks like Apple is going to beat them to the punch once again.

  • Engadget (Score:5, Informative)

    by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:10AM (#12940972) Homepage
    Engadget reported the same thing [engadget.com] yesterday with a pic and it's even in English.

  • It's also on AppleInsider [appleinsider.com].

  • A scroll wheel? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:13AM (#12940992) Homepage
    So... in other words it's... a rotary phone?

    :O

  • Geek Candy Bars (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DanielMarkham ( 765899 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:14AM (#12941006) Homepage
    In the middle of the presentation there's a slide titled "Changing the Game in Candy Bars" with some cool phones in the background.
    These are some really hot products. I wish I had these guys on-board last time I did a demo to a client! But I wonder if cell phones are the new candy bars for geeks?
    Candy bars, I would guess, are a fairly stable commodity. A Mars bar last year is going to be the same as this year. Eye candy, sure, but not candy bars.
    Will all that consumer production value, it makes you wonder how much these companies actually pay product designers to keep new stuff churning out. There's got to be a lot of money in that business. Everybody's getting into it.

    Love Boat Meets Santa's Workshop? [whattofix.com]

  • Looks real but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by RavenChild ( 854835 )
    All it might be is a phone with a circle drawn and a vis from iTunes slapped onto the screen. Also notice the placement on the keypad, it lacks numbers and also the placement of the wheel might hinder the use of the keys.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Or it could be that you dial using the scrollwheel. Goodness help us if that's the case, as I've used iPod Linux before which has a similar scheme, and it's horrible.

        My grandmother has a phone that you dial using a scrollwheel and I actually kinda like using it.
    • Actually it looks to me like it does have number buttons; they're just unlabeled. If you look closely you can see the seams between them. Oddly, it looks like the green scroll wheel-like thingy is superimposed on them (works for photoshop; not sure how they would do that in real life).

  • What happened to basic phones? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by strongmace ( 890237 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:18AM (#12941033)
    I know I, my family, and many of my friends, do not need these super tricked out phones. We do not need games, dozens of ringtones, video playback, cameras, or mp3 players in our phones.

    All we need is a very basic phone, that has a phone book, maybe voice activated dialing, and voicemail.

    It is getting pretty difficult to find basic cell phones as it is. All the vendors try to press all these phones with extra features that I will never use. Damnit, I dont need my phone to be able to play mp3s. /me grumbles
    • Speaking of voice dialing, I'd like voice dialing that let you navigate through phonebooks and let you speak numbers, which are pretty hard for most VRU's to actually get wrong (9 and 5 if things are noisy, but that's it). Something like:

      Me: "Call Fred"

      Phone: "Did you mean ``Call Ted Smith'' (press or say 1), ``Call Fred Jones'' (press or say 2), ``Call Jeb Bush'' (press or say 3) ...'

      Me: "two"

      Phone: Calling Fred Jones...

      Add the ability to go to manual dial as well. Mostly I'm thinking this would be
      • Actually, as much as I despise the Moto V710, I do have to admit that it has AMAZING voice recognition.

        No training, completely speaker independant. It does exactly what you describe. You pick it up, tap a button, say "Call Bob", and it calls Bob.

        In pretty much all other aspects it's a lousy product not deserving of the hype it recieved. Interesting that the one thing it does very well (voice rec) never got any hype at all.
    • This comes up on every bloody time. Why? So you don't want it, I like my VNC client and pictures of my 'ickle sis.

      Most phone makers to a "basic" phone (i've no idea how you think of Voice dialing as basic? and voice mail is normally done "serverside").

      However as every monthly offer normally throws in a free phone better than the basic models. So just don't use what you don't like on the free phone.
      Or if its a PAYG, go with the ~£25 Nokia 1100.
      • The only trouble is that "basic" phones also tend to suck in terms of style, size, battery life, etc. Why can't I have a phone that's stylish like the RAZR (for example) but without the screen and camera and whatnot? Why can't I just have a phone that looks like a tiny, thin pocket calculator (complete with 7-segment LCD)? Why can't I have a cellular PCMCIA modem with buttons, a display, and a battery?

      • However as every monthly offer normally throws in a free phone better than the basic models. So just don't use what you don't like on the free phone.

        Actually, I agree with the grandparent poster. It is hard to find a simple phone and even if you don't use the functions of a complex phone, it is still harder to use than a basic phone. For example. My last (fairly basic) phone finally died so I bought the simplest and cheapest phone my provider offered. It is a piece of poorly designed crap, and the co

        • Plus, no one is saying that they shouldn't sell these complicated phone computers, it's just that it would be nice to have the option of simplicity.

          The main problem with the "just don't use the features" response is that the complicated phones can break more easily, due to so many more things that can break. And if the functions are interrelated somehow, losing one "feature" could actually disable many others at the same time.

          KISS is not just a rock band, but the phone companies don't seem to care.
      • Most phone makers to a "basic" phone

        The LG phone I've got is about the most basic one on the list the carrier offered for our area. It's too damn fancy and complex and even if you don't USE the features you're still paying for them in reduced battery life.

        go with the ~£25 Nokia 1100.

        Oh, a pom.

        That explains everything. Look, sunshine, you're in bloody cellphone heaven. Here in the US it's like the third world, except the third bloody world generally has better cellphone service than the US. You don't get a choice of phones when you sign up, you don't usually get to buy a phone and use it with your service because everyone's phones are locked... and not what you guys think of as locked either: there's like four different cellular protocols and most of them don't have any concept of phone portability like GSM does.

        So people who are frustrated by crappy cellphones, they probably don't have any of the options you're talking about. Even PAYG isn't PAYG as you know it.
        • That explains everything. Look, sunshine, you're in bloody cellphone heaven. Here in the US it's like the third world, except the third bloody world generally has better cellphone service than the US. You don't get a choice of phones when you sign up, you don't usually get to buy a phone and use it with your service because everyone's phones are locked... and not what you guys think of as locked either: there's like four different cellular protocols and most of them don't have any concept of phone portabili
    • Hmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
    • Yah, when work switched carriers they had to switch phones, so we all got these fancy LG phones to replace our old dumb B&W nokia bars. So now:

      Battery life sucks, it's less than half... I had to get a charger for my desk because if I forgot to charge it overnight one day the chance of running it flat before I got home was too high.

      I can't read the display outside. Color displays for cellphones are just plain wasteful.

      The Nokia had three dumb games on it (snake was one, i forget the others). They were

    • Re:What happened to basic phones? (Score:4, Informative)

      by desolation angel ( 447816 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:49AM (#12941308) Journal
      What like this one?

    • Re:What happened to basic phones? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:56AM (#12941366)
      For every news story about a new mobile phone:

      1. Complain that there is no more basic phones
      2. Get moderated +4 Insightful
      3. Profit!

      Come on, this is the same thing every bleeding time a new phone is announced. Get over it already.

      The fact is that it is cheaper for the manufacturers to make a limited selection of models at the same time.

      Features sell phones, so the minimum number of features will always go up.

      For every 1 user that only needs a phone book and voicemail, there is probably 20 that also wants polyphonic ringtones, 10 that wants a colour display and a 100 users that also need text messaging.

      It does not make sense to make every single combination of these phones, so you will either have a phone that is underfeatured or overfeatured.

      If it is underfeatured you will have lost most of your customers. If it is overfeatured the people that need less will still buy it.
      • For every 1 user that only needs a phone book and voicemail, there is probably 20 that also wants polyphonic ringtones, 10 that wants a colour display and a 100 users that also need text messaging.

        You have the numbers backwards.

        For every 1 user that needs polyphonic ringtones or a a color display, there's 10 who just want a bloody phone. And EVERYONE benefits from longer battery life.

        Text messaging? That's just software. You don't need to build a fancy phone to get text. OK, OK, you can't get text on a 7 segment LED, but that's a bit primitive even for us puritans.
    • There are just as many people on both sides of the fence. While I would never accept the low quality of a cell-phone camera I would not mind it keeping notes, emails, or playing music.

      Why?

      Because I don't need 2 or more devices with me at all times that I need to lug around. Worse on trips each manufacturer seems intent on using their own AC adapter.

      Last trip I took was just with the cell phone, iPod, and a digital camera. Now as before I do not want the junk cameras they are using but I could have don
      • One... on the AC adapter front: most devices have a USB charge cable available, and you can get auto- and wall-wart adapters now with a "power-only" USB connector in them. You can also get a wall-wart with an auto cigarette lighter socket in it, and use the car adapters only.

        Two... my experience with fancy phones and PDAs with MP3 players in them is that because the MP3 player sucks down power for extended periods you're much more likely to have a music player device that's "too low to use" than any other

  • Bah (Score:5, Funny)

    by Khuffie ( 818093 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:20AM (#12941051) Homepage
    PEBL? RAZR? SLVR?

    Does no one at Motorola have spell check turned on?

    • Re:Bah (Score:4, Funny)

      by Rolan ( 20257 ) * on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:25AM (#12941093) Homepage Journal
      They're just trying to be 1337.
      • Pretty much. I work at Motorola. Awhile ago they had a little internal contest asking us to come up with any cool 4 letter names. Never heard if that one yielded any fruit. I'm sure the marketing flacks are racking their brains.


    • > PEBL? RAZR? SLVR?

      Motorola, buy a vowel.

      Matthew
    • CMON EBDY LVES SHTY FLTR NMES
    • Drppng evry othr vowl gts annying.

      I think it is annoying that Motorola is doing this. They do this so they can trademark a name, trademarking dictionary words, even in association with very strict product definitions, is becoming harder to do and harder to defend.

      But with the irritating naming scheme (IMO worse than iProductname), and my experiences with Motorola phones, I will avoid this product, at least for the time being. The Motorolas I have seen/borrowed/used in the last several years had poor rec
    • following the same trend as RAZR and PEBL, motorola can DEFINITELY have a strong-selling model in the middle east if it's named BSHT :-)

  • Nothing like... (Score:3, Funny)

    by llamalicious ( 448215 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:21AM (#12941063) Journal
    ...linking a 6+MB PDF directly. Then posting on the homepage.

    Really, have some compassion Slashdot. :P

  • Great! More Buttons on a Phone! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by smug_lisp_weenie ( 824771 ) * <cbarski.4503440@bloglines.com> on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:34AM (#12941164) Homepage
    Now they actually have to superimpose them on top of each other (note how the scroll pad intersects the number keys)- Don't these designers understand that this is a horrible design?

    It's so obvious what to do: The scroll wheel is great for picking songs and numbers to call out of the address book- For numbers, just use voice recognition: Having a recognizer just for digits works fantastically already- Heck, they wouldn't even have to do the recognition in the handset, but use a central server to handle that part, if it requires too many computrons!

    For crissakes, the whole point of the scroll pad is that it is a versatile input device- The scroll pad is all you need!
    • "For numbers, just use voice recognition: Having a recognizer just for digits works fantastically already"

      Problems:
      1. Text messaging is a basic feature of phones today. Almost nobody will buy a phone without it.
      2. You don't always want to shout out phone numbers or messages aloud.

      Unless you get a really brilliant and fast way of putting in text with just a scroll wheel, a keypad is still necessary.
  • Reading through those other slides, this presentation is like something from another world. Slides with "WOW!" and "YIKES!" on them in huge letters -- when did Motorola slip into the Comic Book dimension?

  • Looks fake, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Iriel ( 810009 )
    While the PR from Motorola on this makes it look like nothing but hype for Motorola, it would be an interesting concept to take a stab at. However, M$ plans on making phones that will kill off the iPod, and while I don't think this will happen, a good enough media phone could kill the Shuffle. If Apple plays this right, they could outdate their own shuffle with an enhanced capacity iTunes phone, and destroy Micro$oft's dream at the same time.

  • Yeah but.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `todhsals.nnamredyps'> on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:43AM (#12941244) Homepage Journal
    Does it accept Morse code? [slashdot.org] :)

  • "First Picture of new Motorola iTunes Phone?" (Score:5, Funny)

    by anonicon ( 215837 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:44AM (#12941259)
    Ya know, when I see incredibly dumb Apple topics like this one, this article immediately springs to mind:

    iProduct [jwz.org].

  • Or is it something like this.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dynamoo ( 527749 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2005 @10:44AM (#12941263) Homepage
    ..the rumoured Motorola E790 [mobilegazette.com] which is at least *white*.


    Look closely though at the two handsets and they are both a very similar layout, apart from the "rotator blob" on the new picture which seems to clash with the keypad.


    The "E790" pictured is basically the E390/E398 platform that has been remixed onto several different handsets already.

  • ...what in the hell is a RAZR or a PEBL?

    -b
  • notice the difference? PEBL looks more like a traditional phone than the RAZR StarTREK communicator .but. PEBL is without any signposts from the past.

    No buttons, no dials... PEBL isn't built on the communicator paradigm. US Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Internet is not a "communications carrier" subject to FCC regs but instead an "information carrier".

    PEBL looks like it skirts the babyBells battle for button pushers, entirely. PEBL will be defined by its software functions and information *ab

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