Dubbed as the Nokia 'Chinesephone' because it was developed by Nokia's Product Creation Centre in Beijing, the Nokia 6108 is a tri-band general packet radio service mobile phone featuring a proprietary, pen-based handwriting recognition system for Chinese character input.
It is hard to separate what is fluff and what is new without first reviewing the new phone, but that will not happen for a while because Nokia will start shipping it in the third quarter.
Timo Toikkanen, vice-president of sales for Nokia mobile phones, China South, said the Chinese-recognition software loaded in the 6108, which uses a predictive system, was not all new code.
'A lot of the technology is used in other Nokia products but this is the first time we've put it all together with such a strong set of features for the Chinese user,' he said.
Nokia is expecting the 6108 to help drive multimedia-messaging services and short-messaging services in Chinese-language markets as the method of input had inhibited their adoption. Most mobile phones use a predictive system for Chinese character input using the keypad, requiring many clicks before the right Chinese character can be selected. Nokia's software uses a stroke-based input method, an approach used by Palm and Microsoft-based PDAs.
For a product that has been so heavily marketed as a developed-in-China Nokia phone, officials from the company were cagey about the time taken to develop it.
Design-wise, the 6108 is much like most Nokia mobile phones. The stylus, shaped like a sword out of a Chinese martial arts film, clips to the back of the phone.
