Chinese Nokia 5800 XpressMusic to come sans 3G, WiFi
By Dusan Belic on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 5:35 AM PST In Devices, Nokia, Symbian
It’s a sad day for every Nokia (NYSE: NOK) fan in China. Apparently Nokia’s iPhone killer, 5800 XpressMusic, will come without 3G and WiFi support. And while I can understand the lack of 3G radio because of Chinese TD-SCDMA standard, lack of WiFi is not that easy to explain. Why on earth would you want such a device like the Tube without WiFi support is beyond me. Sure, these two combined will make Nokia’s all-touchscreen wonder more affordable to the Chinese consumer, but will they actually want the smartphone that bad to get it that crippled? Any thoughts?
[Via: Gizmodo]
All mobile phones in China are not allowed to have wifi, for some stupid legal reason.
although, you can always buy imports…
Licensing. It comes a computing / radio frequency device and not a “mobile phone”. So Nokia would have to buy additional licenses to sell mobile phones with wifi capabilities. Which cost a lot of money and a lot of time. They probably commited to the market and probably cant wait for either any longer with Apple and LG sporting really slim devices.
Wifi was supposed to be replaced with WAPI. Anyone know what happened to that?
Yes, it’s the regulation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLAN_Authentication_and_Privacy_Infrastructure
Well, is it that difficult to understand?
If everybody uses wifi, who’s gonna use the GPRS data plan from carrier?
Without those expensive GPRS bills, how could the carriers make more money?
Who owns the carriers? Bingo, the government.
What does government do? Making laws.
So if I understand this correctly, China got upset after its WAPI technology (an alternative to Wi-Fi) was rejected by ISO and as a result of that China released a law to ban selling mobile devices with Wi-Fi.
Am I misunderstanding this, or is China just playing the role of a crying baby now?
Its not about promoting GPRS data. Its about the companies / members of WAPI paying off the government to promote its own standard. But as a result, WAPI devices are no where to be seen. No one uses it. But no one makes Wifi in China for Chinese market.
Uhhhh….I got mine 2 weeks ago from China and it does have Wifi but sadly no 3G support.
Really?
Because mine doesn’t.
gdamn I don’t see the point of getting this phone