Forget about upgrading today’s cellular networks to increase the speed at which they transmit data, what about making them better for the function they were originally created for in the first place? Phone calls, love them or hate them, is what people do with their mobile devices. Sure, Facebook, Twitter, push email, and even good old fashioned text messaging has seen the amount of time we actually blather into our handsets decline, but voice is still important. Enter HD Voice, which sounds a bit lame, but check out the video below and prepare to be blown away at the amazing increase in sound quality. How exactly does this all work? Like the music you pirate from your favorite torrent tracker, you can find albums recorded at a measly 128 kbps or you can find it compressed via something like FLAC, where you’re in a situation that every album you grab is upwards of 500 MB in size. HD Voice is simply increasing the bit rate at which voice is compressed as well as increasing the frequency range.
The only operator that’s been trying to get this to catch on is Orange. They’re alone since no one is willing to invest in the infrastructure to support the crisper, cleaner, and overall better sounding calls. The only handset maker who actually makes devices that support HD Voice is Nokia. Others, rightly so, don’t feel like they should bother supporting the technology, because there are very few networks who are rolling it out or even plan to roll it out. It’s the classic chicken and egg problem, something similar to what we’ve seen with NFC.
What do you think, would you make more phone calls if they sounded like what you just listened to above, or it doesn’t matter since the convenience of texting outweighs everything else?
[Via: Nokia Conversations]