China has their own 3G standard. First thing you may be asking yourself is why? China has always done their own thing, and by developing an alternative to WCDMA they save themselves the burden of having to pay for WCDMA royalties. Every decision in today’s mobile world, and I mean every single bloody decision from the materials used to make the body of a device, to whether the instruction manual inside the package comes printed in color or black and white, comes down to money. Nokia feels that with China’s population of 1.3 billion people, playing their game and making devices that work on their network would be beneficial to their bottom line.
Politics out of the way, does anything make the 6788 special? Well it has two 8s in the product name, which is a big thing in China. Some Chinese, a fair bit actually, are still superstitious and believe that the number 8 will bring them good luck. When picking a mobile phone number, they want to make sure it has as many 8s as possible, and they’ll even pay to have a phone number with a lot of 8s. Specification wise you have a massive 2.8 inch screen that is sadly QVGA (320 x 240) resolution, a 5 megapixel camera, and it’s powered by S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2. The 6788 will star shipping in December on China Mobile, price unknown. Looks like Colin Giles, Nokia Senior Vice President for Greater China, Japan and Korea, kept his promise.
[Photo below via All About Symbian]
[Press Release]
