BT Fusion / Motorola V560 / Bluephone
Available
now 16th June 2005
BT and Motorola have announced the fruits
of a multimillion pound project stretching back over
two years to produce a new and radical phone for
the UK market.. and have finally announced a handset
that looks almost exactly the same as most other common
Motorola handsets. Initially dubbed the "Bluephone",
this forms part of a range of handsets called "BT
Fusion".
In fact, the Motorola V560 is almost
exactly the same in every respect as other recent V500
series handsets, except that it has a little BT logo
on it. The screen size of 176x220 pixels, the basic
VGA resolution camera, the internal layout, quad band
GSM plus GPRS and of course Bluetooth are all identical
to other handsets in the range.
So where has the money gone? Certainly
not on the handset hardware. Although we do like the
V500 series of handsets, they are looking dated these
days. It looks like most of the money has been spent
by BT, not Motorola.
Indeed, the it's the back end of the
BT Fusion system that is interesting, with what amounts
to a Bluetooth-enabled VOIP point wired into a BT ADSL
line enabling the V560 to make low-cost calls when within
about 25 metres. This is basically an advanced Bluetooth
accessory for the phone. Visitors to your household with
BT Fusion handsets can also piggyback onto your system.
Is this a great idea then? Well.. we
hate to rain on BT's parade but we can hardly see the
point of the whole setup. It will only work if you subscribe
to BT Mobile or Vodafone (it's the same network these
days) and want to pay for the expense of a BT ADSL
line in your home. If you're a subscriber with another
telco or mobile provider, then forget it. You are limited
to using this very dull V500 series handset at launch,
with the possibility of using an ever-so-slightly modified
RAZR
at a later date. So.. if you like Motorolas, use BT
Mobile or Vodafone and want BT Broadband AND you
are close enough to an ADSL-capable exchange then you
are in luck. That's a pretty small market segment.
To us, this looks like a technical solution
in search of a market, rather than the other way around.
People with long memories may remember BT's Phonepoint
technology that briefly ran in the early 1990s (see
BT's archive).
That too was a technology in search of a market - and
it failed disastrously.
And boil the technology down and it's
not so clever after all. VOIP has been around for a
few years now, and the V560 is definitely showing it's
age in terms of features. Had this product come to market
in 2003, then it would have been fantastic. But now
it's beginning to look somewhat irrelevant. Sorry, BT.
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|
Motorola
V560 at a glance
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Available:
|
Q3
2005
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Network:
|
Quad-band
GSM
|
Data:
|
GPRS
|
Screen:
|
176x220
pixels, 65,000 colours
|
Camera:
|
0.3
megapixels
|
Size:
|
Medium
Clamshell 88x49x25mm
/ 115 grams
|
Bluetooth:
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Yes
|
Infra-red:
|
No
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Yes
|
Battery
life:
|
Not
specified
|
|
|