NEC E338
Discontinued 7th November 2004
Rough specifications of the NEC E338
have been around for a few months, but NEC only recently
announced the handset officially, and despite the fact
that it is on sale, both NEC and the network 3 (who
are selling it) have kept remarkably quiet about the
handset, with just a single press release from 3 at
the end of October.
It's clear that the NEC E338 is a conventionally
good looking handset, on the small side for a 3G unit,
but much larger than most 2.5G handsets at 130 grams
and 94x47x24mm in size. There's a single rotating camera
in CIF resolution (352x288 pixels) which is OK for video
calls but pretty poor for any kind of still photograph.
The E338's screen is a standard 3G resolution of 176x220
pixels in 65,000 colours.
There's
no Bluetooth on the NEC E338, nor is there any removable
memory, and the internal memory is just 17Mb, which
is a shame because the NEC E338 can play back a wide
variety of media formats.
Usefully the E338 also supports tri-band
GSM and GPRS in addition to 3G UMTS voice and data,
so it can be used pretty much anywhere. There's also
the usual features with a 3G phone such as video calls,
a WAP 2.0 browser, email client, MMS, Java, PC synchronisation and
polyphonic ringtones.
Styling on the E338 is unfussy and minimalist.
It manages to look smart, and is certainly an improvement
over many 3G handsets. There's no external display however,
but internally the phone is well laid out with simple
to use controls.
The NEC E338 can be seen as a clamshell
counterpart to the NEC E228 candy-bar phone. It's pretty
basic as 3G phones go, but it's still better specified
that it's 3G rivals. It's hard to see the unique selling
point of this handset though, as most handsets on the
3 network are so heavily discounted as to make price
a fairly minor factor. Available from mid-November 2004
on Hutchison 3 contract and pay-as-you go in the UK,
and roughly the same time on 3 in other regions.
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NEC
E338 at a glance
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Available:
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Q4
2004
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Network:
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UMTS
(3G) + Tri-band GSM
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Data:
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UMTS
(3G) + GPRS
|
Screen:
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176x220
pixels, 65,000 colours
|
Camera:
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352x288
pixels, rotating
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Size:
|
Large
candy-bar 94x47x24mm
/ 130 grams
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Bluetooth:
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No
|
Infra-red:
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No
|
Polyphonic:
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Yes
|
Java:
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Yes
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Battery
life:
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2 hours talk / 7 days standby
|
|
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