Nokia and Motorola 2MPix cellcam music machines

Everybody’s been blogging about the Palm+Microsoft lovefest so I thought I’d cover two other new devices that might be important and more widely used in the long run.

Both Motorola and Nokia announced 2 megapixel cellcams yesterday. They both support memory cards and various digital audio formats, promising to be good cellpods as well as phones and cameras.

Motorola Razr V3x has fixed a lot of the Razr V3 shortcomings I blogged about previously. No mention of whether V3x will support at least EDGE if not WCDMA, but I’m guessing both since the lower resolution of its two cameras, an inside-the-flip VGA cam, is meant for video conferencing. It supports a 2MPix external camera with LED flash, hopefully of good enough quality so that I can finally check off “quality cellcam” from my must-have list. It doesn’t appear to support WiFi, and I think I’m dreaming if I really hope to see FRS in a handset, but the TransFlash memory slot allows you to expand storage up to 512MB. This should allow for more digital music and photos by far than Papa V3.

Nokia 3250 launches Nokia’s new XpressMusic line of digital audio player oriented cellpods. According to the press release, XpressMusic guarantees a phone will provide:

• Great audio quality
• Dedicated key(s) for fast and easy access to your music collection
• Play, talk, and play – music pauses when a call comes in, resumes when the call has ended
• Use any headphones for listening with standard 3.5mm jack
• Extended battery time (minimum of 10 hours for music)
• Substantial storage capacity for a large number of songs
• Create and edit playlists on the go
• USB 2.0 support for fast and easy transfer of your music
• Wide support of audio formats – including MP3, M4A, WMA, AAC and eAAC+
• Easy access to over-the-air music downloads

Dedicated music keys, use of a standard 3.5mm jack, and USB 2 support are all spot on. I’m not sure I like the rotating bottom which swaps keypad for music controls, but I’m willing to wait til I hold one in my own two hands to pass final judgement. Other 3250 features include Series 60, the previously mentioned 2MPix digicam, stereo FM radio, GPRS and EDGE, the very cool ability to share playlists using SMS or Bluetooth, and support for microSD cards up to 1GB in size. (Note: I believe this makes 3250 the first announced Nokia handset to use microSD instead of RS-MMC.) Details can be had from the Nokia 3250 presentation, 3250 data sheet, and the XpressMusic backgrounder.

It appears that both Nokia and Motorola are finally getting their acts together with higher resolution cellcams and standard, expandable memory. It will be interesting to see if those trends continue across other new as-yet-unannounced handsets from the dualing duo. And if the audio quality of 3250 is as good as promised, Apple+Moto may need to innovate new ROKR’s in double time.