By Paige Engelhardt
Zack Morris introduced the trend. Derek Zoolander raised the standard. Nokia perfected it.
Fresh from the drawing table, a cellular phone enters the market in the next few weeks with the technical savvy-ness to capture, store and transmit digital photos.
The phone, Nokia 3650, has the digital capabilities to take photos using an integrated VGA camera, record video clips and real-time audio content and send multi-media messages all from the palm of your hand, according to a Nokia press release.
The phone recently received the prestigious Innovations 2003 award at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. A panel of industry designers, engineers and journalists judged the Nokia 3650 phone as one of the year''s best new consumer electronics products in the United States, according to a review by Timo Poropudas.
Yet despite the raves, awards and seemingly endless new features, students are not impressed.
'A phone with all those features might be convenient, but the convenience is outweighed by the high cost, low battery life and the probably low quality of the features,' said Catherine Chou, a first year law student at BYU from Morris Plains, N.J.
BYU film student, Chris Sturgis, from Boston, has worked extensively with digital cameras and said he would not expect high quality resolution from a cell phone.
'From the ones that I''ve seen on the Internet, they''ve always been low quality,' Sturgis said. 'I''d rather buy them separately. If you buy a digital camera separately, you can get much higher quality.'
For students who extensively use cell phones, the added benefits of the Nokia 3650 do not address their main reasons for owning a cell phone.
'A cell phone''s main purpose is to make contact from one party to another,' Sturgis said. 'I wouldn''t see the purpose in it .'
The Nokia 3650''s features may not be specifically designed to attract a college-age audience. Experience suggests a different demographic consumer base.
'If you look at ... cell phones in Asian countries, they''re typically a lot more advanced than they are here,' Chou said. 'People who spend time in those countries might want something that would seem the latest in those countries.'
A younger crowd may also find more enjoyment in the multi-media message system than would college students.
'It seems like a teeny-bopper kind of thing,' Sturgis said. 'In terms of adults, I don''t see the practicality in that.'