 A user searches video clips on youtube.com on the touch-sensitive screen of the Samsung Haptic phone with a pencil tip. Touch-screen phones from Samsung, LG and Pantech & Curitel are selling hot in Korea since late last month. / Korea Times Photo by Shim Hyun-cheol |
By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
It's a bit slow, but it works well enough. Reading e-mail and browsing the Internet via mobile phone have become more enjoyable and convenient than ever, thanks to new technology and clever ideas.
Mobile Internet is the hottest issue among early adopters of technology in Korea. At www.cetizen.com, the largest online community of mobile phone users, the three most popular handsets these days are all touch-screen phones specializing in Web browsing ― Samsung's Haptic, Pantech & Curitel's CanU and LG's Touch Web Phone.
These so-called full-browsing phones are selling at impressive rates. Samsung says that it has sold around 30,000 Haptic phones in 15 days since its launch on March 25, which is about the double the daily sales of other new models. Its hefty price tag ― 797,000 won ($800) without a rebate or a discount ― hasn't been discouraging customers, the company says.
``It's a bit expensive, but still we are in short supply. Retailers are even paying in advance to secure their volume,'' a company spokesman said.
LG and Curitel are also happy with their Web-surfing handsets, each selling more than 1,000 units a day.
Telecom network operators also helped handset makers make mobile Internet easier, faster and less expensive. Three telecom operators were reluctant to sell such full-browsing handsets because they wanted to tie their users to their own pay-per-view portal sites. But this year, they have changed their policies to allow their users full access. Improvement in network systems also sped up the connection speed of mobile Web.
Mobile Internet competition escalated on April 3, when LG Telecom launched the Oz price plan, which offers unlimited Internet access for 6,000 won ($6) per month.
Boon of Touch Screens
LG's Web Touch Phone is on sale at LG Telecom, combining hardware and service for mobile Internet use. Its high-definition screen, easy control and relatively low price has earned it recognition as a truly Web-oriented phone.
Web Touch Phone has a touch-sensitive screen that is superior to that of Samsung Haptic in terms of color definition. It also has an embedded Web browser, which displays Web pages the same way Internet Explorer does on a personal computer. Users can easily increase or decrease font sizea with a dial.
Samsung's Haptic phone is more versatile. Mobile TV, a digital camera and MP3 player are its basic features, and it also has two fun elements ― a vibrating screen and motion sensor.
The phone makes a tick motion when the screen is touched, confirming that it understood the user's command. It also automatically shifts the screen between horizontal and vertical positions using a built-in motion sensor, similar to that used in the Nintendo Wii game console. The same feature is being used with dice and Korean folk game Yutnoli.
Haptic is being serviced by SK Telecom. At 26,000 won per month, its unlimited Internet plan is more expensive than that of Web Touch of the LG Electronics-LG Telecom alliance. However, many users feel that Haptic is faster than Web Touch in displaying Web pages because of its clever Web browsing system.
Korean Web sites are usually crowded with traffic-heavy graphics and animation that make mobile Internet painfully slow. The Haptic-SK Telecom system circumvents the problem by showing a snapshot of the Web page to the user, instead of showing the original, data-heavy page.
When the user clicks on a certain position of the snapshot, the SK Telecom server interprets the motion into a real command on the Web page and gives the subsequent result in another snapshot of the next Web page.
This ``Web viewer'' technique is controversial among fans of mobile Internet who downplay it as fake browsing. Many also feel it's less sensitive than Web Touch Phone in reacting to users' command, though its downloading speed appears faster.
Sorry, Blackberry
Another reason that these full-browsing phones are fast gaining popularity in Korea is e-mail.
Both Samsung's Haptic and LG's Web Touch provide the e-mail services that Blackberry offers in other countries. Telecom firms' mail servers automatically refresh users' inboxes and ``push'' new mail to handsets. External mail accounts such as Hanmail, Hotmail, and Gmail can be linked to the mobile e-mail services as well.
Using e-mail on mobile phones is an old habit in Western countries, where smartphones such as Blackberry have become a staple for businessmen. But in Korea, foreign smartphones are almost non-existent because of fussy government regulations on software and hardware configuration, which the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea has cited as a non-tariff barrier on foreign goods.
indizio@koreatimes.co.kr
