Nextel, Sun, Motorola introduce phone, talk Java

April 5, 2001 —

NEXTEL COMMUNICATIONS AND Motorola Monday announced the release of the i85s Java-enabled mobile phone.

Manufactured and designed by Motorola in Schaumburg, Ill., the i85s will be resold by Reston, Va.-baseed Nextel, Motorola, Southern LINC, and Pacific Wireless Technologies and is among the first phones to use Java.

The phone will come loaded with a number of applications, including voice-activated dialing, a datebook, an enhanced phonebook, a voice recorder, menu customization, adjustable font sizes, and enhanced security.

The i85s even offers users the "smart phone" feature of having the ringer automatically turned off and calls forwarded to voice mail when in a meeting that has been entered into the phone's date book. Future applications will be downloadable from Nextel's Web site as they become available, the company said in a release.

The phone uses Sun Microsystems' Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), a version of Sun's Java language aimed at mobile devices such as phones or PDAs.

The phones will appeal to white collar professionals and small to midsize business owners, Nextel President and CEO Timothy M. Donahue said on a conference call held Monday morning. The companies chose Java because it offers "richer content on mobile devices and provides customers with more choices to manage their business," he said.

Using Java, the phones will offer a rich graphical interface and will, in the future, give them access to office e-mail as well as management and sales applications, Donahue said. Applications downloaded to the phones "will allow users to customize phones with applications tailored to their specific needs," he said. The applications will run the gamut from freeware to shareware to commercial, he said, adding that most programs would cost about $10, with upgrades being free. Some programs will also have a usage fee and Nextel may eventually begin to collect revenue from programs it offers, Donahue said.

The phones have 640KB of storage space for programs, with 120KB of that used with pre-loaded applications. The target size for most programs will be 10KB to 50KB.

The i85s will be available in the United States from Nextel at a promotional price of $199.99 starting April 2, $100 off the retail price of $299.99, and will be offered in Canada later in the year. The phone weighs 4.7 ounces and provides 165 minutes of talk time and 75 hours of standby, according to Nextel. The phones also include such standard Nextel features as two-way radio, a built-in speaker for hands-free calling, text messaging, caller ID, voicemail, 3-way calling, and vibration that allows for silent notification of a call.

Nextel will introduce a second Java-enabled phone from Motorola, the i50sx, later in April and will also introduce four more handsets from the Motorola partnership later this year. The i50sx has some of the i85s' features and is a bit bigger.

Scott McNealy, the chairman and CEO of Sun and Christopher B. Galvin, chairman and CEO of Motorola, also spoke on the conference call.

Java-enabled mobile phones are already available in Japan and Korea, and J2ME-based devices are forthcoming from a number of vendors, including Nokia, Siemens, and Sony, McNealy said.

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