CELLPHONE giant Nokia is considering building antivirus software into its latest batch of multimedia smartphones, fearing that emerging breeds of phone viruses will block users鈥� access to thousands of paid-for music tracks or movies.
鈥淭oday, the threat from phone viruses is more theoretical than real,鈥� says Kari Tuutti, a director of Nokia鈥檚 multimedia division, 鈥渂ut as phones become more like computers the threat may become more concrete.鈥�
So Nokia has begun working with computer security firms F-Secure and Symantec in a bid to work out the best method of protecting its phones, including its first 鈥渋Pod killer鈥�. Nokia鈥檚 N91 phone, unveiled last week, has a 4-gigabyte hard drive which will hold up to 3000 tracks, three times as many as Apple Computer鈥檚 basic iPod mini machine. Despite having the same size hard drive, the gadgets use different encoding schemes for music files so track counts don鈥檛 match.
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Tuutti says people who own such phones will 鈥渘eed to protect their digital content鈥� from corruption by mobile malware. However, he concedes that vigilance on the part of the user, in rejecting files that arrive from untrusted sources, won鈥檛 be enough. So Nokia is considering supplying antivirus software free with the smartphone, though the user might need to buy further virus definition updates online so the phone could identify new malware. 鈥淲e need a solution that鈥檚 both secure and low cost,鈥� says Tuutti.
鈥淣okia鈥檚 鈥榠Pod killer鈥� will hold up to 3000 tracks, three times as many as Apple鈥檚 basic iPod mini machine鈥�
They haven鈥檛 got long to make their minds up, as competition in the multimedia smartphone market is about to hot up: the disc-based N91 launches in the autumn at around the same time as Sony-Ericsson鈥檚 flash-memory-based 鈥淲alkman鈥� phone, the W800, which will store 150 tracks on a 512-megabyte flash memory card (or 1000 tunes on a 2-gigabyte card bought separately).
The battle could boil down to a contest over battery life. Using hard drives boosts power consumption. The N91 lasts 5 hours with the phone, music and camera frequently used, says Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia鈥檚 head of multimedia. But using it for music only, users will get 12 hours play.
Rival Sony-Ericsson says the W800, based on flash memory, will offer 15 hours life if the phone is used as well as the player, but 30 hours if the phone is turned off.
