It’s another darn mobile acronym, that’s what it is. But it’s actually quite exciting if you’re into mobile content. To take the basics first, HSDPA stands for High-Speed Downlink Packet Access, although it’s probably easier to think of it as ‘mobile broadband’ or ’3.5G’.
In short, it’s an upgrade to the operators’ 3G networks that gives you more bandwidth, making it faster to get content – whether that’s streaming video and music, or downloading games, video or music.
As a rough guide to what it means in the real world, while 3G currently gives you around 384 kilobits per second, HSDPA will allow 1.8 megabits per second for most of the handsets that the operators will launch later this year, although this will go higher in the future.
All the operators are upgrading their 3G networks to HSDPA, with 3 announcing last week that the first handsets would go on sale before Christmas. So what does it mean for mobile content? Well, for music, it means the operators will be able to start selling you full albums rather than individual songs.
Meanwhile, for video, it will improve the quality of streaming video, while making video downloads much faster. It’ll either be quicker to get content, or the operators will be able to up the quality, and get rid of some of that unattractive pixelisation that you see even on a 3G connection.
It remains to be seen whether the operators will let you use the increased bandwidth to use Voice-over-IP software to make ‘free’ phone calls. As you can guess, they probably won’t be keen.
What will the handsets be like? Well, 3 was showing off a prototype LG mobile last week that was an extremely slinky clamshell, so they won’t be bricks. Meanwhile T-Mobile has already announced plans to launch the MDA Vario II, a smartphone equipped with a QWERTY keyboard.
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About Stuart Dredge
you can play online flash games with some devices that have flash lite 3 installed on them but not things like seafight as that needs a higher version of flash. So i think you would need to wait for something like a flash lite 4 or flash lite 5 to be released rather than it being the strength of the signal you are getting. However i do not know when a new version of flash lite will come out. Maybe someone else does?
ive been on hsdpa for a day now and its pretty sweet
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