Siemens yesterday announced the Siemens CX70, the first push-to-talk enabled handset from the company. The push-to-talk feature (being called Push and Talk or PaT by Siemens) works over GPRS. Here are some other features of the CX70:
* 132 x 176 pixel 65K color screen
* 3-D Java engine
* VGA resolution camera
* Only 18 mm thick
Here is a description of how the PaT feature works (quoted from Siemens):
bq. First, the user selects the people he or she wants to talk to from a list. At the push of a button, all of these previously defined addressees immediately receive an invitation which they can accept or decline. As soon as the participants have confirmed, the initial caller pushes the PaT button and starts the chat, which everyone hears simultaneously. There is no time-consuming call setup, because the "Always On" feature of the GPRS network maintains the connection all along. Any group member can reply immediately by pressing the PaT button. The communication can only go in one direction at a time, however: whoever presses the PaT button first, talks first.