Posts Tagged ‘Nokia’

Nokia World: How do you own the platform when you don’t own the platform?

Nokia World, London – Having jumped off of a burning platform and into Redmond’s arms – a story that I (partially) broke on TechCrunch back in February this year – Nokia this morning finally took the wraps off its much anticipated entry into the Windows Phone world with two new devices: The flagship Lumia 800 and a lower-cost but competitively spec’ed (for a Windows Phone, anyway) Lumia 710.

I’ll get this out of the way right now. The Nokia Lumia 800 is a great looking device, sharing its design cues if not its internals with the recently launched meego-powered N9. After spending some hands-on time with the Lumia 800, overall there’s much to like if not love about this phone. However, much of the credit has to go to Microsoft not Nokia as the OS – Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) – is all Redmond’s own work. And herein lies the conundrum.

How does Nokia intend to own the platform when it doesn’t actually own the platform? How will the company differentiate its smartphone wares in a sea of Androids and iPhones and, drilling down further, with LG, Samsung and others offering Windows Phone-powered handsets. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop himself inadvertently highlighted the exact problem when he described his decision not to adopt Google’s Android for fear of commodization. Today we got a partial answer.

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Review: Nokia E6 (a must have upgrade)

On paper at least, Nokia’s E6 smartphone could have been designed just for me.

It keeps most of the design cues and form-factor first seen on the E71 and its successor the E72 – easy one handed operation, great physical QWERTY keyboard, rock solid build (well, the E71 at least), superb call quality, free turn-by-turn navigation, amazing battery life and sleek design –  while introducing a high resolution touch screen, 8 megapixel camera, HD video recording and playback and the latest version of Symbian, somewhat redesigned for touch.

In fact, the E6 is the type of smartphone that I’ve been waiting for: a touch screen phone that doesn’t generally force me to use touch so that I can still operate the device one-handed and swap between direct manipulation and click and scroll when either is more efficient or convenient. Of course, attempting to combine the best of both worlds could mean the E6 falls horribly between the two. I’m glad to say, however, that for the most part this isn’t the case.

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Review: Nokia N8 and the Symbian 3 verdict

Announced back in July, Nokia’s new flagship N8 smartphone began shipping on the last day of September to those that had pre-ordered the device (it’s now available on most UK networks). As did the first review units sent out with almost military provision to chosen technology bloggers, this writer included.

Having already declared “Nokia is back” at Nokia World, the Finnish juggernaut is to a degree framing the N8, the first to run the new Symbian 3, as a hard reset for the company as it attempts to return its once held leadership position in the smartphone space. Not in terms of marketshare (that’s not looking too shabby) but in terms of mindshare where Nokia has in recent times fallen behind iPhone, BackBerry and the relentless onslaught on Android. It’s in this context that the N8 is to be judged.

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Nokia World: Very quick hands-on impressions of Nokia’s three new smartphones

Yesterday was a really fun day spent at Nokia World, the Finnish handset maker’s annual shindig. Conveniently, this year it was held in my home city of London and I got to cover the event for TechCrunch Europe.

On day one, Nokia unveiled three new smartphones running Symbian^3, the C6, C7 and E7, which I later had a brief hands-on with, along with the previously announced N8. I came away quietly impressed with subtle but extremely necessary improvements to the UI of Symbian, which also seemed snappier and in touch form really benefits from Nokia’s decision to (universally) switch to capacitive touch screens. The build quality on all four devices seems rock solid too, and the newly introduced ClearBlack screen technology “for improved outdoor visibility” and contrast levels was quite impressive too. That said, Nokia is still crying out for wider developer support to bring better and more third-party apps, but that’s also what events like Nokia World are for.

Oh, and the other personal highlight of Nokia World was definitely meeting Chris Ziegler and Thomas Ricker from Engadget, and being recognized by the awesome Leila Makki of TelecomTV, along with a few other folks from Twitter.

Read my full coverage over at TechCrunch…

MeeGo for smartphones gets previewed

We were recently given a preview of MeeGo for Internet tablets, but now the Open Source Linux-based OS from Nokia and Intel has been publicly outed running on smartphone hardware.

It’s only a few UI screen shots and a YouTube video of the OS running on some kind of reference device, but it gives us a good idea of how MeeGo is translating to the small screen, and how much of its Nokia Maemo legacy remains.

First impressions are generally good; the UI is pretty in parts, if a little barebones (think: Android) in some areas. The contact/address book isn’t much to look at, for example, while the web browser and webOS-esque task switcher appears much more fully baked. Overall, however, it looks promising.

Video and more screen shots after the jump…

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More Nokia tablet rumors, and what's this? MeeGo for touch

Another day, another rumor of Nokia’s next-generation Internet tablet.

This time from Digitimes, which pegs the device at 7-9 inches, based on an ARM chip and running the Nokia/Intel MeeGo OS.

Yes, that’s right, not a version of Windows 7, despite Nokia’s increasingly cozy relationship with Microsoft and its track record with the Booklet 3G netbook (see first impressions).

See also: Nokia said to be readying iPad competitor – Windows or MeeGo anyone?

And low and behold, on the same day as the report, MeeGo shows off a multi touch-friendly version of the Linux-based OS, which looks quite promising.

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EXCLUSIVE: Mobile Review's Eldar Murtazin talks Nokia, N8 leaks, 'iPhone-gate', and more

“I’m not blogger, I’m a professional journalist”, says Mobile Review Editor-in-Chief, Eldar Murtazin.

In a wide-ranging interview with last100, it’s just one of many misconceptions he’s keen to correct following reports last week that his “review” of Nokia’s N8 was responsible for a dive in the handset maker’s stock price and may have even forced it to bring forward the device’s launch. The then unannounced smartphone is the first based on the company’s Symbian ^3 operating system.

“I’m working for ages in the field”, says 34 year-old Murtazin, who prior to founding Mobile Review in 2002 was responsible for covering the mobile sector for one of Russia’s largest hardware review sites. “I like this job, I like different tasks, different goals, receiving different devices, and trying to find out what feature, what devices will be more interesting for the market.”

He’s also quick to point out that the N8 controversy is nothing new. Mobile Review is renowned for breaking the cover of unannounced devices, particularly those from Nokia. In fact, for Murtazin perhaps the hardest decision is deciding what not to publish or when.

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Nokia wants to connect everyone with 3 new QWERTY-touting handsets

Nokia-c3-c6-e5Nokia unveiled three new phones today as part of their Everyone Connect launch, (press release here). “Everyone Connect” is Nokia’s attempted at bringing E-Mail, Instant Messaging and Social Networking together into a unified whole. As part of this messaging emphasis, all three phones have a QWERTY keyboard. This is a loud and clear message from Nokia as to what they think about touch screen keyboards. Another theme that ties these three phones together is their low cost with Nokia clearly wanting to bring smart phones to the low and mid tier markets. While none of these phones are ground breaking, and may invite yet more of the same-old tired Nokia bashing, these three may prove to be ideally placed to sell in large numbers, thus maintaining Nokia’s market share.

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Nokia said to be readying iPad competitor – Windows or MeeGo anyone?

From the words of an “analyst”, so I won’t hold my breath. Nokia is said to be readying its own take on the now-credible Internet tablet, post Apple’s iPad.

TheStreet.com reports: “Nokia is working with suppliers and design manufacturers on a touch-screen tablet to have available as early as this fall, according to Rodman Renshaw analyst Ashok Kumar, who is close to Nokia’s technology partners. Nokia declined to comment.”

My take

With Internet tablets likely to soon become part of the carrier subsidy merry-go-round, Nokia will be forced to jump on the latest bandwagon – although it already has form in this space – so it would make sense if the handset maker is already putting into action plans to challenge Apple’s iPad. It’s not like we didn’t already know that 2010 is going to be the year of the tablet, just like 08/09 was for the Netbook – and Nokia was far too late to that particular party.

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MeeGo arrives on the N900, non-developers advised to move along

N900 booting into Meego terminal

The MeeGo community blog has announced that N900 users can download a working image of the new MeeGo operating system. In addition to supporting the N900 ARM architecture, they have also released an image for Intel’s Atom processors, thus covering the shared heritage of the the Moblin and Maemo parent platforms.

In their own words:

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