Best Nokia Blog

First of all we should say that anyone who has been misled by Nokia’s recent ramblings should not be laughed at. How the company talked up its Windows Phone 7 plans at Mobile World Congress and other events throughout the earlier part of this year, one would conclude that the company has some devices running on the new platform ready for consumer’s eager hands (and not so eager wallets). But that seems not to be the case as the company has said that while it is planning on releasing a Windows Phone 7 device by the end of the year, it will be consistently selling more and more Symbian devices during the transition. We’re guessing this would be to help the company reach their goal of 150 million devices shipped in the years coming.

According to the company’s official statement, they do plan on switching to Windows Phone 7, albeit over the next two years which gives them plenty of time to release some of the previously promised Symbian devices. Whether MeeGo will see the light of day on a Nokia branded smartphone during this period is of course not known but seeing the company’s ever increasing want to push MeeGo off to the side we highly doubt the platform will take a major residence in the company’s two year timeline.

Nokia has also stated that Symbian users should look for a major OTA software update coming this summer. The company has given the Ovi Store a “fresh look and feel” thanks to a new UI that includes revamped layout and new buttons.

While these improvements and phones are not designed to save the Symbian platform, Nokia is known for offering some of the best software support in the mobile phone industry and we’re guessing this is one of those things where the company is looking to keep its Symbian users happy while they work out the kinks of Windows Phone 7.

Source: Engadget

Nokia, the Finnish cellphone manufacturer has begun delivery of updates to it’s some of its smartphones. The included models that will be receiving the update include the E52, E66 and the E72. Because the E52 and the E72 are very much alike, both devices are receiving the same software version, 053.001, which will contain minor software changes from the previous 051.018 and 052.005 updates respectively.

As of now there is no specific information on what exactly will be included in the actual software update. But, it does seem the update will be available for most, if not all, E52 and E72 users.

Both the E52 and the E72 have User Data Preservation (UDP), which means that during the update process, user data such as files, contacts, etc. will remain in contact. It is however recommended that a backup be done before updating any of the devices for security reasons. Said software update will be released OTA, but users will still be able to update their devices through Nokia’s Ovi Suite PC application.

The E66 is receiving a firmware update that will bump it up from 500.21.009 to v501.21.001. According to tipsters, the update for the E66 will not be initially available for all users though Nokia will be increasing the availability of the firmware update in the not too distant future.

Unfortunately, the E66 does not feature UDP, thus users who are interested in keeping their personal data are advised to back it up before proceeding with the firmware update. As for the update availability of the E66’s update, it will be available through the Ovi Suite PC application or OTA.

As mentioned before, the actual changes which are included in the update are not yet known but within the next few days, this information should become available.

Source: Softpedia

The Nokia C7 is one of the many launches that have come from the Nokia stable recently. This phone sticks to the Nokia tradition of offering the best value for money for consumers, with a solid package that is very sturdy. Despite it being sturdy, it is also one of the best looking phones to come out of the Nokia stable in recent times. The sleek and rounded edges offer a contemporary and modern feel to the phone. This is one of the very few phones that will appeal to both the male and female buyers.

The phone comes with a pretty large 3.5 inch touch screen that would be more ideal for playing your favourite games and browsing the web in the phone’s new web browser that offers support to Flash Lite 4. This in turn, will support a majority of Flash Player 10.1 content. The phone hence provides support for streaming video meaning that you can watch all the YouTube videos directly on your phone itself without having to look for a computer every time you want to kill off time.

The Nokia C7 has a stunning 8 megapixel camera. The camera has a LED flash that enables it to capture photos, with amazing quality even in low light conditions. The camera also has face recognition software technology that is similar to the ones that you normally see in compact digital cameras. The camera provides digital zoom up to 2x for images and 3x for videos. The phone has an 8GB memory to store the photos and videos and it stores the images in JPEG/EXIF formats. Due to having a capacitive touch screen, the phone lets the users to pinch to zoom.

The phone should retail at around £290 when it is launched in the UK shortly.

Nokia is taking on a whole new approach in the seemingly elusive Smartphone industry by introducing the Nokia X3 Touch and Type. This device is unlike any other mobile that the manufacturer has launched in the past as it combines two mobile phone functionalities that you won’t usually see together.

This phone features both a touch screen display, as well as an alphanumeric keypad at the same time. Here’s a closer look at this unique device.

The Best of Both Worlds

There are consumers who prefer touch screen mobiles but still miss the ever dependable feature of an alphanumeric keypad. On the other hand, users of standard keypads also wish to experience the convenience and pleasure of using a touch screen device.

Without compromising either of the features, the manufacturer has combined both in the Nokia X3 Touch and Type handset. Now, you can compose text messages more quickly using the alphanumeric pad and browse through your mobile using its touch functionality all in one device. This truly is combining the best of both worlds.

Not Short in Features

The Nokia X3 Touch and Type doesn’t rely solely on its unusual feature combination. For starters, it sports a very intriguing appeal. It comes in several colour schemes including black, white, gray, pink, and blue. One of its best features in terms of design is its slimness as it only measures 9.6 mm thin.

The Nokia X3 Touch and Type also has WLAN support which means that you can go online practically anytime and anywhere (so long as you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot, of course).

The built-in 5-Megapixel camera is also a pleasant surprise as it can capture high quality photos that you will be proud to share with your family and friends. All in all, the X3 Touch and Type is a device that definitely deserves a second look.

There is something interesting to see when one looks at the results of the Nokia design by community project that has been part of Nokia’s plan for determining the hardware specifications that people want to see in a mobile phone. However, looking at handset sales performance and actual spec details, there is a significant difference between high end models and devices that simply sell well.

What many people tend to forget is that it is the mid range handsets that sell the most –after all, this is where the majority of the target market is concentrated. However, when asked to come up with hardware specs for a new smart phone, people tend to concentrate on giving the device higher specifications.

As it stands, the Nokia concept phone will come with an 8 mega pixel camera, a 4 inch touch screen display and so far, an undisclosed processor capabilities. Even with the CPU still undetermined, it is easy to see the direction that the concept is moving towards. The request for an operating system that is both open source and can handle unlimited multitasking also seems more in the direction of the Google Android instead of the Symbian or the Moblin mobile platforms.

While it is unlikely that all the specs in the Nokia conversations blog will be added into this device, it is easy to see what the typical mentality of consumers are: when it comes to actual purchases, specifications that are practical are selected. For wishful thinking, users would like to see and over the top hardware configuration as long as they would not be forced to purchase the product later on.

The design by community event has already finalized the specifications and has since moved to the part where the community chooses from three available designs for the smart phone.

Nokia’s C6 is a very simple smart phone, but one that has been attracting plenty of interest from smart phone users. This is because the device actually manages to be fully functional, without being over the top. And the best part about all of this is that the handset is priced with a rather practical price tag, making it an excellent handset to switch to for anyone planning replace their current device.

In terms of form factor, the Nokia C6 is as regular as a handset can be. When we said simple, we meant it. This Symbian handset comes with a simple form factor, large touch screen display, a slide out keyboard and a short row of buttons below the screen. The overall effect is subtle yet effective. In black, the design looks pretty serious and high end. In white, the phone is elegant and sophisticated. Either way, the design works and users simply need to choose the variation that works best for them.

The keyboard on the handset is a joy to use. The four row layout might seem a little cramped with the extra pad on the right side of the keyboard, but after a short while, owners will be used to the control setup. In any case, many smart phone users will enjoy being able to type out long messages and posts easily on a keyboard. Also, the buttons are quite responsive –making it an effective keyboard.

The one thing that users might be complaining about is the TFT resistive touch screen display. The lack of multi touch and gestures is pretty crippling when it comes to browsing and searching through the device –making it a little more tedious than it would be on a capacitive touch screen display. The device also comes with a 5 mega pixel camera for taking videos and images.

It seems that the largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, Nokia, is suffering from lower revenues this year. According to the latest financial reports, the Espoo based manufacturer has sold more phones than ever, however, the continued decrease in the overall cost of handsets –particularly basic GSM mobile devices has brought Nokia even less profits than they did year.

Lowered price tags are really taking a bite out of Nokia’s financial status, and there is nothing that the company is able to do about it other than start focusing on high end smart phones.

As expected, the number of smart phone users each year is increasing. Not that there is no market for 2G devices (these are often good as emergency use handsets or to be brought along to events where minding an expensive smart phone is out of the picture –such as really fun parties where the chances of coming home sober are virtually zero). In any case, the price for 2G devices is continuously going down as the standard shifts more and more towards smart phones.

Nokia has always been able to balance its financial performance each year with its sales from low end devices, but as the technology moves forward, the company is forced to concentrate more on its’ high end line. However, as well known as the Symbian platform may be, many industry experts feel that the platform is not good enough to compete with the likes of the Android and the BlackBerry OS.

If the upcoming launch of the Nokia N9 smart phone is to be any indication, then the Finnish phone maker is more than well aware of the situation, they are already preparing for it.

The Nokia N-series (their flagship line of handsets) is getting a major revamp with the MeeGo operating system. They had already began preparations last year with the Maemo OS but the sudden tie up with Intel’s Moblin team to develop the MeeGo operating system delayed plans. The upcoming Nokia N8 will be the last handset to use the Symbian^3 OS.

There are countless mobile phones being churned out every day thanks to the tight competition in the handset industry. Some of these phones are basically just rehashed copies or those that rely on gimmicky concepts to get appreciation from the niche market. There are those that truly redefine what the norm is in the mobile phone industry, or at least try to. The Nokia Kinetic is one such noteworthy device.

This novel concept phone converts the digital signals it receives and turns it into kinetic energy. The use of an electro magnet allows the mobile phone to shift its weight to its base and gets the unit to stand up. This shift in position shows you whenever a phone call or text message is received which would be great for, say, deaf people or those that do not like using blaring ring tones or message alerts to tell them they have to check their handsets.

To cancel a call, you can simply tap the Nokia Kinetic back down. This seems to be an elegant, techie solution to the age old problem of loud, annoying call and message alerts.

The one thing that this ends up sacrificing is the convenience factor whenever the user pockets the phone. The bumpy bottom which houses the camera and the electro magnet makes the handset seems a bit bulky and will surely give users a bulging pocket. Ergonomics-wise, the shape may not be for everyone, especially those who have gotten used to gripping a flat shaped device. That would not be an issue if used hands-free however.

At any rate, it is a very interesting idea. This nifty little concept was the hard work of Mr. Jeremy Innes-Hopkins, a British designer that predicts that this is the next trend in the future of mobile phones.

It is a well established fact that Finnish manufacturer Nokia has very close ties with the Symbian Foundation. Technically, it can even be said that they started it. But the time for close ties seems to be coming to an end with the announcement that no new Symbian smart phones will be part of the Nokia N-series (which is basically their flagship series of handsets) as the Espoo based phone maker shifts its focus on the Moblin OS (which they co-developed with Intel).

According to recent reports, the Symbian OS is not looking good. Many doubt that even the upcoming Nokia N8 and Symbian^3 operating system would be able to help the ailing OS. Despite having once been the most widely used operating system for mobile phone users, many are passing up on the Symbian.

It has to be noted that the Symbian’s initial popularity was one of technicality: the Nokia devices they were installed on where what was selling. In an era where a mobile handset’s operating system was not a key factor, the Symbian OS dominated the field.

With the emergence and popularity of smart phone devices however, people are not aware of the value of a good operating system –and the choice of handsets is as influenced by its OS as much as the hardware specifications would.

Google’s Android OS is major competitor that has taken over the field. In just two years, the open source mobile platform has become the most widely used smart phone OS. And with less and less people using generic 2G devices, it seems that the OS with control of the smart phone market will be the one that dominates.

Nokia still has high hopes for the Symbian Foundation. Not only are they excited about the upcoming Nokia N8, but are pretty much open to the idea of a Symbian^4 handset appearing on the N-series.

A recent update on the Nokia Conversations blog with Damian Dinning showed that the camera on the upcoming Nokia N8 is more than just a handset extra –it is a main focus. Sure, it has also got the new Symbian^3 operating system, a pretty sweet 3.5 inch AMOLED touch screen display, a 680MHz CPU and all the other features one would expect from a high end smart phone (Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi, etc).

But the real draw here is the camera.

At 12 mega pixels, the image quality is pretty hard to match. Of course, it does not matter all that much when you are viewing it on a computer monitor –where the image will have to be shrunk down to fit onscreen. But in printing, those extra mega pixels are certainly going to add up.

First off, the camera has a base resolution of 4000 x 3000 pixels, on printed image at 300dpi this gives a print out of at least 13.3 x 10 inches –and that is a high quality print. Naturally, users will want to shrink down the image to a reasonable size before uploading it to Facebook or on a web blog as the file size is also pretty large.

The colors are captured nicely and the Carl Zeiss lens provides an accurate capture of depth. When images are taken in natural daylight, the camera works like a charm. The Xenon flash provides ample lighting for specific situations, though the phone loses its edge with flash photography. Either way, images are still captured in pretty high definition.

Speaking of high def, the camera can also take videos with 720p HD quality at 30 frames per second. The high speed graphics processor ensures that every frame is capture with perfect quality allowing for crisp playback on the N8’s HDMI output port. All in all, this should make an excellent addition to Nokia’s NSeries.