Tag: Nokia
Nokia Nautilus and two other touchscreen mobiles to come
The word on The Street is that Nokia is getting serious about touchscreen mobiles since RIM took a bite out of their market share last year and, apparently, we’re to see three new models in the next 12 months.
One is 4.2″ tablet type handheld with a “hidden slide-out QWERTY” due to hit the shelves before Christmas. A second is known for now as “Nautilus” and has the kind of talk around it that makes it sound like something from the year 2116. It’s supposed to be a much finer form and with an ultra-thin QWERTY that slides out by means of a sensor with keys that raise for easier typing.
Sounds slightly farcical but I’m happy to run with it until I hear otherwise. Funnily enough, Nautilus isn’t expected for a year. The third touchscreen handset is thought to be with us within four months, though.
No word on the on the OS of the handsets but I wouldn’t presume S60 to be the natural choice. I have it on good authority that the next big handset from Nokia after the N97 will run Linux.
SHINY VIDEO PREVIEW: Nokia E75
Although I was told in no uncertain terms that I’m not allowed to label this a ‘review’, I really liked the Nokia E75. Its QWERTY keyboard complements the keypad nicely.
Shame the screen’s a little on the small side, but you can’t have everything, I suppose. If you’re a prolific text communicator, then you’ll find a lot to like here. If you’re more into your multimedia, then it might be worth sitting tight till the N97, which isn’t far off now. Check out my full thoughts in the video above.
Nokify – why Spotify and Nokia should team up
Scandinavia is a cold place. The nights are long, the winters are snowy, and the coasts are fjordy. To stave off the cold, they run their computers all night long, and as a result the populations of the Nordic countries have become rather adept programmers and designers.
They make brilliant stuff, like the Pirate Bay, Ericsson phones, and a smörgåsbord of other exciting inventions, including Nokia and Spotify. In my post this morning about Nokia’s new music phones, I questioned why the two companies hadn’t made friends yet.
After all – Spotify has definite mobile ambitions and is in the process of pumping out an iPhone app. Nokia, on the other hand, dearly want to do more with music, but their Comes with Music service is an awful DRM-encumbred experience. Spotify has brilliant software, but no hardware. Nokia has incredible handsets, but a crappy software experience.
So why not combine? Ditch Comes with Music, which must be a buttload of hassle for Nokia to operate, and get Spotify to do exactly the same thing, but better. Build a year’s subscription into the handset price, and everyone’s happy. Nokia gets a fantastic music service that it doesn’t have to run, Spotify gets a tonne of new happy users, and the phone-buyer gets unlimited streaming music for free.
What could go wrong? Well, that depends on how Spotify implements its mobile experience compared to the desktop software. A constant 3G connection is unlikely, so there’s going to need to be some on-device storage of tracks, even if it’s heavily encrypted.
From what we know of Spotify’s iPhone application, it appears that you’ll be able to cache entire playlists – which would be fantastic. When the device can get a 3G connection, it will, but most of the time you’ll probably want to be playing off the internal memory – for reasons of battery life if nothing else.
A Spotify S60 application is coming, there’s no doubt about that, but with Nokia’s resources, expertise and cash behind the startup, something really exciting could happen that could really be a deal-breaker for someone choosing between a Sony Ericsson, Samsung or Nokia handset.
Best of all, it could finally drop the axe on the aging iPod, providing a fantastic, integrated on-the-go music listening experience with a catalogue in the cloud. I can’t think of anything better.
Spotify and Nokia
Nokia pumps out three new music phones, and comments on the N97, Spotify and Comes with Music
Nokia seems to have decided that music is where it wants to be. The Finnish handset-maker has announced three new handsets today – the 5730 XpressMusic, the 5330 XpressMusic, and the 5030 – which doesn’t have an XpressMusic suffix, but does have an XpressRadio one.
The handsets range from budget to high-end. Starting at the bottom, the 5030 XpressRadio is a candybar with a built-in FM radio antenna, not the internet radio that Nokia’s been pushing to date. It’s very cheap, at just €40 before contracts come into play. Budget-tastic. It’ll be available in Q2.
Then there’s the 5330 XpressMusic, which has a different design to many Nokia handsets. More square. It’s a slider, and it has a 3.5mm headphone jack, 24 hours of listening time battery life, and some sort of crazy light thing going on. If you have any idea what that’s about, then free free to comment. Unfortunately, the 5330 won’t be running S60 – just the cut-down S40 version. It’ll cost €184 before taxes or contracts get involved. It’ll be available in Q3 2009.
Then, at the top of the range is the 5730 XpressMusic which comes in black/red, black/grey, grey/blue and black/pink. It’s got both a numeric keypad and a slide-out QWERTY, which shrinks the screen down a little, but it’s the only phone of the three to be running S60.
Specs-wise, the 5730 has got Wi-Fi, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a 3.2-megapixel camera, HSDPA, and GPS. You can also access your media from the home screen, which will be handy for those who want easier access to their content on the go. It’ll cost €280, and will be available in Q3 2009.
The phones were announced with a webchat this morning, and as part of that chat, the Nokia team also answered a few random questions from the audience. Here’s a few interesting tidbits that they came out with.
Firstly, when asked about the N97, Product Manager for Music Solutions, Steven Stewart, said the handset is “like sex in your hand”(!). The device hasn’t been announced as a Comes with Music device, but Stewart said it would be “perfect for getting unlimited free music downloads”, which sounds like a hint to me.
The inevitable question about Spotify was asked – Nokia responded: “Yes, the music team is aware of most all types of music services and devices. Spotify is one of many interesting new services. Social Music is an important part of the music experience which our teams are busy as beavers working on!”. Given Spotify’s now-officially-announcedmobile ambitions, a tie-in could be very powerful.
Discussing Apple and competition, Stewart said: “Nokia is doing many exciting things with music that apple is not. Nokia has a large range of devices for most every taste, style, and use. Nokia also has a subscription model for unlimited free music that users keep even AFTER the membership ends. But we do look at ALL of the competitive intelligence to make sure we are developing music experiences that consumers want.”.
Lastly, with regards to Comes with Music, the service will shortly be announced in Italy, Sweden, and Mexico. There are no current plans to unbundle the service from handsets, so that it’ll be usable with any device. I suspect that’s because, like Apple, Nokia wants to carefully control the ecosystem and not have to deal with supporting other manufacturer’s handsets.
The DRM on the service is “a requirement of the labels and publishers at this point”, says Stewart. “Nokia Music team is looking for the best experiences for Music Lovers. Getting DRM free music is one of the things which we are in discussions with the labels and publishers about.”
Nokia 5730, 5330 and 5030.
OPINION: Why is nobody using Android?
I’m going to do you a favour before I make you read everything I’ve got to say. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know why just about every phone manufacturer save Apple and Nokia has given Google’s mobile OS the cold battery cover ever since the G1 came out in October last year. I don’t know.
You don’t hear any Android user talking about how rubbish the platform is. You don’t hear any developers saying it isn’t any good either, and in techland, that’s a sign that a product is more or less perfect. So, what’s the problem…
Mystery mobile phone found in bag of crisps
Last week we had “phone found in fish” and this week it’s “phone found in chips”, if you’ll excuse the slight Americanization. A lady in Wisconsin, one Emma Schweiger, found a Nokia 6810 in her bag of Clancy’s Ripple Potato Chips.
The phone wouldn’t turn on (probably out of battery) but it had a T-Mobile SIM card inside. There was also a “discoloured circle” of some sort on the back. Yuck. She didn’t finish the packet of crisps, but did get a free packet in replacement. She politely declined.
No word if the handset’s owner has been traced yet. I imagine they might be quite happy to see it again, but not as happy as the owner of the codded mobile.
Have you ever found a mobile phone in an odd place? No, not that place. Leave us a comment below, and we’ll see if we can turn two news stories into a TECH TREND.
Janesville Gazette (via CrunchGear)
Nokia wants to ditch DRM from Comes With Music
Nokia’s “Comes With Music” service, which offers unlimited music for a small amount bundled into the price of the of your phone, is unfortunately hobbled with DRM.
The ways things are set up means that any tracks you download are locked to one handset and one PC and if you want to do anything else, then…. well, you can’t do anything else.
However, Nokia doesn’t want it that way. Nokia understands that music should, in its very nature, be sharable with people you love. That’s why it wants to get rid of the DRM. Nokia’s director of global digital music retail, Adam Mirabella says:
“We have dialogues going with all of our partners and Digital Rights Management-free is also on the roadmap for the future integration of Comes With Music.”
Don’t hold your breath – I doubt we’ll see this for at least a year – but it’d certainly be nice, and would certainly make me retract most of my criticism of the service.
(via Music Ally)
Cod eats phone, fisherman catches cod, phone returned to owner
Andrew Cheatle is a lucky chap. He lost his phone on a beach a couple of weeks back and assumed it’d been lost at sea. On a shopping trip to replace the handset, however, his girlfriend’s phone rang. She handed it to him, saying it was some guy going on about a cod.
On the end of the line was fisherman Glen Kerley. He’d found a handset in the belly of a cod, and figured he’d try and return it to its owner. After going to meet him, he was reunited with his (rather battered) handset, and after it dried out, he was amazed to find it worked perfectly.
So what was the handset that survived a week in a fish? I wasn’t sure, so I consulted the masses on Twitter. The wonderful @lovelychaos was first with the answer – it’s a Nokia 1600 – a handset designed for use in developing countries. Well, I guess it’s proved its worth!
Nokia asks 1,000 staff to take voluntary redundancies
Work for Nokia, and fancy a bit of a change of scenery? Well, now is a good time, because the company is inviting its employees to quit with a “voluntary resignation package”. Nokia says that it’s attempting to avoid the need for ‘involuntary redundancies’. Nicely put.
Nokia staff have between March 1 and May 31 to apply for the scheme, or until 1,000 employees have applied. The company is also encouraging employees to take time off rather than exchanging holiday for cash, and granting short-term unpaid leave to anyone who wants to take it.
(via Barrons)
Nokia N86 announced/revealed/played with at Singapore Nokia event
Today’s impenetrable wall of mobile phone news continues, with this – the arrival of proper facts regarding Nokia’s Symbian S60-powered N86.
The slidey phone is Nokia’s entry in the GREAT PHONE CAMERA MEGAPIXEL WAR, thanks to it coming with an 8megapixel Carl Zeiss camera round the back, with auto-focus and support for recording MP4 video at a maximum resolution of 640 x 480.
On the phone side of things, it’s packed with 8GB of memory…
