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Here’s a quick follow up to the 2.5 months old post about Exchange ActiveSync support in Hotmail. Microsoft is announcing today that EAS (Exchange ActiveSync) is fully functional and up and running in Hotmail as promised earlier this year:
EAS keeps everything in sync between your phone and Hotmail, so whatever you do on your phone, like delete an email, add an appointment, or update one of your contacts with a new number, will also be reflected on the web, and vice-versa.
Continue reading Exchange ActiveSync for Hotmail officially up and running →
I guess that Nokia isn’t really loving all the praises the iPhone 4 is getting for its ability to take really good pictures compared to other handsets so the Finnish company has decided to set the record straight today with some crazy sample pictures shot with the upcoming Nokia N8 smartphone. All the sots are supposedly untouched and come directly from the phone. There’s isn’t much to say here, I’ll let you be the judge…hit up the source link to check a few more of them in full uncompressed quality.
Source: Nokia
That’s right folks, the first retail mobile platform to support Microsoft’s Silverlight technology (in the browser) isn’t Windows Phone 7 but Nokia’s Symbian. Today is the official availability day of the Silverlight plugin/app for available for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices such as Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 and Nokia N97 Mini. The app can be download for free directly though Nokia’s OVI store:
Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform implementation of the .NET Framework for building media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web on desktop computers, is also available for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices such as Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and N97. Silverlight applications now can be viewed inside mobile browser.
Source: OVI
It’s been a while since I’ve posted about the Nokia N900 bu this doesn’t mean that the Maemo community isn’t active, especially the NITDroid crew who’s been working on making Android functional on Nokia’s über smartphone. Their latest achievement is the successful poor of Android 2.2 aka Froyo on the N900. You can check out the hands-on video after the break:
Continue reading Android 2.2 on the Nokia N900 →
According to Cnet Australia, the company has apparently decided that the Nokia N8 will be the last N Series handset to run the Symbian operating system and that all future N devices will be based on the Meego OS (formerly known as Maemo… Can’t say I”m surprised especially after seeing how the Finish giant has a hard time modernizing it’s symbian OS (especially in terms of UI performances and UX). Symbian ^3 and Symbian^4 arnet”t completely out of the door thought. Nokia plans to use it on more mass market (mid-end) devices.
According to the Nokia peeps we spoke to, the N8 will be the last N-series to run on Nokia’s Symbian platform; all N-Series from here on will run MeeGo. This leaves Symbian (in its current version 3 and the future version 4) on Nokia’s X- and E-series devices, with the budget-conscious C-series making use of the existing Series 40 platform. The N9 will be the first MeeGo device, but with the N8 shipping at the end of Q3 or early Q4 it’s hard to say whether the N9 will see the inside of phone stores before the end of the year.
Source: Cnet
Nokia has just posted part 3 of their ongoing Nokia N8 overview videos. This time the focus is on the multi-media player which features a Cover-Flow like UI (also similar to the one on the HTC HD2) that doesn’t seem to suffer from the sub-par performances that we have seen in previous videos (new Firmware?). Next discuss the ability to connect the handset to an HD TV via the HDMI connector and the bluetooth support which enables the user to control and navigate the phone with a BT keyboard. Video after the break:
Continue reading Nokia shows off HDMI and bluetooth capabilities of the Nokia N8 →
Hot on the heels of yesterday iMovie for iPhone 4 announcement comes this video showcase of the photo and video editing capabilities of the Nokia N8. Both functionalities will come free on the N8 unlike iMovies for the iPhone 4 which will cost $4.99. On the other hand Nokia will seriously have to hurry up and fix the abyssal frame rate of the UI. The lack of v-sync and subsequent screen tearing is unaceptable. Video after the break:
Continue reading Video Editing on the Nokia N8 →
Here’s a 6 minutes long video overview of Nokia’s upcoming Symbian^3 smartphone the Nokia N8. You will get to see a walkthrough of the homescreen and some UI customization, integration of OVI maps and a whole bunch of other nice features like Flash in the browser.One interesting thing to not is that the devices seems to be running faster that what we have seen in the earlier promo videos back when the N8 was announced. but there’s still a sever lack of v-sync causing the noticable screen tearing you see when scrolling and panning. This is one thing that has to be fixed ASAP. The iPhone has shown us that a perfectly rendered UI is the minimum a user should expect when buying a high-end smartphone. This problem has ^plagued Windows Mobile for many and it is only now that Microsoft is finally natively “fixing” this issue with the release of Windows Phone 7 (I highly suggest you take a look at my live hands-on video of WP7 in action to see how it looks like). Check out the video after the break:
Continue reading Nokia N8 overview video →
Too little too late? I frankly don’t really know what to think of this deal right now especially when you consider Yahoo’s current position in the mapping and search business so I’ll give you the full press release and let you judge:
Nokia and Yahoo! to bring integrated web services to millions of consumers around the world May 24, 2010
Global strategic alliance enables industry leaders to leverage strengths in e-mail, instant messaging, maps and navigation across PC and mobile devices
New York, NY, USA – Today, Yahoo! and Nokia announced a worldwide strategic alliance to extend the reach of their industry leading online services and offer people rich experiences that keep them connected to their world and the world around them.
Building on more than five years of collaboration, Nokia and Yahoo! ® will leverage each others’ strengths in e-mail, instant messaging and maps and navigation services, to provide consumers with access to world-class experiences on both PC and mobile devices.
As part of the alliance:
- Nokia will be the exclusive, global provider of Yahoo!’s maps and navigation services, integrating Ovi Maps across Yahoo! properties, branded as “powered by Ovi.”
- Yahoo! will become the exclusive, global provider of Nokia’s Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat services branded as “Ovi Mail / Ovi Chat powered by Yahoo!”
- Nokia and Yahoo! plan to work on ID federation between their services, beginning by making it easy for people to use their Ovi user IDs across select Yahoo! properties to easily access the online content and services they need.
Continue reading Yahoo and Nokia announce Worldwide mail, maps and search deal →
Today Yahoo has sent out an invitation for a press event scheduled on Monday in New York that reads:
Please join Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz for an exciting announcement about providing global consumers with rich online and mobile experiences, and bringing forward a new era in keeping consumers connected.
According to BoomTown’s sources this will the the announced of a deal to build Yahoo’s mail, search (err Bing?) and other services into some of Nokia’s handsets. The deal is apparently named “Project Nike” and has been in the work for a while now (even before the Microsoft / Yahoo search deal). I will be interesting to see if this deal affects Nokia devices sold worldwide or only in the US. If it’s the later then it unfortunately wouldn’t mean much fro Yahoo in light of Nokia’s current marketshare in North America and given that Yahoo search is soon going to be powered by Bing the Redmond software giant will probably in some way be involved.
Source: Yahoo via BoomTown
After the proof of concept video of Android on the N900 we saw a couple months ago some folks decided to start the NITDroid project to get Android 2.1 fully functional on Nokia’s N900 and N800 Maemo5 devices. The video shows the device booting up the Android OS and general functionality currently up an running. Foo more info head over to the Nitdroid page here.
Source: NITDroid & MaemoTalk
It has been a while since we’ve heard any Microsoft-Nokia related news but things are slowly starting to change. Nokia has finally announced this week that Microsoft Communicator Mobile is now available on the OVI Store initially for Nokia E72 and Nokia E52. Back in august of last year Microsoft and Nokia signed a deal and form a global alliance to develop, design and market mobile productivity solutions. This weeks release of Microsoft’s Office Communicator is the first (tiny) step:
Continue reading Microsoft Communicator Mobile for Nokia Debuts →
Nokia has just issued a press released today announcing that they are suing Apple one more time. This time the Finish company filed a complaint against Apple with the Federal District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin, alleging that Apple iPhone and iPad 3G products infringe five important Nokia patents. This whole drama isn’t going to end anytime soon. Unfortunately for Apple, Nokia ain’t no HTC… Here’s the full press release:
Nokia sues Apple in Wisconsin for infringement of Nokia patents
May 07, 2010
Espoo, Finland – Nokia announced that it has today filed a complaint against Apple with the Federal District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin, alleging that Apple iPhone and iPad 3G products infringe five important Nokia patents.
The patents in question relate to technologies for enhanced speech and data transmission, using positioning data in applications and innovations in antenna configurations that improve performance and save space, allowing smaller and more compact devices. These patented innovations are important to Nokia’s success as they allow improved product performance and design.
“Nokia has been the leading developer of many key technologies in mobile devices” said Paul Melin, General Manager, Patent Licensing at Nokia. “We have taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia’s innovation.”
During the last two decades, Nokia has invested approximately EUR 40 billion in research and development and built one of the wireless industry’s strongest and broadest IPR portfolios, with over 11,000 patent families. Nokia is a world leader in the development of handheld device and mobile communications technologies, which is also demonstrated by Nokia’s strong patent portfolio.
Source: Nokia
Here’s hands-on demo of BillboardLive’s Windows Phone 7 application showing Silverlight IIS smoothsreaming content directly on the phone similar to the Netflix application shown at MIX10. Later in the video you’ll also see the first ever Silverlight application on a Nokia S60 handsets:
iPhone users will also be able to watch silverlight video content thanks to the IIS’s real-time Silverlight to MP4 de-muxing functionality.
Source: Channel9
Following yesterday’s camera samples here comes the first ever 720P HD video sample captured withe Nokia N8 camera and it looks amazing for a phone IMO.You can download te original .mp4 file directly from Vimeo to check it out in its fully glory.
Source: Nokia Conversations
Nokia has just posted a couple of sample pictures taken with the newly announced Nokia N8 spartphone. I re-sized three of them (it’s going to kill my bandwidth if I don’t) to give you a quick look at how the new 12 Mpix wide-angle camera (with Carl-Zeiss optics and Xenon-Flash) performs and frankly this thing is beautiful. Head over to the source link to check them all out.
Source: Nokia Blog
Nokia has just unleashed one of the best speced handset ever today; the Nokia N8. The N8 is Nokia’s first Symbian^3 handset and also the only handset that packs so many advanced features: a 3.2″capacitive touchscreen, 12Mpix wide-angle camera (with Carl Zeiss optics and a Xenon flash), HDMI outpout, 720P video capture and decoding, Dolby Digital Plus decoding. All this for only €370 without a contract:
Nokia N8. Connect. Create. Entertain.
April 27, 2010
Espoo, Finland – The Nokia N8, Nokia’s latest smartphone, intuitively connects to the people, places and services that matter most. With the Nokia N8, people can create compelling content, connect to their favorite social networks and enjoy on-demand Web TV programs and Ovi Store apps. Available in select markets during the third quarter of 2010, the estimated retail price of the Nokia N8 is EUR 370, before applicable taxes or subsidies.
The Nokia N8 introduces a 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and a large sensor that rivals those found in compact digital cameras. Additionally, the Nokia N8 offers the ability to make HD-quality videos and edit them with an intuitive built-in editing suite. Doubling as a portable entertainment center, people can enjoy HD-quality video with Dolby Digital Plus surround sound by plugging into their home theatre system. The Nokia N8 enables access to Web TV services that deliver programs, news and entertainment from channels like CNN, E! Entertainment, Paramount and National Geographic. Additional local Web TV content is also available from the Ovi Store.
Social networking is second nature to the Nokia N8. People can update their status, share location and photos, and view live feeds from Facebook and Twitter in a single app directly on the home screen. Calendar events from social networks can also be transferred to the device calendar.
The Nokia N8 comes with free global Ovi Maps walk and drive navigation, guiding people to places and points of interest in more than 70 countries worldwide.
Symbian^3 in action
Powering the Nokia N8 is Symbian ^3, the latest edition of the world’s most used smartphone software, which introduces several major advances, including support for gestures such as multi touch, flick scrolling and pinch-zoom. The Nokia N8 also offers multiple, personalizable homescreens which can be loaded with apps and widgets. The new 2D and 3D graphics architecture in the platform takes full advantage of the Nokia N8’s hardware acceleration to deliver a faster and more responsive user interface. Symbian^3 also raises the bar in performance by delivering greater memory management allowing more applications to run in parallel for a faster multi-tasking experience.
Getting Qt for Developers
The Nokia N8 is Nokia’s first device to be integrated with Qt, a software development environment that simplifies the development and makes it possible to build applications once and deploy across Symbian and other software platforms. Nokia has also made the powerful and simple to use Nokia Qt SDK available, in its initial beta, to enable developers to start realizing the potential of Qt.
The only downside of this phone is Symbian^3, if it was running Maemo/Meego this would have be the perfect phone. Unfortunately S^3 is sonly a stopgap before Symbian^4 comes out later this year and it from the videos show the UI still seems to suffer from sub-par performance.
Source: Nokia
The first Symbian^3 smartphone is supposedly going to be announced next month during a special event according to Engadget’s sources. The Nokia N8 (pictured above) features a 3.5″ Capacitive touchscreen, 12 megapixel camera with Xenon flash and Carl Zeiss optics, and HDMI-out & 3.5mm jack. Check out the updated Symbian^4 UI here.
Source: iT168 via Engadget
Mary Jo Foley was quick enough to notice that Microsoft posted the Silverlight Beta executable & tools for Symbian on March 11 before everything was pulled out a few hours later. Here’s the tools description:
“The installable executable file enables users to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform. The executable file includes the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition devices, the Silverlight runtime for Nokia S60 5th Edition emulator, sample applications, and developer documentation.”
And the executable description:
“The installable executable enables user to run Silverlight applications on the Nokia S60 5th Edition platform.”
Nokia is currently the only mobile company who has signed a deal with Microsoft to make Silverlight available on their platform. We should expect more news on this subject next week at MIX.
Source: All About Microsoft
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