My Nokia Blog |
- Leaked: Meltemi almost 1:1 with N9 UI; C7-like Hardware, without buttons on screen
- The Verge’s Nokia 808 PureView Review – camera, “ASTOUNDING, BREATHTAKING, STUPEFYING.”
- Lumiappaday #223: Tom and Jerry demoed on the Nokia Lumia 900
- Microsoft Denies any Home-Grown WP; Still Believes in OEMs (+ Random Thoughts on Meego)
- Microsoft will not be building their own Windows Phones.
- Closer look at Nokia TV- #NokiaEntertainment
- Video: Ask Elop-
- Nokia 808 PureView and zooming in 12x
| Leaked: Meltemi almost 1:1 with N9 UI; C7-like Hardware, without buttons on screen Posted: 25 Jun 2012 05:21 PM PDT  This is NOT the Meltemi device, but the description is similar. We all wish Meltemi had seen the light of day, or at least leaked images and info right? Well last night I received the latter, from a reliable source of mine, about Meltemi, the other Linux-based OS killed by Nokia’s reshuffling. So here’s what I’ve been told.
Based on the schedule, I assume Meltemi would have been launched at Nokia World (which is in approx. 2 months). How would this have affected the current strategy though? We’ll never know now. On to the hardware side. The device was using a C7-like design, however, as expected with Swipe, those three buttons beneath the screen would be gone. The screen, apparently, was a 3.5″ with a 15:9 ratio (now a standard among several European countries, so quite possible). No further specs were given, so we have to keep dreaming that some more information will come to light. Michael
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| The Verge’s Nokia 808 PureView Review – camera, “ASTOUNDING, BREATHTAKING, STUPEFYING.” Posted: 25 Jun 2012 01:45 PM PDT
The Verge has published heir review of the Nokia 808 PureView.
The most important section is Camera. This is 5 years worth of work. Has it been worth it?
The phone scores 6.1 overall as unfortunately they’re not fans of Symbian. Vlad feels that the hardware is let down by the software.
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| Lumiappaday #223: Tom and Jerry demoed on the Nokia Lumia 900 Posted: 25 Jun 2012 01:06 PM PDT
#223) Tom and Jerry
Developer Blurb:
Rating:Design: 7 Usability: 8 Performance: 9 Price: 10
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| Microsoft Denies any Home-Grown WP; Still Believes in OEMs (+ Random Thoughts on Meego) Posted: 25 Jun 2012 12:31 PM PDT
No beating around the bush here, when Microsoft announced it’s own home-made line of tablets alot of minds (mine included) went down the “Nokia is screwed” route; but thankfully we’re all a bit hyper-imaginative, since MSFT have confirmed that they are currently no plans to create a Microsoft phone to accompany their pretty impressive surface tablet.
Of course this is great news for Nokia (and any other OEM for WP) as it puts to rest that little annoying voice that was whispering doubts into their ears, after all how can you compete with the people who make the OS itself? Which on a totally unrelated subject was the reason why I don’t think Meego could have made it as a 3rd/4th ecosystem- who in their right mind would choose to be an OEM competing against the N9 WITHOUT swipe interface on their phones (as that is a custom skin that wouldn’t be part of the licencing deals)? Anything and I mean Anything that anyone pushed out would look like a troll in a beauty pageant (don’t bother searching for that phrase I just made it up). At the risk of sounding cliched Meego was a victim of it’s own perfection in the N9 (although a bit pre-mature). If perhaps Nokia had a slightly less investment in Meego (meaning Intel or some other SOFTWARE company was the main developer) there might have been a glimmer of hope, but it’s no use competing against the people who coded the whole OS; where they know every line of code and have a huge head start, it just doesn’t seem reasonable. Honestly I couldn’t see Microsoft going down that same route of pushing out their own phones at the risk of alienating their OEMs; not because that would be mean, simply because WP doesn’t have enough of a userbase to be abandoned by it’s OEMs. I can see Microsoft pushing out their own phone somewhere down the line once WP has established a PROPER foothold in the smartphone market (at least 15-20%), hopefully if that time comes Nokia will be well back on it’s feet and kicking diversifying into multiple strange new worlds (maybe the concept UI we saw yesterday). The tablet market could be considered as if Microsoft didn’t encroach on any of it’s OEMs as really none of them ever put some serious effort into a tablet (except Samsung) and those who did make a tablet pushed it out under the Android Banner (HTC Flyer), but phones are a whole nother story; when an OS manufacturer knows how much effort a company such as Nokia went through to get those WPs up and running and the number of services they’re providing for their WPs under the Lumia name they probably will think twice before messing with them. Also it would seem that MSFT have slightly dug themselves into a commitment with Nokia by the amount of air time they inadvertently gave to the Lumia range, using the Lumias as their phone of choice in the “Smoked by Windows Phone” competitions as well as using mockups VERY similar to Lumias in their presentations and bringing Nokia on stage in their Dev meets has made Nokia/Lumia Synonymous with WP; meaning when someone mentions WP they would conjure a picture of a lumia their brain, if MSFT were to make their own phone they’d have to tone down the subliminal advertising of Nokia’s first.
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| Microsoft will not be building their own Windows Phones. Posted: 25 Jun 2012 12:08 PM PDT
There were some rumours from ‘analysts’ that Microsoft were going to be making their own Windows Phone, much to the detriment of Nokia. This was based after Microsoft kept harping on about the importance of the close ties between Hardware and Software in their new Microsoft Surface. Well, apparently they aren’t and this is denied by a Microsoft executive and retweeted by Nokia UK PR. Here is the article link: http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/microsoft_news/240002635 Still, information week reiterates that some analysts believe MS will make a move for Nokia.
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| Closer look at Nokia TV- #NokiaEntertainment Posted: 25 Jun 2012 07:15 AM PDT
Regardless of what your thoughts are on the Nokia/WP strategy one fact that can’t be denied is that is has led to an increase in the number of previously dismal Nokia services, and more importantly these services don’t end up in the notorious “Forever-Beta land” (looking at you nokia pulse). Currently Nokia WPs have an impressive number of services provided by Nokia for their line of WPs (Maps, drive, transit, reading, creative studio, camera extras, play to, mix radio, TV, reading…) so here’s my attempt at taking a closer look at these services, starting with the Nokia Entertainment range which includes, Mix Radio/Nokia Music, Nokia Reading and Nokia TV. As you should have probably guessed from the title first up from the entertainment line is Nokia TV, Nokia TV is one of the more recently launched services and is currently only available for those of you in Finland (shame), Nokia TV is a brilliant “catch up-TV service” that allows users in Finland to view content from some of the countries largest providers on their Lumia phone, Anytime- Completely FREE (there might be the occasional video ad).
So here’s the video in Glorious 1080p (poll: is there a need for 1080p quality or is 720p enough?- only asking cause of the file size/upload times):
As you can see in the video demo the services are really neat bringing you a HUGE variety of content from talk shows to comedies to sport matches and all free, the other factor that really impressed me in the content provided was the quality of the content as it appeared to be “near-HD” quality.
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| Posted: 25 Jun 2012 06:58 AM PDT
So the Nokia Youtube channel just uploaded a video about a bunch of people asking Elop questions and him responding through the video, some informative bits and pieces amongst the usual vague generic replies (BTW is it just me or is Elops voice TOO calm, he shows no emotion when talking- would be great for an audiobook reader though “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phenoix, read in the voice of Stephen Elop” I’d buy that).
Here’re some random points if you decided to skip the 11 minutes of video (not exact quotes more of gists of the idea).
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| Nokia 808 PureView and zooming in 12x Posted: 25 Jun 2012 01:13 AM PDT
With the Nokia 808 PureView, the lower the resolution of your picture or video, the further you can zoom. [I'm not super technical so this is just my understanding. Not sure why this article became this long, I originally just wanted to share a video that showed 12x zoom]
This is because there’s more pixels for the 808 PureView to crop into. Traditionally, digital zooms from other manufacturers work by zooming in the set pixels they are at already. What I mean by this is that if they were to record at 360p, (640×360), all they would simply do is enlarge the pixels already inside that 640×360 frame, resulting in ugly blocky recordings. This gets better in higher resolutions, but still you produce an obvious quality degraded image.
You’ll also notice that when you are zoomed in (just before taking the picture), the exposure is managed differently to what is in the frame. This would be quite different to zooming in to a photo where the exposure is locked to what the photo was taken at. Sometimes, some digital zooms don’t compensate for the fact that you have zoomed in and just take the full frame.. This means that when you’re zoomed in and you zoom in to somewhere bright, it may remain over exposed. I believe in the 808, it is also able to manage the focus differently to what is in the frame. Starting with the N86, suddenly that ugly useless zooming wasn’t there anymore. It was in a way, usable. The N8 however was the first one to market this feature. The 808 is now the king of this type of digital zoom. Instead of simply zooming in on the pixels in the frame, it zoomed in to the pixels available to the whole sensor. So the total sensor size of 7728×5368 can be used and a 640×360 image can be cropped within that to produce your level of zoom.
Think of it as if you were able to pinch and zoom within a 640×360 frame, inside of a 7728×5368 image. The bigger the resolution of the camera sensor (combined with a physically larger sensor to make sure those extra pixels are usable and not just marketing fluff), you can record at higher resolutions, still with useful digital zoom. Another alternative is to record at lower resolutions and achieve even higher digital zoom.
by ashouhdy The Nokia 808 PureView at 1080p manages 3x zoom. But knock down your resolution to 360p and you can get up to (by default camera) 12x zoom. Camera Shakes The more you zoom, the more camera shakes become apparent. Consider again looking at a scene with the 640×360, 4″ frame on the Nokia 808 PureView. Move it up slightly by 1mm and the image will probably look near enough the same. As you increase your zoom level, that 1mm difference becomes exaggerated to the point that at the 12x zoom range, it can cut off whole objects out of the frame and look like a completely different picture. Apparently the 808 maintains the same aperture (well, f stop) throughout, whilst optical zooms cameras may reduce the f-stop in telephoto, thus less light is reaching the sensor. The point and shoot might compensate by lengthening the shutter time to obtain more light. But, increased shutter time increases the chance of blurring. It’s useful to have some excellent optical/digital image stabilisation. It helps to have a tripod to reduce shakes at the zoom end. I don’t know what type of image stabilisation the 808 uses but it could be better. It’s best not to be moving yourself whilst zooming. It may be ok if taking photos but the shakes are made so much worse if you’re in zoom and you’re walking about whilst video recording. Something like a steadicam could help here. Interestingly, speaking of zoom/cropping and zooming in causing more shakes – in digital image stabilisation, I believe it works by shifting an image frame by frame, counteracting your motion, so that particular points in your view have less jittering motion and you can take a sharper image/less shaky video. Pixels outside the border of the original frame act like a buffer by which the frame can be shifted in those directions to stabilise the image/video. This may mean that you won’t get the full focal length of your camera at the cost of digital image stabilisation.
Bokeh
Bokeh describes that selective out of focus blurring. Often it’s things in the foreground that are kept in focus while the background has a lovely mellow blur but it doesn’t just have to be the background or even the foreground – it’s up to you where you select your focus areas and out of focus areas to be.
When you zoom in to close up objects, the bokeh is somewhat enhanced by magnifying the out of focus area and exaggerating the distances between the in focus subject and the out of focus subject (usually the background).
Focusing
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